Nikolai Mikhailovich Lukin was born on July 20, 1885 in the family of a folk teacher in the village of Kuekovo near Moscow. After graduating from the 2nd Moscow Gymnasium in 1903 with a gold medal, he entered the first year of the History and Philology Department of Moscow State University in the same year. A member of the Bolshevik Party since 1904, Lukin received battle training during the first Russian Revolution. He became involved in active illegal party work, which was conducted among the workers of Zamoskvorechye and university students. Arrests, prison, and exile followed .1
Even in those years, Lukin was distinguished by will and determination. After returning from exile, he has been persistently and persistently engaged in the seminar of Prof. Vipper Moscow University, combining his studies and underground revolutionary work - this time in the Rogozhsky, now Proletarsky, district of Moscow 2 . These qualities were even more pronounced in the post-revolutionary years, when Lukin organically linked intense practical party activity with serious scientific work.

Having chosen for his thesis a politically very acute issue - a turning point in the development of the French bourgeois revolution of the late XVIII century - the fall of the Gironde, Lukin brilliantly defended his work and in May 1909 completed his studies at Moscow University with a first-degree diploma. In 1910, Lukin was awarded the faculty prize for his thesis, in which he, according to his own statement, "sought to prove that the fall of the Girondist regime can be scientifically explained only by studying the mass popular social movement that developed with particular force at the end of 1792 and at the beginning of 1793 and was caused by the anti-national food policy of the Girondist Convention.""3 . Much later, Wipper said that " I deeply appreciated the clarity of N. Lukin's critical mind, his advanced ideas... His thesis, The Fall of the Gironde, was fresh and original. " 4 If we take into account that these are the words of a rather stingy professor, it becomes clear what a bright and promising talent Lukin appeared to the then scientific world.

In 1909, Wipper made "an idea of the desirability of leaving Lukin at the university to prepare for a professorship in general history." After much delay on the part of the Moscow University administration, Lukin was admitted to the master's exams only at the end of 1910, and the final exams were completed only at the end of 1915. Each master's exam was Lukin's academic triumph. The exams ended with the resolution of the authoritative commission, which included professors Yu. V. Gauthier, A. I. Savin and S. I. Sobolevsky, "to recognize N. M. Lukin as worthy of the title of privatdozent in world history" 5 . In 1916/17 academic year, G. Lukin was admitted to give lectures at Moscow University. In his free time at the university, he uses chi to earn money-

1 Druzhinin N. M. N. M. Lukin in the Bolshevik underground. In: Europe in the New and Modern Times, Moscow, 1966, pp. 49-54.

2 See for more details: ibid.; Galkin I. S. N. M. Lukin - revolyutsionnier, ucheniy [Lukin-revolutionary, scientist], Moscow, 1984.

3 Proceedings of the 1st All-Union Conference of Marxist Historians, vol. II, Moscow, 1930, p. 105.

4 See Galkin I. S. Uk. soch., p. 54.

5 TsGIA of Moscow, f. 18. Minutes of meetings of the Council of the Faculty of History and Philology, d. 418 - 476 - 36, p. 6, l. 59-vol.; p. 14, l. 81; d. 418 - 476 - 42, p. 19, ll. 69ob, 73.

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He lectured at the Shanyavsky People's University and at the Private Commercial School of Gorbachevsky.

At the same time, from 1910 to 1917, Lukin, on the instructions of the Moscow Party Committee, conducted active illegal work, collaborated in various legal organizations of workers, in the editorial offices of the workers ' newspapers Fabrichny Rabochy and Nashe Slovo, and from 1913 - in the Bolshevik newspaper Nash Put. During these years, he published pamphlets "On Militarism", "Struggle for the Colonies" and others.

Lukin came to the February bourgeois-democratic revolution of 1917 with a solid experience as a party publicist. After February, by a party decision, he is assigned as a member of the editorial staff and an employee to the newspaper Sotsial-Demokrat, an organ of the Moscow Regional Bureau of the Central Committee of the RSDLP(b) and the Moscow Party Committee. In the period from February to October, Lukin's talent as a publicist was particularly strong, skilfully combining in his publications large-scale bold characteristics of the moment experienced with the subtlety and depth of coverage of theoretical problems put forward by the development of the revolution. His articles in Sotsial-Demokrat and Pravda in 1917 and 1918 profoundly and vividly reflected the process of the bourgeois-democratic revolution developing into a socialist one.

