Those who left their mark on history are remembered for centuries. Undoubtedly, all these outstanding personalities were ambitious, self-confident and purposeful.
At the same time, they are the same people as all of us - with hidden fears, childish grievances and a desire to declare themselves to the world. So let's remember once again what they were ...
1. Vladimir Lenin (04/22/1870-01/21/1924)
Country RussiaVladimir Ulyanov (Lenin) is a Russian revolutionary who dreamed of leading the country to communism. His childhood passed in Simbirsk. When Vladimir was 17 years old, his older brother was hanged, proving his involvement in a conspiracy against Tsar Alexander III. This made a painful impression on the child and influenced the formation of a worldview. After graduating from school, Ulyanov (Vladimir's real name) studied abroad, and upon his return founded the Union of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Proletariat. He created the Iskra printed edition, from the pages of which communist ideology emanated.
Was in exile. After the revolution in February 1917, he returned to his homeland, where he headed the new government. He is the founder of the Red Army, changes war communism to a less burdensome new economic policy.
2. Adolf Hitler (04/20/1889 - 04/30/1945)
Country: GermanyAdolf Hitler is perhaps one of the most feared people in history. By origin - an Austrian, his direct ancestors were peasants. Only his father managed to become an official.
During the First World War he was in the service. He was distinguished by frailty and fawning, but masterfully mastered the art of oratory. In the post-war period, he worked as a "spy", infiltrating gang formations of communists and leftist forces.
He was a member of the meeting of the German Workers' Party, where he was imbued with the ideas of National Socialism and identified the main enemy - the Jews. The way of thinking of one person later led to millions of human victims and broken destinies of people of various nationalities.
In 1933, Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany. After the death of the President of Germany, he was transferred to the powers of government, which, as we know, ended in terrible bloody events for the whole world. It is believed that Hitler committed suicide, although there is a theory of the death of his double.
3. Joseph Stalin (12/18/1878-03/05/1953)
Country: USSRJoseph Stalin is a cult figure for an entire era, surrounded by an aura of mystery. 30 options for pseudonyms, changing the date of birth, hiding one's noble roots - these are not all the secrets of the great leader.
During his reign, a different opinion was equated with a crime - many executions were committed, the camps were overcrowded. On the other hand, the totalitarian leadership made it possible in record time to raise the USSR from the ruins of the civil war and win the Great Patriotic War.
4. Mahatma Gandhi (October 2, 1869 - January 30, 1948)
Country: IndiaMahatma Gandhi is one of the most prominent people, a peacemaker who fought against aggression with his "accurate" word. He became the father of the whole nation, the "pious soul" of the whole world, vehemently defended human rights.
His personality and ideology were formed under the influence of the Mahabharata, books and correspondence with Leo Tolstoy, the philosophical teachings of G.D. Toro. He fought against caste inequality, organized the Indian Independence from Britain movement, tried to resolve the conflict that arose between Muslims and Hindus inhabiting Pakistan using non-violent principles.
5. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (05/19/1881 - 11/10/1938)
Country: TurkeyMustafa Kemal is considered the father of Turkey, where his personality is honored, remembered and monuments are erected in almost every city. He organized secret societies to combat the corruption of military officials, was the initiator of the liberation movement against the Anglo-Greek intervention, and also abolished the sultanate, introducing a republican form of government.
Kemal is a supporter of moderate dictatorship. He tried to reform the state along the lines of Western countries. Thanks to his efforts, women's rights were equalized with men's.
6. Konrad Adenauer (01/05/1876 - 04/19/1967)
Country: Germany (Germany)Konrad Adenauer is the first Federal Chancellor of Germany, a ruler with positive features in the modern history of Germany. During the period when the Nazis came to power, Adenauer resigned from his posts because of his personal enmity towards Hitler. Since he was an opponent of the regime, he was arrested by the Gestapo. After the end of the Second World War, he headed the Christian Democratic Union, was the chancellor of Germany from the 49th to the 63rd year.
An energetic and strong-willed politician, a supporter of an authoritarian style of government with the simultaneous presence of tough and flexible methods of leadership, he was able to raise the country from ruins. The rate of development of the FRG was far ahead of the GDR. Konrad Adenauer was loved by the people, had the nickname "Der Alte" ("Old Man" or "Master").
7. Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (11/30/1874 - 01/24/1965)
Country: UKOne of the most prominent people in the UK, "long-liver" of the political arena. Churchill served twice as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
His activities were not limited to politics. Winston, the son of the Duke of Marlborough, was a versatile personality: a historian, artist and writer (awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature). Churchill was the first to be made an honorary citizen of the United States.
8. Charles de Gaulle (11/22/1890 - 11/9/1970)
Country: FranceA well-known French politician, the first president of the Fifth Republic. He headed the anti-Hitler coalition, in 1944-1946 he was the head of the provisional government of France. On his initiative, in 1958, a new constitution was prepared, which expanded the rights of the president.
Of particular importance is the withdrawal from the NATO bloc and French-Soviet cooperation. Supported the creation of its own nuclear forces.
9. Mikhail Gorbachev (03/02/1931)
Country: USSRMikhail Gorbachev is the first and only president of the USSR, a politician who wanted to make the country more open and democratic. The restructuring of the state, which Mikhail Gorbachev began, has become a difficult period for all the people of the post-Soviet space. The collapse of the USSR, the decline of the economy, unemployment - all this is well remembered by people who lived at the end of the 20th century.
The undoubted success of Mikhail Sergeyevich was his meetings with Ronald Reagan and the first steps towards ending the Cold War with the United States. In 1991, Gorbachev announced that he was leaving the presidency, transferring powers to Boris Yeltsin.
10. Vladimir Putin (07.10.1952)
Country RussiaVladimir Putin is an outstanding politician of the Russian Federation, Boris Yeltsin's successor. Today Vladimir Putin leads the country for the third time. A native of a simple working-class family was in the service of the KGB. He worked in the state security bodies of Dresden in the GDR. In 1991 he returned to his homeland, to St. Petersburg, where he headed the committee for external relations of the mayor's office.
Putin managed to stabilize the situation in Chechnya and stick to social priorities during the 2008 economic crisis. The third term of the president was crowned with active actions to return the Crimea to Russia in connection with the refusal of the population to obey the new illegitimate government in Ukraine. This situation was not accepted by the heads of the European countries.
The editors of the site recommend that you read the article about the highest paid professions in our country.
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The loudest falsifications of the history of Russia in the 20th century
Pankin:
The "Sovok" program is a program for those who grew up in the Soviet Union, but do not know anything about it. In a studio Ivan Pankin and my colleague Pavel Pryanikov, political commentator for Radio Komsomolskaya Pravda, historian.
Gingerbread:
Hello.
Pankin:
I forgot to say that you are the creator of the Interpreter.ru portal. So that everyone understands that you are really a competent historian. Today we will talk about falsifications of history. As I understand it, we will talk about extremes on the one hand, about extremes on the other. Relatively speaking, we take Stalin, some shout that there should not have been any Stalin in the history of the Soviet Union and the Russian state in general, others repeat the famous phrase "Stalin is not on you." So, today we will understand. Theses that you shared with me before the broadcast. Prosperous Russia under Nicholas II. No, it's not, you say. The country was backward, and this backwardness only grew at the beginning of the 20th century. Next: Lenin made a revolution with German money. No, it's not, says Paul. Third. Stalin was the first to want to start a war against Hitler. No, it's not, Paul is sure. Is everything right?
Gingerbread:
Yes everything is correct.
Pankin:
And the fourth point, the most curious, in my opinion: America is our eternal enemy. No, it's not. At key moments in our history, the United States has stood as the most staunchest ally. Pash, well, I feel sorry for you. I suspect that you will now have to accept a fight from our listeners. Let's ask the audience a question. Of course, you can express your wishes and questions to us. But here's what I'm interested in. Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky, not so long ago, he expressed the opinion that history textbooks should take into account the interests of the state. Do you agree with him or not?
Gingerbread:
Let's ask.
Pankin:
Pavel is another key informational occasion, thanks to which we are gathered here today. Not so long ago, March 16, what happened?
Gingerbread:
The head of the State Archive Mironenko was fired. Famous for the fact that last fall he said that there was no feat of 28 Panfilovites. In particular, probably no one blamed him directly, but this was, in my opinion, the last straw why they got rid of this person.
Pankin:
It seems like there was no real feat. Is not it so?
Gingerbread:
There was no move, yes. But this is exactly what we are talking about those examples of falsification of history that have become part of history. And people, without thinking about it, replicate certain myths.
Pankin:
Although the Panfilovites are still heroes.
Gingerbread:
Undoubtedly.
Pankin:
There simply was no feat in the form in which it was described to us earlier.
Gingerbread:
Yes everything is correct.
Pankin:
This is one of the highlights. So, let's talk about everything in order. Let's start then with a prosperous Russia under Nicholas II. The country was backward.
