The figure of Stalin in Soviet history is perhaps the most discussed and controversial. The period of his sole rule is associated both with the Great Victory and success in industrialization, and with large-scale repressions and mass famine. And what could our country be like without Stalin?
Overtake Germany
Russian economist Nikolai Shmelev and American historian Steve Cohen believe that without Stalin, the economic development plan proposed by Nikolai Bukharin could have been realized. According to the Bukharin program of the NEP, the dominant role of commodity-money relations was to be maintained in the market economy mechanism.
With such an approach, which was scientifically justified and economically justified, experts believe that the reforms would not only lead to a noticeable improvement in the well-being of the population, but would also have a minimal side effect, in contrast to Stalin's industrialization. And in the 1930s, the USSR would have entered the period of the “golden decade”.
Publicist Vladimir Popov points out that "if the NEP had been preserved, by the end of the 1930s, Soviet industry would have at least surpassed German industry in terms of production, including military production." And then, according to Popov, we would be able to overtake Germany in the production of tanks, aircraft and artillery barrels not in 1943, but much earlier.
Many experts are sure that if the policy of the NEP had continued, the country would have lived through the 30s of the 20th century without peasant supertaxes, the seizure of bread from the village, collectivization, dispossession of kulaks, and mass starvation.
However, instead of Bukharin's economic policy, Leon Trotsky's plan could also come into force, according to which the growth of the national economy was to be achieved by relying solely on internal resources, without attracting foreign capital and specialists.
But in this scenario, according to Trotsky's plan, all the costs of industrialization would be paid by the peasantry. It is possible that the implementation of Trotsky's concept would have turned out to be much more excesses and sacrifices for the country than Stalin's industrialization.
Long and inefficient
According to some economists, having undoubted advantages, the NEP could not provide the main thing - forced industrialization. They note that, under similar conditions, the Industrial Revolution in 19th century England took 70-80 years at an average growth rate of 6.3% per year, while industrialization in Germany dragged on from 1855 to 1923 with an average annual growth of 5%. The USSR did not have such a reserve of time.
Writer Boris Sidorov notes that, given the long period of industrialization in Western countries, it can be assumed that in our country this process, which began in the late 1920s, would have ended only at the end of the 20th century. However, the writer does not rule out that under the influence of technological acceleration factors and due to the fact that in the USSR the property was mostly in the hands of the state, industrialization could have been completed by 1960. But even at such a pace, the USSR would not have had a developed heavy industry and would not have been able to prepare for a war with Germany, lagging behind it in terms of the development of its military-industrial potential by two decades.
save the population
Without Stalin, it would not have been necessary to resort to strengthening the repressive apparatus, and the country would not have experienced all the horrors that followed the secret order of the NKVD under the number 00447, which claimed the lives of almost 400 thousand people and sent the same number to forced labor camps. There would be no "Yezhovshchina" and "Berievshchina", under the terrorist flywheel of which thousands of innocent citizens fell.
A number of experts are of the opinion that without Stalin, human losses in the 1930s could have been reduced by at least 10 million people, as a result of which the most able-bodied part of the population among the intelligentsia, workers and peasants would have been preserved. Thanks to this, by 1940 a significantly higher level of well-being of the country's inhabitants would have been achieved.
Sociologist Ella Paneyakh is convinced that if it were not for Stalin, the planned system of the economy would most likely not have received such support, which gave rise to corruption and became the cause of inefficient management.
The USSR, without Stalin, probably would not have known the massive famine that in 1932-1933 covered the territories of Belarus, Ukraine, the North Caucasus, the Volga region, the Southern Urals, Western Siberia and Northern Kazakhstan. Then the victims of hunger and diseases associated with malnutrition, according to official figures, were about 7 million people.
Many researchers place the main responsibility for the famine on Stalin, citing his own statements as evidence, for example, in a letter dated August 6, 1930: “Force the export of grain with might and main. This is now the nail. If we take out the grain, there will be loans.”
Historian Viktor Kondrashin writes about this: “In the context of the famine years in the history of Russia, the peculiarity of the famine of 1932-1933 lies in the fact that it was the first “organized famine” in its history, when the subjective, political factor was decisive and dominated all others. ".
There is no alternative to terror
Portuguese politician and economist Francisco Lousa is not inclined to believe that violence and repression are Stalin's offspring. Their ancestors should be considered Lenin and Trotsky. If someone else had inherited power in the country, the system would not have become less cruel, Lowes is sure.
As one example of the “Leninist” approach to building socialism, one can cite an excerpt from Vladimir Ilyich’s telegram: “Hang (by all means hang, so that the people can see) at least 100 notorious kulaks, rich people, bloodsuckers. Publish their names. Take away all their bread."
Trotsky's "humanism" showed itself during the suppression in March 1918 of the Kronstadt mutiny of sailors, most of whom were disappointed with the dictatorship of the proletariat. And in Terrorism and Communism, Trotsky eloquently wrote:
“Whoever renounces terrorism on principle must renounce the political domination of the working class, its revolutionary dictatorship. Whoever renounces the dictatorship of the proletariat renounces the social revolution and puts an end to socialism.”
According to another scenario
When evaluating the results of the Great Patriotic War, we hear different voices. Some are convinced that we won largely thanks to the strategic genius of Stalin, others argue that the leader had nothing to do with it, since the whole burden of the war fell on the shoulders of the common people.
For example, Oleg Budnitsky, director of the International Center for the History and Sociology of World War II, notes that many experts do not pay attention to the miscalculations of Joseph Vissarionovich in foreign policy, because of which the USSR was actually left alone with Germany.
Be that as it may, it can be argued that the Second World War without Stalin would have developed according to a different scenario. Probably, there would not have been an Anglo-American landing in Normandy, most likely, he would have invaded Europe through the Balkans, as planned. But Stalin blocked the Allied proposal. In fact, this decision did not allow the Anglo-American hegemony to spread in Eastern Europe.
Some historians reproach Stalin with a low level of defense capability, mass purges among the senior command staff, and ignoring intelligence reports about the imminent start of the war, which turned into a tragedy in the first months of the conflict.
The chief of the General Staff during the war, Marshal Alexander Vasilevsky, wrote: “Without the thirty-seventh year, perhaps there would have been no war at all in the forty-first year. In the fact that Hitler decided to start a war in the forty-first year, an assessment of the degree of defeat of the military personnel that we had had played a big role.
Marshal of the Soviet Union Andrei Eremenko believed that it was Stalin who had a significant share of the blame for the extermination of military personnel before the war, which affected the combat capability of the army. According to the commander, Stalin was well aware of this, and therefore found switchmen.
“And who is to blame,” I timidly asked Stalin, “that these poor, innocent people were imprisoned?” - “Who, who ... - Stalin threw angrily. “Those who gave sanctions for their arrest, those who were then at the head of the army, immediately named comrades Voroshilov, Budyonny, Timoshenko,” Eremenko recalled in his memoirs.
