Nasonov, Arsenii

Born Aug. 15 (27), 1898, in Evpatoriia; died Apr. 23, 1965, in Moscow. Soviet historian; specialist in USSR history in the feudal period, historical geography, historical sources, and early texts. Son of N. V. Nasonov.

Nasonov graduated from the department of history and philology of the University of Petrograd in 1922. In 1924 he went to work at the State Hermitage and from 1935 to 1965, with interruptions, at the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.

In 1940, Nasonov published the monograph The Mongols and Rus’ and in 1944 Essays on the History of Old Russian Chronicle Compilation. Nasonov researched and published the Pskov Chronicles, the Novgorod Primary Chronicle, the Nikanor Chronicle, and others. Nasonov also contributed much to the investigation of manuscripts containing chronicle texts, having identified more than 1,000.

Nasonov’s The “Russian Land” and the Formation of the Territory of the Old Russian State (1951) was the first attempt to trace the growth of the state lands of medieval Rus’ and to reveal the social changes that affected this process. Nasonov was one of the authors of the multivolume An Outline History of the USSR: The Feudal Period (parts 1–2, 1953).