He was appointed an Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union on February 13, 1929, for the Department of Humanities (History),[b] expelled on September 5, 1938, and restored on April 26, 1957.

[2] Vavilov Institute of the History of Natural Science and Technology of the Russian Academy of Sciences Lukin was born in the village of Kuskovo in the Spasskaya volost of the Moscow Governorate (now within the city of Moscow) into the family of an elementary school teacher.

His graduation work, "The Fall of the Gironde", carried out under the direction of Robert Wipper, was awarded a faculty prize.

Albert Manfred would later write:[6] Vyacheslav Volgin, Nikolai Lukin–Antonov, Fedor Rothstein, David Ryazanov – this is the whole list of Marxist historians who worked in the field of foreign history, prominent scientists who stood at the origins of Soviet historiography.In 1922, Lukin's book "The Paris Commune of 1871" laid the foundation for a new direction in his scientific research.

In it, Lukin noted that the Paris Commune was the first attempt of the proletariat to give the bourgeoisie a general battle, and that is what remained in the memory of subsequent generations.

Since 1927, he was a member of the main editorial board of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, and together with Fedor Rothstein, editor of the department of modern and recent history of Western countries.

[8] At that point, the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union dismissed Lukin from the post of director of the Institute of History, leaving him as a full member of the Institute, while also appointing him head of the sector of modern history there.

[11] On August 22, 1938, Lukin was arrested, and on May 26, 1939, he was sentenced by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union, which stated that Nikolai Lukin was "found guilty of committing crimes under Articles 17-58-8 and 58-11 of the Criminal Code Code of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, and sentenced to imprisonment in forced labor camps for a term of 10 years with a defeat in political rights for five years and confiscation of all personally owned property.

[12] On March 16, 1957, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union adopted a ruling according to which the sentence against Nikolai Lukin of May 29, 1939, was quashed "for lack of corpus delicti".