Yefim Gorodetsky

Efim Naumovich Gorodetsky
Городецкий Ефим Наумович
Yefim Gorodetsky[1]
Born	29 January [O.S. 16 January] 1907 Vinnitsa, Podolia Governorate, Russian Empire (now Vinnytsia, Ukraine)
Died	20 June 1993(1993-06-20) (aged 86) Moscow, Russia
Nationality	Ukrainian
Citizenship	Russia/Soviet Union
Occupation	Historian
Known for	Historiography of the October Revolution
Spouse	Polina Veniaminovna Gurovich
Children	Evgenii Gorodetskii
Awards	State Prize of the USSR (1943)
Academic background
Alma mater	Moscow State University
Academic work
School or tradition	Soviet
Institutions	Moscow State University
Notable works	Rozhdenie sovetskogo gosudarstva 1917-1918 gg (1965)

Efim Naumovich Gorodetsky (or Gorodetskii; Russian: Городецкий Ефим Наумович; 29 January 1907 – 20 June 1993) was a Soviet historian and a leading authority on the historiography of the October Revolution and the formation of the Soviet state. He received his advanced education at Moscow State University (MSU) where he also taught. He was awarded the State Prize of the USSR in 1943 for his part in a history of the Russian Civil War and produced and edited a number of collections of primary sources relating to Russian and Soviet history.

He was associated with Eduard Burdzhalov and Isaak Mints at MSU, and in the late 1940s was one of the historians at the university who was attacked by Arkadiĭ Sidorov as one of what Joseph Stalin described as "rootless cosmopolitans", most of whom were Jewish intellectuals. His career flourished in the post-Stalin period and in 1960 he won the N. V. Lomonosov Prize of MSU, also receiving a doctorate there in 1965, and publishing a number of books such as the highly cited Rozhdenie sovetskogo gosudarstva 1917-1918 gg (1965) on the birth of the Soviet state.

In 1987, he was interviewed in Voprosy Istorii on the 80th anniversary of his birth, and in 1997, Russian History published an article titled "Lessons from Gorodetsky (on the occasion of his 90th birthday)".