Faculty and students of the Institute of History and Archives (now RSUH) fought during the Great Patriotic War. It was possible to restore more than 90 biographies of historians-archivists, the participants in the events of those years.
Nikolai Shakhnazarov (1907-1941) was born in the city of Stepanavan in Armenia into a peasant family. In 1925 he left for Tbilisi to study. He graduated from an evening Soviet party school, an advanced-level school, and three-month cooperative courses. Until 1927, he worked as a salesperson in the Tbilisi Unified Workers' Cooperative. In 1927-1929 he graduated from the two-year cooperative courses of the Transcaucasian Communist University.
In 1935 he was sent to Moscow to study at the Institute of History and Archives, and graduated on July 1, 1939.
Then Mr. Shakhnazarov worked at the Institute of Marx, Engels, Lenin under the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks as a researcher at the Party Archive.
From June 30, 1941, he attended a two-month retraining course for reserve officers and political officers in the city of Cheboksary. He participated in battles with the Nazis being a political instructor of the 901st Infantry Regiment of the 245th Infantry Division. He died on the Leningrad Front on October 17, 1941 in the village of Maslovichi, Leningrad Region.
In 1991, the memoirs of the wife of Nikolai Shakhnazarov about her husband, "About a person dear ", were published.