Lukin's ability to work as a publicist is striking. In the newspaper Sotsial-Demokrat alone, he published about 60 large signed articles, not to mention many small anonymous articles. Their problems are very diverse. Here is the "Unsuccessful Adviser" 6-an article that revealed the whole abyss of the fall of G. V. Plekhanov, who called on the proletariat of the Concord powers to "fight a merciless class (!!) struggle against the German workers together with their capitalists", and the article "Why they are delaying"7 about the need to arrest the tsarist government and its agents, and Lukin published a large publication entitled "L. Martov's Historical Excursion"8 , which was directed against the latter's slanderous attacks on the Bolsheviks, and revealed the anti-historical nature of Martov's statements, which tried to draw a parallel between the collapse of the Jacobin dictatorship and the near and inevitable (from his point of view) end of the "Bolshevik dictatorship".

In the article "Charles I - Louis XVI - Nicholas II" published in Pravda, 9 Lukin's active party position was particularly pronounced. This is both research and journalism, and strictly documentary, showing all the drama of the era, exposing the roots that fed the counter-revolutionary forces. Lukin, an active participant in the socialist revolution and a member of the Military Revolutionary Council of the Rogozhsky district of Moscow, found time to attack the enemies of the revolution with politically sharp articles. On the eve of the October Revolution , he published an article in the newspaper Sotsial-Demokrat entitled "The Work of Diplomats," 10 in which he exposed the machinations of representatives of the "allied"powers who were plotting a counterrevolutionary plot against revolutionary Russia.

The heyday of Lukin's talent as a historian came in the first years after the revolution, when the young Soviet Republic was straining all its forces to fight the counter-revolution and the armed intervention of imperialist states. Lukin, continuing to engage in revolutionary journalism, 11 published Maximilian Robespierre (1758-1794) in 1918. This was followed by a series of works that were distinguished by the novelty of philosophical and historical interpretations of the most important social and political problems of the historical process. In 1922, the second revised and expanded edition of Maximilian Robespierre was published. In the same year, he published a large monograph, The Paris Commune of 1871, which was reprinted

6 Социал-демократ, 21.III.1917.

7 Ibid., 11. III. 1917.

8 Pravda, 26, 27. III. 1918.

9 Ibid., 21. VII. 1917.

10 Social-democrat, 22. X. 1917.

11 In 1918, Lukin published dozens of articles in the newspapers Sotsial-Demokrat and Pravda: "The Victories of the Soviet government on the counter-revolutionary front"; "The bourgeoisie is Turning Black"; "The Revolutionary War"; "The Barons Call Wilhelm for Help"; "The Cynicism of the German Invaders"; "Be Ready"; "Secret Diplomacy"; "The new Charlotte Corde"; "To the struggle of the social Forces of Siberia"; etc.

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in 1923 and 1924. In 1923, he published his book "The Modern History of the countries of Western Europe", as well as the work"From the history of the revolutionary armies". In 1925, his "Essays on the History of Germany 1890-1914" were published. In the same years, his very topical pamphlet "Church and State"was repeatedly reprinted.

As a result, in six years, five original monographs and several dozen articles published in various central journals were published from Lukin's pen. If we take into account that at the same time Lukin was a professor at Moscow University, worked at the Socialist Academy and the Institute of the Red Professorship, and lectured at the Academy of the General Staff of the Red Army, then his research activity can be assessed as a phenomenon of efficiency.

Lukin's works were created at a time when Soviet historical science was in its infancy. Lukin's role in this complex process was extremely important. He wrote works of a truly epic nature. These include major works on the French bourgeois Revolution of the late eighteenth century and the Paris Commune of 1871. In these works, Lukin reveals the organic unity of the revolutionary transformation of society and the personal improvement of active participants in revolutionary movements, i.e., he shows on the concrete material of history how "in revolutionary activity, the change of oneself coincides with the transformation of circumstances" 12 .

