Alexander Yevgenyevich Presnyakov (Александр Евгеньевич Пресняков; 1870-1929) was a Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

n historian who attempted to reform the Saint Petersburg

Saint Petersburg

Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...

 school of imperial historiography

Historiography

Historiography refers either to the study of the history and methodology of history as a discipline, or to a body of historical work on a specialized topic...

 after the Russian Revolution. He was elected into the Russian Academy of Sciences

Russian Academy of Sciences

The Russian Academy of Sciences consists of the national academy of Russia and a network of scientific research institutes from across the Russian Federation as well as auxiliary scientific and social units like libraries, publishers and hospitals....

 as a corresponding member in 1920.

Presnyakov was born in Odessa

Odessa

Odessa or Odesa is the administrative center of the Odessa Oblast located in southern Ukraine. The city is a major seaport located on the northwest shore of the Black Sea and the fourth largest city in Ukraine with a population of 1,029,000 .The predecessor of Odessa, a small Tatar settlement,...

 and spent his childhood in Tiflis. A brilliant disciple of Sergey Platonov

Sergey Platonov

Sergey Fyodorovich Platonov was a Russian historian who led the official St Petersburg school of imperial historiography before and after the Russian Revolution.Platonov was born in Chernigov and attended a private gymnasium in St...

, he published several important studies of medieval Russia, including Princely Law in Old Rus (1909), The Tsardom of Muscovy (1918), and The Development of the State of Great Russia (1918). He opposed Platonov in admitting the distinct nature of the medieval Lithuanian statehood

Grand Duchy of Lithuania

The Grand Duchy of Lithuania was a European state from the 12th /13th century until 1569 and then as a constituent part of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth until 1791 when Constitution of May 3, 1791 abolished it in favor of unitary state. It was founded by the Lithuanians, one of the polytheistic...

.

After the Russian Revolution Presnyakov authored the revisionist biographies of Alexander I

Alexander I of Russia

Alexander I of Russia , served as Emperor of Russia from 23 March 1801 to 1 December 1825 and the first Russian King of Poland from 1815 to 1825. He was also the first Russian Grand Duke of Finland and Lithuania....

 and Nicholas I

Nicholas I of Russia

Nicholas I , was the Emperor of Russia from 1825 until 1855, known as one of the most reactionary of the Russian monarchs. On the eve of his death, the Russian Empire reached its historical zenith spanning over 20 million square kilometers...

. He helped establish and run the Institute of Historical Studies, a branch of the Petrograd University, and managed the Leningrad branch of the RANION History Insitute. It was shortly after Presnyakov's death that his mentor Platonov, as well as their disciples, faced persecution from the government. His library was acquired by the Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

in 1931.