Nina Sidorova

Sidorova, Nina Aleksandrovna 

Born May 13 (26), 1910, in Kraskovo, now in Liubertsy Raion, Moscow Oblast; died Nov. 30, 1961, in Moscow. Soviet historian and medievalist. Doctor of historical sciences (1949). Member of the CPSU from 1939.

Sidorova taught at higher educational institutions in Moscow from 1936 and at Moscow State University from 1943. From 1942 she was a researcher at the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, and from 1952 she was head of its medieval history section. Her main work—Essays on the History of Early Urban Culture in France (Moscow, 1953)—was devoted to the cultural and ideological life of medieval France: specifically, to the role of the popular masses in the creation of urban culture, the popular heretical movements of the 11th and 12th centuries, and early medieval freethinking in its struggle against the ideology of the church. She was a coauthor of a university-level textbook on the history of the Middle Ages.

Sidorova was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor and various medals.