Arkady Sidorov

Arkady Sidorov
Born	Arkady Lavrovich Sidorov 8 February [O.S. 27 January] 1900 Pochinki, Nizhny Novgorod province, Russian Empire
Died	11 March 1966(1966-03-11) (aged 66) Moscow, Soviet Union
Nationality	Russian/Soviet
Occupation	Historian
Academic background
Alma mater	Moscow State University
Thesis	Экономика России в годы Первой мировой войны 1914–1917 гг. ('The Russian Economy during the First World War of 1914–1917')
Academic work
Era	Soviet
Discipline	Economic history, history of communism
School or tradition	Marxist
Institutions	Moscow State University

Arkady Lavrovich Sidorov (8 February [O.S. 27 January] 1900 – 11 March 1966) was a Russian Soviet historian. A member of the Communist Party from an early age, he was educated as a political activist and did party work before serving in the Second World War during which he was wounded. He started an academic career in Moscow and received his doctorate from Moscow State University (MSU) where he also taught before joining the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR of which he became director.

He campaigned against the MSU professor and Jewish academician Isaak Mints during Joseph Stalin's anti-Semitic drive against the "rootless cosmopolitans" as a result of which Mints lost most of his academic positions. The zeal with which Sidorov opposed Mints was remembered when a position became vacant for a corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences and Sidorov was not elected.

He edited Istoricheskie zapiski and was on the editorial board of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia and the Soviet Historical Encyclopedia. He was instrumental in the publication of 18 volumes of documents on the 1905–07 Revolution and ten volumes on the October Revolution of 1917.

He researched the development of capitalism in Russia which he concluded had developed largely independently of the rest of Europe, and is considered to have been the father of a new direction in Soviet historiography.