Viktor Trofimovich Illarionov (1901–1985) — archaeologist, historian, local historian
In the early 1950s, on orders from above, enrollment in the history department of Gorky University was suspended. All attempts to reverse the decision proved unsuccessful, including an appeal to the Central Committee of the Communist Party. The department faced closure. It was saved by Illarionov, the dean of the history and philology faculty. In July 1953, he sent a letter to Kaganovich, whom he knew personally and had watched rise in 1918–1919 from agitator for the Nizhny Novgorod Guberniya Party Committee to its chairman. On 7 August 1953, the university received instructions from Moscow to resume first-year enrollment in the history department. Viktor Illarionov was born in Nizhny Novgorod, in Gordeevka, the thirteenth child of a locksmith named Trofim Aleksandrovich. After his father's death, the thirteen-year-old boy set off for Moscow to live with his brother Aleksandr, who worked in an office and rented a room. His brother took him in but set one condition: "Earn your own keep." Viktor worked during the day and studied in the evenings at Shanyavsky People's University. After completing his studies there, he returned home in 1917. Back in his native city, he threw himself into frenetic activity: he joined the Bolshevik Party and held a series of responsible posts — head of the guberniya division of the Russian Telegraph Agency, authorized representative of the Istpart of the Central Committee of the RCP(b) in Nizhny Novgorod Governorate, and commissar of the State Archive of the RSFSR for Nizhny Novgorod Governorate. He contributed to several newspapers, studied at the Nizhny Novgorod branch of the Moscow Archaeological Institute, and in 1922 graduated with a gold medal, earning the title of "scholarly archaeologist." His countless party and professional obligations and his convictions did not prevent Illarionov from meeting Serafima Sakharovskaya, the daughter of a priest at the Spassky Church. In 1920 they married, and they would live together in love and harmony for 57 years. Of all Illarionov's endeavors, the most demanding was the collecting, editing, and publishing of materials on the revolutionary events. "The hardest thing at that time," Mikoyan would later recall, "was convincing busy people of the need to sit down and write their memoirs. And yet Illarionov managed it." Viktor Trofimovich succeeded in establishing contacts with many prominent figures, among them A. S. Bubnov, N. K. Krupskaya, M. S. Olminsky, P. M. Lebedev-Kerzhenets, N. A. Semashko, and Andrei Zhdanov, while preparing four volumes of Materials on the History of the Revolutionary Movement. All four volumes were published. In one of the gifted copies, the compiler wrote: "To the leader and teacher Lenin — party member Illarionov." The Bolshevik press of that era praised the Nizhny Novgorod collections highly. But then came a stumble. During a routine party purge, Illarionov was asked why he had given space in the collections to Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, and on top of that had married a priest's daughter. Shouts came from the floor: "Let him choose: either her or the party!" He refused to renounce his wife. In July 1923, the bureau of the Nizhny Novgorod Guberniya Committee of the RCP(b) resolved "to expel V. T. Illarionov from the party as an ideologically degenerate element, and to remove him from his work in Istpart." Viktor Trofimovich was stripped of all his posts, including that of editorial secretary of "Gorkovskaya Kommuna (newspaper)," and was forced to leave the city; he spent about a year working as a reporter in Kharkiv. The respected party figure Olminsky, who headed Istpart, put in a word on Illarionov's behalf. Returning to Nizhny Novgorod, he found work in the information department of the guberniya executive committee and devoted himself actively to local history. From 1938 he began teaching at the pedagogical institute and focused closely on the historiography of the Paleolithic. He no longer touched modern history. In 1941, at the Institute of Material Culture of the Academy of Sciences, Illarionov successfully defended his candidate's dissertation, "Fossil Man in the Historiography of the Paleolithic of the USSR"; he published a monograph with a local press and set to work on his doctoral dissertation. The Paleolithic had become a safe haven for him — the truth about "fossil man" did not trouble the orthodox. In 1946, Illarionov was invited to Gorky University to join the department of world history at the history and philology faculty. He completed his doctoral dissertation, "An Essay in the Historiography of the Paleolithic of the USSR," and defended it in 1948. This was a rare event for those times — all the more so because some scholars considered the dissertation "without equal in significance for Paleolithic historiography anywhere in Europe or America." Archaeologist, historian, local historian, author of numerous publications and fourteen books, Professor Viktor Trofimovich Illarionov taught many foundational courses in the history of primitive society, the Ancient East, archaeology, and ethnography at both the pedagogical institute and the university, and he founded a school of Nizhny Novgorod archaeologists and local historians who continue his work successfully and with distinction to this day. The work of a man who knew how to live openly and with dignity, never compromising his honor even in the most difficult and dangerous of times.