Boris Grekov (1882–1953)

Note: Grekov was born on 9 April 1882 according to the Julian calendar ('Old Style') in use in the Russian Empire at the time, the equivalent of 21 April in the 'New Style' Gregorian calendar adopted after the Soviet revolution.

"At this time, he turned toward the study of Kievan Rus' and became known as an opponent of the Ukrainian historian Mykhailo Hrushevsky, who claimed the heritage of Kievan Rus' primarily for modern Ukraine. His major work, Kievan Rus' appeared in 1939 and was the first of three of his works to win the Stalin Prize. In this work, steeped in Marxist-Leninist ideology, he stressed the agricultural rather than commercial basis of the economy of this polity and argued that the heritage of Kievan Rus' was equally shared by modern Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. Grekov's extensive research on Kievan Rus' provided insights into the economic and cultural development of medieval Rus' during the period of the Tatar domination. He summarized these findings in Culture of Kiev Rus (1944) and Russian peasants from the most ancient times to the seventeenth century (1946). But his most lasting work (and the one which is still regularly reprinted) was Golden Horde, written in collaboration with Alexander Yakubovsky and first published in 1937. The second (and now classical) edition appeared in 1950 under the title Golden Horde and its downfall." (Wikipedia).