The article is the first research work on the biography of Khairi Gimadi, who was a bright representative of the Soviet school of historians, whose activities took place at the time of tighter ideological pressure on the Tatar intelligentsia. Kh. Gimadi’s works on the history of the Tatar ASSR were created in the context of the ongoing campaigns against “bourgeois objectivism” and “cosmopolitanism”, linguistic and political economic discussions. Being a loyal communist, he often had to sacrifice his scientific principles, and it ultimately led to the disillusionment with the current system and the tragic death of the historian.

The article uses the method of oral history (in-depth interview), which played an important role in building a holistic picture of the life of Kh. Gimadi. For the first time, the personal file of the historian is introduced into a scientific circulation, the documents from which allow us to trace the pedagogical, scientific, and socio-political activities of the scholar. The most valuable are the memoirs and letters of Kh. Gimadi. These records are kept in his children’s personal archives and reflect the childhood and adolescence of the future historian: they describe in detail the years of mass famine in the Volga region, children homelessness, the work of the Children’s commissions and orphanages. The materials of the article may be useful for the researchers studying the development of the Humanities during the period of late Stalinism, the daily life of the Soviet children of the 1920s and the intelligentsia of the 1940s and 1950s.