Gingerbread:
Persistent myth. The first to speak about this was director Stanislav Govorukhin - "The Russia We Lost", at the height of perestroika. And in many ways, by the way, this film contributed to the fact that Soviet power was overturned. And today this thesis sounds very often among many, from Nikita Mikhalkov to Tatyana Tolstaya, a writer. As we can see, these are people mainly from the upper nobility who adhere to this principle. But there is such a boring part of history as statistics, which says that, of course, there was no prosperous Russia at the beginning of the 20th century. Which led to the revolution. Revolution is an objective process that Russia could not avoid to some extent. Had it not happened in 1917, it would have happened in 1919 or 1920. If the Bolsheviks had not won, the Socialist-Revolutionaries would have won. But in one form or another, of course, the current government that was at the beginning of the 20th century would have been overthrown.
Pankin:
It seems to me that Nicholas II just gave a little slack.
Gingerbread:
I gave slack. And in general, when you read documents, statistics of both the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, in my opinion, the main reasons for this lag are, of course, three lost decades under Nicholas I. Russia, of course, from the middle of the 19th century passed by other developed countries. The liberation of the peasants, the development of the national bourgeoisie, education, and the like. Up to the imperialist expansion, what distinguished all the developed states of that time. But she did all this too late. Lenin's famous words that Russia was 70 years behind the advanced countries were indeed true. And a little later, Stalin spoke about the same in 1931, his famous phrase that we are 50-100 years behind the developed countries, and we must overcome this distance in 10 years, he was talking about industrialization.
Pankin:
Before industrialization, he said.
Gingerbread:
1931 This gap has been maintained. Yes, Russia was developing rapidly. But this gap has not been reduced. We can even see that the entire twentieth century also maintains this distance - lagging behind developed countries, primarily from the United States and the three or four leading powers of the world: Germany, France, England, Japan. Simple numbers that anyone can understand. According to statistics, at the beginning of the twentieth century, only 0.4% of the population had an annual income of a thousand rubles. This is not such a lot of money - approximately 80 rubles a month, in order to understand how it compares with our money, this amount must be multiplied by 1000-1200. One royal ruble is 1000-1200 modern rubles. An income of one million rubles - this is 80 thousand rubles a month - was 0.4% of the population. For comparison, this amount in Germany was 5% of the population. In England - 6%, in the USA - 8%. This is a 10-20 times difference. we simply did not even have wealthy people who could push that very consumer economy, the bourgeois economy at that time.
Pankin:
They write to us: “The question is meaningless. This is an axiom. If history textbooks do not express the interests of the state, this state will end.” Vyacheslav, higher historical. And here is another question from him: “What was the expression of the imperialist expansion of Russia?”
Gingerbread:
Examples. This, of course, is expansion into Southeast Asia. This is Manchuria, Port Arthur, this is the expansion that led to the first revolution, to the war with Japan and to the sad consequences, from which the decline of the empire of Nicholas II began. There is much more to be said about the statistical data on the backwardness of Russia. One can cite such an example as the average life expectancy, which was much lower, infant mortality, earnings denominated in rubles. For example, the Washington Labor Bureau at the beginning of the 20th century, in 1907, determined that the average earnings of a laborer in the United States was 71 rubles per month, with a 56-hour work week, in Germany - 31 rubles, and in Russia - 17 rubles. Given that the work week was 65 hours. Here is an example ratio. Now let's talk about the fact that Lenin was supposedly a German agent.
Pankin:
Alexander called us.
Alexander:
I agree with what is stated and with the fact that textbooks should take into account the interests of the state. In the post-perestroika period and later, our textbooks were very heavy, including those by Soros and so on. I got it. We have a lot of lies, roughly speaking, came from the descendants of the White Guards and their henchmen. A lot has been screwed up. That the Red Army defended the country from external interventionists, who were supported by the Whites, from the Americans, the French, the British and others, it's all gone, no one talks about it. This external intervention was supported by the Whites. Nicholas II was killed because the whites were eager. They were afraid of the authorities, including the locals in the first place, that they would raise him on a shield and trample on further to Moscow. Imagine 1913. A lot of grain was sold, including to Germany, and then they were imprisoned almost on ration cards, there was famine in many places.
Pankin:
Thank you. After listening to Alexander, I concluded that he agrees with you. At the same time, he agrees that history textbooks should take into account the interests of the state. But only in those textbooks, according to which we study now, in any case, according to those textbooks, according to which I studied, everything is quite the opposite. According to those textbooks, Lenin made a revolution with German money.
Gingerbread:
I didn't see it in the textbooks.
Pankin:
I remember this from school.
Gingerbread:
It's amazing that this comes up.
Pankin:
That Stalin was the first to want to start a war against Hitler is, of course, nonsense that Mr. Rezun-Suvorov threw at us. America is our eternal enemy? America has never been praised in history books. That's why. Next, let's move on to the fact that Lenin made a revolution with German money. No, it's not, you say.
Gingerbread:
There is a wonderful book by an interesting English intelligence officer, George Hill, who spent almost two years in Russia, from the middle of 1917, in which he describes the history of the appearance of these fakes that Lenin was a German spy. This story appeared in the middle of 1917, after the unsuccessful July uprising of the Bolsheviks, when the Provisional Government had to prove to people that all this was arranged by agents not only of Germany, but also of Austria-Hungary and Turkey, in order to withdraw Russia from the war. The Provisional Government had a clear strategic plan - to continue the war to a victorious end, no matter what. Which, by the way, led to the overthrow of this regime and to the October Revolution. So, the French began to fabricate this fake. There is even an initiator - the same George Hill names the initiator of this fake, this is French Defense Minister Albert Thomas. And the specific developer who directly typed these documents on a typewriter is French intelligence captain Pierre Laurent. On the part of the Provisional Government, they were assisted by the head of counterintelligence, Boris Nikitin. These documents wandered from one department to another.
Under Kerensky, a commission was set up in the summer to investigate the activities of Lenin and the Bolsheviks. This activity was slowly curtailed by the beginning of autumn, because it led to unpleasant consequences for the Provisional Government, which consisted mainly of Socialist-Revolutionaries, they were helped by the Cadets and Mensheviks, which showed that the Socialist-Revolutionaries enjoy foreign support - the current government, which received quite a lot from France. still a lot of money. For rubles of that time - about 2 million rubles. Then these documents, these are about 70 sheets that were allegedly stolen from the German General Staff, allegedly the intelligence officers took part in this, at the end of 1917 - the beginning of 1918, the British intelligence SIS, represented by the same George Hill, bought these documents for 15 thousand pounds sterling . This is about 150 thousand rubles of that time. Hill looked at these documents, found that they were fake. There are a number of technical features. For example, the falling letter "e" on all documents. But the most important thing is that all these 70 documents were printed on the same typewriter. Although they allegedly came from different departments. From the German General Staff, from their intelligence, reports of some agents. All 70 documents. Hill was horrified. And he sold these documents to American intelligence for 25 thousand pounds. That is, he also earned 10 thousand.
After that, these documents became known as the Sisson documents, it is the Sisson publisher who published these documents. The Americans then quickly realized that it was a little longer than the British, who saw through it in just two months, until about 1921, their documents appeared as real, then they admitted that yes, it was a fake. The fact that this is a fake was mentioned by many historical figures. First of all, for example, the German General Staff, which on April 2, 1919, through the newspaper Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, announced that this was a forgery, that this had never happened. This was also proved by the Czech President Masaryk, who also told the story of the appearance of this fake. Even the Western powers by the beginning of the 1920s were all calm about the fact that Lenin was a German agent.
Moreover, as a result of this activity, it was revealed that the main active political forces of that time received money from foreign residencies. And no one even hid it. For example, the leader of the Socialist-Revolutionaries Breshko, the famous Breshkovskaya, who really went through prisons, exiles, she said that the Socialist-Revolutionaries received 2 million dollars from the United States for the elections to the Constituent Assembly. To understand what this amount is for today's money, it's about somewhere around 40-45 million dollars. All the countries of the Entente were interested in Russia not leaving the war.
Pankin:
You said that Lenin made a revolution with his own money.
Gingerbread:
Party money.
Pankin:
We were asked a question: “Your Svanidze -2 smiles at me. And why did he, Ulyanov, live in Switzerland, Germany? Anathema!"
Gingerbread:
It is well known what money Lenin used to live there. Until 1916, until Lenin's mother died, he lived on money, in particular, transferred by his mother. By the way, he bitterly mourned the loss of his mother. They said that for the second time in their lives they saw him cry. Plus party money, which came from the collection in Russia, for the so-called donations, and for the printing of party literature. Large contributions were given by Maxim Gorky. Before the First World War it came that even Chaliapin gave a lot of money. Lenin did not show off, he lived rather modestly. He spent the whole of 1916 in complete poverty. There are his letters and notes of other people. Yes, of course he wasn't...
Pankin:
This is known even from Krupskaya's diaries.
Gingerbread:
Yes, Lenin lived on this money. His mother regularly, every month listed. I'm afraid to name the exact figure, in my opinion, about 50 rubles, those royal ones, multiply by a thousand, according to current money - 50-60 thousand rubles. This is the main money. Plus his salary as a released functionary in the party. There were not so many, in my opinion, 8 people, including Lenin. The income allowed him to live, but Lenin did not have any luxury.
Pankin:
Let's move on to the third point of your accusations of falsification. Stalin was the first to want to start a war against Hitler. No, it's not, Paul is sure. Many will agree with you here. Except, perhaps, the historian Rezun-Suvorov.
