“Showing Antiquity” in the Soviet School: Dissertation by O. E. Ivanova (1943)

The article dwells on personal experience in defending a dissertation and constructing a historical narrative during the Great Patriotic War. The work focuses on the dissertation history of the Soviet medievalist, teacher and methodologist Olga Efimovna Ivanova. The study considers the professional formation of O. E. Ivanova within the work of the Leningrad Scientific and Methodological School of History Teaching Methods, which developed in the mid-1930s and mid-1940s. The dissertation was defended at the Academic Council of Leningrad University in 1943 during its evacuation to Saratov. The author focuses on the design of the dissertation layout and comes to the conclusion that the conditions of military everyday life reduced the requirements for dissertation and also made it possible to defend it in another scientific specialty. The text of the dissertation reflects the changes in approaches to understanding history and its main functions, which occurred in the 1930s and during the Great Patriotic War. Showing images of antiquity and the Middle Ages, O. E. Ivanova selects visual aids demonstrating different sides of the historical past and pays special attention to the theme of heroism and readiness for a feat. Wartime terminology penetrates the text of the dissertation. The author comes to the conclusion that the dissertation, written at the turn of the 1930s — 1940s, only partially incorporates elements of the military-historical narrative that would develop by 1942.