Soviet History Research Articles

Постсоветская историография о взаимоотношениях Екатерины II и французских просветителей

The study scrutinizes the views of post-Soviet historians on the relationship between Catherine II and the French enlighteners. The most characteristic and common views are identified. It is deemed that the research-es of the post-soviet period had confirmed the views of the pre-revolutionary and soviet historians on the moti-vation of these relationships. On the part of the Empress, this is the fear of nascent public opinion; revenge on the French court; hypocrisy, a game; illusions of Catherine II; the desire to communicate with intelligent people. On the part of the French enlighteners: political illusions; interest in Russia; fear of revolution “from below”. Nevertheless, the historians of the post-Soviet period, apart to the above, had tried to explain these relation-ships by the Empress’s desire to find equal interlocutors for herself, since it was difficult for her to do this among her entourage in Russia. In their opinion, the desire for simple human communication encouraged Catherine II to seek correspondence partners in the society of French enlighteners.

The History of International Relations in the Legacy of the Soviet Historian Vladimir M. Khvostov (1905–1972)

In the article, based on a large number of archival documents, some of which were first put into scientific circulation, the research activities and problems of scientific research by V.M.Khvostov are considered. The author analyzed two main directions in the work of the scientist: the history of diplomacy and international relations; problems of general and national history (mainly the events of world wars). The contribution of V.M.Khvostov to the study of this issue is determined, his creative biography is considered as one of the models of the life and career of a scientist in the Soviet political and historiographic space.

I KNOW MY TRUTH… NOW TELL ME YOURS: FROM ACTIVE MEASURES TO COGNITIVE WARFARE IN THE RUSSIAN INVASION OF UKRAINE

In recent years, international attention has been turned to the ways that states use disinformation to further their own political ends. Propaganda, information conflict and active measures have long been a tool of statecraft, but the parallel development of information and communication technologies with increased levels of internal discord and social tension within states have made such disinformation campaigns both more effective and more worrying. This paper provides a brief history of Soviet “active measures”, before examining the role of Russian disinformation and cognitive warfare in Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The examination of this topic is not solely confined to a description of the methods used; it also highlights some of the ethical issues involved in Russia’s use of cognitive warfare and its heavy reliance on disinformation. Whereas information warfare focuses on controlling the flow of information, cognitive warfare instead has a more subtle yet potentially more damaging goal of shaping not simply what people think, but how they think and how they react to information. One of the significant features of the current conflict in Ukraine is the role that disinformation is playing in both driving and describing the conflict, and this paper explores the history and ethical implications of modern cognitive warfare, particularly in relation to the current conflict in Ukraine.

«Философский пароход»: о парадигме С.С. Хоружего

The article analyzes the speech of S.S. Khoruzhy, published in 1990 in the “Literaturnaya Gazeta” under the title “Philosophical Steamer. How it was”. The metaphor he found has become popular and is actively used by modern critics of Soviet history. in 1922, S.S. Khoruzhy presented the expulsion of a group of Moscow and St. Petersburg intellectuals, among whom there were 13 philosophers, sociologists and jurists, as a spiritual catastrophe of Russia and even as the “end of Russian philosophy”. On the contrary, in the proposed article, this event is assessed as only a political action aimed at excluding from the public life of Soviet Russia all those who remained in the same unscientific ideological positions, defended the bourgeois values of university autonomy and freedom of speech, stating this in public speeches not understanding the new socio-political reality. The article emphasizes that the value confrontation in the public consciousness of Soviet Russia could turn into a political confrontation, which could threaten the country and the authorities with a new round of civil war. A parallel is drawn between the state of public consciousness of Soviet Russia in the 20s and the USSR in the 80s – early 90s of the twentieth century, when “glasnost” and “perestroika” became the beginning of the death of the USSR. The article challenges the thesis of S.S. Khoruzhy about the “end of philosophy” in Russia. It is argued that the establishment of the monopoly position of Marxist materialism and the exclusion of any non-Marxist philosophy from cultural life was simply the beginning of a new stage of Russian philosophy, forced to develop in its prescribed theoretical form. Meanwhile, thinkers of the Russian diaspora noted the presence of positive heuristic possibilities in Soviet philosophy, but in the absence of a philosophical dialogue they could not fully develop. The transformation of philosophy in Soviet history reminds the author of the time of Peter the Great, when one of the directions of European philosophy was given state patronage and Russian philosophical thinking left behind “love of wisdom” as a passed stage.

