Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Zimin (Александр Александрович Зимин; 1920-1980) was one of the most prolific and well-known Soviet

medievalist The asterisk ( ), from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek , ''asteriskos'', "little star", is a typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a heraldic star. Computer scientists and mathematicians often v ...

s. His area of expertise was late medieval Muscovy. Zimin was born in a noble family in

Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...

. In the 1950s, Zimin edited the official historical series dedicated to the history of

. However, at least seven of his monographs were not published during his lifetime. His 1964 essay attempted to prove that '' The Song of Igor's Campaign'' was fabricated in the 1770s. It met skepticism and hostility from the academic community and was eventually banned from being printed. Another important work, ''Warrior at the Crossroads'', was not published until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. It described the

Muscovite Civil War The Muscovite Civil War, Muscovite War of Succession,Janet L. B. Martin, John D. Martin''Medieval Russia, 980-1584''(1995), p. 400. Cambridge University Press. or Great Feudal War, was a prolonged conflict that cast its shadow over the entire rei ...

of the 1430s as a vital clash between the autocratic, pro-Tatar, Muscovite administration and the protocapitalist forces, clustered around the northern Principality of Galich, with its salt production facilities. Zimin's mother descended from Field Marshal Kamensky. He was involved in researching her family's history. At the time of Zimin's death in 1980, his unpublished manuscripts reportedly "totaled many thousands of typed pages".Quoted from: Antoon De Baets. ''Censorship of Historical Thought: A World Guide, 1945-2000''. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002. . Page 495.

References

1920 births 1980 deaths Writers from Moscow Soviet historians Soviet medievalists Genealogists {{russia-historian-stub