He Is Not Scholar, He Is Great Topsy-Turvy Person, That Is Why He Can’t Be Chair of the Department

The article is devoted to the influence of the ideological campaign unleashed by the publication in August 1946 of the Resolution of the Orgburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) on the magazines “Zvezda” and “Leningrad” on the activities of the art history department of the history faculty of Leningrad State University and the fate of its head I. I. Ioffe (1888—1947). The author relies on data from materials from some of St. Petersburg archives, most of which are being introduced into academic circulation for the first time. Materials from the University’s party organization (from the Central State Archive of Historical and Political Documents of St. Petersburg) make it possible to reconstruct the course of the campaign of criticism against the art history department in general and its individual lecturers in particular. The “official” criticism of the University’s party apparatus and the press (both central and university) was aimed primarily at defamation of the prominent art historian and art critic N. N. Punin, who only became a full-time employee of Leningrad University at the end of 1946. I. I. Ioffe became the object of “unofficial” criticism, largely initiated and supported by the archaeologist M. K. Karger. The defense of the candidate’s dissertation by L. Ya. Yelkovich, I. I. Ioffe’s first postgraduate student, in June 1947, although successful, was accompanied by a political scandal. L. Ya. Yelkovich was publicly “exposed” as the son of an enemy of the people by the professor of the history department N.A. Kornatovsky. In August 1947, I.I. Ioffe died suddenly of a heart attack. His approach to the synthetic study and teaching of art was soon forgotten; in 1949, the two art history departments of Leningrad University were merged into one, and M.K. Karger became its chairperson

Eastern European Communism and Reforms