Valuable Waste: Soviet management of food scarcity in the early 1930s

ABSTRACT Stalin’s “Great Break” of 1928 threw the Soviet population into a period of extreme material shortages. As hunger swept over the country, waste and its management became a central concern of the Party-State. This article situates food waste as a systemic feature of the Stalinist regime, providing fresh insights into both Food and Soviet histories. It explores the large campaigns that were launched to educate the Russian public about the need to minimize food waste in the 1930s and traces the uncertain rise of state canteens: eateries that were promoted as a rational and modern way to produce and distribute food throughout this period. In practice, as this article will show, these efforts to curtail waste and alter food behaviors were largely unsuccessful. Poor transport and storage conditions led to the deterioration of large quantities of food. But because of the severe shortages, spoiled food was frequently prepared and eaten by consumers regardless, leading to regular bouts of food poisoning for which cooks and canteen managers were blamed. All the while, Soviet political elites continued to perform their power and (relative) opulence by wasting their own food behind closed doors. In Soviet society, food waste was both a disgraceful practice to be avoided and a subtle symbol of wealth, prestige, and power.

"“The International” is outdated for our people". Creation of the national anthem of the USSR (1943-1944)

The article examines the process of work of the state commission headed by K.E. Voroshilov and A.S. Shcherbakov on the creation of the text and musical accompaniment of the new National Anthem of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics instead of the "International". "The source base of the article was made up of previously unknown materials of the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History, the State Archive of the Russian Federation and the Archive of Russian Foreign Policy, as well as published documents and memoirs. Since the poems and music for the new anthem were selected on a competitive basis, dozens of Soviet poets and composers were able to participate in this competition. Stalin closely followed the work of the Voroshilov-Shcherbakov commission. He periodically gave instructions to the authors of the words of the anthem (S.M. Mikhalkov and G.A. Urekioyan), attended the auditions of its musical accompaniment. It is concluded that the work on the creation of a new anthem of the USSR in 1943-1944 was the implementation of an important state project that had no analogues in Soviet history. Keywords: "International", the National Anthem of the USSR, I.V. Stalin, K.E. Voroshilov, A.S. Shcherbakov, the Union of Soviet Writers of the USSR, the Committee for the Arts of the USSR, the Union of Soviet Composers of the USSR.

Le dernier plénum du parti : préparatifs, discussions et échec de la réforme de la politique soviétique des nationalités en 1989

The article provides a new comprehensive analysis of the September 1989 Central Committee Plenum of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the first in Soviet history entirely devoted to nationalities. The plenum, whose preparations lasted more than a year, aimed to radically review Soviet nationalities policy to cope with growing interethnic tensions and nationalist sentiments during perestroika. While scholars agree that the plenum failed to meet the moment and prevent the Union from disintegrating, this article argues that it warrants new scrutiny. First, the research shows how Soviet scholars, experts, and Party members seriously questioned existing federal and interethnic relations during perestroika. Second, the detailed analysis of the discussions at the plenum unveils the sharp disconnect between the preparation phase – with attempts to find written and legal solutions to the national question with the help of academic experts – and the plenum itself, where debates were essentially political. Overall, the article looks at the dilemmas the Union leadership discussed and coped with when looking for a viable and comprehensive solution to the national question.The article draws on archival documents, notably the preparatory material for the plenum and letters addressed to the Central Committee by Soviet citizens before the event itself, which have recently become available at the Russian State Archive for Contemporary History (RGANI). The research also draws on contemporary press reports and the official publication of the Communist Party, which published—with only minor omissions—the full stenographic transcripts of the two-day discussions. The first part follows the emergence of the idea of devoting a Party plenum to nationalities policy, as well as its concrete preparation in 1988–1989. The second part details the content of the debates at the plenum. Finally, the article concludes with a short section drawing together the findings and marking out avenues for future research.

