The case of Solomon Gertsevich Basin: regional practice of political and ideological campaigns of the second half of the 1940s – early 1950s

The paper reconstructs the little-known pages of the biography of the Samara historian, doctor of historical sciences, professor Solomon Gertsevich Basin. The source base for the study was the materials of his personal file, personal files, protocol documentation of the primary party organization of the Kuibyshev State Pedagogical Institute (now Samara State University of Social Sciences and Education), the Frunzensky District Committee of the Kuybyshev CPSU(b) and other documents that were found in the archive and the SSUSSE library, the Central State Archive of the Samara Region and the Samara Regional State Archive of Social and Political History. The focus is on the circumstances of the involvement of S.G. Basin in the well-known political campaigns of the second half of the 1940s – early 1950s, the analysis of his «case» as well as the teachers of the Kuibyshev Pedagogical Institute – the most active participants in the «fight against servitude before the West», with «cosmopolitanism» and others. The paper also attempts to clarify the motivation that determined certain actions of the main «actors» in the context of the ideological influence on the pedagogical intelligentsia in the post-war period. For this purpose, the biographies of some directors, deputy directors, secretaries of the university organization of the party, teachers of the history department of KSPI were studied.