Russian historian (1878–1959)
Inna Ivanovna Lubimenko (Любименко Инна Ивановна), or Lioubimenko, (1(13) April 1878 – 15 January 1959) was a Russian and Soviet historian of the early modern period and a specialist in Anglo-Russian relations. She earned her doctorate in Paris and travelled regularly to London and Moscow in the course of her researches, publishing articles in English language and French journals. She was the only woman to address the International Congress of Historical Studies in London in 1913.
From 1916 she was based in Russia, working as a researcher, archivist, and lecturer at official academic institutions, particularly the Academy of Sciences whose history she researched and helped to write. She was evacuated from Leningrad during the Second World War with her institute and received the medals for the "defence of Leningrad" and for "Valiant Labour in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945." After her retirement she wrote essays on the history of Saint Petersburg where she died in 1959.
Early life and education.
Inna Lubimenko was born in Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire, on 1(13) April 1878. Her father was the botanist Ivan Parfenievich Borodin and her mother Alexandra Grigoryevna. She received her basic education at the Obolenskaya Gymnasium before taking higher classes in the history of the Middle Ages under Ivan Mikhaĭlovich Grevs and Georgīĭ Vasilevich Forsten, graduating in 1904.
On Grevs' advice, in 1905 she went to the Sorbonne in Paris. There she studied under Charles Bémont and received her doctorate on the subject of John of Brittany, Earl of Richmond. It was published in 1908.
She married the distinguished botanist and academician Vladimir Nikolaevich Lyubimenko, who worked in the Nikitsky Botanical Garden in Crimea where they lived for a time. He was also at the Sorbonne in 1905.
Career.
During her studies in Paris, Lubimenko made regular trips to London and Moscow and developed an interest in Anglo-Russian diplomatic and commercial relations of the early-modern period which became her specialist subject. Her first articles in this area appeared in French and Russian in 1912. She also wrote on Dutch and French relations with Russia.
She was the only woman to address the International Congress of Historical Studies in London in 1913 when she read a paper titled "The Correspondence of Queen Elizabeth with the Russian Czars". It was published in "The American Historical Review" in 1914 and told how the English accidentally made contact with the Russians in 1553 when the ship "Edward Bonaventure" was forced to seek shelter on the north coast of Russia due to weather conditions, leading to the English crew coming in contact with the court of Ivan the Terrible, the forming of the Russia Company, and diplomatic contacts between Ivan and Elizabeth I of England.
Later articles explored the subject through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries from the diplomatic and trading perspectives, identifying the impact of one on the other in strengthening or loosening ties between England and Russia. Multi-part articles in French historical journals explored the different classes of persons who travelled to Russia and their activities there.
After Paris, Lubimenko joined the main Saint Petersburg botanical garden as a foreign correspondent and translator in 1916 before teaching and lecturing at various institutions including the Central Archive. In 1923 she attended the fifth International Congress of Historical Sciences in Brussels and in 1925 travelled to Latvia, Germany, France and England to study archiving methods there and acquire archival material.
Her health began to decline from 1926 but she continued to hold research positions at academic institutions in Russia, particularly the Academy of Sciences about whose founding and history she published a number of articles. She joined the Saint Petersburg branch of the Institute of History in March 1942 and was evacuated in July that year to Yelabuga, then to Tashkent, where she worked until 1944.
She was awarded medals for the "defence of Leningrad" and for "Valiant Labour in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945."
Later life.
Lubimenko retired in 1952 but continued to participate in academic life, writing essays on the history of Saint Petersburg for a volume on the history of the city that was published in 1955 and editing chapters of the first volume of the history of the Academy of Sciences. She died in Saint Petersburg on 15 January 1959. She received an obituary in the "Revue Historique".
Publications.
Russian language works.
Some of her works in Russian are:
References.
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