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Альма-матер академика. Институт красной профессуры в судьбе И.И. Минца
Marxist historians – trained at the Institute of Red Professors of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and the network of communist universities of the 1920s and early 1930s – better known as the School of Professor Mikhail Pokrovsky – represent a unique generational phenomenon in the community of Soviet scholars. Occupying leading positions in historical scholarship during the interwar period, they ensured the practical implementation of Lenin’s principle of “party-mindedness in science” within the contradictory realities of Stalin’s political and ideological system. This article focuses on the early academic career of one of the most renowned representatives of this school, Academician Isaac Mints (1896–1991). It examines the events preceding and accompanying Mints’s studies at the Institute of Red Professors, the circumstances of his postgraduate career as a historian of the new generation, and the challenges of his interactions with his teacher, Professor Pokrovsky, and his patron, Party historian Yemelyan Yaroslavsky. A conclusion is drawn about the significant influence of the early, institute stage of Mints’s life (1923–1931) on his integration into the field of historical science, the development of a sphere of scientific interests, and the formation of a network of professional contacts.