Many are sure that if Stalin did not support the slogan "victory at any cost", the war would have ended later, but with fewer casualties. However, a protracted conflict would force the Americans to drop ready-made atomic bombs not on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but on Berlin and Hamburg.
The writer Vladimir Voinovich believes that it is incorrect to speak of Stalin as a symbol of the Victory, because if there had been no Stalin, there would have been no war. And the people in any case would have overcome fascism.
Before talking about Soviet historians, it is necessary to say a few words about two authors who are colloquially called "historical novelists." They are the providers of “easy reading”, and often, not without talent, tell fascinating stories from the past, with dialogues and props, when their heroes either “think, scratching their heads”, then “cough meaningfully”, or whisper something to their beloved woman, so that no one does not hear, except for herself. These authors have nothing to do with historians, but readers read them with enthusiasm. M. Kasvinov’s novel “23 Steps Down” about Nicholas II was written in this style: when the tsar receives Stolypin on a serious state matter in his office, the fireplace is on fire, the interlocutors are sitting in comfortable armchairs, and the tsarina is in the corner darning the tsar’s socks. N. Yakovlev's novel "August 1, 1914" is somewhat more real. In it we even find something about Freemasonry: the author met the Minister of the Provisional Government N.V. Nekrasov (there is an example of the hero's direct speech); the author gives us to understand that there is also a document, and maybe more than one, with which he has read. But instead of curiosity, the reader begins to vaguely feel a slow surge of boredom: at the moment when N. Yakovlev made his hero speak on the pages of the novel, it turned out that it was not Nekrasov at all, but only Yakovlev himself. In the writings of these feuilleton novelists, it is difficult to distinguish fantasy from truth, and the reader is sometimes not entirely sure: did the tsarina really darn the tsar's socks, and Nekrasov did not tell Yakovlev about some of his notes, memoirs and documents, either buried somewhere, or walled up by him. The reader is offered a piece of the past, and he is not averse to learning more about it, even if it is slightly distorted and embellished. It is worse when quotation marks are placed and a quotation begins, which does not end anywhere, since the author forgot to close the quotation marks. “Nekrasov told me a lot of interesting things then,” Yakovlev writes, but does not say when he wrote it down: then? Or in twenty years? Or is he writing from memory? And is it possible to put quotes in this case? Was what began with quotation marks taken from buried material, or something else? The names of close friends of Nekrasov and his brothers in the Masonic lodge are full of mistakes that Nekrasov could not make: instead of Kolyubakin - Kolyubyakin, instead of GrigorovichBarsky - GrigorovichBorsky. Occasionally, Yakovlev explains: "The word is not clear in the document." In what document? And why is this document not described? The conversation between Yakovlev and Shulgin is of no interest: Shulgin was never a Freemason, and Yakovlev was a historian. But not for this, but for other sins, Soviet criticism treated him cruelly. When Soviet historians rightly complain about the paucity of material on Freemasonry,146 and some of them hope that much more can come out, I cannot share their optimism: too much was destroyed during the Red Terror and the Civil War by people who had even a remote connection with the pre-revolutionary Freemasonry in Russia, not to mention the brothers of the secret society themselves. And what was not destroyed then was gradually destroyed in the 1930s, so that after 1938 hardly anything could survive in the attics and cellars. Artist Udaltsova in the early 1930s. in Moscow she herself burned her paintings, and Babel - part of her manuscripts, like Olesha. What more can be said after that? S.I. Bernstein, a contemporary and friend of Tynyanov and Tomashevsky, destroyed his collection of records, slandered by poets in the early 1920s. Bernstein was the first in Russia, then engaged in "orthoepy". Soviet historians do not have the Masonic materials they need, not because they are classified, but because they do not exist. Freemasons did not keep Masonic diaries or write Masonic memoirs. They kept an oath of silence. In the Western world, the protocols of the “sessions” have partially survived (it is possible that the protocols began to be kept only in exile). What is the state of Soviet Freemasonology now? I'll start from afar: two books published by B. Grave in 1926 and 1927, I still find very valuable and significant. These are “On the History of the Class Struggle” and “The Bourgeoisie on the Eve of the February Revolution”. They do not tell us much about Freemasonry, but they give some characteristics (for example, Gvozdeva). These books give an excellent outline of events and some brief but important comments: “Minister Polivanov had connections with the bourgeois opposition”, or a story about the visit of Albert Thomas and Viviani to St. Petersburg in 1916, and how P.P. Ryabushinsky, publisher of the Moscow newspaper "Utro Rossii" and a member of the State Council, informed the French about where the tsarist government was leading Russia (with Rasputins, Yanushkeviches, and other criminals and fools). This happened when everyone gathered in the estate of A.I. Konovalov near Moscow, at secret meetings. Between 1920s. and the work of Academician I. Mintz almost thirty years have passed. Mintz wrote about Freemasonry, which either existed or not, and if it did, it did not play any role. Nevertheless, he quotes the memoirs of I.V. Gessen, where the former leader of the Cadets, a non-Mason, wrote that "Freemasonry has degenerated into a society of mutual assistance, mutual support, in the manner of" hand washes hand ". Fair words. But Mintz understands them in such a way that Freemasonry in general was an insignificant phenomenon and skeptically quotes a letter from E. Kuskova, published by Aronson, that the movement “was huge”, taking seriously her statement that “Russian Freemasonry had nothing in common with foreign Freemasonry” ( typical Masonic camouflage and white lies) and that "Russian Freemasonry has abolished the whole ritual". We now know from the minutes of the Masonic sessions that this is all false. Mintz is also firmly convinced that there never was any "Supreme Council of the Peoples of Russia", and that neither Kerensky nor Nekrasov stood at the head of Russian Freemasonry. Mintz's position is not only to downplay Freemasonry in Russia, but also to ridicule those who think that "something was there." A preconceived position never lends dignity to a historian. Works by A.E. Ioffe is valuable not because he reports on Freemasonry, but because of the background that he gives for it in his book Russo-French Relations (Moscow, 1958). Albert Thomas was going to be appointed "overseer" or "Special Representative" of the Allied Powers over the Russian government in September 1917. Like Mints, he believes that Russian Freemasonry did not play a big role in Russian politics and, citing an article by B. Elkin, calls him Yolkin . In the works of A.V. Ignatiev (1962, 1966 and 1970s) one can find interesting details about the plans of the English Ambassador Buchanan, at the beginning of 1917, to influence the Petrograd Soviet through the English Labor parliamentarians, "our Left", in order to continue the war against "German despotism". He already at that time foresaw that the Bolsheviks would take power. Ignatiev speaks of those who have changed their minds about the continuation of the war, and are slowly and secretly moving to the supporters of "at least some", but if possible, not a separate peace (Nolde, Nabokov, Dobrovolsky, Maklakov). He gives details about Alekseev's negotiations with Tom about the summer offensive and G. Trubetskoy's unwillingness to let Tom into Russia in the summer of 1917: being a Freemason, Trubetskoy perfectly understood the reasons for this persistence of Tom. The Soviet historian is aware of the importance of the meetings of Gen. Knox, the British military attache, with Savinkov and Filonenko in October 1917 - both were in some way allies of Kornilov - and tells, conscious of the hopelessness of the position of the Provisional Government, about the last breakfast on October 23 at Buchanan, where guests were Tereshchenko, Konovalov and