Scientific traditions of the Leningrad School of Medieval Studies in wartime: defense of the Ph.D. thesis by Valentina V. Stockmar in 1942

Abstract

Valentina V. Stockmar was the only representative of Leningrad school of medieval studies who defended her candidate dissertation during the Great Patriotic War (Saratov, 22 September 1942). The article reveals the specifics of Stockmar’s educational path, reconstructs the peculiarities of her PhD thesis ‘The Works of Jonathan Swift as a Historical Source’ and analyses the reception of this work by official opponents, medievalist Matvey A. Gukovsky and comparative philologist Mikhail P. Alekseev. The main sources of the study are archival materials from Stockmar's dissertation dispute (Central State Archive of St. Petersburg), with particular attention paid to the thesis’ abstracts and the reviews of the opponents. The author of the article concludes that Stockmar was working in the conditions that limited full-fledged scholarly creativity.
The success of the defense was the result of the opponents (and the Academic Council of Leningrad State University as a whole) recognising the candidate's professional competence, as well as her “methodological maturity” associated with her desire to develop and apply original approaches to the analysis of historical sources. The article also demonstrates that Stockmar's dissertation was part of a scientific trend that was relevant in the 1940s and 1950s, aimed at institutionalising source studies as an independent field of historical research.