The Influence of K. Bücher – E. Meyer Controversy on Russian (Soviet) Historical Thought 1890–1920s

Abstract

The article is devoted to the influence of the polemics of E. Meyer and K. Bücher on Russian (Soviet) historians and economists in the 1890–1920s. It has been established that in the pre-revolutionary period of the development of Russian historical thought, Bucher's ideas about the steady progress of the economy and society had less influence on it than Meyer's ideas about the cyclical development of the historical process. It is shown that, despite the political views of their creators, the concepts of Bucher and Meyer were popular among Russian Marxists in the pre-revolutionary period. It was noted that this was due to the fact that many Russian Social Democrats perceived Marxism as a scientific methodology open to the integration of new scientific concepts, and not as a dogmatized singular correct teaching. It is shown that the ideas of Bücher and Meyer had a significant impact on Soviet historical thought in the 1920s. It is concluded that this influence is explained by the preservation of certain elements of pre-revolutionary social democratic thought in it and its organic inclusion in the European intellectual space of the first third of the 20th century. It is noted that ideological self-isolation and the subsequent formation of the Marxist canon in the 1930s led to a weakening of the intellectual influence of modern European thought on Soviet historical science.