Grevs Ivan (1860–1941) – historian, one of the founders of the Russian school of medievalism.
After the Larin Gymnasium, in 1879, he entered the Historical and Philological Faculty of the St. Petersburg University; there he wrote his first research work ‘Roman Byzantine State in the Sixth Century on the Base of Canonic Books of Christian Emperors’.
He took part in groups of Narodniki, from 1886 till 1903, he was under a hidden police surveillance. In 1890-s, he made lectures at the St. Petersburg University, and at the Bestuzhev Female Courses (1892-1899 and 1902-1918). In 1900, he defended his Master thesis ‘Essays from the History of the Roman Landownership, Mainly in the Epoch of Empire’. In 1890-1892 and 1894-1896, he had training periods abroad. Since 1905, he was a member of the CD Party (Constitutional Democrats).
In 1923, he was fired out of the Leningrad University. In 1921-1924, he headed the Humanitarian Department of the Petrograd Excursion Institute. Since 1925, he worked at the Central Bureau of the Local History. In 1930, he was arrested but escaped long imprisonment. In 1935, he returned to the University as Professor of the Chair of the Medieval History.
He followed the French school of historical research. He was one of the founders of ‘city studies’, and so he worked out large-scaled excursions in medieval cities. On his opinion, Early Middle Ages were a direct development of the Roman social system. Together with his disciples, G. studies mainly culture of Medieval Western Europe, including various aspects of the history of Christianity in the West