Nikolai Mikhailovich Iezuitov

Born Oct. 24 (Nov. 5), 1899, in Aleksandrov; died 1941. Soviet film historian and critic; one of the founders of Soviet film studies.

Iezuitov graduated in 1924 from the department of archaeology and art history at Moscow University. In 1924 he began working for the Society of Marxist Historians, and he taught historical and dialectical materialism and the sociology of art in Moscow music schools and technicums and at the Moscow Conservatory. From 1930 to 1932 he was a scholarly worker at the Institute of Literature and Language of the Communist Academy; he also worked in the State Academy of Art Studies and the All-Union Scientific Research Cinema and Photographic Institute. During 1932–36 he worked in the Leningrad State Academy of Art Studies and directed the graduate program in film studies. In 1936 he became chairman of the subdepartment of the history of cinema at the All-Union State Institute of Cinematography, where he was a professor from 1939. During the Great Patriotic War (1941–45) he joined the militia and died in battle.