Druzhinin, Nikolai

Born Jan. 1 (13), 1886, in Kursk. Soviet historian. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (AN SSSR; 1953).

Druzhinin graduated from the departments of law (1911) and history and philology (1918) of Moscow University. He combined a career in museum work (Museum of the Revolution of the USSR, 1924-34) with teaching at such institutions as Moscow University (1929–48) and the Academy of Social Sciences of the Central Committee of the CPSU (1946-48). He also did research in the Russian Association of Scientific Research Institutes of the Social Sciences, and after 1938 he worked at the Institute of History of the AN SSSR.

Druzhinin’s principal research was devoted to the socioeconomic history of 19th-century Russia and problems of social thought and the revolutionary movement. His major works on the liberation movement in Russia include the monograph The Decembrist Nikita Murav’ev (1933), which deals with the Northern Society of the Decembrists, and articles on P. I. Pestel, S. P. Trubetskoi, Z. G. Chernyshev, I. D. Iakushkin, and the program of the Northern Society. In The State Peasants and P. D. Kiselev’s Reform (vol. 1, 1946 [State Prize of the USSR, 1947]; vol. 2, 1958), Druzhinin made comprehensive observations on the history of the state peasantry and the connection between Kiselev’s reform and the peasant reform of 1861. In 1958 he began a study of the countryside and developments there after the reform of 1861. He made an important contribution to historical science with the methodological articles “Concerning the Periodization of the History of Capitalist Relationships in Russia” (Voprosy istorii, 1949, no. 11; 1951, no. 1) and “The Conflict Between Productive Forces and Feudal Relationships on the Eve of the Reform of 1861” (ibid., 1954, no. 7) and a report on the origins of capitalism in Russia, which was delivered at the Fifth International Congress of Historians in Rome in 1954.

Druzhinin was also the author of chapters in The History of Moscow (vols. 3-4) and the textbook The History of the USSR (vol. 2), which was written for use by departments of history. Until 1964 he was director of the Commission on the History of Agriculture and the Peasantry and of the publication of the multivolume series of documents The History of the Peasant Movement in Russia. He has directed a number of other projects. Druzhinin’s autobiography Memories and Thoughts of an Historian (1967) is of interest. He was awarded two Orders of Lenin, two other orders, and various medals.