«As You Know, Stubbornness is my Main Virtue»: The Experience of Reconstructing the Scientific Biography of N.A. Sidorova

The article presents the milestones of the scientific biography of N.A. Sidorova (19101961). A student of S.D. Skazkin, in 1952-1961 she was head the sector of the history of the Middle Ages at the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of USSR. The figure of this woman occupies a rather controversial place in the history of Soviet medieval studies, and current ideas about her are mostly based on the image «constructed» within the scholarly community of medievalists in the 2000s on the wave of «battles» for professional memory. The memory of the «uncomfortable past» differentiated the corporation, and the attitude to the role of N.A. Sidorova became a litmus test, an indicator of belonging to one or another group within the scholarly community of medievists. Many modern researchers suppose that N.A. Sidorova was administrator and it was she who influenced the dismissal of some scientists of the «old school» in the late 1940s; or they suppose that N.A. Sidorova was ideologist, and it was she who deformed the soviet medievistics. However, we believe that her role in the development of Russian medieval studies was more complex and unclear. On the basis of new archival materials the authors of the article make an attempt to reconstruct the main stages of N.A. Sidorova’s scientific path.