Zutis, Ian Iakovlevich

(in Latvian, Jānis Zutis). Born Aug. 4 (16), 1893, in Kalnini, in present-day Jekabpils Raion; died June 28, 1962, in Riga. Soviet historian, academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Latvian SSR (1951); corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1953). The son of a farm laborer.

Zutis graduated in 1924 from the department of social sciences at Moscow University and between 1940 and 1949 worked in the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. In 1946, Zutis became a professor at the Latvian State University and that same year became a co-worker at the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the Latvian SSR. His chief works include Tsarist Policy in the Baltic Area in the First Half of the 18th Century (1937) and The Baltic Question in the 18th Century (1946; State Prize of the USSR, 1950). Zutis collected valuable material on the economic and political history of the Baltic peoples and studied Latvia’s history in relation to that of the other Baltic nations and to Russia and its peoples. He made a significant contribution to the creation and development of Marxist historiography on the Baltic. Zutis was a deputy to the third and fourth convocations of the Supreme Soviet of the Latvian SSR and a member of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Latvian SSR. He was awarded the Order of Lenin and two other orders.