On October 19, 1970, Professor Sergei Mitrofanovich Dubrovsky, a prominent Soviet agricultural historian, died suddenly.

S. M. Dubrovsky was born on March 15, 1900. As a 16-year-old boy, he joined an illegal circle of young students organized by the Orel Bolsheviks. Since June 1918, he was a member of the CPSU. In 1919-1921, S. M. Dubrovsky conducted political work on the training of Red Army commanders at the PURA and GUVUZ courses. In 1921, he became a student at the Institute of the Red Professorship (ICP), and in 1922 he published a number of articles directed against the bourgeois concepts of agricultural development in our country. Sergey Mitrofanovich made a great contribution to the construction of the Soviet higher school. In 1923, he was one of the organizers of the Faculty of Economics of the Timiryazev Agricultural Academy and served as its dean until 1926. In 1924, he was awarded the title of professor, and in 1935 - the degree of Doctor of Historical Sciences. Since 1933, S. M. Dubrovsky was a member of the Presidium of the Committee on Higher Technical Education and a member of the Higher Attestation Commission. At the end of 1934, he became dean of the History Department of Leningrad University, while continuing to teach at the Moscow State University and the Moscow Art Institute.

Sergei Mitrofanovich belonged to the first generation of Soviet historians. In 1922, he published " Essays on the Russian Revolution "(issue 1. "Agriculture"), and then actively engaged in polemics on the question of the prerequisites for a socialist revolution in the countryside, devoting a number of his articles to this. He was a member of the commission of the 15th Party Congress for drafting a resolution on work in the countryside. The leading theme of S. M. Dubrovsky's works is the history of the agrarian movement. To mark the 20th anniversary of the first Russian Revolution, he wrote an article entitled "The Peasant Movement on the Eve of the 1905 Revolution" and published a collection of documents entitled "The Peasant Movement in the 1905 - 1907 Revolution". The result of many years of work in this field was the book "The Peasant Movement in the revolution of 1905 - 1907" published in 1955. In 1927, he published the book "The Peasant Movement in Russia in 1917", and in 1930 - the capital work "Stolypin Reform", which passed three editions (the last one - in 1963).Being a wide-ranging scholar, he was also interested in the problems of world history. So, in 1927, he published a pamphlet "On the Asian method of production". In total, Sergey Mitrofanovich has written more than 200 works.

S. M. Dubrovsky was one of the organizers and leaders of the International Agrarian Institute, a member of the village department of the Comintern and a member of the Presidium of the Comintern. S. M. Dubrovsky was a loyal son of the party, a thoughtful researcher and a brilliant polemicist, a man of great charm and high spiritual qualities. He generously shared his rich experience with young people and until the last days of his life maintained contacts with scientists from other cities of the USSR and foreign countries. His work left a significant mark on Soviet historical science.

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