Tretyakov. In the same row of serious scientists is E.D. Chermensky. The title of his book, The Fourth Duma and the Overthrow of Tsarism in Russia, does not cover its rich content. True, most of it is devoted to the last convocation and the progressive bloc, but already on page 29 we find a quotation from the verbatim report of the 3rd session of the State. Duma, which shows the mood of Guchkov in 1910: on February 22, he said that his friends "no longer see obstacles that would justify a slowdown in the implementation of civil liberties." Particularly interesting are the descriptions of secret meetings at Konovalov's and Ryabushinsky's, where not all the guests were Freemasons, and where the names of "sympathetic" bureaucratic friends often come across (he does not use the word "rearguard"). The picture of these meetings shows that Moscow was "to the left" of St. Petersburg. He described a conspiratorial meeting at Konovalov's on March 3, 1914, where the participants represented the spectrum from the left Octobrists to the Social Democrats (the owner of the house at that time was Comrade Chairman of the State Duma), and then the second one - on March 4 at Ryabushinsky, where, between by the way, one Bolshevik was present, SkvortsovStepanov (a well-known Soviet critic, about whom there is no information in the KLE). Kadet Astrov reports (TsGAOR, fund 5913) that in August 1914 "all (progressives) stopped fighting and rushed to help the authorities in organizing victory." Apparently, all the conspiracy ceased until August 1915, when the catastrophe began at the front. And then, on August 16, they again gathered at Konovalov's (between others - Maklakov, Ryabushinsky, Kokoshkin) for new conversations. On November 22, both Trudoviks and Mensheviks were in Konovalov's house (Kerensky and Kuskova were among the first). There was one of the first discussions of the "appeal to the allies". Chermensky recalls that the generals were always right there, close, and that Denikin, in his Essays on Russian Troubles, many years later, wrote that “the progressive bloc found sympathy with the gene. Alekseev. At this time, Meller Zakomelsky was the permanent chairman at the meetings of the "progressive bloc" with representatives of Zemgor. Chermensky walks alongside Freemasonry, but today's younger historians, working in Leningrad on the epoch 1905-1918, come even closer to him. Thus, one of them raises the question of "generals" and "military dictatorship" in the summer of 1916, "after the tsar is overthrown." "Protopopov never trusted Ruzsky," he says, and moves on to Guchkov's letter, which was circulating throughout Russian territory, to Prince. P.D. Dolgorukov, who foresaw the victory of Germany back in May 1916. The knowledge of this author can be appreciated by those who carefully delve into the course of his thinking, the thoroughness of his work and the ability to present material of great interest. Among this generation of Soviet historians there are other talented people, significant phenomena on the horizon of Soviet historical science. Many of them have serious knowledge and have found a system for them, some have also been awarded the literary talent of the narrator. They distinguish "important" from "not important" or "less important". They have the flair for the epoch, which our great historians had in the past. They know how important the (unrealized) conspiracies were - they give a picture of the Masonic and non-Masonic convergence of people whose parties had no reason to converge with each other, but the members of these parties were able to compromise. This rapprochement and - for some of them - the conciliar vision of the Apocalypse, coming at them with an inevitability from which there is no escape, now evoke in us, as in the tragedy of Sophocles, a sense of horror and fate. We understand today what the tsarist regime was, against which the Grand Dukes and the Menshevik-Marxists went against, for a short time they came into contact, and were crushed together. In one of the recent books we find discussions about Westernism and Slavophilism on a level at which they were never discussed in the sealed retort of the 19th century. The author finds a "chain of traces" (an expression by M.K. Lemke). It leads from the headquarters of the tsar through his generals to the monarchists who want to "preserve the monarchy and remove the monarch", to the centrists of the Duma, and from them to the future military of the Petrograd Soviet. Conversations A.I. Konovalova with Albert Thomas, or an assessment of the gene. Krymov, or a party at Rodzianko's house - these pages are difficult to read without the excitement that we experience when we read tragedians, and which we are not accustomed to experiencing when reading the books of learned historians. Here there is that “creative infection” that Leo Tolstoy wrote about in his famous letter to Strakhov, and which far from all people of art possess. Soviet historians, specialists in the early 20th century, occasionally touch upon Russian Freemasonry in their works. This gives me the right, while working on my book, to think not only about how it will be received and appreciated by young European and American (as well as Russian-American and American-Russian) historians, but also about how it will be read by Soviet historians, who in recent years are increasingly directing their attention towards Russian Freemasons of the 20th century. Read it or hear about it.
How can one “negatively” or “positively” relate to a thunderstorm, an earthquake, a plague? This is a given of our existence, this is how the world works. A Christian performs the sacrament of the Eucharist, that is, as if ritually cannibalistically eats the body and drinks the blood of Jesus Christ and rehearses the sacrifice of God and partakes of holiness-heaven, but "the whole truth" is also in the fact that after that the most righteous believer shits and pisses on the swallowed-digested in the stomach, fertilizing the lowland-earthliness, such is life. How can one “love” or “hate” the historical figures of the past, no matter how much blood they shed, be it even Genghis Khan with Henry VIII and Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great and Lenin with Stalin and Mao Zedong to boot, etc.? They should also be taken for granted, this is how the world works, sometimes they look “like God's thunderstorm”, like “God's Scourge”, like “World Spirit on horseback”, etc. How can one “glorify” or “criticize” Moses, who, on the one hand, received the commandments of God from the Lord God, including the commandment “Thou shalt not kill!” for the sake of being, and brought them to people, but for the sake of being, he smashed to smithereens the stone tablets on which these commandments were carved, when he saw his God-chosen Jewish people, who had just been led out of a long Egyptian captivity, but in his forty-day absence bowed to the Golden Calf and rejoiced in freebies -dances, and ordered the remaining faithful to a handful of Levites to cut down all their fellow tribesmen in a row, if only to bring the fallen to their senses and bridle the people and save the souls of the survivors (Exodus 32). Isn't it obvious that man is for God, and not God for man, and one must fulfill one's supreme duty of self-sacrifice to God, no matter what horrors this may entail. Tired of the superficiality even of those who claim to be wisdom - theologians, philosophers, philologists and other humanitarians. Okay, there is little demand from political publicists, they write mainly for the toilet, but a professional should rise above emotions. After all, “morality” is relative, depends on the stage of historical development and, accordingly, on the degree of subjectivity, the day before yesterday it was “moral” to ritually eat another person, often a relative, to sacrifice a beloved child, etc., yesterday it was “moral” to burn a dissident at the stake or exile him to the Gulag, today after our Great Victory over fascism and the Nuremberg trials and the adoption in 1948 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, more tolerant norms and ideas were established, from the positions of which it is foolish to judge our ancestors. But they are judging, awakening frozen storms, picking open healing wounds, calling for Lenin to be thrown out of the Mausoleum. I throw up my hands when I hear this from doctoral professors. From the current position of respect for the rights and dignity of man and people, what is moral for today's sick Russia is that which heals it, including the restoration of its historical and territorial integrity, is it really unclear.
