Mikhail Nikolayevich Pokrovsky

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Mikhail Nikolayevich Pokrovsky (August 29, 1868 - April 10, 1932) was a Bolshevik Russian historian, who was held in highest repute under Lenin and Stalin.

Pokrovsky matriculated from the Moscow University in 1891. A Bolshevik since 1905, Pokrovsky emphasized Marxist theory and the brutality of the upper classes in his Russian History from the Most Ancient Times (1910-13), downplaying the role of personality in favour of economics as the driving force of history. He is the author of Brief History of Russia, published in 1920 to much acclaim from Lenin, who said that he "like[d] the book immensely" in the preface to the first edition. In 1929, he was elected to the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Posthumously, the Communist party accused Pokrovsky of "vulgar sociologism", and his books were banned. It has been suggested that his works lost favor because their opposition to "great men" history contradicted the cult of personality built by Stalin. After Stalin's death, and the subsequent renouncement of his policies by the Communist Party, Pokrovsky's work regained some influence.