Leading historian of the working class who drove destalinization in scholarship: first woman full academician in Soviet historical studies
From 1953 as editor of Voprosy Istorii, Pankratova opened the Stalin-era Short Course schema to public debate, pushing destalinization in historical scholarship. The March 1957 Central Committee decree condemned her line as 'liberalism and bourgeois objectivism' and effectively removed her.
A leading authority on Soviet working-class and revolutionary movement history, she authored some 200 scholarly works. She was the first woman elected a full academician in Soviet historical studies and directed the first comprehensive history of the Kazakh SSR. After Stalin's death, as editor-in-chief of Voprosy Istorii, she led efforts to revise the schematic narrative of the Short Course and pushed for destalinization: work halted in March 1957 when the Central Committee accused her of 'liberalism and bourgeois objectivism,' effectively removing her.
Career Timeline
- 1919Joined RCP(b) · partisan in Odessa during the Civil War
- 1922–1925Studied at the Institute of Red Professors
- 1926–1939Taught at Sverdlov Communist University, Lenin Military-Political Academy, Moscow State University, and others
- 1939Joined the Institute of History, USSR Academy of Sciences
- 1942–1949Directed History of the Kazakh SSR (1949) — first comprehensive republic history in the USSR
- 1952Elected to the CPSU Central Committee at the XIX Party Congress
- 1953–1957Editor-in-chief of Voprosy Istorii
- 1955–1957Headed the National Committee of USSR Historians
Related historical events
- 1918–1922The Civil War and Foreign InterventionOdessa partisan activity
- 1941–1945The Great Patriotic WarDirector of the History of the Kazakh SSR projectEvacuated to Alma-Ata with the Institute of History in 1941, she led historians from Moscow, Leningrad, and Alma-Ata in writing the History of the Kazakh SSR (first edition 1943, expanded 1949), the first comprehensive republic history in the USSR. Awarded the Medal 'For Valiant Labour in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945.'
- 1956.02The Twentieth Party Congress and the Secret SpeechDelegate to the 20th Party Congress
The Ordeal of 1936: Denunciation, Expulsion, and Survival
At the Institute of Red Professors, Pankratova met and married the historian Grigory Yakovin (born Mitelman). Their daughter Maya was born in 1925. Yakovin, however, became a key figure in Trotsky's Left Opposition, and in 1927 Pankratova publicly denounced him and ended the marriage. Yakovin was arrested in 1928 and exiled to Central Asia. In 1929, with party and OGPU approval, Pankratova traveled to his prison in Tashkent to try to persuade him to renounce the opposition. He refused. Yakovin was shot in Vorkuta on 1 March 1938.
In August 1936, after the first Moscow show trial, the Institute of Red Professors party organization summoned Pankratova. She was expelled unanimously for 'concealing her connection to her Trotskyist ex-husband' and 'failing to unmask enemies.' She denounced herself as 'a prominent representative of rotten liberalism' and confessed that 'to part with the party is to part with life.' She planned a joint suicide with a friend. The friend went through with it; Pankratova was saved at the last moment by her housekeeper. She was then effectively exiled to Saratov University, separated from her daughter for three years. Reinstated in the party in 1938, she was elected a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences the following year.
This personal drama became the subject of Naum Korzhavin's long poem 'Tanka' (1957), which mourned a woman who gave love and conscience to the Party. Pankratova's descendants and contemporaries have recognized her as the poem's real-life model.