ОТСУТСТВИЕ ДИАЛОГА ИМПЕРАТОРА НИКОЛАЯ II И РОССИЙСКОГО ОБЩЕСТВА – ПРИЧИНА КРАХА МОНАРХИИ В ФЕВРАЛЕ 1917

Debates about the role of Nicholas II in the Russian history bring about an issue of whether the Emperor facilitated or retarded the development of Russia. Emigrants and Soviet historians contemporary with the February Revolution had a prevailing opinion that it was the Emperor's refusal to cooperate with the society and attempts to solve vital problems resorting to “reforms from above” that led to “revolutions from beneath. In the recent years, a number of authors have written that both on the initiative and under the leadership of Nicholas II, modernization of all spheres of the society kept a rapid pace. It was not the Tsar who hindered the development of the country but the society represented by the State Duma and the State Council (too slow to consider the Emperor’s bills).Besides, external and internal cataclysms (wars and revolutions) hindered the transformational activity of Nicholas II and the country's progress. The purpose of the article is to analyze the attitude of Nicholas II to the idea of transferring some of his powers to society, namely, the State Duma.

Transformation of the identity of the Buryat children's literature at the turn of the 1980s–1990s.

The article is devoted to the changes that took place in the Buryat children's literature at the turn of the Soviet and post-Soviet eras in the context of sociocultural transformations caused by the collapse of the USSR and the formation of new identities in the post-Soviet space. The discourses of identity found in the children's literature of this period, their interaction and dynamics are investigated. The purpose of the study is to determine the specifics of the transformation of the identity of the Buryat children's literature in this transitional period. The material of the study is Buryat children's magazines and plays published in the period from 1985 to 1995. The study is based on a diachronic approach. The main research methods are cultural-historical and discourse analysis methods. As a result, it was established that as a result of the crisis of Soviet culture and the formation of the discourse of national revival in Buryat children's literature, there was a gradual replacement of Soviet identity with a new national identity. Prior to this transformation, Buryat children's literature was aimed at the formation of a Soviet identity associated with the communist ideology, the party and the pioneer movement, the idea of the unity of the Soviet nations, the events of the general Soviet history, such as the October Revolution and the Great Patriotic War. After the changes that took place, Buryat children's literature began to focus primarily on the formation of a national identity based on familiarization with the traditions of Buddhism, the culture of the Mongolian peoples, and the history of the Buryats, out of touch with the Soviet statehood.

The People’s Revolution of 1921 as a Phenomenon of the Social Transformation of Mongolian Society

The article deals with the phenomenon of the Mongolian People’s Revolution of 1921 and its significance for the social transformations of the Mongolian society. The revolution had unique features that reflected historical features, and, at the same time, had properties similar to other types of sociocultural changes. The people’s revolution of 1921 at the initial stage of its development belonged to the world of ideas, represented a phenomenon that was more speculative, but under the influence of internal and external factors, it acquired empirical features. In the course of deepening social transformations, it gradually turned into a phenomenon and began to represent an exceptional phenomenon, especially in terms of eliminating the feudal system and gaining international recognition. We see the reflection of all these ideas in the writings of many Mongolian and Soviet historians. His Works Academician Bazaryn Shirendyb, Doctor of Historical Scienc, on the topic of revolution are recognized as fundamental. The article reflects the main points of the revolutionary process, their characteristics and significance for the Mongolian people. The tasks of the revolution are touched upon, the democratic transformations of the People’s Government during the period of the formation of people’s power and its role in strengthening the national independence of the country are disclosed in detail. The author of the article used general scientific (analysis, information collection, synthesis, extrapolation) and special methods (comparative, typological, periodization method). Moreover, to understand the sequence of revolutionary events, the historical-genetic method was used based on the principles of historicism, consistency and reliance on historical sources. The theme of the revolution remains relevant and attracts new researchers. We study the historical path followed by Mongolia in the XX century as an exceptional phenomenon.

