SOVIET HISTORIOGRAPHY OF RESEARCHES OF THE HIGH INDUSTRY OF THE EASTERN REGION OF UKRAINE IN THE CONDITIONS OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR

Abstract

The First World War led to significant changes in the geopolitical situation in the world. Its scale and duration led to the collapse of several empires, among which was the Russian Empire. The association of as many of the territories that were previously part of the Russian Empire, the aggressiveness of the foreign policy of the USSR, and the excessive analysis of all spheres of life required an appropriate economic foundation, the implementation of ideological work and ethno-national policy. This marked the isolation of the Soviet historiography of the newest period in the history of mankind, beginning with the Bolshevik revolution, which led to the perception and consideration of the history of the First World War as periods of 1914–1916 and 1917–1918. Thus, the fact of political life was a factor in the allocation of certain historical periods, which to a large extent contradicted the distinction of historical periods of human development on the basis of changes in industrial and economic relations. The Marxist periodization, modified by the Bolshevik leaders in accordance with its goals, became an important factor which influence on the coverage of the history of the First World War in the USSR. The main aim of the article is to overview Soviet historiography on the state of heavy industry in the East of Ukraine during the First World War and to analyze the views of the authors on the economic phenomena and processes that took place at these enterprises in 1914 – 1918. It is important to mention that the substantiation of the historical condition of the establishment of Soviet power during the 1920’s after a long civil war, demanded a certain shift in the emphasis on the coverage of economic processes during the First World War. On the one hand, there was a need to prove the existence of a monopoly capitalism in the Russian Empire, whose destruction was declared an important milestone in the construction of a «socialist society», but on the other hand – economic transformations and successes in the USSR for a long time were evaluated in comparison with the achievements of the Russian Empire in 1913. This led to the gradual introduction of various stamps in the assessments of economic development both during the First World War and in the prewar period, which largely reflected by Soviet historiography. Despite the existing Soviet historiography, in which the authors analyzed economic phenomena and processes during the First World War, changes in the heavy industry of the East of Ukraine, unfortunately, were investigated only fragmentarily: mostly in the context of processes that took place in the territory of the Russian Empire. However, in the presence of general tendencies in the field of finance and measures aimed at ensuring state regulation of economic development, there were a number of peculiarities in the field of heavy industry in Ukrainian lands which were not subject of scientific studies. The main idea of the article is that in the second half of the XX century, in the Soviet historiography, coverage of the First World War gave way to the study of the events of the Second World War. The increase in interest in this event was followed in the writings of Russian scientists in the 90's of the XX century. As a result of content analysis and critical discourse analysis, this interest was partly due to the growing tendency to outline the links between the Russian Federation and the Russian Empire, criticizing the Soviet period in the history of the country. Imperial ambitions of the Russian Federation at the beginning of the XXI century became one of the factors of increasing attention to the events of the First World War.