Abstract
The purpose of this publication is to introduce into scientific circulation the transcript of the meeting of the Directorate of the Marx Engels Lenin Institute (IMEL) dated November 20, 1940. The published source belongs to the problematic field of the history of historical science at the turn of the 1930s-1940s. The meeting reflected in the document became one of the few known to us "exchanges of views" within the institute on the development of the author's team of the biography of V.I. Lenin. The document complements the plots related to the functioning of the cult of personality of I.V. Stalin and its limits in Soviet historical science; gives an understanding of how the image of a professional revolutionary should appear; reflects the technical nuances that imposed objective restrictions on the author's team during the writing of the biography of V.I. Lenin. The creators of the text found themselves in a certain ideological framework: they were obliged to build the reviewed Lenin's works, focusing on the "Short Course of the history of the CPSU (b)". Separate text inserts and quotations of V.I. Lenin in the text of the biography were subject to the same kind of adjustments. The construction of the image of the leader from the point of view of his human qualities posed a large number of questions to the team of authors concerning the image of a professional revolutionary. How should one comprehend the theoretical heritage of the leader and how to combine it with practice? How should the portrait of V.I. Lenin be given? Is it worth showing the personality through everyday details (through a description of his rest, attitude to nature, etc.) or is it quite possible to limit yourself to showing high culture in the work and modesty of the leader? And is it necessary to set such a goal at all? Ultimately, during the discussion that unfolded during the meeting of the IMEL directorate, the team of authors decided to focus mainly on the political activities of V.I. Lenin, limiting themselves to only rare references to the personal life of a professional revolutionary. The source was identified in the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI) in f. 71. The document is a typewritten original and is published in accordance with modern rules of spelling and punctuation. Obvious shortcomings and a few errors have been corrected in the text. Information about the persons and scientific works mentioned in the source is given in the footnote. An important pre-publication comment updating this source is important. The source is published with banknotes: plots that are insignificant from the point of view of the issues discussed are cut out.
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