The Diaries of N.A. Akimkina (1935–2014)

Abstract. The diaries of doctor of historical sciences, professor of the Rostov State University, Nina Alekseevna Akimkina, are published for the first time. Diaries were found in the personal archives of N.A. Akimkina after her death in 2014. We found five notebooks with records. The text in the fifth notebook is interrupted on an unfinished sentence. It is possible that the author of the diary entries herself tore out the pages. The diaries give information about the ordinary Soviet undergraduate student, a graduate student and a university lecturer life. Chronologically the diaries cover the period from 1945 to 1954; geographically the same records refer to the Omsk, Moscow and Rostov periods of N.A. Akimkina's life. In the notebook No. 5 the life of a post-graduate student at the Faculty of History of the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute is presented: a trip to kolkhoz and Yasnaya Polyana, the death of Stalin and an attempt to get to the Pillar Hall, the defense of the thesis and fear of being directed to the Russian Far East, the appointment to Rostov-on-Don and new friends. We can be acknowledged from N.A. Akimkina’s diaries with her first impressions of the city of Rostov-on-Don and new job, an assessment of the student level and professional qualities of colleagues.

Keywords: Nina Alekseevna Akimkina, professor, historian, Rostov State University, postgraduate study, Moscow State Pedagogical University, dissertation.