Lukin's work is multi-faceted. It features his personality as a communist researcher. The high professional and ideological-theoretical level of Lukin's research are inseparable and are organically connected with the scale of his personality. He was distinguished by a high sense of state and moral responsibility for Soviet science, the purpose of which he saw in serving the people who were building socialism. During the seminar sessions, he insistently instilled in his students that the ideological and theoretical understanding of historical material and the historical narrative should be merged together. The following words apply to Lukin's research activities: According to Engels, when conducting research, a person of genuine science is not engaged in creating arbitrary subjective constructions, he "develops scientific results, and when he is also a party person, he fights for these results to be applied in practice"13 .

Lukin was extremely responsible for the thought and word of the classics of Marxism-Leninism. He was well aware that Marxism-Leninism does not require a mechanical reproduction of certain quotations from the works of his classics, but a deep assimilation of their method. The high moral character of Lukin's scientific work lies primarily in his rigorous pursuit of objective truth. He had an abiding sense of partisanship. In his writings, he proceeded primarily from the historicism of the works of Karl Marx, F. Engels, and V. I. Lenin. Lukin was convinced that in a scientific debate, in an equal scientific debate, the winner is the one who does not reject the arguments of his opponent from the threshold, who carefully studies all the facts of a particular story.

Lukin's creative method is also characterized by his attitude to his predecessors. His work is based, in addition to the documents he himself studied, on the efforts of many specialists, and in this he saw a natural development of science. Summing up the results of a critical analysis of the works of A. Olar, Lukin wrote:: "His methods are alien to us, but his scientific technique should become the property of every Marxist who is engaged in modern history, and the archival materials he has studied should be the object of scientific research from the point of view of historical materialism."14 For Lukin, as a materialist who stands on the position of party science, the criterion for a correct understanding of the facts, processes and laws of historical development was the struggle for social progress, and not an abstract one, namely, the struggle of classes operating in certain historical conditions.

What consequences can even the slightest manifestations of a worldview lead to?-

12 K. Marx and F. Engels Soch. Vol. 3, p. 201.

13 Ibid. T, 36, p. 170.

14 Lukin N. M. Izbrannye trudy [Selected Works], vol. 1, Moscow, 1960, p. 217.

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Lukin experienced this type of economic instability on his own experience. The great challenge for him, as for many other party activists, was the question of peace with Germany. As you know, Lenin proposed to sign a peace treaty immediately, but his point of view did not meet with the support of the majority of the Central Committee of the Party and a number of local party organizations, supporters of the "left communists". Lukin was one of them. Lenin wrote that "a mood of the deepest, most hopeless pessimism, a feeling of utter despair" 15 led the "left" to adopt an absurd," strange and monstrous " resolution rejecting the conclusion of the Brest Peace. But after the Third Congress of Soviets granted the Sovnarkom, headed by Lenin, an unlimited right to decide the question of peace at the end of January 1918, most of the "left communists", including Lukin, supported Lenin.

Lukin took an active part in the formation and development of Soviet science and personnel training. Like A.V. Lunacharsky, M. N. Pokrovsky, V. I. Nevsky, V. P. Volgin, F. A. Rothstein and other revolutionaries, scientists of the first Lenin draft, he devoted himself with full dedication to the task of educating a new generation of historians. In this regard, he was indefatigable. His professorial and teaching activities were highly creative, they inspired him, enriched him with new forces. Participants in Lukin's seminars at the Institute of the Red Professorship, Moscow State University, RANION were brought up in the spirit of a high understanding of the social significance of scientific work, and at the same time the power of collective search. It is no coincidence that many of the student works of the participants of these seminars were later translated into monographs and collective problem-solving works, some of which have not lost their scientific significance to this day16 .

