Boris Kozmin

Born Dec. 15 (27), 1883, in Moscow; died there July 5, 1958. Soviet historian and literary critic; doctor of historical sciences (1935); professor.

In 1910, Koz’min graduated from the faculty of law of the University of Moscow. During the 1920’s and 1930’s he was a senior scientific worker at the Institute of Literature of the Russian Association of Scientific Research Institutes in the Social Sciences. He became the senior scientific worker of the Institute of World Literature of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (AN SSSR) in 1939. From 1946 to 1954 he was director of the State Literary Museum. He was a senior scientific worker at the Institute of History of the AN SSSR from 1946 to 1958.

An active contributor to Literaturnoe nasledstvo (Literary Heritage), Koz’min also edited and wrote commentaries for the collected works of a number of 19th-century revolutionary writers, including A. I. Herzen, N. G. Chernyshevskii, and N. A. Dobroliubov. His scholarly research focused on the social movement in Russia in the second half of the 19th century: populism, the world view of the revolutionary and democratic figures of the 1850’s through the 1880’s, the Russian revolutionary emigration, and journalism. Koz’min was awarded two orders, as well as several medals.