The Tasks of Soviet Historical Scholarship at the Present Stage of its Development

Abstract

Soviet historical scholarship has traversed a long and complex path in its development. It has been guided at all stages by a major goal — participation in and assistance to the creation of a communist society. Basing itself on Lenin's world-view, making use of Lenin's contribution to historical materialism and his analysis of concrete historical questions, and resting on the achievements of the Marxist current in pre revolutionary historiography, it demonstrated, as early as in the first years of Soviet power, its indisputable superiority over historiography, which rests on the interests of the bourgeoisie and the nobility. Research was extended to encompass the most important aspects of the historical process, which had as a rule been left outside the purview of bourgeois and nobility-oriented historiography. Study of the productive activity of the toiling masses as the true creators of history, of their class struggles, and of the history of revolutionary movements defining turning points in the progre...