# Georgiy Basharin

Georgiy Prokopyevich Basharin (Russian: Георгий Прокопьевич Башарин), March 21, 1912 – April 18, 1992) was a Soviet and Russian historian, professor, public figure, an honorable scholar of Sakha and of Russia, the first Laureate of the A.E. Kulakovsky State Prize, Sakha Republic (Yakutia).

## Biography

Basharin was born in Sylan village, in the Yakutsk Oblast of the Russian Empire (present-day Churapchinsky District, Sakha, Russia), in a large poor peasant family. He was introduced to literacy at the age of 17 during the illiteracy eradication campaign initiated by the Soviet state. In 1932 Basharin became a student of the Yakutsk Pedagogical College and then transferred to the History department inside the newly established Yakutsk Pedagogical Institute. In 1937 he continued his education at the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute. Upon his graduation, in 1938, Basharin returned to his homeland to teach at the Yakutsk Pedagogical Institute. On September 10, 1943, he successfully defended his dissertation (Russian: кандидатская диссертация) titled "The Three Yakut Realists-Enlighteners", which analyzed the lives and work of the founders of the Sakha national literature—Alexey Kulakovsky, Anempodist Sofronov, and Nikolay Neustroev. During Stalin's totalitarian era, these three enlighteners had been accused of bourgeois nationalism and their writings were prohibited. Basharin's dissertation, published as a separate book in 1944, became a scholarly triumph over erroneous political accusations of the founders and classics of Sakha literature. The history of its appearance and the political struggle that unfolded around it became the example of courage, fight for the historical truth and decency, defense of the national pride of the Sakha people and their best representatives. In 1949 Basharin has defended his doctoral dissertation (Russian: докторская диссертация) "The History of Agrarian Relations in Yakutia (from the 1760s to mid-19th century)" and became the first ethnic Sakha to obtain a doctoral degree. His dissertation was published as a book in 1956 and republished in two separate volumes in 2003. In 1952 Basharin was accused of "bourgeois nationalism" for rehabilitating the prohibited Sakha national writers. He was excluded from the Communist Party, deprived of his academic degrees and his job. The accusations were dismissed in 1962. Shortly after, Basharin defended his doctoral dissertation for the second time. After his name was cleared, Basharin worked as a dean of the History and Philology Department, a Professor of the Yakutsk State University, and a researcher at the Yakutsk Institute of Humanitarian Studies, previously known as Institute of Language, Literature and History.

## Work

Basharin is the author of 18 monographs and over 400 scholarly papers. He devoted his life to investigating key problems regarding the socio-cultural, economic, and political life of the Sakha republic, including:
* The history of Sakha literature.
* The origin and development of agriculture in the Sakha republic.
* The inclusion of Siberia and Sakha republic in the Russian state and its significance. He investigated and developed a theory of peaceful, voluntary joining of Yakutia (Sakha) to the Russian state.
* The origin and socio-cultural development of the Sakha people.
* The problems of historiography