The present paper deals with an important and essential subject of scholarly
activities of Galina Evgenievna Lebedeva (1935–2021) — one of the most outstanding
Soviet-Russian Byzantine scholars, who taught at the Medieval History Department
at Saint-Petersburg State University over 40 years, from the mid-1960s to 2021, and
who headed this Department during 25 years, from 1990 to 2015. The author of the
paper takes into account Galina Evgenievna’s monograph called «Cathedra medii
aevi: Materials on a History of Leningrad Medieval Studies in the 1930s–1950s»,
which had been published in co-authorship with her colleague by the Department, that is a famous historian of Late Medieval Poland Vladimir Aleksandrovich
Yakubskiy, in 2008. Having based on some points from this book, the author wants
to trace the scholarly tools of Galina Evgenievna as a historiographer, to show also
the peculiarities of her style’s argumentation and considerations. The main aim of
the author is to clear up how Galina Evgenievna studied a history of her native
Department, where she taught most of her life, how she reconstructed not only a
scholarly biography of her senior Department’s colleagues, but also, if it’s possible
to say, a scholarly biography of the books written by Department’s teachers during
the 1930s–1950s. It is important to note that Galina Evgenievna accepted a subject of
the monograph as a part of her personal biography, and, as a result, while searching
in history of Leningrad academic university Medieval studies in the course of the
1930s–1950s, she in some way indirectly narrated her own academic life, thought
about her own way in science. So, with no doubts, Galina Evgenievna comprehended
her book as a tribute to the memory of University academic tutors, who influenced
greatly on her growth as a scientist and a teacher.