Alexander A. Vasiliev and “Academic Trial”
National Research University “Higher School of Economics”
Financing: Friends of UW-Madison Libraries University of Wisconsin-Madison Memorial Library.
For citation: Ivanov, Sergey A. Alexander A. Vasiliev and “Academic Trial” // Graphosphaera. 2023. Vol. 3. № 2. P. 287–299. URL: http://writing.igh.ru/index.php?id=2023-3-2-287-299
DOI: 10.32608/2782-5272-2023-3-2-287-299
Abstract: The article is based on the correspondence received in 1930 by the Russian Byzantinist Alexander Vasiliev (1867–1953), who taught at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The letters in question were written at the time of the “Academic Trial” in the USSR or directly touched upon it. The letters from Vasiliev’s two sisters, who remained in Leningrad, are evasive, apparently because of censorship concerns, and say nothing about the way the wave of state repressions affected their family. Yet, Vasiliev got unambiguous information from two independent sources: 1) a Danish trade-union activist Edith Olsen who had visited the Soviet Union and, upon return, passed to Vailiev the news from his friends in Leningrad; 2) an emigré law professor Alexandr Makarov who had met in Berlin with a colleague, a high-ranking and well-informed Soviet law professor Mikhail Pergament who obviously disliked what was going on in Russia. From both sources Vasiliev learned that on the New Year Eve of 1930, the secret police (GPU) arrested his brother-in-law Dmitrii Khalturin, Vasiliev’s sister Olga’s husband. The police also came to his own apartment, where his other sister, Nadezhda, lived, with an arrest warrant for Vasiliev himself. This is how Vasiliev realized that there was no way for him to return to Russia.
Key words: Alexander A. Vasiliev (1867–1953), history of scholarship, history of Byzantine Studies, Academy of Sciences of the USSR, “Academic trial”, Russian Emigration
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