"Our Grand Inquisitor is a very good Man": to the Scientific Biography of Naum Abramovich Bortnik (1911-1977)

The article is devoted to the scientific biography of the Soviet medievalist, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor Nahum Abramovich Bortnik (1911-1977). The author pays special attention to the period of the Great Patriotic War. Letters addressed to N. A. Bortnik are introduced into scientific circulation. The letter of the writer Isaac Sadykov, who worked a lot in Sverdlovsk during the Great Patriotic War, sheds light on the literary life of the city. Special attention is paid to the discussions, sometimes acute, emotional, devoid of academic chic, which flared up between M. Ja. Sjuzjumov and N. A. Bortnik. The article publishes the minutes of the meeting of the Department of General History of the Ural State University. The author comes to the conclusion that it is necessary to reconstruct the scientific biographies of Soviet historians. This work is important for the preservation of the scientific heritage of our country. The publication of sources, in this case, is the only antidote against the tenets of "cathedral historiography" and empty references "separated by commas" in the notes for the next anniversary date. The article is a continuation of the study of the biographies of historians who were part of M. Ja. Sjuzjumov's "inner circle" and represents an independent scientific problem. The complete opposite of M. Ja. Sjuzjumov was undoubtedly N. A. Bortnik (1911-1977). They were separated by many things. Thus, M. Ja. Sjuzjumov belonged to the last generation of pre-revolutionary historians. Naum Abramovich Bortnik was a representative of the first generation of Soviet scientists. Professor Sjuzjumov has been developing the theory of dialectical continuity all his life; Professor Bortnik followed the "romantic school", highly appreciating the role of the masses of the people. M. Ja. Sjuzjumov saw echoes of political struggle in heretical movements; N. A. Bortnik insisted on the most important role of the leaders of the masses.

SCIENTIFIC AND PEDAGOGICAL IDEAS OF VASYL SUKHOMLYNSKYI AND UKRAINIZATION: AREAS OF INTERSECTION

The article describes the periodization of the pedagogical activity of V. Sukhomlynskyi, which is based on published and archival sources in the Ukrainian studies dimension and the leading factors in the formation of the personality of a well-known teacher are clarified. Special attention is given (paid) to the scientific-pedagogical concept developed by V. Sukhomlynskyi, which counteracted the efforts of the communist-imperial state apparatus, aimed at the assimilation of the Ukrainian people, at erasing its inherent national features. Pedagogical activity of Vasyl Oleksandrovych was aimed at exalting the Ukrainian nation, forming patriotism; he wanted that every teenager gradually develops a personal attitude towards the Motherland: a desire, a spiritual urge to confirm its dignity, greatness, honour, glory, and power. An analysis of V. Sukhomlynskyi's creative heritage proves that the formation of his pedagogical views began in 1945–1948. Despite the fact that V. Sukhomlynskyi was educated and brought up under the conditions of a totalitarian regime aimed at Russification, he managed to remain a true patriot, a Ukrainian intellectual who cheered for his native people. The pedagogical heritage of V. Sukhomlynskyi must be considered in the context of the historical period when his formation took place as a teacher and scientist. Simultaneously with the spread of Ukrainization of education, the issue of providing teaching staff for newly created Ukrainian schools became acute. In particular, in 1923, the shortage of national teaching staff was catastrophic – with a need for 100,000 teachers, there were actually 45,000, a significant percentage of whom had a low level of pedagogical and general education. It should be noted that during the early period of Soviet history (1921–1926), the intellectual atmosphere of society was quite free. The national idea was not rejected, but only combined with the idea of internationalism.

