Gote, Iurii

Born June 18 (30), 1873, in Moscow; died there Dec. 17, 1943. Soviet historian and archaeologist. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1939; corresponding member, 1922).

Got’e graduated from the history and philology department of Moscow University in 1895. From 1903 to 1915 he was first a privatdocent and then a professor at the university. His scholarly activity was influenced by the methodology of V. O. Kliuchevskii. In his first major work, The Moscow Region in the 17th Century: An Experiment in the Study of the History of the Economic Life of Moscow Rus’ (1906; 2nd ed., 1937), Got’e depicted, on the basis of a meticulous study of cadastres, the country’s desolation and devastation as a result of the Polish and Swedish interventions of the early 17th century. The work also depicted the subsequent restoration of the economy, the growth of nobiliary land-owning owing to the government’s wide-scale distribution in the 17th century of palace lands along with peasants, and the intensification of the peasants’ bondage and the nature of their obligations. This study has retained its scholarly value to this day. In another major work, The History of Regional Administration in Russia From Peter I to Catherine II (vols. 1–2, 1913–41), Got’e made use of numerous new, unpublished sources and showed the nobiliary character of local institutions. He also wrote An Essay on the History of Land-owning in Russia (1915), which contained valuable factual material. In 1900, Got’e began excavations in central and southern Russian cities. In the works Essays on the History of the Material Culture of Eastern Europe (1925) and The Iron Age in Eastern Europe (1930), he advocated a synthesis of historical and archaeological data in order to study the ancient period of Russian history. He was the first to undertake a generalized scientific processing of a vast amount of disconnected archaeological material pertaining to the ancient history of the USSR, from the Paleolithic and Neolithic periods to the emergence of the ancient Russian state. However, Got’e failed to completely overcome the Normanist theory, according to which the Russian state was founded by the Vikings.

Got’e published Chronicle of the Defense of Smolensk of 1609–1611 (1912), which he extracted from Swedish archives; English Travelers in the Moscow State in the 16th Century (1937), sketches by travelers that he translated from English; and other source works. He collaborated on writing the first textbook for higher educational institutions, The History of the USSR (vol. 1, 1939). Got’e engaged in extensive pedagogical work at the Moscow Advanced Courses for Women (1902–18), the Surveying Institute (1907–17), Shaniavskii University (1913–18), the Institute of the Peoples of the East (1928–30), the Moscow Institute of Philosophy, Literature, and History (1934–41), and the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Between 1898 and 1930 he was first academic secretary and then assistant director of the Lenin All-Union Library.