Lukin's students and students met with their teacher almost daily. He generously gave his students all his talent. His seminars were an excellent school of scientific mastery, developing a dialectical-materialistic vision, and penetrating the essence of the historical process. Lukin did not patronize his students, but encouraged them to truly innovative scientific research. He had the art of creating a working mood, a creative climate, found a confidential tone in conversations with students, and from this, the classes of his seminar were always mutually interesting and useful. Lukin's students and listeners never felt his pressure during creative interviews, because in him the gifts of a scientist and a teacher were inseparably merged. That is why Lukin lives in the memory not only of his immediate students and contemporaries who are still alive today, but also of those who studied under his students. Working in scientific institutions, universities and schools, they adequately continue and develop the scientific, pedagogical and educational traditions of one of the founders of the Soviet historical school.

The first generation of the Soviet school of Marxist historians, to which Lukin belonged, experienced the direct life-giving influence of Lenin - On Lenin's initiative, a special commission was organized and fruitfully worked, directing the research activities of scientific institutions and training personnel in the field of social sciences. In November 1920, under the leadership of Vladimir Ilyich, a meeting of the commission on social sciences was held, later called the "Rothstein Commission", which included F. A. Rothstein, M. N. Pokrovsky, D. P. Bogolepov and other scientists .17
Lukin and all the members of this commission played a great role in reorganizing the teaching of science in universities .18
15 Lenin V. I. PSS. Vol. 35, p. 404.

16 See, for example: Kunissky S., Poznyakov V. Communal lands in the Era of the French Revolution, Moscow, 1927; Dalin V. M. Strikes and the crisis of syndicalism in pre-war France, Moscow, 1935; Bantke S. The Struggle for the Creation of the Communist Party of France, Part 1. The Zimmerwald movement in France during the World War, Moscow, 1937; Militsina T. The Struggle of currents in the trade union movement of France, Moscow, 1937; Alenin F. G. Soviets in the German Revolution of 1918, Moscow, 1934; Socialist Movement in France, Collection of Articles edited by N. M. Lukin, Moscow, 1934.

17 On the activities of the "Rothstein Commission", see: Archive of the USSR Academy of Sciences, f. 453, op. 3, d. 32; and also Pokrovsky M. N. Selected works. Book 4. Moscow, 1967, p. 11.

18 For more information, see: Dunaevsky V. A. Sovetskaya istoriografiya novoi istorii 1917-1941. Moscow, 1974; Galkin I. S. Uk. soch,

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Of course, in the first years after the victory of the Great October Revolution, young Soviet historians devoted to the cause of the revolution substituted the power of political passion for the depth of research, when they did not reveal in the facts and events of the past what is the essence of the development of human society. The first to rebel against the denial of the past, those who had the gift of large - scale thinking - an approach to the study of historical phenomena that requires the use of data on the economy, social structure, political system, ideology, and way of life of past eras-were scientists of Lenin's appeal, such as Lukin.

In his works, for example, in the book "Maximilian Robespierre", Lukin sought to present his characters against the background of the era in which they lived and acted. Thus, Robespierre's activities were investigated in all aspects, including the extreme circumstances of the French bourgeois Revolution of the late XVIII century. Before us is an epic canvas of the revolution, the main character of which is the people fighting for land, for bread both in the city and in the countryside.

In 1927, Lukin left for Paris, where he worked in the archives and collected materials on the history of the French bourgeois revolution of the late XVIII century, on the basis of which he decided to publish a new work "The Peasantry and the food policy of the revolutionary government". He focuses on the main driving force of the revolution - the peasantry. After returning from France, Lukin is in a hurry to finish this work, while his impressions of working in the archives and meeting with French historians are still fresh. His talks at graduate seminars are full of creative thoughts. Lukin tells about the documents he collected, and the audience is presented with the opposing classes of French society, a chronicle of events, signs of the times. The very nature of the presentation indicates that the sequence of events is very important for the scientist, and on the basis of studying specific facts, he seeks to understand the essence of the historical process.