范文瀾의 학술궤적과『中國通史簡編』저술 배경 - 중화인민공화국의 흠정사서는 어떻게 탄생했나? -

This article aims to reveal the politicization of Marxist history in the founding period of modern China(PRC), by following Fan Wenlan’s academic trajectory. Fan’s academic career began with studying the Chinese traditional classics at the Peking university. He partook, however, in progressive movements in 1920s, with a close relation to the Communist party, and engaged in the anti-Japan resistance in 1930s. When political circumstances made the resistance impossible, he joined the Communist party in 1939 and moved into Yenan: It may be inferred that he agreed to shape a new model of the Chinese national identity, reexamining the anti-Japan resistance and the Chinese tradition. At that time, the Chinese communists needed their own historical narrative as an ideology to establish a new regime founded upon Mao’s authority. Fan’s Brief history of China served that purpose.BR Fan’s Brief History imitated the Soviet History, written upon the Stalinist line, which determined the Chinese official line. Accordingly, Fan based on the Five Species Social Form theory, denies the Asian production mode theory. He also accepted the doctrine of class conflicts in history and replaced the idea of stagnation of the past with the developmental point of view. Unlike the Stalinist line, however, he confined the history of China to Han Chinese, which originated from the Qin and Han empires. Fan’s approach left behind two tasks; How to forge an idea of people, including minorities in China, and how to overcome the prejudices against Asia presupposed in the doctrine of the Asiatic mode of production.

A Deceptive Stability: New Scholarship on Postwar Soviet Society

In an essay written in 2013, Soviet historian Stephen Bittner called the wartime and post-1945 Soviet Union a ‘negentropic society’.1 Countering historians who emphasised the Soviet project's inevitable failure, Bittner argued that the Soviet Union defied the laws of thermodynamics in its capacity for reorganisation and regeneration, allowing it to survive in the face of multiple challenges. The essay was a rejoinder to those who would see harbingers of the Soviet collapse in the heterogeneous social tendencies of the postwar period. Instead, Bittner draws attention to the sources of cohesion that held the Soviet Union together through the challenges of wartime and beyond. However, Bittner intended his essay not as a general theory of post-war Soviet society, but as an observation about the integrative tendencies that kept the Soviet Union together during the Second World War and in the decades that immediately followed. So when did this alchemical potential for ‘self-organization, resilience, regeneration, redefinition, and creation of new social forms and structures’ come to an end?2

Review: Spatial Revolution: Architecture and Planning in the Early Soviet Union

Review: <i>Spatial Revolution: Architecture and Planning in the Early Soviet Union</i>

Позднесоветское религиозное сознание в поэзии Ильи Кормильцева

The article examines the phenomenon of late Soviet religious consciousness of the intellectual, expressed in the poetry of I. Kormiltsev. The crisis of Soviet ideology of the second half of the 20th century is seen as a conflict of ideology and religion, actualized after March 5, 1953. The cultural periods of Soviet history of the second half of the 20th century are characterized in the context of religious consciousness. Thaw period — aimed at finding alternative scenarios, but gave nothing but the very state of the search. The era of stagnation, which simultaneously attempted to capture the stability of society while capturing the ideals of the Thaw, which were not suitable for this purpose. The period of perestroika, which uncovered all the accumulated contradictions. I. Kormiltsev's work is taken as a marker of religious instability 1980–1990s. The conclusion is made that in this period the poet is characterized by the actualization of Christian meanings. The analysis of the poem «The Scoundrel and the Angel» is carried out for the subject characterization. The text is parsed as an example of assertion of Christian meanings through their formal negation.The conclusion is made that the actualization of Christian symbolism, characteristic of I. Kormiltsev's poetry in this period, is due to the reflection on the search for a new national identity.

Roman Republican Statehood in the works of S. I. Kovalev

The subject of this article is the scientific work of the outstanding Soviet historian of antiquity S. I. Kovalev, related to the history of the Roman Republic and its state institutions. The authors analyze the hypotheses expressed by Kovalev on the most controversial problems of the history of republican statehood and compare them with the theories that existed at that time in Western historiography, as well as pre-revolutionary Russian historiography. The authors refer not only to the works of the Soviet scientist himself, his predecessors and contemporaries, but also to archival materials, namely to the correspondence of S. I. Kovalev with his foreign colleagues. The appeal to the study of Soviet historiography of ancient history is currently becoming more and more relevant among Russian antiquarians, but there is still no detailed analysis of S. I. Kovalev's scientific work in Russian historiography. The authors show the validity of many assumptions made by S. I. Kovalev for the level of development of scientific knowledge in the study of the history of ancient Rome in the middle of the XX century, as well as the continuity of many of its provisions from the hypotheses of the outstanding pre-revolutionary Russian antiquarian I. V. Netushil. In addition, the paper demonstrates the groundlessness of the widespread point of view about the complete isolation of Soviet historical science from the global one.

