Narochnitskii, Aleksei Leontevich

Born Feb. 3 (16), 1907, in Chernigov. Soviet historian. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1972). Member of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the USSR (1968). Honored Scientist of the RSFSR. Member of the CPSU since 1961.

Narochnitskii graduated from the University of Kiev in 1930. From 1946 to 1960 he was a senior research worker at the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR; during this period he taught at the Academy of Social Sciences under the Central Committee of the CPSU, first as a docent and from 1955 as a professor. From 1949 to 1960, Narochnitskii was chairman of the subdepartment of modern history at the V. P. Potemkin Moscow Pedagogical Institute. In 1960 he became chairman of the subdepartment of modern and recent history at the V. I. Lenin Moscow Pedagogical Institute. From 1962 to 1974 he was editor in chief of the journal Novaia i noveishaia istoriia (Modern and Recent History). In 1974 he became director of the Institute of the History of the USSR of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.

Narochnitskii is a specialist on international relations, the colonial policies of the European powers and the USA in the Far East during the 19th and 20th centuries, the history of bourgeois revolutions and international relations in Europe during the 18th and 19th centuries, the foreign policy of Russia in the 18th and 19th centuries and of the USSR, and historiography. Among Narochnitskii’s scholarly works is the fundamental monograph The Colonial Policy of the Capitalist Powers in the Far East, 1860–95, published in 1956. He is also one of the principal authors of A History of Diplomacy (vol. 1, 1941; State Prize of the USSR, 1942; 2nd ed., vol. 1, 1959) and of other jointly written works, including textbooks for higher educational institutions.

Since 1957, Narochnitskii has worked as a consultant with the rank of counselor at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the USSR. He is a member of the commission on the publication of diplomatic documents of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the USSR and from 1960 to 1972 served as editor in chief for vols. 1–8 of Russia’s Foreign Policy in the 19th and Early 20th Century. A participant in many international congresses of historians, Narochnitskii has been awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor and several medals.