Smirin, Moisei

Smirin, Moisei Mendelevich 

Born Oct. 23 (Nov. 4), 1895, in Disna, in what is now Vitebsk Oblast; died May 20, 1975, in Moscow. Soviet historian and medievalist. Doctor of historical sciences (1946).

Beginning in 1938, Smirin taught world history in the faculty of history of Moscow State University; that same year he also became a senior research worker at the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. He became a foreign member of the Academy of Sciences of the German Democratic Republic in 1956 and doctor of philosophy honoris causa of the Karl Marx University of Leipzig. His main works are The Popular Reformation of Thomas Münzer and the Great Peasant War (1947; 2nd ed., 1955; translated into many languages; State Prize of the USSR, 1948), Studies in the History of the Political Struggle in Germany Before the Reformation (1952, translated into German), and On the History of Early Capitalism in the German Lands (XV-XVI Centuries). Smirin was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor.

REFERENCE

Volodarskii, V. M. “Nauchno-pedagogicheskaia deiatel’nost’ M. M. Smirina. In the collection Srednie veka, vol. 28. Moscow, 1965. (Includes a list of Smirin’s works that appeared before 1965.)