Nina Nikolaevna Belova and ancient city studies at the Ural University

Interest in biography is steadily growing in modern Russian society. Mythologized concepts, stamps and "dark spots" are increasingly discredited by archival data. The article is devoted to the scientific biography of the candidate of Historical Sciences, associate professor of the Department of General History N. N. Belova (1917-2012). The author reconstructs the course of work of the Soviet epigraphist on the problems of dialectical continuity based on archival materials. In the second half of the 1960s, N. N. Belova worked on a set of problems concerning the Gallo–Roman villa as an economic unit connected with the city. N. N. Belova considered the history of the late Roman Republic and the Gallia of the principate era as the history of the relationship between Rome and Italians, i.e., the struggle of Italian communities against Roman-Italian slavery. The author used a biobibliographic method, as well as developments in the field of everyday history. The article presents for the first time a letter from M. Ja. Sjuzjumov to N. N. Belova. The materials presented in this article allow us to highlight an important aspect of the scientific work of the outstanding Soviet historian M. Ja. Sjuzjumov (1893-1982) - the study of the genesis of the ancient city. The most important result of the work was the formation of the most important milestones of the scientific biography of N. N. Belova, a historian who is part of the "inner circle" of M. Ja. Sjuzjumov.

The Meiji Revolution: 100 and 150 Years Later (Nikolai Konrad and the Paradoxes of His “Progress”)

Using the example of the article “The Centenary of the Japanese Revolution” (1968) by the outstanding Japanologist Nikolai Konrad, the author examines his understanding of the “Meiji Revolution”. Holding on, by and large, to the Marxist views on history, Nikolai Konrad turned out to be surprisingly close to “bourgeois” historians in understanding the Meiji Revolution. The “bourgeois” and Soviet historians (including Konrad himself), who were in conflict relations, consistently qualified the Meiji Revolution as a “progressive” (positive) event that introduced Japan to the “world” (i.e., Western and the only one possible) civilization. Marxist and “bourgeois” thinkers differed in their assessment of the future (whether or not communism was the highest stage of progress), but their view of the Japanese past showed amazing unanimity. The keenness on the theory of progress was so allembracing that Nikolai Konrad’s assessments of specific historical phenomena of the Tokugawa period demonstrate outright error and bias. None of the “advanced” European countries could boast of such a long-lasting social peace as that which we observe in the Tokugawa period, which, however, did not prevent Konrad (as well as other Western historians) from branding the Tokugawa rule as “reactionary” and “stagnant”.

The Beginnings of 1980s Soviet ‘Paper Architecture’ and the Circumstances of its Existence

History of Soviet ‘Paper Architeture’ of 1980s is mostly oral: its fragments are scattered in architecture magazines, critical articles and interviews. It seems that it has come from nowhere — this phenomenon has a very weak connection with what was going on in ‘built’ architecture. Nevertheless, Paper Architecture is a prominent part of Soviet culture of 1980s that is impossible to neglect. Conceptual architecture in the 20th century has certain regularity: to totalitarian myths of 1940s and once again as the part of the ‘Space Age’ aesthetics of 1960s. Paper Architecture wasn’t supported by ‘real’ architecture except from a very small number of projects; nevertheless it has answered the postmodernist challenge — to make architecture talk. Restoration of events chronicle may be the key to understanding the development of Paper Architecture: its duality between art and architecture, weak interest of its authors in ‘real’ building and disbanded nature of working groups can be explained by outer circumstances, not some program of the group. This article tries to connect this puzzle from recollections and events to describe the beginnings of this phenomenon.