А. А. Васильев и «Академическое дело»

Abstract

The article is based on the correspondence received in 1930 by the Russian Byzantinist Alex-ander Vasiliev (1867–1953), who taught at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The letters in question were written at the time of the “Academic Trial” in the USSR or directly touched upon it. The letters from Vasiliev’s two sisters, who remained in Leningrad, are evasive, ap-parently because of censorship concerns, and say nothing about the way the wave of state repressions affected their family. Yet, Vasiliev got unambiguous information from two inde-pendent sources: 1) a Danish trade-union activist Edith Olsen who had visited the Soviet Un-ion and, upon return, passed to Vailiev the news from his friends in Leningrad; 2) an emigré law professor Alexandr Makarov who had met in Berlin with a colleague, a high-ranking and well-informed Soviet law professor Mikhail Pergament who obviously disliked what was go-ing on in Russia. From both sources Vasiliev learned that on the New Year Eve of 1930, the secret police (GPU) arrested his brother-in-law Dmitrii Khalturin, Vasiliev’s sister Olga’s husband. The police also came to his own apartment, where his other sister, Nadezhda, lived, with an arrest warrant for Vasiliev himself. This is how Vasiliev realized that there was no way for him to return to Russia.