Oksana Kulishova

Sergey Karpyuk

The article is devoted to the analysis of activities of S.A. Zhebelyov (Zhebelev) in the late 1930s and early 1940s. The authors use official documentation of Moscow and St. Petersburg academic institutions as a source. The most interesting document is the stenographic account of the meeting of institutes for humanities of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR which took place in Tashkent on 31 January 1942; the two most important fragments of this account are published here. The article addresses the problem of explaining the transformation of Zhebelyov of the period of the ‘Case of the Academy members’ (1929–1930), when he was in disgrace, to ‘later Zhebelyov’, holder of a Soviet order (1940). This transformation has usually been connected only with his ‘discovery’ of ‘Saumacus’ uprising’ – the first uprising of ‘oppressed masses’ in the USSR territory. Surely, bitter experience of the ‘Case of the Academy members’ taught Zhebelyov how to survive in the Soviet reality. But in the late 1930s the reality of Soviet historical science also started adjusting to him. In the self-made obituary notice (1932) Zhebelyov regarded himself as a ‘fact-worshipper’. But this ‘factworship' was becoming more and more popular among Soviet historians in the late 1930s after the decay of Marxist (or pseudo-Marxist) discussions and establishment of the Stalinist dogma. As well as other representatives of the ‘old school’ (Grekov, Wipper, Tarle, etc.), Zhebelyov became a very respectable scholar, but very loyal to the Soviet authorities. Thus, we may speak of a ‘rehabilitation’ of the ‘old school’ in Soviet antiquity studies in the late 1930s.