Aleksandr Neusykhin

Neusykhin, Aleksandr Iosifovich 

Born Jan. 6 (18), 1898, in Moscow; died there Oct. 22, 1969. Soviet historian specializing in the socioeconomic history of the early Middle Ages in Western Europe and the history of medieval Germany. Doctor of historical sciences (1946). Senior researcher at the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR from 1936.

From 1934 to 1941, Neusykhin taught at the Moscow Institute of History, Philosophy, and Literature, serving in 1940–41 as head of the subdepartment of the Middle Ages. From 1942 to 1959 he was a professor at Moscow State University. Using a vast number of concrete historical materials, Neusykhin investigated the evolution of communal forms of property in the Germanic tribes. He comprehensively worked out the Marxist concept of the transformation of free members of communes into feudally dependent peasants. He described the basic lines of development of the peasantry in Germany from the eighth through the 12th century. Neusykhin trained many medievalists.

WORKS

Vozniknovenie zavisimogo krest’ianstva kak klassa rannefeodal’nogo obshchestva ν Zapadnoi Evrope VI-VIII vv. Moscow, 1956. (Expanded German edition; Berlin, 1961.)
Sud’by svobodnogo krest’ianstva ν Germanii ν VIII-XII vv. Moscow, 1964.
Problemy evropeiskogo feodalizma: Izbr. trudy. Moscow, 1974.

REFERENCE

Danilov, A. I. “A. I. Neusykhin—istorik-medievist, uchenyi i pedagog.” In the collection Srednie veka, fasc. 32. Moscow, 1969.