Cultural and educational work in the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army during the front-line Civil War: Soviet historiography of the 1920s – the first half of the 1930s (a brief review of the history of the problem)

Abstract

The researcher highlighted (in the format of a lapidary historiographic review) historiographic sources published in the 1920s the first half of the 1930s, which dealt with the topic of cultural and educational work in the Workers and Peasants Red Army (RKKA) during the front-line Civil War (19181920). In the historiographic period, the chronological framework of which is indicated above, a relatively large number of historiographic sources appeared on the history of the Russian Civil War (at the front stage of its course). They reflected, among other things, many aspects of the historical phenomenon of party political work in the Armed Forces of the young Soviet state, that historical phenomenon, within the framework of which cultural and educational work in the Red Army was born and strengthened. Moreover, such studies were carried out immediately as the Civil War continued until the end of 1922 on the outskirts of the Soviet state, although it was not so large-scale. Such historiographic sources require understanding and rethinking from the standpoint of new theoretical and methodological approaches, established in modern Russian historical science. For a lapidary historiographic review the author has selected, first of all, a complex of historiographic sources that have both direct and indirect relation to the topic of cultural and educational work in the Red Army during the front-line Civil War, which were published in the chronological framework indicated above. Of course, there are no copyright claims in the work for the completeness of coverage of the topic under consideration. This, in fact, cannot be achieved in the format of a historiographic survey, especially lapidary.