Yuri Saprykin

Yury Mikhailovich Saprykin was a Russian historian, Doctor of Historical Sciences, and professor at Moscow State University. A veteran of the Great Patriotic War, he specialized in the history of the English colonization of Ireland, the English peasantry, and the development of political thought in medieval England. He was the author of six monographs and numerous articles.

Yury Saprykin graduated from the Faculty of History of Moscow State University in 1939. He took part in the Great Patriotic War. In 1949 he defended his Candidate of Historical Sciences dissertation on the topic “The Origins of the Political Views of James Harrington (1611–1677). From the History of the Class Struggle over Questions of Property and Power in England in the late 1640s and 1650s.” In 1949–55 he was deputy dean of the Faculty of History of Moscow State University and deputy vice-rector for academic and educational work of the humanities faculties. In 1959 he was elected secretary of the CPSU party committee of Moscow State University. In 1963 he defended his Doctor of Historical Sciences dissertation on the topic “The Agrarian History of Ireland during the Period of the English Conquest: the 12th–17th Centuries.” In 1965–1993 he was professor in the Department of Medieval History. In 1979–85 he chaired the Scientific and Methodological Council for Higher Historical Education under the USSR Ministry of Higher and Specialized Secondary Education.

Field of research interests: the history of the English colonization of Ireland and its agrarian development. He was awarded the Lomonosov Prize for a series of works on the history of England and Ireland in the 16th–17th centuries. Main works: “The Irish Rebellion of the 17th Century” (1967), “Socio-Political Views of the English Peasantry in the 16th–17th Centuries” (1972), “Harrington’s Political Doctrine. From the History of the Ideological and Political Struggle during the English Bourgeois Revolution of the 17th Century” (1975), “A History of Ireland” (coauthor, 1980), “The English Conquest of Ireland, 12th–17th Centuries” (1982