Gingerbread:
Just what is surprising and sad is that this thesis of the writer Suvorov-Rezun is supported by so many people. Especially today I googled how many people, and even historians, share this view. As a rule, this view is based on one paper. This paper was compiled on May 15, 1941 by Zhukov, called "Considerations of the General Staff on the deployment of troops." It was a draft version in which Zhukov hypothetically admitted that maybe we should have started the war first. With these papers, he came to Stalin, Stalin was extremely annoyed by this paper, as Zhukov himself later recalled. Stalin ordered the paper to be shelved. In the 60s, Doctor of Historical Sciences Viktor Anfilov discovered this paper. And everything is based on it. But Stalin did not give a move. At the same time, one must understand that the General Staff plays many options in any situation. And this is a possible offensive, and defense, and something else. However, the general message was that the USSR in no case wants to be the first to enter the war. Stalin hoped to the last that Hitler would get bogged down in a protracted war in Europe. Yes, by 1940 France was defeated, leaving only England. But he hoped that in 1941 the United States would enter the war. And the USSR, as he hoped, would sit out behind this war on the continent.
Pankin:
I can tell you with what money Lenin forged the revolution. “With the money of world Jewry,” listeners write to us. "Today the country does not belong to itself." Not sure if this is on topic. They also write: “I am a bus driver, and at work, many drivers use the Internet and the Transport. Yandex" in order to see a competitor. Perm". And then the same comrade continues: “Your comrade is lying, ... the sponsor Bronstein drew money for the revolution and other Jewish ...” and another bad word.
Gingerbread:
You see how much porridge people have in their heads.
Pankin:
Let's move on to the fourth point: America is our eternal enemy. America is our eternal friend, sings Pavel Pryanikov. Again, here, as with Stalin, who was the first to want to start a war against Hitler, here very many will agree with you. We have a call.
Peter:
For God's sake, let a history textbook be published under the editorship of Mr. Medinsky. And let there be only such a hat.
Pankin:
Do you agree that history textbooks should take into account the interests of the state?
Peter:
Let them publish an official history with the title "Official History", let the interests of the state be taken into account there. But if these are the interests of the state, understood as Mr. Medinsky understands, I feel sorry for our schoolchildren. And let them continue to publish anthologies, memoirs, and so on. When I studied at a Soviet school, our director said: you are future mathematicians, but the most important subject for you is history. Sheer truth. If our leaders - both Soviet and post-Soviet especially - knew at least something from our history, from the truth that your distinguished guest is talking about today, I completely agree with him, I think we would not be writing history for this new Russia . The story that comes out from the pen of people like Medinsky and so on is purely utilitarian. It is aimed at achieving some narrow group of people their own selfish goals. This is very sad, very sad. This could cost Russia its future.
Pankin:
Thanks a lot. They also write to us: “I fundamentally disagree with your historian. Pindosia has always been an enemy. Lend-Lease was not supplied for free. Khrushchev exhausted Stalin. Nikolai Romanov surrendered theirs. The economy was booming under him. Let Starikov read. I think, Pasha, that you have read Starikov. And I read. Starikov is not a professional historian. He is often accused of making absurd interpretations and rather controversial conclusions.
They write to us: “What, was Lenin’s mother a millionaire? Funny. Everything that you call sources of funding for the party is a drop in the ocean. Where does the main money come from? Tver".
Gingerbread:
Another source of income is interesting - Nadezhda Krupskaya in 1915 received an inheritance of 7 thousand rubles. She spent 3 thousand on the operation, because she suffered from Graves' disease. Lenin's family received 4,000 rubles, of which he gave another thousand rubles to the Sotsial-Democrat newspaper, to resume printing. And 3 thousand rubles was their income, on which they lived in 1915-1916. I assure you, there are documents, you can read about Lenin's income. Indeed, both party leaders, and even his ill-wishers - no one has ever noted any personal wealth of Lenin. Yes, of course, even during the famine of the civil war, he ate properly and well. But this was not some kind of transcendental wealth either.
Pankin:
Listeners wrote to us: “Medinsky seems to be saying and writing the right things. But I remember how Medinsky passionately, with all his might, supported Mikhalkov's anti-Soviet-Russophobic foul language - "Anticipation" and "Citadel". Some kind of discord in the head of an unsigned comrade.
Alexei:
City of Engels. I think that history should correspond to the interests of the state if the state has full sovereignty in every sense.
Pankin:
What do you have in mind?
Alexei:
During the loss of the Cold War, we introduced a system alien to us. This is not only capitalism, this is soft occupation.
Pankin:
We are addicted to it.
Alexei:
It has not yet been removed from our country. And therefore, if at this stage we adjust historical interests to our state, then we can get a catastrophe.
Pankin:
Still, there must be some kind of propaganda?
Alexei:
Of course there should be. But for this it is necessary that the state be self-sufficient and completely independent. As was the Soviet Union before 1953.
Pankin:
They write to us: “Of course, Medinsky is right. Gingerbread too. “Gentlemen, communism is 100% schizophrenia. We are brothers with the American people. Vladimir. They also write: “Thank you for the transfer. As always, very interesting and informative. I fundamentally disagree with Paul's last thesis. Vyacheslav.
Gingerbread:
About the fact that America was not our enemy.
Pankin:
Vitaly, Belgorod: “And what is your opinion on the issue of propaganda?” Personally, my opinion is this: of course, there should be propaganda. Of course, in a good way and on a reasonable scale. I think that under the Soviet regime there was excellent propaganda. And she was very stylish and beautiful. If you look at Soviet posters. And if you read these words, how it was all written. And if you listen to Soviet songs. And remember the "Hymn of the Aviators", the lines from this song: "We were born to make a fairy tale come true." And for 17 years - from 1921 until the beginning of the Soviet-Finnish war, we made an incredible breakthrough, which has no analogues, never was and never will be.
Gingerbread:
My short opinion. The main dates and events should not be hidden, they should be openly discussed. And the interpretation of history largely depends on the teacher, on the family, on the environment. Because, remember, in the 20th century alone, six constitutions have changed in our country, and how many authorities, and each authority, is trying to shove something of its own into history. It would be better if it was some kind of compressed ersatz, composed of the main events and dates, without any deep interpretation. And then there is the matter of the history teacher. Each region has its own history. Take the North Caucasus, Moscow or the Far East.
Pankin:
America is our eternal enemy. Let's.
Gingerbread:
The most important thing is that never in the entire history of relations between Russia and the United States have we had a war between these two countries. This is the first.
Pankin:
Now I'm going to argue with you. Do you know what war is? And the fact that now America has launched a duck that the Great Patriotic War, or rather, the Second World War, was won by the allies. That is the UK and the US.
Pankin:
Of course, the Allies won. That's how it should be said. Because it was really a union. Another thing is who contributed what to the victory.
Pankin:
Are you talking about the Soviet Union now?
Gingerbread:
About the union during the Second World War. Let's see the main stages, let's see only in the twentieth century, the United States and Russia. The first is salvation from the famine of 1921-1922. American agency ARA. The second is industrialization, a huge help. And the third is Lend-Lease. There are official figures. We received 11.3 billion dollars - products for this amount. And they were supposed to give back unused civilian equipment in the amount of only 1.3 billion. But even this Stalin did not give back. There were negotiations for a long time, he tried 300 million, 170 million, bargained. In the end, under Putin, they have already fully paid for Lend-Lease. This is a very long separate story. And under Brezhnev they traded, and under Yeltsin. In the end, in 2006, we paid 722 million modern dollars for lend-lease. More than 10 billion of those dollars is about 160 billion of today's dollars. But the main thing is not this. The main thing is that Lend-Lease assistance was critical in many areas. First of all, it is, of course, aviation fuel. This is the main thing. Because aviation fuel accounted for 70% of the total amount consumed by our aviation. Without supplies of this type of fuel from the USA, our aviation would be simply blind.
Pankin:
But they didn't help for free.
Gingerbread:
11.3 billion were delivered, but they asked for 1.3 billion back, which they did not give back.
Pankin:
I'll read out a few messages: "The essence of the story is in the description of what was as unbiased as possible." Sorry, this is not possible. “I will answer Medinsky’s statement with a question: the interests of which state should be taken into account by history textbooks in Russia?” Alas, we cannot answer this question for you. “History should reflect historical facts, not someone's interests. Andrey, Volzhsky. “A history textbook should be a history textbook. No propaganda, only real and truthful events. Alex, Stavropol".
Gingerbread:
I completely agree.
Pankin:
If possible. But, alas, this is not possible. You can agree as much as you like. We'll be back in exactly one week.
