The article discusses little-known publications of the Soviet scholar I.I. Ioffe of the late 1930s — 1940s, which have almost never been discussed in the acade­mic community and are a bibliographic rarity. Pheno­mena of the history of the Western and Russian culture were considered by I. Ioffe using his own synthetic me­thod. He successfully applied the developed methodology of research in the analysis of specific historical and cultural eras. The scientist paid attention to the phenomena of “synthesis of arts” in the French culture of the 18th — 19th centuries, exemplified by the works of J.L. David and M.J. Chenier, E. Zola, and also in the Russian culture of the 19th century, by the example of the works of N.V. Gogol and P.A. Fedotov. The interpretation of the iconography of “Dead Souls” made by I. Ioffe allowed him to identify the time of turn in the Russian painting. In the study context of the author of the articles “David and Chenier” (1939) “Zola and Naturalism” (1941) “Dead Souls and the Russian Realism” (1842—1942), “The Russian Renaissance” (1944), there were involved all spheres of artistic culture in their complex interaction. The topics and subjects of I. Ioffe’s articles are demanded again in the modern art history, literary stu­dies and cultural studies. The materials from this article allow filling the unfortunate gap in the national historio­graphy and cultural studies, and determining the true place of I. Ioffe’s conception and methodology among the studies of Russian historians and cultural theorists.