It is sickening to listen to the Svanidzevsky-Kisilevsky "Historical Process" on the Rossiya TV channel at these moments (Dmitry Kiselev is completely pathetic, unconvincing, not suitable for serious polemics, he works out the order with effort). Terry counter-revolution, hysterics about the "tyrant Stalin" - although the discussion of the Maslenitsa prayer service of the punk band Pussy Riot is closer to the urgent. This prayer service is a civil protest against the infernal nature of Putin and the nicolaitism of the ROC hierarchy, I support it. So we must fight against today's evil, that is, against Putin's massacre of young Russian women. And in general, against Putin and Gundyaev, whose lies go off scale. If you consider yourself moral - do not live by lies, speak out against the current liars! And it’s better to take the lies, sins, malice of the past as a given, because any person and any society has not only “pluses”, but also “minuses”, and it is now more proper for a historian, as a citizen, to condemn the current scoundrels, and as a professional, he is called only to speak the whole truth about the past, in no case blaspheming or praising it.
Now on the "Russian historical TV channel" "365 days TV" curses against Lenin as the "worst enemy of the Russian people" and fierce denunciations of "Soviet historians" who de-blackened the crowned martyrs "killed by the Bolsheviks" and distorted Russian history in every possible way . I ask - name, asshole, specifically the names of Soviet professional historians who "distorted and blackened" the history of our country? In the 1970s I worked in the Department of Historical Sciences of the Institute of Scientific Information on Social Sciences of the USSR Academy of Sciences and I know well Soviet historians of the older and my generations, they are different, they are tens and hundreds of highly qualified professionals, their works will forever remain in the golden fund of national historical science and culture. And I maintain relations with dozens and hundreds of domestic philosophers and philologists who matured in the Soviet years, who are also great professionals, it is vile to discredit them as "Soviet". However, vile Putin's time is characterized by vile falsifiers, I just ate shit in the "Historical Trial".
Otdushina - two TV spots that I watched in the last hours. One is about the Roman emperor Adrian (76-138) on the Viasat History TV channel, the other is about Ivan the Terrible (1530-1584) on the Culture TV channel. Yes, Adrian practiced decimations, that is, the execution of every tenth soldier of the Roman legion who went wrong, and the Romans generally did not shun all sorts of genocides and "crimes against humanity" (speaking in today's language). So what? This is how a person has been arranged since the time of Adam and Eve, you can’t change it, but you can only restrain the lethality-killfulness inherent in a person and counterbalance his self-terror, let’s not delve into philosophy, I have already written a lot of texts on this topic. And the film shows where the "viceroy of God on earth" defecated, what he wiped himself with - and this is also part of the historian's concern to tell "the whole truth." And Ivan the Terrible, from the point of view of current norms and ideas, seems to have committed all sorts of “crimes”, but it’s stupid and ridiculous to kick him to the current “moralists”, then kick and blaspheme also Moses, if you dare, and a professional historian should perceive the deeds of the formidable king as one of the "historical thunderstorms" along with the "thunderstorms" of Peter the Great, Lenin and Stalin, without emotions of blasphemy or praise. And then one of the luminaries of Soviet historical science, Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt, wisely and dispassionately told the viewers “the whole truth” about the Russian ruler of the distant 16th century, it was a pleasure to listen.
But he turned 90 on Orthodox Easter on April 15, 2012. But what a good mental shape he is! I kinda envy him. His father is the legendary polar explorer, Hero of the Soviet Union, editor-in-chief of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, Academician Otto Yulievich Schmidt. The son of one of the personifications of the Soviet era graduated from the Faculty of History of Moscow State University in 1944, since 1949 he has been teaching at the Moscow Institute of History and Archives (now the Russian State University for the Humanities). Patriarch of national historical science. Adviser of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Academician RAO. Honorary Chairman of the Archeographic Commission of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Editor-in-Chief of the Moscow Encyclopedia. Honored Professor of the Russian State University for the Humanities, Head of the Moscow Studies Department of the Historical and Archival Institute. He also knew other prominent Soviet historians at close range, so Sigurd Yulievich is not some rare exception.
Both of his lectures within the framework of the wonderful Academia program can be viewed and listened to with some comments on the luxurious site of the Novgorod philologist, historian of ideas, literary critic and literary critic Nikolai Podosokorsky ( philologist ) - "To the 90th anniversary of Sigurd Schmidt" (April 17, 2012) and "An era named Schmidt" (April 14, 2012). I listened to a lecture by Sigurd Ottovich and was afraid that he was about to be brought into moralizing and condemning the bloodshed and genocides and atrocities of Ivan the Terrible, but the venerable historian avoided such stupidity, setting out “the whole truth” about the oprichnina and torture impeccably, pointing out the manifestations of sadism as on a medical fact (I would add, with reference to research by psychologists, that every second of us will prove to be a sadist if he receives uncontrolled power).
Sigurd Schmidt: Whether power is moral or immoral is a matter of life and death for us. Photo: Kolybalov Arkady
It is noteworthy that Sigurd Ottovich's interview, which he gave to Dmitry Shevarov and in which he spoke about his life and the Stalin years and the state of national historical science (I basically agree with his judgments) - “An era named Schmidt: Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt will mark his 90th birthday in the same house where he was born on Holy Saturday 1922” (Rossiyskaya Gazeta, Moscow, April 11, 2012, No. 79 /5752/, p. 11):
“The year of Russian history, in addition to well-known significant dates, is decorated with the anniversary of our outstanding contemporary, historian Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt.
His first printed scientific work was published in April 1941. Schmidt has been teaching at the Institute of History and Archives for 63 years! Here, every autumn, student life for first-year students begins with a lecture by the most beloved and oldest professor. "He is the best connoisseur of sources on the history of Russia in the 16th century today," said Dmitry Sergeevich Likhachev.
Most of all, the old word enlightener fits Sigurd Ottovich. Created by Schmidt in 1949, the student circle of source studies entered the legends as a scientific school that brought up several generations of scientists.
April 15 - for Easter! - Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt will celebrate his 90th birthday in the very house where he was born on Holy Saturday 1922 to the sound of Arbat temples.
I really love this nondescript house, pushed into Krivoarbatsky Lane, like an old closet. I like to climb the stairs, touching the dark wood of the railing. I'm apprehensive about the elevator. Once I got stuck in it with Sigurd Ottovich. At that time I was so worried about the professor, who was late for the lecture, that I considered it my duty to bang on the elevator doors and shout.
Well, what are you fighting about, - Schmidt said affectionately and pressed the button.
Who's stuck? the dispatcher replied.
Professor Schmidt. You know, my lecture starts in half an hour.
Wait. Maybe the mechanics haven't gone home yet.
Silence. Sigurd Ottovich asks me: "What date is it today?"
Twenty sixth.
Nothing bad can happen on the twenty-sixth.