Gennady BORDYUGOV
I. PROLOGUE
HISTORIANS IN THE ERA OF WARS, REVOLUTIONS AND THE SOVIET STRUCTURE .................................................. 17
Vladimir ESAKOV
The idea of science in A.S. Lappo-Danilevsky ....................................................... ............................................. 17
Soviet power and the scientific community .............................................. .............................................. 19
Moscow – the center of academic science .............................................. ................................................. .29
New ideological pressure .............................................................. ................................................. ...... 34
Historians in the "thaw" and "new direction".................................................................. ............................................... 40
"PROFESSIONALS OF HISTORY" IN THE ERA OF PUBLICITY: 1985–1991 .................................. 55
Irina CHECHEL
Self-determination of a historical corporation in relation to
to the previous tradition .................................................................. ................................................. .............. 56
Self-determination of historical science 1985–1991 in relation to
to historical journalism .............................................................. ................................................. ............ 69
Historiographic culture of the Russian community of historians in 1985–2010 .............................. 95
II. TRANSIT: A SOCIOLOGICAL PORTRAIT OF THE COMMUNITY
Gennady BORDYUGOV, Sergey SHCHERBINA
1. Analysis of general demographic parameters.................................................... ................................. 122
2. Age and territorial characteristics ............................................... ............................. 127
3. Professional interests............................................................... ................................................. ........ 141
4. Change of priorities in scientific and popular science publications .............................................................. .. 167
5. Portrait of a Russian historian .............................................. ................................................. ...... 171
III. NEW FORMS OF ASSOCIATION OF SCIENTISTS
COMMUNITIES OF "NATIONAL HISTORIANS" .............................................................. ....................... 177
Dmitry LYUKSHIN
National histories in the national historiographical tradition .............................................. 177
Communities of “National Historians”: Life after the Sovereign Parade .............................................................. 180
Time of rethinking… canceled .................................................. ............................................... 183
"National Historians" about the period of "gathering Russian lands"
at the turn of the XX-XXI centuries: the search for a place in Russian historiography .................................................. ...... 185
RUSSIAN HISTORICAL JOURNALS: THREE MODELS
KNOWLEDGE ORGANIZATIONS AND COMMUNITIES .............................................................. .................................... 191
Natalia POTAPOVA
Journal as a Legacy: Experience in the Reconstruction of Academic Journals.................................................. 195
Magazine as a business: marketing principles by example
«New Literary Review».................................................................. ................................................. .215
Journal as a media project: strategic principles
on the example of the magazine "Rodina".................................................. ................................................. ............ 220
HISTORIANS IN THE INTERDISCIPLINARY COMMUNITY ............................................................................ .......... 234
Anton SVESHNIKOV, Boris STEPANOV
“Soviet means excellent”: interdisciplinarity in one single country .............................. 236
Romance of interdisciplinarity: "Odysseus" and "THESIS" ................. 239
"Dashing 90s": knowledge about the past between disciplines and institutions 242
Academic periodicals between the 1990s and 2000s.................................................. ........................... 247
IV. BEFORE THE CHALLENGES OF THE TURN OF THE CENTURY
THE EVE OF THE NEW ORTHODOXY. HISTORIAN AND POWER
IN PERESTROIKA AND POST-SOVIET RUSSIA.................................................................. ...................... 261
Vasily MOLODIAKOV
New orthodoxy - 1: "socialism" against "Stalinism" .............................................. ................... 262
New orthodoxy - 2: "democracy" against the "Soviet" .............................................. ................... 266
New orthodoxy - 3: "Putinists" against "morons" and "liberals" .................................................. .271
HISTORICAL COMMUNITY AND SENSATION CREATORS .............................................................. ........... 281
Nikita DEDKOV
On the ruins of the empire .............................................................. ................................................. ...................... 282
Background.................................................................. ................................................. ................................... 283
Away from the noise of the city .................................................... ................................................. ............ 286
Success................................................. ................................................. ............................................... 288
And what about historians? ................................................. .............. 289
BETWEEN COMPETITION AND PATERNALISM: "GRANT"
HISTORIAN IN MODERN RUSSIA....................................................... ............................................. 301
Igor NARSKY, Julia KHMELEVSKY
«Grant space».................................................................. ................................................. ................ 302
"Rules for the application of rules": the realities of the grant policy .................................................. ................ 306
Sketch for a portrait of a modern historian-grantee .............................................................. ............. 310
Postscript ............................................... ................................................. ................................... 317
MORALS OF MODERN RUSSIAN HISTORIANS: BACKGROUND
TO THE FALL AND HOPE FOR REVIVAL .............................................................. .............................. 321
Boris SOKOLOV
Social roots of morals .............................................................. ................................................. ............... 322
Writing dissertations for other people: shame or not shame? .............. 323
Scientific unanimity in the post-Soviet way and the struggle for power in historical science...................... 325
State fight against "falsifications that harm Russia",
and mores of historians .............................................. ................................................. ................................... 329
The epistemological roots of the current morals of Russian historians.................................................................. .. 331
Is there a community of Russian historians .............................................................. ............................ 334
The need for a charter of historians ....................................................... ................................................. .. 338
V. Russian scientific and historical community
at the end of the 19th – beginning of the 21st centuries: publications and research
1940s - 2010s
Joseph BELENKY
1. Institutions. Communications. Traditions................................................. ...................................... 344
2. Scientific schools in Russian historical science .............................................. ................... 371
3. Collections in honor and memory of domestic scientists-historians .............................................. .......... 389
4. Memoirs, diaries and letters of domestic historians.................................................. ................. 445
5. Bio-bibliography of scholars-historians .............................................. ............................................. 460
6. Biographical and bio-bibliographic dictionaries of historians.................................................................. ...... 468
NAME INDEX .............................................................. ................................................. ............................... 479
There are books, books and waste paper. The latter can be safely attributed to the absolute number of detective stories, romance novels, esotericism, some "textbooks and encyclopedias" and numerous pseudo-historical works, for example, by Viktor Suvorov-Rezun and Mark Solonik.
two-volume "Russian history. XX century" I came across one of the bookstores in Tomsk. Encyclopedic format and plump volume. No less hefty price. I began to read with great interest. And the further I got acquainted with this "masterpiece", the more questions arose - not at all about history, but about the authors ... Such a presentation of "history" could well be expected from a descendant of a white émigré or an unfinished Vlasovite. Blatant disregard for modern spelling and punctuation, very strange names of historical events (what do you think of the "Soviet-Nazi war"?), Finally, confusion and vacillation in the presentation of historical facts, not to mention the complete distortion and stretching them under the concept invented by the authors .. Stuffing both volumes back on the shelf, I also thought: it would be interesting to get acquainted with the opinion of professional historians about this work, supposedly consecrated by the beard of A.I.
Desires tend to come true sometimes. Accidentally came across two reviews cited below. The first - written with a great deal of irony - was written by a professional historian. The second - to the professor of the theological university. To his credit, it must be said that Boris Filippov had much more conscience (and perhaps fear of God for a lie) than the authors of the reviewed opus, among whom there are also clergymen.
Pitying the townspeople, I will not give extensive excerpts from this two-volume book, here is a link to several chapters from the two-volume book. Already on them you can make a sufficient impression. And now for the reviews themselves.
Alexander Shishkov.
History of gay Russia from Professor Zubov
Alexander Shishkov - Candidate of Historical Sciences, Polotsk State University (Belarus). The article was first published in the Russian historical journal "Rodina" (2010, Nos. 6-7) and provided byIA REGNUM News
for publication by the editors of the journal.
Volume one. Amazing near
Russian history. XX century. 1894-1939. Moscow: Astrel; AST, 2009. 1023 p. Tyr. 5000 copies
I will make a reservation right away: I have no complaints about 42 of the 43 authors of the History of Russia. First, it is absolutely impossible to reveal who wrote what from both volumes. This seems to be such a newfangled practice: in the same vein, the "History of Ukraine" was published in Russian in 2008, edited by V. A. Smolii ( History of Ukraine. Popular science essays. M., 2008.): on 1070 pages it was not possible to distinguish between the texts of 14 authors, and often well-known Ukrainian specialists sang, as they say, out of order. But the genre of that book was at least designated as "popular science essays", and Professor Zubov's project clearly aims for more - "to tell the truth about the life and ways of the peoples of Russia in the twentieth century"(S. 5). Secondly, the editor-in-chief himself boldly declares in the preface: "All the flaws are on me"(p. 6).
The official website of MGIMO (U) reports that the respected Professor Zubov is actually an expert on parliamentarism in Thailand, so the responsibility he takes for himself and 42 other authors is impressive, because the history of Russia gives way to journalism of not the best bottling already on the 7th page of the first volumes, and ahead of the reader, we recall, another thousand pages. Looking ahead, we note that there will be relatively calm, almost neutral pieces of presentation, but the style of a terrible horror story set by Zubov's preface is constantly present, and where it is difficult to screw something in, "notes of the responsible editor" are inserted into the text. This is how the tone of the whole story is set. : "In 1917-1954, tens of millions of the best citizens of Russia were killed by the Russian people themselves, millions of others were expelled from the country ... In the 20th century, the country lost, according to our estimates, 95 percent of its cultural treasures, a lot of cultural wealth, and, finally, disintegrated in 1991"(S. 7). It’s scary, even horror, but there are no links at all, where these millions with interest come from, and then we will meet many more such crafty figures.
