Historians and opposition in Leningrad (1920s – 1930s)

Abstract

In the 1920s-1930s, the political struggle in the USSR at the Politburo was closely linked with historical science. The search for “crimes” against the Communist Party that Bolshevik leaders had committed in the past became an important lever for obtaining political dividends in the contemporaneity. In this regard, the history of the Revolution was given special attention, and specialists in this field took on a great responsibility, often without even realising it. In the historiography of Soviet science, considerable attention is paid to the formation of the canon of the history of the Bolshevik Party, crowned by the Short Course of 1938. The author continues to study this topic from a different angle. The article aims to answer the question of how, under the conditions of the gradual establishment of the Stalinist vision of history, Stalin’s recent opponents existed – historians participating in Grigory Zinoviev’s opposition and the so-called United Opposition in 1925-1928. At the same time, it describes how they themselves used historical publications in the political struggle, as well as their direct participation in campaigning against Joseph Stalin’s and Nikolai Bukharin’s course. An important milestone was the publication of Stalin's letter to «Proletarian Revolution» newspaper, which, in addition to changing trends in historiography, also led to repression against former Trotskyists working in the humanities.