On the twenty-sixth I defended my doctorate. And in general, I had a lot of good things that day.
What if today was the thirteenth?
Nothing too bad either. True, on the thirteenth, in February, the Chelyuskin sank.
Well, you see...
So on the thirteenth of April, the Chelyuskinites were saved!
Then the mechanics came and saved us. And Sigurd Ottovich was in time for the lecture. Outside the auditorium, the ancient Nikolskaya Street floated through blue puddles towards the Kremlin. After the lecture, we went to the bakery, bought some bread and walked through the yards to the Arbat. I remembered that once the boys at that time played Chelyuskinites.
All your friends probably envied you in your childhood, - I say to Sigurd Ottovich.
I didn't feel it. Father had world fame, but we lived in trembling for him. It seemed that if the newspapers do not write about dad for three or four days, then something happened. After all, two of my father's deputies for the expedition were arrested as enemies of the people ...
At the age of fifteen, he began to keep a diary, but soon abandoned it. The heroes of the diary - friends of the father, familiar mothers, neighbors, parents of classmates - disappeared one by one.
Otto Yulievich took his son with him to Kremlin receptions several times. "Stalin passed us at arm's length..." Many years later, Sigurd Schmidt would become one of the greatest experts on the origins of despotism - the era of Ivan the Terrible.
"Arbatism dissolved in blood..."
When did you decide to become a historian?
Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: In the eighth grade, I had a desire to become... a professor. Not because I was so dreamy and arrogant, but simply because I grew up in a professorial environment and could not imagine anything else. I chose a profession close to my mother's and far from what my father did, so that no one could say that I use his merits.
And school history lessons - they didn’t beat off love for this subject?
Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: We had good teachers. After all, I studied in the former gymnasiums: in the former women's Khvostovskaya and in the former Flerovskaya near the Nikitsky Gate - then the already famous 10th (later 110th) school named after F. Nansen. I made my first essentially scientific report on December 26, 1939, when I was a first-year student at Moscow State University.
The craving for history, obviously, was brought up by the very area where you were born - Arbat. What was he then? I'm not talking about historical buildings - it is clear that there is almost no left - but about the atmosphere ...
Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: What I miss the most in today's Arbat is children's voices. I remember a time when ten or three children lived in our six-story building, or even more. Now there are five children left in the whole house. It is extremely painful to see streets and yards without children. After all, the Arbat has never been a beautiful street, but it was distinguished by its special comfort. Hammocks hung in the yards in summer. Among the sheds, lilac and bird cherry bushes, we played hide and seek - there was where to hide. This persisted for a long time - until the 1960s, and when I began to travel abroad, I did not see anything like it in other capitals of the world. Even in Paris.
What place on earth do you think is the most beautiful?
Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: From the height of my age, I see that no foreign impressions can overshadow what our homeland gives us. In 1961, I first came to Vologda, and from there to Ferapontovo, to see the frescoes of Dionysius. There was no museum then. The temple was closed. I went and found a watchman. She says: I will unlock it for you, but I have to go to the village council, so I will lock you up for an hour and a half. And those were some of the happiest moments of my life. It was the beginning of September, a warm, fine rain was drizzling outside the walls of the temple. And then suddenly the sun splashed through the windows on the right, the frescoes flared up with sparkling colors ...
Thanks to your efforts, book sales have recently returned to Old Arbat, and I have just dug up a book there that I have been looking for for a long time. What else would you like to return to the Arbat?
Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: My dream is to restore the temple of St. Nicholas the Appeared with a marvelous bell tower, which was a symbol of the Arbat and depicted in many works of art. Arbat was even called St. Nicholas Street. This will immediately restore the appearance of the Arbat and will dictate a decent style of behavior.
Unforgettable 1812
Many who lived through 1812 recalled that they felt the movement of history not speculatively, but simply physically. And, probably, it is no coincidence that it was at this time that Karamzin wrote the History of the Russian State.
Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: Nikolai Mikhailovich wrote most of his "History ..." before the war. He possessed great historical intuition and rare insight. It is amazing how he, who did not undergo special scientific training and did not know the historical sources discovered later, expressed accurate assumptions. Here at Klyuchevsky it was already much less common. One must imagine the conditions in which Karamzin wrote his "History ...". What did Russia know about itself, if the first Minister of Public Education, Count Pyotr Vasilievich Zavadovsky, declared several years before 1812 that the entire history of Russia before Peter could fit on one page.
A very modern take on history.
Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: To the credit of the society of that time, it must be said: people were eager to know their history. After the Patriotic War, everyone was already looking forward to Karamzin's "History ...".
Did everyone know that he wrote it?
Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: Of course, the educated society has heard a lot about it. Karamzin was the most famous but silent writer of that time. The expectations were huge. The publication in February 1818 of the first eight volumes was the event of the year, as they would probably say now. The entire circulation was sold out in twenty-five days.
Looking at the volumes of "History ..." Karamzin, it seems to us that he was a long-liver.
Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: And Nikolai Mikhailovich lived only sixty years!
And did Karamzin not have time to write about the war of 1812?
Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: He was offered to write the history of the Patriotic War in hot pursuit, but he understood...
What is the distance in time?
Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: And this too, but the main thing: Karamzin understood that there would be someone to write about the war of 1812, and he needed to finish his work. He was just approaching Ivan the Terrible at that time, and his attitude towards the Terrible is the most important thing for understanding Karamzin's worldview.
He can be called a liberal conservative or a conservative liberal. He arrived in France at the time of the French Revolution, full of expectations, but saw the coming terror. Nikolai Mikhailovich was a staunch supporter of the monarchy, but believed that the power of the head of state should be limited by law.
Captured by utopia
Many Decembrists sought to limit the monarchy by law ...
Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: Yes, and here again we must remember 1812. He made a revolution in the minds of the top of society. The officers, having been abroad, saw how quite decently and relatively freely the life of the lower classes was arranged there. The senior Decembrists were formed precisely then. We have now adopted cheap denunciations against the Decembrists ...
They are sometimes called "Bolsheviks of the nineteenth century."
Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: This is absolutely wrong. The Bolsheviks are rather the successors of the Narodnaya Volya and the descendants of the utopians of previous times. And if anything brings the pre-revolutionary Bolsheviks closer to the Decembrists, it is the fact that many of them come from wealthy families. They could well make a career under the king. These were people deeply captivated by utopianism. And they dreamed not of their well-being, but of a world revolution.
But if the Bolsheviks only dreamed! If it were not believed that the end justifies the means.
Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: And not everyone thought so. There was no primitive unanimity among the old Bolsheviks. I reflected on this in one of my recent books, which is called "Considerations and Memoirs of a Historian Son" - in it is a biography of my father Otto Yulievich Schmidt and my sketches about him and his era. In my childhood and youth, I involuntarily witnessed the conversations of Bolsheviks with pre-revolutionary experience. So, for example, about Zinoviev, who, to put it mildly, behaved dissolutely and disgustingly in Petrograd - I did not hear a single kind word from them from them. And the Countrywoman! I saw her several times. It was uncomfortable to be around her. There was a sense of evil emanating from her. These are fanatics. Or mentally ill people.
