Yevgeny Viktorovich Tarle (; – 6 January 1955) was a Soviet historian, Marxist scholar, and academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, who studied and published on topics such as the Napoleonic invasion of Russia and the Crimean War. Much of his work dealt with themes of Marxist historiography, imperialism, and Russian nationalism. Tarle spent much of his professional life disagreeing with state authorities over his scholarship and was also a history reader of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (Russia's diplomatic university).
Life
Early life and education
Yevgeny Tarle born Grigory Tarle in 1874 in Kiev<!--See WP:KIEV-->, Russia (modern-day Ukraine) into a Jewish family. He changed his name as a young man, before converting to the Orthodox Church. His father, Viktor Grigorievich Tarle, belonged to the Merchantry Social Estate and ran a shop in Kiev. Viktor also translated books from Russian to German, including the works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Viktor and his wife Rozalia Arnoldovna Tarle had four children.
Early political activism
As a student, Tarle joined Marxist clubs and took an active part in the social democratic movement, frequently visiting Kievan factory workers as a lecturer and agitator. On 1 May 1900, he was arrested during a secret meeting in the middle of Anatoly Lunacharsky's speech. Tarle was sent to Kherson under police supervision and was banned from teaching at imperial universities and gymnasiums. In August, he and his wife moved to Warsaw, where he published articles on history in various magazines. In 1901, he was allowed a two-day visit to St. Petersburg to defend his master's thesis on Thomas More. With the support of his colleagues, he was permitted to work as a privatdozent at the University of St. Petersburg in 1903, a position he held until 1917. To achieve his doctoral degree, he completed a two-volume dissertation about France. From 1913 to 1918, he served as a professor at the University of Tartu. During this time, he completed another work on the economic history of France, published in 1916.
Foreign travel
From 1903 to 1914, Tarle travelled to France yearly. From 1918 on, he headed the Petrograd department of the Central Archives of RSFSR. He soon became a professor at Moscow University and moved to Moscow. In 1921, he became a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, becoming a full member in 1927. He was also active in the Russian Association of Scientific Institutes for Research in the Social Sciences (RANION). From 1922 to 1924, he published an annual journal of general history along with Fyodor Uspensky.
During 1928–1931, Tarle was frequently criticized by his colleagues in articles published in Istorik-Marksist and in Borba Klassov. Between 1929 and 1931, a group of prominent historians were arrested by the State Political Directorate following the Academic Case (also known as The Case of Platonov). They were accused of hatching a plot to overthrow the Soviet government. On 8 August 1931, Tarle was exiled to Almaty where he spent the next four years. His wife, Olga Tarle (1874–1955), died just a month later and was buried near him; they had lived together for over 60 years. The couple had two adult children, both of which went on to work in mathematical economy.
Works
- History of Italy in the Middle Ages («История Италии в средние века»)