Rewriting History in Soviet Russia: The Politics of Revisionist Historiography, 1956-74 by Roger D. s> Markwick (review)

Abstract

i68 SEER, 8o, I, 2002 an international history and its coverage of the domestic context is limited, more attention could have been given to the protest movements of the I960s and i 980s, not leastbecause of theirrelationshipto armscontrolefforts. Overall,though, thisshortbook isreallyquitean achievement.What comes across repeatedly is the manner in which Painter manages to handle a very wide range of events, developments and processes, juggling with some complex interactions yet holding them together to produce a remarkably coherent text. Moreover, he has managed to do this in a manner that is both concentrated and thoroughlyreadable. Injust I I8 pages of text, an overview is provided that bears favourable comparison with much more substantial texts. Department ofPeace Studies PAUL ROGERS University ofBradford Markwick,Roger D. Rewriting Histogy in Soviet Russia:ThePoliticsofRevisionist Historiography, I956-74. Foreword by Donald J. Raleigh. Palgrave, Basingstoke and New York, 2000. XX + 327 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. ?50?00? STALIN'S death, followedby the revelationof his crimesat the Twentieth Party Congress, called into question the legitimacy of his system, the intellectual foundationsof which were embodied in his Short Course of Partyhistory(I937). A new cohort of scholars,many of them formerfrontoviki, began to challenge the crude dogmatism that had hitherto prevailed in the discipline and to interpretMarxism-Leninismcreatively. But the 'New Direction' movement, as it came to be called, raised delicate issues whose articulation threatened conservativesin the ideological establishment,and in the earlyBrezhnevyears they forciblytruncatedthispotentiallyfruitfulhistoricaldebate. These controversiesare examined sensitivelyand with authorityby Roger Markwickin a studybased on diligent researchin relevant archivalholdings, published sources, and particularly on interviews with sixteen surviving participantsthat offervaluable insights.He shows convincingly that farmore was involved than 'isolated ripples on the surface of the historiographical swamp' (p. 234): not only did the discussionsprefigurethose of the glasnost' era, which involved many of the same people, but they also led to the emergence of 'a community of revisionisthistorians'(p. 29) who fought hard to uphold professionalstandardsand could lay claim to be trueintellectualsin the nineteenth-centuryRussian tradition men and women concerned with universalvalues and well awareof the social impact of their ideas.Among the issues discussed were the social cost of agricultural collectivization (V. P. Danilov, N. A. Ivnitsky et al.), Stalin's responsibility for the catastrophic defeats of I94I (A. M. Nekrich), and the 'Burdzhalov Affair' of I956--57 which resulted in a purge of the editorial board of the leading historical journal, Voprosy istorii; here Markwick usefully amplifies Joachim Hosler's account of 1995. Other topics debated were the differencesbetween Russian and West European absolutism,with the explosive implication that Stalinism might be considered a latter-dayvariantof the orientaldespotismpilloriedby REVIEWS I69 Marx, and above all the supposed 'objective preconditions' for the October Revolution, which impinged even more directlyon the regime'sideologicallyderived claim to historical legitimacy. Like the Euro-communists abroad, Soviet revisionist scholars sought to reinvigorate Marxism by using it as a flexible tool to comprehend current developments, not least the evolution towardssocialismperceived to be underway in many Third Worldcountries. They de-emphasized general laws (zakonomernosti) of historical development, exemplified by the formula of successive socio-economic 'formations', in favourof more specificsocial 'structures'(uklady), whose characteristicsvaried from one country, or even region, to another. This notion was particularly fruitfulin consideringthe 'multi-structured',ethnicallydiverseRussianempire before I9I7 and opened up the perspective of alternativepaths along which post-revolutionary Russia might have developed. But to the academic nomenklatura and their political mentors this raised the spectre of Trotsky's concept of uneven developmentand riskedunderminingtheUSSR's integrity. All these propositions were advanced by indirect allusion in a series of scholastic exchanges which at their worst involved labelling adversaries as heretics. Markwickexcels in dissecting these argumentsand explaining their covert implications. His last chapter, on events after I974, is rather hurried and not enough is said about the initial stirringsof historiographicaldissent prior to Khrushchev's 'secret speech'. Attention might profitablyhave been paid to parallel developments in other disciplines such as economics or sociology. While it may be true that non-conformitywithin the establishment 'was farmore threatening [. . .] than those dissidentswho began to repudiate the system as a whole' (p. 238), one should not lose sight of the Soviet revisionists'intellectual limitations. They were a good deal less iconoclastic than their East...