Кривоносов Ю. И.

Based on the hitherto unstudied archival documents, the article analyzes the tragic events in the existence of the Institute for the History of Science and Technology following its relocation to Moscow in 1936. Despite the efforts of the institute’s first director, Nikolai Bukharin, to keep its structure and protect the personnel from the ever-increasing political pressures (revealed in his 1936-1937 correspondence with vice-president of the Academy of Sciences, G. M. Krzhizhanovskii, and its permanent secretary, N. P. Gorbunov, appended to the article), the persecution ran through its ranks, sparing neither Bukharin himself, not his deputy, academician A. M. Deborin. After academician V. V. Osinskii (who had suceeded Bukharin as the institute’s director) was arrested and executed in 1937, the institute was left in shambles. Although a number of famous scientists (most notably, Vladimir Vernadsky) made energetic attempts to find a new director, no one wanted to assume such a threatening position, and in March of 1938 the Presidium of the Soviet Academy of Sciences solved to liquidate the institute altogether.