Going deeper into the analysis of the documents, Lukin sketches the struggle of the opposing classes, defines the socio-political groupings of French society on the eve and during the bourgeois revolution. He does not offer his listeners "on faith" ready-made results of his research, he leads them through a complex, sometimes contradictory procedure of comprehending the historical process, to the knowledge of objective historical truth. When dealing with facts, Lukin is by no means a prisoner of facts. The integrity and partisanship of the worldview position, the dialectical-materialistic view of the development of society allow him to see the entire historical process.

The approaching 60th anniversary of the Paris Commune prompted Lukin to prepare for publication the 4th, radically expanded and revised edition of his fundamental work "The Paris Commune of 1871". At the same time, he continues to study the agrarian question during the French bourgeois Revolution of the late eighteenth century; at this time, instead of the planned monograph, his articles "The Revolutionary Government and agricultural workers in the period of the second and third maxima"19 and "The class struggle in the French countryside and the food policy of the Convention in the period of the second and third maxima" are published."20 . Paying tribute to Robespierre, Lukin, in his articles on the history of the French Revolution, gave the main place to the people, to the working masses; in their struggle, he sought to explain the turbulent events, trying to understand the driving forces of history.

Lukin was particularly responsible for researching the history of the Paris Commune in 1871. Following the Leninist approach, he sought to show the germs of socialist principles in the history of the Commune. His work on the Paris Commune in its first edition, he called "Marxist intelligence" in the study of this event. Lukin truly conducted reconnaissance in combat, engaging in a decisive battle with anti-Marxist, anti-Leninist interpretations of the history of the world's first proletarian revolution. "The working class," he wrote, " must know and appreciate its past, the history of its class battles, which in our days have led it to a general battle with world capitalism. Careful study of these preliminaries

19 See: At the Battle Post, Moscow, 1930.

20 Istorik-Marxist, 1930, vol. 16.

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Taking into account their experience should make it easier for the proletariat to carry on the grandiose class war that is unfolding before our very eyes."21
In the first editions of this book, Lukin made mistakes of a fundamental nature. "The most important of these," he wrote, "are, first, the characterization of the Commune as ' the dictatorship of the proletarian city over the rural population'.. secondly... the statement that " The Commune (its Council) it was not a Soviet-type state. " 22 In the 4th edition (1932), Lukin revised these propositions as contradicting the actual history and assessments of the Paris Commune "as a form of dictatorship of the proletariat" given by Lenin, who wrote that "Soviet or proletarian "democracy" born in Russia meant "in comparison with the Paris Commune... the second world-historical step. The proletarian-peasant Soviet Republic was the first stable socialist republic in the world"23 . It was in the fourth edition of the book on the Paris Commune and in numerous articles about it that Lukin dealt the most sensitive blow to all the detractors and falsifiers of its history.

As is well known, after the defeat of the Commune, the Government Commission of Inquiry published in 1872 an article claiming that the revolution of March 18, 1871, was the result of a carefully prepared conspiracy, ideologically directed from London by the International, which was declared responsible for the "crimes" of the Commune. The progressive public in the Soviet country and abroad was very pleased with Lukin's analysis of the literature that appeared in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries on the role of the International, its General Council, and the Paris Federal Council in the French revolutionary movement of 1870-1871. Lukin emphasized that the character of this literature, as well as of books and articles on the history of the Commune, 24 "was strongly affected both by the frenzied reaction that followed the defeat of the Commune in France and by the sharp factional struggle between Marxists and Bakunists in the International Workers' Society itself."25
Lukin's work on the Paris Commune carries a great charge of international ideas, it awakens revolutionary thought with a lively, exciting display of the practical affairs of the communards. Before us is the epic of their feat, Lukin managed to reveal the drama of the popular uprising that broke out in a difficult historical time. He showed the reality of the Second Empire in all its angles and layers of society: from the imperial court to the very bottom of the disenfranchised but strong-spirited people; Lukin's historical narrative, permeated by partisanship, conveys to the reader all the acuteness of the class, social, and ideological struggle, vividly depicts the collapse of the Bonapartist policy, accompanied by the brewing revolutionary situation in the country, and the victory of the fourth bourgeois revolution in France, as a result of which the government was headed by a "gang of career lawyers" 26 . The popular uprising of March 18, 1871, Lukin emphasizes, has its roots in the June days of 1848 - the first great battle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie of France.

