Smirnov, Ivan Ivanovich

Born Mar. 5 (18), 1909, in Ivanovo-Voznesensk, now Ivanovo; died May 14, 1965, in Leningrad. Soviet historian. Doctor of historical science (1947). Member of the CPSU from 1941.

Smirnov graduated from the Viatka Pedagogical Institute in 1930. In 1938 he became a research worker at the Leningrad Division of the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. He taught at Leningrad State University from 1936 to 1941 and from 1947 to 1956. Smirnov’s principal works deal with the history of the rural population of feudal Russia and the class struggle in the countryside. He received the State Prize of the USSR in 1950 and was awarded two orders.