«White spots» in modern Russian historical science are the biographies of many unjustly forgotten historians of the Soviet period. One of these was the head of the department of history of the USSR at the Leningrad State Pedagogical Institute named after A. I. Herzen in the 1930s. - Ivan Sergeevich Smolin. In this article, thanks to the involvement of previously unused archival materials, it is supposed to analyze the life and scientific activities of the forgotten Soviet historian, I. S. Smolin.