[1] Vyacheslav Petrovich Volgin was born in Borshchyovka village, Khomutovsky District, Kursk Governorate, Russia on 14 June 1879.

[1] One of the first challenges that he faced as rector was to reform the VUZy (ВУЗ – высшее учебное заведение, "higher educational institutions") to ensure that their teachers and staff were ideologically sound.

Despite protests by Volgin, a few days later the State Political Directorate (GPU) told Novikov they were deporting him.

[5] Volgin did what he could to minimize the impact of the purge, trying to ensure that where the charges were minor the teachers could continue to teach.

[3] From 1919 to 1929 he was a member of the National Scientific Council, and from 1921 to 1922 Deputy Chairman of the Main Committee of Vocational Education of the RSFSR People's Commissariat.

[9] Volgin spent many years researching the history of social thinking in France before the French Revolution, developing an original view of the nature of the ideological struggle during this period.

[11] He also published in depth biographies of French proto-communist thinkers and activists such as Jean Meslier, Gabriel Bonnot de Mably, Étienne-Gabriel Morelly and François-Nöel Babeuf.

[11] In his introduction to the 1934 Russian-language version of Campanella's work The City of the Sun, Volgin identified the monastic life as an early form of "communist utopia", emphasizing "the absence of private property, the universal obligation of labor (which is considered a matter of honor), the social organization of production and distribution, and the training through labor of the inhabitants.