This book, in theory, should have seen the light of day 15 years ago, when they tried to free themselves from the legacy of the Soviet era in the post-Soviet space as quickly and loudly as possible. At one time, the voluminous volume of the "History of the CPSU" was colloquially called the "gray brick": in the 1990s, many expected that they would soon release the same brick, only viciously anti-Soviet. Now there are two bricks at once, the chronological boundary between them was 1939. The angle chosen by Professor Zubov to present the history of Russia in the 20th century can be defined as the point of view of a landowner who was not cut by the Bolsheviks. Already Professor Preobrazhensky in Bulgakov, being, as you know, an anti-Soviet element himself, treated this character very ironically.
(bout " uncut by the Bolsheviks landowner"- can't be more precise. It is enough to give a list of some of these 42 authors in order to understand who is xy. So:
"Kirill Alexandrov (St. Petersburg), archpriest Nikolai Artyomov (Munich), Alexey Bobrinsky (Moscow), Sergey Volkov (Moscow), Ivan Voronov (Abakan), Natalya Zhukovskaya (Moscow), Vladislav Zubok ( Philadelphia), Dmitry Kalikhman (Saratov), Alexey Kara-Murza (Moscow), Alexey Kelin ( Prague), Vladimir Kolosov (Moscow), Mikhail Krasnov (Moscow), Vladimir Lavrov (Moscow), Boris Lyubimov (Moscow), archpriest Georgy Mitrofanov (St. Petersburg), Alexander Pantsov ( Columbus, Ohio), Yuri Pivovarov (Moscow), Mikhail Slavinsky ( Frankfurt am Main), Vladimir Sogrin (Moscow), Vittorio Strada ( Venice), Nikita Struve ( Paris), Leon-Gabriel Taiwans (Riga), Nikolai Tolstoy-Misloslavsky ( London), Tikhon Troyanov (Geneva), Sergey Firsov (St. Petersburg) and many others".
Diogenes.)
It is not befitting for an unfinished landowner to delve into historical details, hence the phenomenon of inaccuracies, errors and absurdities, which are not uncommon in the first volume. Actually, the presentation, starting with the accession of Nicholas II, anticipates a very short course of Russia's past until the end of the century before last. The originality of the interpretations here is much greater than in the main part. What is it worth "famous throughout Europe pirate and adventurer Rurik"(p. 8); on the same page it is stated that the Millennium of Russia was allegedly celebrated in 1852, and not in 1862. From Thailand, it seems to be more visible. The initial history of Russia is described exotically: princes Vladimir and Yaroslav for some reason cannot exist on their own, but certainly with the Scandinavian versions of their names: Voldemar and Yaritsleiv. Other fragments of the text are so entertaining that they resemble not the best examples of student term papers:
"Tatars also demanded tithes in women. In order to protect their wives and daughters from being stolen into harems, Russian men hid them from the eyes of tax collectors. So women left public life, in which they played a significant role in the Kyiv period, and this made them even more rude morals of Russian men(p. 24).
The subsequent militant anti-Bolshevism does not prevent the authors from speaking impartially about the persons ruling in the state. In particular, the first of Ivanov Vasilyevich got it:
"Under Ivan III, a state ideology was introduced in Russia, which in its essence was preserved throughout its subsequent history. Russia is declared a besieged fortress of the true faith, and the Russian ruler is the only keeper of the shrine of Orthodoxy"(p. 35).
The most complex historical plots, over which the thought of experts still struggles, are solved in a very convenient style of "simple solutions": "From 1730 to 1741, the regime of German temporary workers raged in Russia"(p. 54). He raged - and that's the point, the details of the "epoch of palace coups" are unnecessary for writers. The XVIII century, in particular Peter I and Catherine II, also fell on nuts, especially the Enlightenment. On the 59th page, it is commemorated and "arbitrariness of absolute monarchical power in the 19th century", the completely ambiguous figure of Nicholas I is presented in a similar vein (p. 60).
The recommended reading list for the introductory chapter explains something. The authors relied on the classical works of Klyuchevsky, Lyubavsky, Platonov, modern studies of Boris Mironov, a well-known historian from St. Petersburg, and also on the works of Richard Pipes. In the exoticism of their views, Zubov and his associates sometimes surpass even this last one...
The story about the last imperial reign is almost devoid of remarks by the responsible editor and, against the general background of the book, looks somewhere even solid. Much is stated in the traditional way: mentioned "the reckless policy of the emperor in the Japanese question"(p. 95), it is mentioned that the traditionally scolded Pavel Milyukov knew 18 foreign languages (p. 170), and very useful statistics on the number of Russian parties at the beginning of the 20th century are also given (p. 186-187). There are few signs that we are reading that same book in this part of the text: Leo Tolstoy is condemned for his religious views (p. 108), the imperial decree of April 17, 1905 "On strengthening the principles of religious tolerance" (p. 197), is scolded, yes hero of Soviet adventure films Kamo announced "outright bandit"(S. 187). (Are there bandits who are not outspoken? - Diogenes).
There are also logical interpretations of subsequent Russian troubles: "The results of the elections to the I and II State Dumas showed that only a small rich and privileged part of the population was loyal to the state regime of the Russian Empire - large landowners, the clergy, a new business class. Neither the peasantry, nor the workers, nor the zemstvo intelligentsia supported the imperial regime. They did not support regime and foreigners, who in the empire were up to 40% of the population"(S. 205). The extremely respectful interpretation of the life and work of P. A. Stolypin, which has already become a tradition, is supplemented by useful information about the intrigues against the reformer by Empress Alexandra Feodorovna and Rasputin (p. 212) and about those executed when Pyotr Arkadievich was Chairman of the Council of Ministers - they, according to the authors, It was "over 2800 people" (p. 208). Rasputin is almost the same as in the famous film by Elem Klimov - "a vicious and ignorant person"(p. 344), the authors do not like "administrative nationalism in relation to the non-Russian peoples of the empire"(S. 252), but personally to Professor Zubov not on the way and with the Black Hundreds: "In a multinational empire, support for Great Russian nationalism was not only morally vicious from an Orthodox point of view ... but also politically extremely dangerous"(S. 253).
Everything gradually changes when it comes to the events of the First World War. Surely, following Pipes, the authors insist on the thesis about "national expansion of the Serbs"(p. 239), and Gavrila Princip is directly and without fuss declared "Serbian nationalist"(p. 290)? When it comes to Lenin's defeatism, expressions are no longer chosen. The events of August 23, 1915, when Nicholas II assumed the duties of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, and Ilyich was busy at a conference in Zimmerwald, are interpreted as follows: "On the same day, the Russian tsar laid on his shoulders an unbearable burden for the outcome of the war, and the future "leader of the world proletariat" embarked on the path of betrayal and outright treason to his homeland"(p. 313).
The further, the more the biting epithet takes precedence over historical analysis: the total Leninist betrayal for Zubov is the same undoubted truth as for Stalin Trotsky's donkey ears, which, as you know, were seen everywhere. The most difficult for historians and very simple for our authors, the problem of Germany's financial participation in the affairs of the Bolsheviks is solved simply and sweepingly: the leader of the Bolsheviks is an agent of German intelligence (the first mention of this is on pp. 365-366), "50 million gold marks or more than 9 tons of gold"(S. 405), rowing gold and after the "sealed wagon".
There are plots in which a thousand-page book frankly "floats", for example, the Polish question at the beginning of 1917. It is completely unclear what caused such an over-optimistic passage: "At the last moment of the existence of the Russian Empire, the Russian government quite freely inclined to restore the full independence of the Polish state"(S. 352). Not possessing at that time even an inch of the territory of the Kingdom of Poland, a lot could be designed "completely freely" ... Belarusians also followed the Poles: it is mentioned "one of the most prominent ideologists of the Belarusian statehood, Polish historian Mitrofan Dovnar-Zapolsky"(S. 515), who had nothing to do with Polish historiography. Following the imperial custom, the Azerbaijanis were called "Tatars" without any comments (p. 517).
Already the February Revolution is portrayed as something strange and monstrous, to use the language of the vile traitor Ulyanov: "In the middle of the third year of the Great War, the Russians ... rebelled, feeling complete indifference to the fate of the fatherland, but completely absorbed in their own problems, wanting peace, warm bread, but not victory"(S. 373). The abdication of Nicholas II is not only portrayed as illegal (p. 381), but advice is given to the people of 1917 on how they should have acted: "Shulgin, Guchkov and other persons who were present in the saloon car during the discussion of the text of the manifesto should immediately point out to the sovereign the legal inconsistency, but no one did this"(S. 383). The new government does not look like such in the eyes of Zubov and colleagues: "The provisional government despised ... the natural succession of supreme power. And therefore, its power, not only formally legally, but actually turned out to be illusory ... As a result, the country fell into the abyss of illegal existence. The legal order that had been created for centuries was completely destroyed"(S. 385). Vasily Vitalievich Shulgin then fell over again: for our authors, he "famous nationalist Vitaly Vitalievich Shulgin"(S. 474).
