Boris Dmitrievich Grekov (; in

Mirgorod Myrhorod ( uk, Ми́ргород, ) is a city in the Poltava Oblast (province) of central Ukraine. Serving as the administrative center of the Myrhorod Raion (district), the city itself is administratively incorporated as a city of oblast ...

Poltava Governorate The Poltava Governorate (russian: Полтавская губерния, Poltavskaya guberniya; ua, Полтавська Губернія, translit=Poltavska huberniia) or Poltavshchyna was a gubernia (also called a province or government) in t ...

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War ...

– 9 September 1953 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 ...

) was a Russian and

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

historian noted for his comprehensive studies of

Kievan Rus Kievan Rusʹ, also known as Kyivan Rusʹ ( orv, , Rusĭ, or , , ; Old Norse: ''Garðaríki''), was a state in Eastern Europe, Eastern and Northern Europe from the late 9th to the mid-13th century.John Channon & Robert Hudson, ''Penguin Hist ...

and the

Golden Horde The Golden Horde, self-designated as Ulug Ulus, 'Great State' in Turkic, was originally a Mongol and later Turkicized khanate established in the 13th century and originating as the northwestern sector of the Mongol Empire. With the fragmen ...

. He was a member of the

Soviet Academy of Sciences The Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union was the highest scientific institution of the Soviet Union from 1925 to 1991, uniting the country's leading scientists, subordinated directly to the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union (until 1946 ...

(1934) and several foreign academies, as well as Director of the Russian History Institute in Moscow. Grekov entered

Warsaw University The University of Warsaw ( pl, Uniwersytet Warszawski, la, Universitas Varsoviensis) is a public university in Warsaw, Poland. Established in 1816, it is the largest institution of higher learning in the country offering 37 different fields of ...

in 1901 but moved to the

Moscow University M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU; russian: Московский государственный университет имени М. В. Ломоносова) is a public research university in Moscow, Russia and the most prestigious ...

four years later. During the pre-revolutionary years he researched the economic and social history of the

Novgorod Republic The Novgorod Republic was a medieval state that existed from the 12th to 15th centuries, stretching from the Gulf of Finland in the west to the northern Ural Mountains in the east, including the city of Novgorod and the Lake Ladoga regions of mod ...

(published in 1914). Grekov was accused of participating in the White Movement in the

Crimea Crimea, crh, Къырым, Qırım, grc, Κιμμερία / Ταυρική, translit=Kimmería / Taurikḗ ( ) is a peninsula in Ukraine, on the northern coast of the Black Sea, that has been occupied by Russia since 2014. It has a p ...

during the

civil war A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government polici ...

, and in 1930, his son was arrested in connection with the " Platonov Affair" and sent to the Solovki Islands Penal Colony. Both of these facts were widely known in the 1930s, and this led Grekov to make wide-ranging concessions to the official ideology during the Stalin Purges and, according to A. H. Plakhonin, to write scholarship "on order" for the regime. At this time, he turned toward the study of

Kievan Rus' Kievan Rusʹ, also known as Kyivan Rusʹ ( orv, , Rusĭ, or , , ; Old Norse: ''Garðaríki''), was a state in Eastern and Northern Europe from the late 9th to the mid-13th century.John Channon & Robert Hudson, ''Penguin Historical Atlas o ...

and became known as an opponent of the Ukrainian historian

Mykhailo Hrushevsky Mykhailo Serhiiovych Hrushevsky ( uk, Михайло Сергійович Грушевський, Chełm, – Kislovodsk, 24 November 1934) was a Ukrainian academician, politician, historian and statesman who was one of the most important figure ...

, who claimed the heritage of Kievan Rus' primarily for modern

Ukraine Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian inva ...

. His major work, Kievan Rus' appeared in 1939 and was the first of three of his works to win the

Stalin Prize Stalin Prize may refer to: * The State Stalin Prize in science and engineering and in arts, awarded 1941 to 1954, later known as the USSR State Prize The USSR State Prize (russian: links=no, Государственная премия СССР, ...

. In this work, steeped in Marxist–Leninist ideology, he stressed the agricultural rather than commercial basis of the economy of this polity and argued that the heritage of Kievan Rus' was equally shared by modern

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-ei ...

, and

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. Grekov's extensive research on Kievan Rus' provided insights into the economic and cultural development of medieval Rus' during the period of the

Tatar The Tatars ()Tatar
in the Collins English Dictionary is an umbrella term for different

domination. He summarized these findings in ''Culture of Kiev Rus'' (1944) and ''Russian Peasants from the Most Ancient Times to the Seventeenth Century'' (1946). But his most lasting work (and the one which is still regularly reprinted) was ''Golden Horde'', written in collaboration with Alexander Yakubovsky and first published in 1937. The second (and now classical) edition appeared in 1950 under the title ''Golden Horde and Its Downfall''. Grekov also gave considerable attention to the collection and publication of primary sources, especially chronicles. His student, Vladimir Pashuto, carried this work forward and began the collection of foreign sources for the medieval period in the history of the Eastern Slavs. In December 2022 the Akademika (Boris) Grekov street in

Kyiv Kyiv, also spelled Kiev, is the capital and most populous city of Ukraine. It is in north-central Ukraine along the Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2021, its population was 2,962,180, making Kyiv the seventh-most populous city in Europe. Ky ...

, Ukraine was renamed to (

Righteous Among the Nations Righteous Among the Nations ( he, חֲסִידֵי אֻמּוֹת הָעוֹלָם, ; "righteous (plural) of the world's nations") is an honorific used by the State of Israel to describe non-Jews who risked their lives during the Holocaust to sa ...

) street.

References

*A. H. Plakhonin, Article "Hrekov, Borys Dmytrovych," in ''Entsyklopediia istorii Ukrainy'', vol. II (Kyiv, 2004), pp. 189–90. *''The content of this page derives in part from the

Great Soviet Encyclopedia The ''Great Soviet Encyclopedia'' (GSE; ) is one of the largest Russian-language encyclopedias, published in the Soviet Union from 1926 to 1990. After 2002, the encyclopedia's data was partially included into the later ''Bolshaya rossiyskaya e ...

article on the same subject.'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Grekov, Boris 1882 births 1953 deaths 20th-century Russian historians People from Myrhorod Academicians of the USSR Academy of Architecture Full Members of the USSR Academy of Sciences Foreign Members of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences Moscow State University alumni Perm State University faculty Tavrida National V.I. Vernadsky University academic personnel Third convocation members of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union Stalin Prize winners Recipients of the Order of Lenin Recipients of the Order of the Red Banner of Labour Recipients of the Order of Saint Stanislaus (Russian), 2nd class Recipients of the Order of Saint Stanislaus (Russian), 3rd class Recipients of the Order of St. Anna, 3rd class Historians from the Russian Empire Russian medievalists Soviet archivists Soviet historians Soviet medievalists Burials at Novodevichy Cemetery Herzen University faculty