Isn't Lenin a fanatic?
Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: It's still different. Lenin is a much more complex figure.
It's hard for me to see when historians imitate party views. Party views are changing. I remember what those who write today about the "spoiled" Bolsheviks wrote before 1991. I even remember what some wrote before 1953.
But people tend to change, to grow to what they did not understand before.
Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: It is very difficult to confuse opportunism with the fruits of painful inner work.
What events did you experience that changed your view of history?
Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: XX Congress. He allowed me to open up as a scientist and be free. I was 31 when Stalin died. Being the son of a very famous person, from the age of fourteen I lived in fear for my father, with whom at any moment the same thing could happen as with my maternal uncle, what happened with my father's sister's husband, and with many of our acquaintances. In our class, almost all the guys had someone arrested, exiled or shot. I was very friendly with my classmates, and then classmates. When we were young, we were very open and frank. When there were three or two of them, the conversations went on social topics. And my happiness is that there were no scammers among my comrades.
No, it was no accident that I took up the era of Ivan the Terrible. These were undoubtedly allusions to modernity. After all, I wrote about those people who became victims of Grozny. I wanted to figure out how this could happen.
Oblivion Invasion
Vyazemsky wrote: "Karamzin is our Kutuzov of the twelfth year: he saved Russia from the invasion of oblivion ..." Do you have a feeling that we are experiencing today just such an invasion?
Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: The big trouble is that the number of educative subjects is consistently decreasing at school. The reason is clear to me: people have become very practical, it seems to them that neither literature nor history has any practical application. Like, what's the difference: Ivan the Terrible killed his son or the son killed Ivan the Terrible, it was in time immemorial. In addition, the Internet is playing a cruel joke on us. Thanks to him, the layer of modernity has grown and swelled so exorbitantly that the memory of the past is forced out somewhere in the backyard of consciousness.
It turns out that our life develops only horizontally, and the vertical - the movement in depth and the impulse towards the sky - completely disappears.
Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: Yes, people are locked in the race for the essentials, and simply do not have time to tell their grandchildren about their ancestors, and about themselves. But only the history of the family can push the narrow boundaries of our life.
And what event in our history do we still underestimate?
Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: If we talk about the 20th century, then this is the Great Patriotic War.
Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: Yes, it must be admitted: we underestimate and misunderstand the feat of the people of the forty-first year. It was an impulse that you can hardly imagine. I have never seen anything like it and never will. Moreover, this mass feat of self-sacrifice took place after a terrible, unjustified period of terror. Remember Bulat Okudzhava - "our boys raised their heads ..."? People at the beginning of the war just raised their heads. I remember that in our intellectual school, almost all the guys had relatives who were "enemies of the people," but how eager they were to get to the front!
And if we fast forward a hundred years, what events that we experienced in recent years will be included in future textbooks?
Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: What do you think?
If this is some kind of "short course", then we will fit in one line: "These people lived in the era of the heyday and destruction of the Soviet Union." Only this, it seems to me, we will be interesting to posterity. But it's not so little...
Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: Pushkin wrote that "the emerging enlightenment" of Europe "was saved by a torn and dying Russia." The events of the 20th century became a continuation of this essentially sacrificial path of Russia. We tested the utopia on ourselves, having suffered huge sacrifices. And this, of course, entered the global history.
A moral story in an immoral world
That inspired Russian historiography, at the origins of which was Karamzin, - does it continue? Or does this tradition no longer exist?
Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: Here we must remember what this tradition consists of. From at least the thirteenth century, our history began to diverge from Europe.
This was due to the division of Christianity into Western and Eastern.
Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: Essentially, yes. And here it is important that Karamzin, realizing that the task of historical science is to shape public consciousness, tried to emphasize the Europeanism of Russian history.
Was he not a supporter of what would later be called Eurasianism?
Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: Of course not. We found ourselves the heirs of the longest-preserved imperial system of Byzantium, which existed until the middle of the fifteenth century. In Rome it all stopped earlier. Of course, the German sovereigns called themselves emperors, but this is just talk. The empire of Charles the First or the German Austrian Habsburg Monarchy were relatively small states. In our country, the size of the country itself is imperial, in addition, the eastern system of government has been mixed in. The sacredness of the first person, which came from Byzantium, greatly helped to keep such spaces under a single leadership, but we have become terribly dependent on the character and abilities of one person. Ivan the Terrible, unable and unwilling to restrain his passions, ruined everything he had built. The most gifted and far-sighted Peter the Great, in a completely despotic and immoral way, planted European reforms. Stalin, whose arrival was so sudden that everyone was waiting for democracy ...
But perhaps that is precisely why the question of whether power is moral or immoral is for us a matter of life and death. Russian literature became great precisely because in it the greatest attention was paid to moral and ethical issues, and not to entertainment. So the "History of the Russian State" is, first of all, a moral history. Karamzin gave moral assessments to historical figures and that is why he was so important to his contemporaries.
But now, as a reader of historical literature, I see that Karamzin's line has given way to a nonjudgmental presentation of the course of events. Historians write about their country in much the same way as they would write about any other. Textbooks are compiled in the same spirit - "nothing personal." We are told that the moral approach is ideological, not modern. Doesn't it bother you?
Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: Worrisome. In my opinion, the moral approach underlies the birth of history as such. For many years now I have been directing the competition of historical scientific papers for high school students, which is organized by Memorial, and I see that the guys think more boldly, more freely than adults.
It turns out that it is teenagers today who are writing moral history.
Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: Yes, they are trying to do it. But what is sad: few of the authors of these talented works enter the history departments. Parents advise them to choose something more profitable. They know that the work of scientists, especially in the humanitarian sphere, is not appreciated in our country.
I see what a disrespectful, essentially humiliating position the scientists, especially the humanities, are in. How much their salary is less than the earnings of guest workers or security guards. And, nevertheless, I see good people who are ready to give their strength to just such work. For them, the feeling of working according to a vocation is a high internal duty. Everyday meetings with such young people make me very happy. After all, I have already lost all my close peers, and those who are much younger than me have become really close to me. I am grateful to them for causing them not only respect, but also sincere interest.
"When a person is expected..."
So, you are an optimist after all: will interest in history in Russia not go out?
Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: I am an optimist because knowing one's history is a human need. A person cannot but be interested in his roots. He needs a connection with his relatives, with his ancestors, a sense of connection with his native area, he needs to determine his place in a series of events and phenomena ...
For twenty years now I have been living in two worlds - with those who left, but remain in me, and with those who surround me. This is absolutely palpable. After the death of my nurse, with whom I lived for sixty-seven years, I began to dream. In them - the dead and the living together. As long as the nanny was alive, as long as my parents were alive, I had them on their own. And now all together.
Everybody is alive...
Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: Yes, everyone is alive. And I feel like they would reproach me if I do something differently than it would be right with them.
And this is not a painful feeling at all?
Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: Rather harmonic.
I noticed that in almost all recent interviews you have been asked about recipes for longevity.
Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: Well, these questions are a tribute to my years... Probably, this is due to several circumstances. And inherited from parents. And the fact that I'm hardworking. Not that I know how to work - I love to work. And when I am not working at a desk or reading special literature, but doing something else, I still think about my work. All my life I have been doing what interests me. I retain to this day the need and ability to learn from others. Curiosity has not diminished, elements of the former enthusiasm remain. Apparently, it is essential that he did not envy anyone, did not see the tragedy in career failures. After all, not everything was smooth - for example, I was not chosen to the "big" Academy.
What comforted and saved you?
Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: I am a social person by nature, I have always been busy teaching. The most interesting for me was communication in a student scientific circle, where I received a lot from young talented people. And I felt the demand there, and this is very important: when a person is expected. For fifty years, until the middle of the year 2000, we got together, and it was happiness.
The ability to work, of course, is lost. Previously, he could easily deal with many topics. Now I have to focus. Lost pace of work. But thank you for what I can do. I even make plans.
Do you have weekends?
Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: Never. And I don't have a hobby. I have bad hands. I am somewhat unharmoniously developed. I can type on a typewriter and that’s it.”
Anonymous:
He could not be objective in relation to Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich the Terrible for obvious reasons.
Gregory:
Nice uncle. Such people are like the suns, around which the rotation of other bright people-planets is formed. Happy birthday, Sigurd Otovich Schmidt! Live and work longer! I read the interview with great pleasure. Thanks to the author!
Before talking about Soviet historians, it is necessary to say a few words about two authors who are colloquially called "historical novelists." They are the providers of “easy reading”, and often, not without talent, tell fascinating stories from the past, with dialogues and props, when their heroes either “think, scratching their heads”, then “cough meaningfully”, or whisper something to their beloved woman, so that no one hears but herself.
M. Kasvinov’s novel “23 Steps Down” about Nicholas II was written in this style: when the tsar receives Stolypin on a serious state matter in his office, the fireplace is on fire, the interlocutors are sitting in comfortable armchairs, and the tsarina is in the corner darning the tsar’s socks.
N. Yakovlev's novel "August 1, 1914" is somewhat more real. In it we even find something about Freemasonry: the author met the Minister of the Provisional Government N.V. Nekrasov (there is an example of the hero's direct speech); the author gives us to understand that there is also a document, and maybe more than one, with which he has read. But instead of curiosity, the reader begins to vaguely feel a slow surge of boredom: at the moment when N. Yakovlev made his hero speak on the pages of the novel, it turned out that it was not Nekrasov at all, but only Yakovlev himself.
In the writings of these feuilleton novelists, it is difficult to distinguish fantasy from truth, and the reader is sometimes not entirely sure: did the tsarina really darn the tsar’s socks, and Nekrasov did not tell Yakovlev about some of his notes, memoirs and documents, or something buried somewhere , not immured by them. The reader is offered a piece of the past, and he is not averse to learning more about it, even if it is slightly distorted and embellished. It is worse when quotation marks are placed and a quotation begins, which does not end anywhere, since the author forgot to close the quotation marks. “Nekrasov told me a lot of interesting things then,” Yakovlev writes, but does not say when he wrote it down: then? Or in twenty years? Or is he writing from memory? And is it possible to put quotes in this case? Was what began with quotation marks taken from buried material, or something else?
The names of close friends of Nekrasov and his brothers in the Masonic lodge are full of mistakes that Nekrasov could not make: instead of Kolyubakin - Kolyubyakin, instead of Grigorovich-Barsky - Grigorovich-Borsky. Occasionally, Yakovlev explains: "The word is not clear in the document." In what document? And why is this document not described? The conversation between Yakovlev and Shulgin is of no interest: Shulgin was never a Freemason, and Yakovlev was never a historian. But not for this, but for other sins, Soviet criticism treated him cruelly.
When Soviet historians rightly complain about the paucity of material on Freemasonry, and some of them hope that much more can come out, I cannot share their optimism: too much was destroyed during the Red Terror and the Civil War by people who had even a remote connection with the pre-revolutionary Freemasonry in Russia, not to mention the brothers of the secret society themselves. And what was not destroyed then was gradually destroyed in the 1930s, so that after 1938 hardly anything could have survived in the attics and basements. Artist Udaltsova in the early 1930s. in Moscow she herself burned her paintings, and Babel burned some of her manuscripts, like Olesha. What more can be said after that? S.I. Bernstein, a contemporary and friend of Tynyanov and Tomashevsky, destroyed his collection of records, slandered by poets in the early 1920s. Bernstein was the first in Russia, then engaged in "orthoepy".
Soviet historians do not have the Masonic materials they need, not because they are classified, but because they do not exist. Freemasons did not keep Masonic diaries or write Masonic memoirs. They kept an oath of silence. In the Western world, the protocols of the “sessions” have partially survived (it is possible that the protocols began to be kept only in exile). What is the state of Soviet Freemasonology now?
I'll start from afar: two books published by B. Grave in 1926 and 1927, I still find very valuable and significant. These are “On the History of the Class Struggle” and “The Bourgeoisie on the Eve of the February Revolution”. They do not tell us much about Freemasonry, but they give some characteristics (for example, Gvozdeva). These books give an excellent outline of events and some brief but important comments: “Minister Polivanov had connections with the bourgeois opposition”, or a story about the visit of Albert Thomas and Viviani to St. Petersburg in 1916, and how P.P. Ryabushinsky, publisher of the Moscow newspaper "Utro Rossii" and a member of the State Council, informed the French about where the tsarist government was leading Russia (with Rasputins, Yanushkeviches, and other criminals and fools). This happened when everyone gathered in the estate of A.I. Konovalov near Moscow, at secret meetings. Between the 1920s and the work of Academician I. Mintz almost thirty years have passed. Mintz wrote about Freemasonry, which either existed or not, and if it did, it did not play any role. Nevertheless, he quotes the memoirs of I.V. Gessen, where the former leader of the Cadets, a non-Mason, wrote that "Freemasonry has degenerated into a society of mutual assistance, mutual support, in the manner of" hand washes hand ". Fair words. But Mintz understands them in such a way that Freemasonry in general was an insignificant phenomenon and skeptically quotes a letter from E. Kuskova, published by Aronson, that the movement "was huge", taking seriously her statement that "Russian Freemasonry had nothing in common with foreign Freemasonry" ( typical Masonic camouflage and white lie), and that "Russian Freemasonry has canceled the whole ritual." We now know from the minutes of the Masonic sessions that this is all false. Mintz is also firmly convinced that there never was any "Supreme Council of the Peoples of Russia" and that neither Kerensky nor Nekrasov stood at the head of Russian Freemasonry. Mintz's position is not only to downplay Freemasonry in Russia, but also to ridicule those who think that "something was there." A preconceived position never lends dignity to a historian.
Works by A.E. Ioffe is valuable not because he reports on Freemasonry, but because of the background that he gives for it in his book Russian-French Relations (Moscow, 1958). Albert Thomas was going to be appointed "overseer" or "Special Representative" of the Allied Powers over the Russian government in September 1917. Like Mints, he believes that Russian Freemasonry did not play a big role in Russian politics and, citing an article by B. Elkin, calls him Yolkin .