On the 400th page, a never-before-seen element of xenophobia, characteristic of undercut landowners, suddenly appears in the presentation: "The first composition of the Central Committee of the Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies is noteworthy. There is only one Russian person in it - Nikolsky. The rest are Chkheidze, Dan (Gurevich), Liber (Goldman), Gotz, Gendelman, Kamenev (Rozenfeld), Saakyan, Krushinsky (Polish) The revolutionary people had such a small sense of Russian national self-consciousness that without embarrassment they took themselves into the hands of foreigners(Is there anyone who wants to explain the meaning of this phrase? - Diogenes) , did not doubt that random Poles, Jews, Georgians, Armenians can best express his interests"(S. 400). A discussion of the configuration of faces logically leads to the camp of "freemasons": “Lenin entered into a criminal conspiracy with the enemy in order to carry out his power-hungry goals with his money. But there was another conspiracy - the Masonic one ... The Jews were always supportive of the Masons and gladly joined their lodges ... The Bolsheviks, on the other hand, are the danger on the left - Freemasons overlooked"(S. 437, 438, 441).
From this place, many elements of the presentation do not go beyond the framework of contemporary propaganda in the spirit of some Demyan Poor, only with the opposite sign: "All actions to maintain power were thought out long ago by Lenin and Trotsky and relied on brutal violence, false propaganda, intimidation and exhaustion of potential opponents with hunger and poverty"(S. 470). Further, the labels are glued non-stop, one more terrible than the other: terribly sorry for "ours", in the terminology of the authors, allies, "whom Russia, captured by the Bolsheviks, betrayed in the most vile way"(S. 502). This is about the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, and then the exotic version of the connection, and possibly the leadership of Wilhelm II in the murder of the royal family, led by his cousin Nicholas II, freezes the soul (C. 529-530). Together with the Kaiser, the laurels of the regicide were hung on the leader of the Hungarian rebels of 1956, Imre Nagy (p. 533). There is no more evidence here than in the stories of the miraculously saved Anastasia, but the moral is at the end of the lethal force: "As the military situation worsened, the German political circles became more and more clearly aware that the meanness that they committed against Russia, supporting the Bolsheviks, did not benefit them, but rather disgraced the glorious name of the German chivalry, and from the Christian point of view, it was also obvious sin"(S. 530-531). And it's a shame for the knights...
After that, terrible pictures are drawn of the Red Terror, the victims of which are calculated from a variety of sources, for example, according to the British newspaper "The Scotsman" of 1923, which gave an incredibly accurate figure of 1,776,747 people (p. 552), this is not enough, and more than 200 pages later, 2,310,000 people were declared victims of Bolshevik atrocities (p. 763). Terror white gives, according to Zubov and colleagues, about 200 times fewer victims (p. 764), and therefore they were not considered among the victims of the Civil War. After such calculations, the Bolsheviks are only obscenely commemorated: "Russia, according to the constitution, had the appearance of a parliamentary republic, but in reality it was a country captured and held by a communist gang". And on the same page: "VKP(b), like any criminal group..."(S. 564). Further, the criminal theme did not receive much continuation, which is a pity: the similarities and differences between the Bolshevik Party and the organization of some Don Corleone need to be specified, since this is written so unambiguously.
But the opponents of the Bolsheviks in the Civil War are all completely not only white, but also fluffy. Any objectivity here is alien to the authors: there are not even the usual words in such cases about "fratricidal slaughter", the exploits of the white fighters are described in detail and enthusiastically, including the murder of Vasily Ivanovich Chapaev by them (p. 628). Reservations are rare: it turns out "whites often had to resort to forceful coercion"(S. 627). It also turns out that there was "the contrast between the heroism and self-sacrifice of the army and the self-interest, greed and laxity of the rear ... in the rear, fenced with bayonets of white fighters, yesterday's Russia was rotting, the one that gave rise to the revolution"(S. 640). And further: "Crimes perpetrated by whites at the front and in the rear were not uncommon. But they never turned into a policy of white power"(S. 643). The knights are almost Germanic, without fear or reproach...
A separate chapter is devoted to the role of Jews in the Civil War. For some reason, the authors did not dare to speak the rough language of the posters of the White movement, they resorted to confusing explanations using hockey terminology: "In the leadership of the RCP (b) and in the Communist Party as a whole, the numerical advantage was with the Russians. Many among the sadistic Bolsheviks were Georgians, Armenians, Latvians, Poles, Chinese, as well as people of other nationalities. And Lenin, and Bukharin, and Molotov, and Dzerzhinsky, and Latsis, and Stalin, and many other major figures of the movement, were not Jews. But to the same extent as the Jewish Bolsheviks, they were all apostates who betrayed their people and culture "(S. 646). But at the same time "in the Kyiv Cheka, famous for its sadistic mass cruelties, Jewish Bolsheviks made up three-quarters of the" staff "... These people, however, because of the many family ties, tried to spare their fellow tribesmen"(S. 647).
According to the authors, any non-Bolsheviks are better than Bolsheviks always and everywhere. For example, Ukrainian nationalists - Professor Zubov has a special opinion about them, positive: "Ukrainian nationalism has always been precisely an anguish - an anguish of a person who loves both his mother and father, but because of the cruelty of the father, he is forced to defend his mother". When it comes to national movements, the professor and his associates are desperately confused in their testimony. Jozef Piłsudski's colleague Lucian Zeligowski, who captured Vilna in October 1920, is named "General L. Zelngovsky"(S. 663), and the head of the Polish state himself is named Josef in the Czech manner (S. 683), even the date of his death is distorted (May 10, 1935 instead of 12, S. 689). At the same time, the absurdities are just beginning: the border of the Commonwealth of 1772, so revered by the Poles after the partitions, was remade into the borders of 1792, which no one ever even thought of demanding (p. 684). About the Soviet-Polish war of 1920, we become aware that "in much more cultured Poland, Lenin's plans failed miserably"(S. 687), and in the tragic story of the death of captured Red Army soldiers, it turns out that Lenin is to blame, who abandoned them "by chance"(S. 688).
Love for all national movements ends with Belarusians - in the spirit of the Black Hundreds, unloved by Zubov, it is reported with resentment that "statehood was given to a people who did not seek it, and independence was given to people who did not seek it"(S. 667). And on the same page, a story about Stalin's insidious plans for "separation from Poland of its eastern Russian-speaking voivodeships", which, however, are not indicated geographically in any way: after all, this is not Thailand ...
There are more than three hundred pages to the end of this fascinating book. Let's not wear out the patience of readers and bump into every stupidity and absurdity of this really large-scale falsification of history. Everything else is quite logically recoverable: the Bolsheviks and the state they created should not count on some minimal objectivity here. And it is worth stumbling upon stories of a special nature, which are rarely found in anti-Stalinist journalism because of their improbability. Here is how the foreign policy of Soviet Russia is assessed: "By diplomatic means, the Bolsheviks continued to undermine the moral foundation of a civilized community"(S. 695-696). And what is the morality at the base, help, please ...
The main thing to say about "Bolshevik(We considered it fair to translate quotes from the book into the mainstream of traditional spelling, moving away from many capital letters and spellings like "less c cue. - Approx. ed.) a regime that has committed incredible crimes against humanity in the first five years of its existence", you can answer very vaguely about the reasons for the defeat of the White movement in the Civil War. The contribution of the Red Army to this victory is not seen at all in the book. Logical lamentations that "out of all 150 million Russian citizens, 300 thousand volunteers have gathered with sin in half"(p. 732) is replaced by meaningless dreams: the sailors of Kronstadt, the Tambov peasants and other participants in the uprisings against the Soviet regime are invited to support "Kolchak, Denikin, Yudenich at the decisive moment of their offensive ... The dead would be heroes, the survivors would be citizens of a free Russia"(S. 749-750). Heroes, by the way, Zubov and his comrades have very specific ones. Eliminated by the Soviet special services in 1930 "General Kutepov can rightfully be considered a national hero of Russia"(S. 871), and another hero, pilot Nikolai Ragozin, fought with the Republicans on the side of Franco (S. 986). But the philosopher Georgy Fedotov, who during the war in Spain showed sympathy for Dolores Ibarruri, is condemned by the authors, and the Republicans themselves are accused of sacrilege (pp. 985, 987).
The further presentation of Soviet history in the 1920s-1930s is quite easy to guess. The poorly educated villain Stalin: a paid agent of the Okhrana (p. 861), who was involved in the death on the operating table of Frunze and his own wife Nadezhda Alliluyeva, who ordered not to touch Leonid Nikolaev, who planned to kill Kirov (p. 944) is much worse than Hitler: "Horrors like the Bolsheviks, the Nazis have not yet created close to 1938"(S. 1003). These words, by the way, justify not anything, but the Munich agreement ...
Two "holodomors" and a terrible collectivization, according to Zubov, many times outweigh the achievements of industrialization and cultural policy, which the authors for some reason reduce to nothing more than propaganda (p. 803). And here Hitler yields to Stalin: "The total number of Russian and Ukrainian peasants killed by Stalin in 1932-1933 exceeds the number of Jews killed by Hitler, and the number of those killed by all the warring countries on the fronts of the First World War"(S. 901). There is nowhere to go further - by the end of the 1930s, we are drawing "the broken, unconscious and enslaved people of Russia"(S. 1005), and they set him as an example "young state communities of Poland, Finland and the Baltic states", which turns out to be "the greatest successes ... have been achieved in the field of developing the national consciousness of a new generation of their citizens. Over the 20 years of independence, young Poles, Finns, Latvians, Estonians and Lithuanians got used to the independence of their countries, were taught by school to love and understand national culture and live in an open world with permeable borders(S. 985). And at the same time, there is not a word about the national policy of these authorities, for example, Polish ones in the lands of Western Belarus and Western Ukraine, nor about the fact that the young Polish citizen Stepan Bandera, who in 1934 was preparing a successful assassination attempt on the Minister of Internal Affairs of his country, was taught to love by school. Bronislav Peratsky...
