I. V. Goncharova, M. V. Druzin, M. V. Kovaleva. V. N. Ginev. Autobiography. From letters //
Petersburg Historical Journal, no. 1, 2026, pp. 184–217.

DOI: 10.51255/2311–603X_2026_1_184

Abstract:

This publication features memoirs and excerpts from letters from the last decade of the life of
Vladimir Nikolaevich Ginev (1932–2025), a prominent Soviet and Russian historian of populism and volost self-government. In his autobiographical notes, Ginev recalls his childhood during the difficult times of the Great Patriotic War, his evacuation, his postwar years in Oryol, and his studies at Leningrad University and graduate school at the Leningrad Branch of the Institute of History of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Ginev’s work on his major historical works is covered in detail. The author also explores his relationship with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and Marxist-Leninist ideology. As head of the St. Petersburg Institute of Historical Studies (SPbIHI RAS) Archive for ten years, Ginev reveals the history of the archive’s collections and the challenges it faced in the 2000s. His teaching at Oryol State University in the 1990s–2010s and his supervision of graduate students also occupy a special place in his memoirs. The chronological autobiographical memoirs continue with excerpts from letters from V. N. Ginev to his student at Oryol University, M. V. Kovaleva, written between 2015 and 2024. The letters contain memoirs about various stages of Vladimir Nikolaevich’s life. In them, he continues to participate in and follow the life of the St. Petersburg Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, documenting, as a contemporary, the changes in the country’s scientific life and all the hardships of life in one’s later years.

Key words: Vladimir Nikolaevich Ginev, historian, autobiography, memoirs, Leningrad branch of the Institute of History of the USSR Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Archive of the St. Petersburg Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Soviet historical science.

Author:

Goncharova, Irina Valentinovna — Dr of Sci. in History, Leading Research Fellow, Research Institute of State Policy and Sectoral Economy Management, State University of Management (Moscow, Russia).
E-mail: 79208195393@yandex.ru
ORCID: 0000-0002-7532-8751

Author:

Druzin, Mikhail Viktorovich — PhD in History, Senior Research Fellow, St. Petersburg Institute of History, Russian Academy of Sciences (St. Petersburg, Russia).
E-mail: mdruzin@mail.ru
ORCID: 0000-0002-5862-310X

Author:

Kovaleva, Marina Vyacheslavovna — PhD in History, Associate Professor of the Department of General Education Disciplines of the Mtsensk Branch of the Oryol State University named after I. S. Turgenev (Mtsensk, Russia).
E-mail: marigurd@yandex.ru

References
Ginev V. N. Vybory v volostnoe zemstvo v 1917 g.: liberal’nye ozhidaniya i neodnoznachnaya real’nost’ [Elections to the Volost Zemstvo in 1917: Liberal Expectations and Ambiguous Reality. In Russ.]. In Peterburgskii istoricheskii zhurnal. 2018. No. 1, pp. 117–138.

Ginev, V. N. Iz zhizni LOII 1980-kh gg. “Biblioteka revolyutsionnykh memuarov”. Ideya i voploshchenie [From the Life of the Leningrad Institute of Historical and Cultural Studies in the 1980s. “Library of Revolutionary Memoirs”. The Idea and Implementation. In Russ.]. In Peterburgskii istoricheskii zhurnal. 2016. No. 1, pp. 247–262.

Ginev, V. N. Reformatory i revolyutsionery v rossiiskikh realiyakh i otechestvennoi istoriografii. Vtoraya polovina XIX veka — 1918 god: izbrannye stat’i [Reformers and Revolutionaries in Russian Realities and National Historiography. Second Half of the 19th Century — 1918: Selected Articles. In Russ.]. Moscow; St. Petersburg, Al’yans-Arkheo publ., 2018. 423 p.

Ginev, V. N., Klimanov, L. G., Pobedimova, G. A. Rossiiskaya i zarubezhnaya istoriya v dokumentakh Nauchno-istoricheskogo arkhiva SPbII RAN [Russian and Foreign History in the Documents of the Scientific and Historical Archive of the St. Petersburg Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In Russ.]. In Sokrovishcha akademicheskikh sobranii Sankt-Peterburga. St. Peterburg, Nauka publ., 2003, pp. 411–448.

Ginev, V. N., Tsamutali, A. N. Valeriya Antoninovna Nardova v Sankt-Peterburgskom institute istorii RAN [Valeria Antoninovna Nardova at the St. Petersburg Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In Russ.]. In Nardova, V. A. Gorodskoe samoupravlenie v Rossii vo vtoroi polovine XIX — nachale XX v.: vlast’ i obshchestvo. St. Petersburg, Liki Rossii publ., 2014, pp. 3–8.

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