In the works of A.V. Ignatiev (1962, 1966 and the 1970s), one can find interesting details about the plans of the British Ambassador Buchanan, at the beginning of 1917, to influence the Petrograd Soviet through the British Labor MPs, "our Left", in order to continue the war against the "German despotism." He already at that time foresaw that the Bolsheviks would take power. Ignatiev speaks of those who have changed their minds about the continuation of the war, and are slowly and secretly moving to the supporters of "at least some", but if possible, not a separate peace (Nolde, Nabokov, Dobrovolsky, Maklakov). He gives details about Alekseev's negotiations with Tom about the summer offensive and G. Trubetskoy's unwillingness to let Tom into Russia in the summer of 1917: being a Freemason, Trubetskoy perfectly understood the reasons for this persistence of Tom. The Soviet historian is aware of the importance of the meetings of Gen. Knox, the British military attache, with Savinkov and Filonenko in October 1917 - both were in some way allies of Kornilov - and tells, conscious of the hopelessness of the position of the Provisional Government, about the last breakfast on October 23 at Buchanan, where guests were Tereshchenko, Konovalov and Tretyakov.
In the same row of serious scientists is E.D. Chermensky. The title of his book, The Fourth Duma and the Overthrow of Tsarism in Russia, does not cover its rich content. True, most of it is devoted to the last convocation and the progressive bloc, but already on page 29 we find a quotation from the verbatim report of the 3rd session of the State. Duma, which shows the mood of Guchkov in 1910: on February 22, he said that his friends "no longer see obstacles that would justify a slowdown in the implementation of civil liberties."
Particularly interesting are the descriptions of secret meetings at Konovalov's and Ryabushinsky's, where not all the guests were Freemasons, and where the names of "sympathetic" bureaucratic friends often come across (he does not use the word "rearguard"). The picture of these meetings shows that Moscow was "to the left" of St. Petersburg. He described a conspiratorial meeting at Konovalov’s on March 3, 1914, where the participants represented the spectrum from the left Octobrists to the Social Democrats (the owner of the house at that time was Comrade Chairman of the State Duma), and then the second one on March 4 at Ryabushinsky’s, where , incidentally, there was one Bolshevik, Skvortsov-Stepanov (a well-known Soviet critic, about whom there is no information in the KLE). Kadet Astrov reports (TsGAOR, fund 5913) that in August 1914 "all (progressives) stopped fighting and rushed to help the authorities in organizing victory." Apparently, all the conspiracy ceased until August 1915, when the catastrophe began at the front. And then, on August 16, they again gathered at Konovalov's (between others - Maklakov, Ryabushinsky, Kokoshkin) for new conversations. On November 22, both Trudoviks and Mensheviks were in Konovalov's house (Kerensky and Kuskova were among the first). There was one of the first discussions of the "appeal to the allies". Chermensky recalls that the generals were always right there, close, and that Denikin, in his Essays on Russian Troubles, many years later, wrote that “the progressive bloc found sympathy with the gene. Alekseev. At this time, Meller-Zakomelsky was the permanent chairman at meetings of the "progressive bloc" with representatives of Zemgor.
Chermensky walks alongside Freemasonry, but today's younger historians, working in Leningrad on the epoch of 1905-1918, come even closer to him. Thus, one of them raises the question of "generals" and "military dictatorship" in the summer of 1916, "after the tsar is overthrown." "Protopopov never trusted Ruzsky," he says, and moves on to Guchkov's letter, which was circulating throughout Russian territory, to Prince. P.D. Dolgorukov, who foresaw the victory of Germany back in May 1916. The knowledge of this author can be appreciated by those who carefully delve into the course of his thinking, the thoroughness of his work and the ability to present material of great interest.
Among this generation of Soviet historians there are other talented people, significant phenomena on the horizon of Soviet historical science. Many of them have serious knowledge and have found a system for them, some have also been awarded the literary talent of the narrator. They distinguish "important" from "not important" or "less important". They have the flair for the epoch, which our great historians had in the past. They know how important the (unrealized) plots were - they give a picture of the Masonic and non-Masonic convergence of people whose parties had no reason to converge with each other, but the members of these parties were able to compromise. This rapprochement and - for some of them - the conciliar vision of the Apocalypse, coming at them with an inevitability from which there is no escape, now evoke in us, as in the tragedy of Sophocles, a sense of horror and fate. We understand today what the tsarist regime was, against which the Grand Dukes and the Marxist Mensheviks went against, for a short time they came into contact, and were crushed together.
In one of the recent books we find discussions about Westernism and Slavophilism on a level at which they were never discussed in the sealed retort of the 19th century. The author finds a "chain of traces" (an expression by M.K. Lemke). It leads from the headquarters of the tsar through his generals to the monarchists who want to "preserve the monarchy and remove the monarch", to the centrists of the Duma, and from them to the future military of the Petrograd Soviet.
Conversations A.I. Konovalova with Albert Thomas, or an assessment of the gene. Krymov, or a party at Rodzianko's house - these pages are difficult to read without the excitement that we experience when we read tragedians, and which we are not accustomed to experiencing when reading the books of learned historians. Here there is that "creative infection", which Leo Tolstoy wrote about in his famous letter to Strakhov, and which not all people of art possess. Soviet historians, specialists in the early 20th century, occasionally touch upon Russian Freemasonry in their works. This gives me the right, while working on my book, to think not only about how it will be received and how it will be appreciated by young European and American (and also Russian-American and American-Russian) historians, but also about how Soviet historians will read it, which in recent years have been increasingly directing their attention towards Russian Freemasons of the 20th century. Read it or hear about it.
Notes:
He was the cousin of Alexander III, and not Nicholas II, as many historians mistakenly call him, including G. Katkov in the February Revolution.
The first composition of the Provisional Government: Prince. Lvov, Guchkov, Kerensky, Tereshchenko, Nekrasov, Shingarev, Konovalov, Manuilov, Godnev, V. Lvov and Milyukov. In addition to Milyukov, all the others can be found in the Biographical Dictionary. “The line-up was somehow outlined by itself.” (Shidlovsky. Memoirs, vol. 2, p. 61).
“Many examples are known that entire Masonic archives were taken away after the death of prominent Masonic figures, sometimes by persons completely unfamiliar to close relatives, but presenting indisputable evidence of their rights to the Masonic heritage ...
From a dangerously ill brother, he (i.e., the one who came) tries to take away all the Masonic papers and things that he may have, to deliver them after his death to the Grand Lodge, or at least he is obliged to keep them ...
That is why we do not know the names of all the Freemasons who were links in the long order chain of Alexander's time, that is why the membership lists that have come down to us are so incomplete and not numerous. (Tira Sokolovskaya. Voice of the Past, 1914, March, No. 3, p. 246).
Here is how, on the eve of the First War, the historian of old Freemasonry complained in S.P. Melgunov to the scarcity of Masonic archival materials!