We have already mastered the first thousand pages with sin in half. But this is just a saying, and the tale about why the Russian people should fall in love with General Andrei Vlasov as a liberator will follow in volume two ...
Volume two. Muddle instead of music.
Russian history. XX century. 1939-2007.- M.: Astrel; AST, 2009. 829 p. Tyr. 5000 copies
The second volume of the epic from Russian history already known to the reader is not as simple as its colleague already known to the reader. The first 187 pages, which deal with events up to and including 1945, undoubtedly continue the line begun, and then a completely different presentation begins, on the whole quite appropriate in ordinary educational literature and, with a few exceptions, useful in the very process of teaching, for which, in fact, I rushed to conquer the depths of this almost two thousand-page monumental structure. 
It is unfortunate that the second volume, being seemingly an independent book, is devoid of any identifying marks: the presentation starts right off the bat with part 4, no preface, no memorable list of 43 authors (42, I remind you, not moreover, I volunteered to answer for all executive editor Professor Andrey Borisovich Zubov) is not attached here. Those of the readers who, for some reason, happened to buy only the volume that tells about 1939-2007 (and spend a lot of money, moreover), will rack their brains for a long time in search of the missing parts. Even in the text given at the end "instead of a conclusion", there is not a word about it. Only in the index of names, starting on page 812, one can inquire that there are two volumes, under Roman numerals I and II. But it is impossible to find these numbers on the volumes themselves. Such, presumably, are the rules for the conspiracy of historical works in order to confuse casual buyers.
The direction of the main blow in a disguised volume is directed to the events of the pre-war years and the Great Patriotic War. For Professor Zubov and associates, the latter does not exist - there is a war "Soviet-Nazi" . The presentation on those same 187 pages often goes in parallel courses - the presentation of facts goes on as usual, and historical moralizing, no higher than rotten even at the time of writing the low truths of the moral code of the builder of communism (1961), proudly march alongside.
In the very difficult history of the last months before the start of World War II, the main blame lies with the leader of the CPSU (b): "Stalin craved war... Having conquered Russia, the Bolsheviks craved no less than the Nazis for world domination, they were inspired by him"(p. 4). This mournful aria about the world revolution is clearly from a different opera, but it is performed loudly and distinctly. The diplomatic games on the eve of September 1939 are described in sufficient detail, but only Soviet politicians are given a moral assessment: "Stalin and Molotov played a cynical game on two chessboards at once"(p. 6).
The heroes are chosen wisely - these are the Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs, Colonel Jozef Beck and his government. We do not learn from the book that the Germanophile Beck brought September 1, 1939, to a large extent closer with his policy, but it is noted "staunch resistance of the Polish government"(p. 4), Beck’s negative answers in August 1939 to requests from Paris and London about the possibility of the Red Army passing through Polish territory are given in passing: England and France, and "conspiracy of two dictators", but not to the ministers in Warsaw with their strange foreign policy. For the authors, the situation around August 23, 1939 is extremely simple: without an agreement with Stalin, Hitler would not have dared to attack Poland (p. 12). This opinion is, to put it mildly, undeniable.
In the paragraph under the eloquent title "The Conquest and Partition of Poland, Katyn" it is useless to look for information about the atrocities and repressions of the Nazis against the Polish people - eloquently reflected, among other things, in Andrzej Wajda's film "Katyn". Ukrainians and Belarusians in the lands occupied by the Red Army after September 17, 1939 are found only with gnashing of teeth, citing Polish statistics from 1938 on the presence in the state of 24 million Poles, 5 million Ukrainians and 1.4 million Belarusians. Without mentioning a word about the "charms" of the national policy of the Second Rzeczpospolita (the mentioned statistics were falsified within its framework), the authors, without any evidence, castigate Stalin for allegedly ordering to write in Pravda about the presence of 8 million Ukrainians and 3 million Belarusians.
The well-known Western version of the "seizure of Eastern Poland" (better known under the name of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus) was tried to deepen by the editor-in-chief himself. It should be noted that Professor Zubov with his comments in the second volume makes his way to the reader very rarely - only seven times, which noticeably facilitates reading. But in his very first "opinion" Andrei Borisovich makes a stunning historical discovery: "But if you look deeper and do not consider the communist regime legal, then it is clear that the peace of 1921 is illegal in principle, because it was concluded by the Poles with the criminal communist regime. But then it is all the more not for the criminal communist regime to restore justice"(p. 14). Out of the blue, everything was tangled up to the limit. Such thoughts, hopefully, never occurred to even the most anti-Soviet Polish historian - the Peace of Riga in March 1921, as you know, was vital for the Poles themselves: the young state, naturally, needed internationally recognized borders. In this text of the responsible editor, consonances with Molotov's well-known phrase about the "ugly offspring of the Treaty of Versailles" are guessed: since the world is illegal in principle, then the offspring is appropriate. But in the same commentary on the same page, Professor Zubov manages to write a few lines below about "annexation of the eastern part of Poland". Since the world is illegal, where does Poland get the eastern part from? Here you will remember Alexander Sergeevich: "Shishkov, I'm sorry: I don't know how to translate" ...
But the plots that are really important for understanding the situation at the end of 1939, for example, the episode about the transfer of Vilna in October 1939 to "bourgeois Lithuania", are presented briefly and indistinctly (p. 15). True, the paragraph with the formidable title "The Capture of the Baltic States, Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina" was written without much sympathy for the "victims" of this very "capture", the authors' unconditional sympathies seem to end with Colonel Beck. When describing the Soviet-Finnish war, it is stated with bitterness: "The frightened Baltic States cowardly refused to even verbally condemn the actions of the Bolsheviks in the League of Nations, although Soviet aircraft bombing Finland took off from Soviet bases on Estonian territory"(p. 17). The Balts generally let us down: "At first, many Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians greeted the Red Army with sympathy"(p. 18). It is rightly emphasized that "Romanians who lived west of the Prut treated the indigenous inhabitants of Bessarabia as second-class people"(p. 19). The events of June 1940 also had pleasant consequences for the authors: "In Bessarabia, 10 underground members from the NTS, taking advantage of the temporary openness of the border, crossed into the USSR in order to bring the ideas of the anti-Stalinist revolution into the country"(p. 19). An intrigued inexperienced reader, just about, will undertake to look for that same revolution in the book ...
The same reader may get the impression that Hitler, who had been thrashed by the perfidious Bolsheviks, had to lose his temper and prepare for war. It turns out that Stalin cunningly violated the secret agreements of August 23, 1939 and took over the Northern Bukovina, which was not designated there, which Molotov called interest for the use of Bessarabia by Romania in 1918-1940 (pp. 18-19). And generally speaking, "after the Soviet annexations of 1939-1940, the configuration of borders in the East took on an increasingly unpleasant shape for the Reich"(p. 28). As if it was not the Nazi elite who coordinated these borders ...
So we gradually get to the war, which we are rightfully accustomed to calling the Great Patriotic War. (But not the authors of this work. The title of the chapter describing the events of the Second World War is noteworthy: "Soviet-Nazi war 1941-1945 and Russia". Only from the name one can draw quite logical (but incorrect) conclusions: that a) the war was fought between the Soviet country and the Nazi country, and b) Russia in this war either took a neutral position or was an ally of one of the parties. - Diogenes).
If the pre-war situation is described in a single sharply anti-Soviet spirit, then the events of 1941-1945 turned out to be an incredible conglomeration of assessments, where there was a place for a long-established Soviet point of view, updated conclusions of modern Russian historiography, and sympathetic texts close to the second wave of Russian emigration about the Russian security corps and ROA. Sergey Kudryashov recently wrote about the last story in Rodina: "Praisers of Vlasov are very active today, including Archpriest G. Mitrofanov and St. Petersburg historian K. Alexandrov, who are among the authors of the voluminous "History of Russia" published in 2009, edited by MGIMO professor A. Zubov. All with the same "disastrous stubbornness" admirers of the hanged traitor paint a fantastic image of a "patriot" "capable of leading the Russian anti-Stalinist resistance ... and attracting Russian people with a positive political program" (Kudryashov S. In search of the history of war // Motherland. 2010. No. 5. P. 8.). There is nothing to add to this (the quote cited by Kudryashov is placed in this volume on pp. 154-155).
It is noteworthy that it is in the texts about the war that the anti-Bolshevik pathos of this work first begins to slip, and then practically disappears altogether. The Great Patriotic War is described according to the principle of a layer cake, which makes reading extremely difficult and confusing in search of the real point of view of the creators of the book. They seem to start in a familiar vein: "The German soldier was an economic peasant, a farmer or a city dweller - active, well-educated and enterprising. The faceless mass of Red Army soldiers consisted of passive collective farmers downtrodden and tortured by a hopeless life"(p. 39). This monstrous "toast" to the victorious soldier is supplemented by an ornate doubt of a different kind: "Imitating the emperor Alexander the Blessed, for 25 years of whose reign in Russia not a single person was executed in Russia, the bloody tyrant declared the outbreak of the war "Patriotic", wanting to unite his criminal regime with the homeland dishonored by him"(p. 43). Such things allow us to call this two-volume book as a whole staying outside the tradition of historical science familiar to us, from where, in fact, the subtitle to our article comes from.
