Yevgeny Tarle

Yevgeny Viktorovich Tarle (Russian: Евгений Викторович Та́рле) (27 October [O.S. 8 November ] 1874 – 6 January 1955) was a Soviet historian and academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He is known for his books about Napoleon's invasion of Russia and on the Crimean War, and many other works. Yevgeny Tarle was one of the founders of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, Russia's diplomatic university.

Tarle was a historian who lived and worked both under Tsarist and Soviet regimes. He witnessed the whole period in which Joseph Stalin held power. The Stalinist era had exceedingly strict ideological pressure on scholarly research in the Soviet Union in science, together with art, literature, education, and all other domains of human culture. Thus, it was inevitable for historians to face that pressure while doing their scholarly works. The secrecy of the regime made the historical study of the Soviet Union, especially Stalin and his era difficult. In the Stalin era the Party’s total control of archives, journals, publishing houses, historians’ appointments, and so on meant that scholarship was entirely subordinate to its whims and dictates. “History was the handmaiden of ideology and politics. The leader and his intimates could manipulate the historical record as it suited them in their struggle to gain and maintain power.” When the Bolsheviks came to power in 1917, Tarle was a successful historian at the University of Saint Petersburg.

Tarle was born in Ukraine in a Jewish family on 8 November 1874. His father was a government official. He completed Gymnasium in Kherson in 1892 and afterward entered the University of Kiev to study history and philosophy. He was “the most distinguished student of Ivan Vasilevich Luchitski (1845-1918) of the University of Kiev.” After finishing his undergraduate education at the University of Kiev, he continued there as a graduate student in history. He defended his master’s thesis in 1901 and became a lecturer at the University of St. Petersburg in 1903. To achieve his doctoral degree, he completed a two-volume dissertation about France. His interest in France increased in time: he completed another work on the economic history of France in 1916.

...
Wikipedia