The idea of the scientist that in March 1871 the working class of Paris openly declared itself as the leading force of the revolution is confirmed by a thorough analysis of sources. Among them are the Commune's Journal official articles. On March 21, 1871, he wrote: "The proletarians of the capital, seeing the deceptions and betrayals of the ruling classes, realized that the time had come when they must save the situation by taking the management of public affairs into their own hands... The proletariat, in the face of a constant threat to its rights and a complete denial of all its legitimate aspirations, sees the defeat of the motherland

21 Lukin N. (N. Antonov). The Paris Commune of 1871, Moscow, 1322, p. 407. 22 Ibid. Ed. 4th, reprint of Part 1. Moscow, 1932, p. 7-8,

23 See Lenin V. I. PSS. Vol. 38, pp. 307, 308.

24 См. напр.: Testut О. L'Internationale. Р. 1871; ejusd. L'Internationale et le jacobinisme, au ban de l'Europe. Tt. I-II. P. 1872; Le livre noir de la Commune de Paris. Bruxelles. 1872; Du Camp M. Les convulsions de Paris. T. 1. P. 1878, p. 22; Hanotaux S. Histoire de la fondation de la Troisieme republique. Le gouvernement de M. Thiers. P. 1925.

25 Lukin N. M. Izbrannye trudy [Selected works]. Vol. III. Moscow, 1963, p. 47.

26 K. Marx and F. Engels Soch. Vol. 17, p. 321. .

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and the ruin of his hopes, he realized that an imperative duty and an unconditional right require that he take its destinies into his own hands and ensure his triumph by seizing power."

All historical figures acting in Lukin's fundamental work - E. Varlen, O. Jean-Marie Vermorel, S. Delecluze; Ya. Dombrovsky, E.-V. Duval, R. Rigaud, G. Flourens, L. Frankel, the legendary Louise Michel, Russian women-A.V. Korvin-Krukovskaya (married to Jacquelard), E. L. Kuleshova (Dmitrieva) and many other heroes of the Paris barricades - are outlined as the embodiment of the revolutionary passion and moral greatness of patriots and internationalists. Lukin does not hide their mistakes and misconceptions. Through their destinies, he shows the fate of the people. In 1930, the avaricious academician V. P. Volgin wrote about Lukin's work: "Neither Western European nor our Soviet historical literature has yet published a work that is at least somewhat equivalent to the work of N. M. Lukin." 27
The scientist worked on the history of the Paris Commune until the end of his life. He did not complete the revision of the second part of the fourth edition of his main work. But what he did is still serving science today. This book, which is an organic fusion of scientific research and revolutionary journalism, has been repeatedly reprinted, and has always been in the service of party propagandists.

Lukin was a wide-ranging historian. Focusing on the problems of the French bourgeois Revolution of the late eighteenth century and the Paris Commune of 1871, he was well versed in the history of other countries, not only in modern and modern times, but also in the periods of antiquity and the Middle Ages. He also encouraged his students to expand their historical horizons, referring to G. E. Lessing, who said that" if you don't know history, you will remain an inexperienced child. " 28

In addition to his" Essays on the Modern History of Germany, "Lukin publishes original articles on the history of the French workers' and socialist movement, and examines the problems of the imperialist era posed by Lenin (the scientist emphasized that one cannot study modern international problems"until one has worked out the pre - war imperialist era in a Marxist way" 29 ). The ideological and theoretical struggle that intensified in the late 1920s and early 1930s prompted Lukin to study in depth the works of the classics of Marxism-Leninism, the methodology of history ,and the materialist understanding of the process of social development. 30
When, in the early 1930s, some Soviet historians made erroneous judgments (on the Hilferding-Kautskyite understanding of imperialism, on the views of R. Luxemburg, and on a number of other problems in the history of Western countries), Lukin actively participated in discussions about the situation in historical science. After the decision of the Presidium of the Communist Academy on this issue was made, he published an article " On the results of the discussion on the western sector of the Historical Front "(Istorik-Marxist, 1931, No. 22). It emphasized the importance of raising the scientific and ideological-theoretical level of research, which implies mastering the Marxist-Leninist methodology, creative use of the richest Marxist-Leninist heritage, mastering the technique and art of scientific research.

The resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU(b) and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR "On the teaching of civil history in schools", adopted in 1934, was very directly related to both research and teaching work of historians. First in two universities - Moscow and Leningrad - and then in other universities of the country, historical faculties were created. The opening of such a faculty at Moscow State University is directly related to the activities of Lukin, the founder and first head of the department-

27 Volgin V. P. Notes on the scientific works of full members of the USSR Academy of Sciences on the Department of Humanities, selected on February 12 and 13, 1929, L. 1930, p. 66. ...

28 Lessing G. E. Auswahl. Bd. 1. Leipzig. 1952.

29 Lukin N. M. Ged i gedizm [Ged and Gedism]. Problems of studying the era of imperialism. In: Lukin N. M. Izbrannye trudy [Selected works]. Vol. III.

30 Lukin N. M. Marx as a historian. - In the same place.

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a swarm of new and recent history of European and American countries. His speech in the assembly hall of the University in September 1934 at the opening of the Faculty of History on the topic: "On the question of the fascization of Historical Science in Germany" 31 went down in the history of Soviet historical science. This speech made an indelible impression on the writer of these lines, as well as on the entire large audience. Restrained in tone, she organically combined Lukin's high intelligence and noble emotionality. It embodied the indignant, agitated, and restless thought of a revolutionary, a thoughtful Marxist historian who knows how to grasp a historical perspective with his mental eye. An academic, revolutionary, and participant in the October events in Moscow32 , he expressed his confidence in the inevitable collapse of Hitlerism and in the fact that the German people would see clearly and find their way to the construction of a new Germany with the Bolshevik conviction and deep sense of historical optimism.

Lukin initiated the creation of a fundamental work - "World History". He was inspired by the idea of Marx, who believed that " the wider the separate circles that influence each other become in the course of this (historical) development, the further the destruction of the original isolation of individual nationalities goes due to the improved mode of production, communication and, as a result, the spontaneously developed division of labor between different nations, the more and more "history becomes world history" 33 . On April 27, 1937, T. Lukin spoke at the general meeting of the Department of Social Sciences of the USSR Academy of Sciences with a proposal to start creating a monumental Soviet "World History". He outlined the periodization and contours of this multi-volume publication. Soviet "World History," Lukin emphasized, must be based on a wealth of concrete material, which requires immediate action to eliminate the "white spots" in Soviet historical research. This work should be free from" Eurocentrism " and in its structure reflect a single world historical process, covering the main thing, the main thing in the development of all nations of the world. Lukin also emphasized that in Soviet "World History" the place of the Country of Soviets "should be determined by the fact that the peoples of the USSR, led by the Russian people, are the bearers of the highest culture, which finds its completion in Leninism" .34 The war prevented the creation of the "world history" in the time frame planned at that time. However, the basic principles put forward by Lukin were the basis of this publication, implemented after the Victory of the Soviet people in the Great Patriotic War.

Characteristic of Lukin's creative life was his ability to identify the most essential things in the complex process of historical development and find an accurate narrative embodiment for this. And he found this embodiment in passionate, deeply partisan journalism. This is the peculiarity and strength of his scientific work, this is his attraction. When we talk about Lukin's traditions as an outstanding scientist, they are most clearly and fruitfully developed by those scientists who follow the spirit, not the letter, of his legacy. Every researcher who seeks to develop the traditions of Academician N. M. Lukin should remain himself, be original in his work and tireless in the struggle for truth in science.

31 Ibid.

32 See: Heroes of October. The book about participants of the Great October Socialist Revolution in Moscow, Moscow 1967, p. 147; October in Moscow, Moscow 1967, p. 5.1, 105, 106.

33 K. Marx and F. Engels Soch. Vol. 3, p. 45.

34 Lukin N. M. Izbrannye trudy [Selected works]. Vol. III, p. 449.

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