But already on the next pages, the heroic history of the Brest Fortress is presented from absolutely correct positions, using vocabulary unusual for this work: "selfless courage and heroism of Soviet soldiers". As a literature subject, the reader is offered a wonderful book by S. S. Smirnov. The circumstances of the Stalingrad (pp. 79-84) and Kursk (pp. 88-90) battles are described in the same logical way. The authors, following the journalism of the last 20 years, cast doubt on the circumstances of the exploits of the Panfilov guardsmen and Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya (p. 56-57), emphasizing once again that the cold prevented the Wehrmacht from taking Moscow (p. 55), they were careful not to touch other significant symbols of heroism .
True, the shift in emphasis is obvious - the history of various kinds of collaborators, the activities of others, "who went to self-government bodies to alleviate the fate of the population abandoned by the Bolsheviks"(p. 94), is undeservedly praised. Among them, on the same page, a certain P. D. Ilyinsky, who stayed in Polotsk during the occupation, was named, who left a memory in our area as a vile traitor, but who was noted after the war with surprisingly “true” memories, according to which everyone allegedly worked in the local Gestapo the same pre-war employees of the NKVD. The partisans who fought the Nazis, it turns out, did "a war more cruel and inhuman"(p. 95).
One of the most brilliant operations of the war called "Bagration" generous words of the authors allocate on p. 140 exactly two and a half lines. A voluminous text is devoted to Stalin's insidiousness in relation to the Warsaw Uprising, including a passage about Roosevelt's conspiracy with Stalin in Tehran(p. 148), and this is the story: "Standing on the other bank of the Vistula, the Soviet army waited until the Germans put down the uprising"(p. 145). As if there weren’t hundreds of kilometers of rapid advance across the Belarusian land in June-July 1944, they were sitting on the banks of the Vistula, doing nothing ...
Finally, the anti-Soviet line begins to evaporate when we encounter a scientifically incorrect definition: Stalin, it turns out, was "Russian national communist"(p. 149). There will also be in the text the stories about the rape of German women by the Red Army, and the version of the emigrant N. Tolstoy-Miloslavsky about "victims of Yalta"(Rodina, as I recall, exposed its failure back in 1991), there will also be an offensive typo: according to the book, the allies landed in Normandy not on June 6, but on July 6, 1944 (p. 143). But the war will end in victory, and the authors do not even try to increase the official figure of 27 million Soviet casualties over the past 20 years.
It remains only to find out the opinion of the responsible editor about that war. Here it is: "The suffering of the peoples of Russia under the Bolsheviks was so unbearable that we now have no right to judge anyone, recognizing moral flaws in any choice of fate in those years. It was tragic, defending Russia, to forge shackles for your children under the Stalinist regime; it was tragic, fighting against Stalin , to forge the same shackles - under Hitler's "(p. 113). Therefore, Professor Zubov sincerely and single-handedly (the team of authors, as we remember for a long time, had nothing to do with it) believes that the people who left autographs on the Reichstag and took part in the Victory Parade on June 24, 1945 were completely struck by a moral flaw and were busy with hard work on forging shackles... I'm afraid most readers will appreciate such moralizing with words close in spirit to the appeals of the French football player Nicolas Anelka to the French coach Raymond Domenech. We, while remaining within the framework of political correctness, will call such an approach defective.
I will stop here - from the 188th page of the second volume, despite the menacing headings about "the period of degradation of communist totalitarianism", contains a text of a completely different nature, which, on the whole, is within the framework of historical science and is solid in terms of factography and estimates. However, the weight of the previous 1.25 volumes is clearly pulling the whole project back into the category of works that are definitely outside the tradition.
(In my opinion, about the "text ... being in general within the framework of historical science and thorough in factography and estimates" the author -
Alexander Shishkov- is very wrong. Most likely, he was simply embarrassed to admit that he was tired of forcing his brain with further reading and therefore limited himself to just a quick look. Here is what, for example, Vitaly Tretyakov, dean of the Higher School of Television of Moscow State University, writes:
"If our born in 1991 gave birth (??? Okay, let's say Tretyakov does not consider Soviet historians to be such. But Platonov, Solovyov, Klyuchevsky - they are not historians? - Diogenes) historical science two-volume "History of Russia. XX century" edited by prof. A. Zubov, where there is no Great Patriotic War, but there is a section "The Soviet-Nazi War of 1941-45 and Russia", so be it - let a hundred flowers bloom. True, the team of authors and enthusiastic reviewers seem to hope that this work will be crowned with the State Prize, but this does not matter either. I hope, however, that the people making the decision will read at least a paragraph devoted to the life of Soviet people in the 1950s and 80s. Zhvanetsky after that should stop writing - the historians turned out to be funnier than his, although they seemed to be writing seriously. ")
Another review - this time by a professor at a theological university. To his credit, it must be said that Boris Filippov had a much stronger conscience (and perhaps fear of God for slander) than the authors of the opus under review.
Boris Filippov, professor at St. Tikhon Orthodox Humanitarian University.
The swing at the true history of Russia in the twentieth century turned into a blow to Soviet myths ... anti-Soviet myths
Books on the recent history of Russia began to appear annually. A new collective work (42 authors) edited by Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor of MGIMO A. B. Zubov, two-volume “History of Russia. XX century”, attracts attention not only by the volume (under two thousand pages), but also by the set super-task: “to tell the truth about the life and ways of the peoples of Russia in the XX century.” and to give a "moral comprehension" of historical facts. It seems that after the publication of this book, there should be no white spots and forbidden names left in Russian history. Although in itself the designation of the research field and correctly formulated problems and topics do not guarantee a convincing answer to the questions posed.
The work is clearly divided into those written by specialists and those written by publicists. Journalism, as you know, does not prove, but postulates, say: Lenin is a German agent, and the Stalinist regime was anti-people. And in this vein, many socially significant topics are presented. For example, the defeat of the White armies is explained by the fact that the Russian people are “a submissive and passive majority, intimidated and trembling over their own life, over their piece of land, and when necessary, going into battle under duress.” And in this war, the people made "the choice not for Russia, but against it."
The authors and the managing editor are convinced that the Soviet leadership in 1940-1941 was planning and preparing for a preventive war. As evidence, the authors refer to the fact that "on land, the most powerful army in Europe in terms of the number of manpower and equipment was at that time the army of the USSR, which outnumbered ground forces, for example, the United States, 11 times." Attention is drawn to the comparison with the United States, which did not have a regular army (according to estimates, the US armed forces in 1939 numbered from 174 to 450 thousand people). When comparing the size of the Red Army with the armies of other countries, one should not forget about the country's unprecedentedly long state border. It is just as strange after the story of the continuous (1929-1933 and 1937-1938) and large-scale purges in the army and the unexpectedly difficult war with Finland to read that, “judging by many indirect data (archives of this time are still classified), preventive (warning) offensive operations were planned to begin on July 12, 1941. Although this conclusion, first formulated by V. Suvorov (Rezun), is contradicted by many official documents published (1941. In 2 books M., 1998) from the archive of the President of the Russian Federation. For example, back on May 5, 1941, the government and the Politburo made a joint decision to finalize and mass-produce the famous T-34 tanks, at the same time a plan for large-scale purchases in Germany of the materials necessary for their completion was approved.
I would like to pay special attention to the theme of anti-communist resistance and the theme of cooperation with the enemy during the years of the Patriotic (according to the authors of the “Soviet-Nazi”) war, which is cross-cutting for the whole work. Their appearance in books on Russian history can only be welcomed. These problems have not been theoretically developed by our science.
Without going into a discussion about what is considered resistance and what is cooperation (there are no criteria in the book), I want to draw attention to the paragraphs devoted to General Vlasov and the Russian Liberation Army (ROA), as well as the participation of Russian emigrants, residents of the occupied regions and Soviet prisoners of war in the Nazi army and in the anti-Nazi resistance. “In 1941-1945. at least 1.1-1.2 million Soviet people were in the German military service. The authors consider the initiators of the Vlasov "anti-Stalinist movement" to be representatives of the anti-Hitler opposition, who offered Vlasov to head it. "After painful reflections, General Vlasov agreed."
Plans for active cooperation between anti-Stalinist Russians and the Nazis, according to the authors, arose already in the "autumn of 1941." According to the responsible editor, "the suffering of the peoples of Russia under the Bolsheviks was so unbearable that we now have no right to judge anyone, recognizing moral flaws in any choice of fate in those years." I believe that after the creation of ghettos and extermination camps (Auschwitz) in Poland (1939-1940), after the extermination of Jews in Lvov (July 1941) and Kyiv (September 1941), after the extermination of Soviet prisoners of war in Nazi camps, about which the authors write to justify, even in this way, a voluntary appeal to the Nazi authorities with proposals for any kind of cooperation is immoral. The end clearly does not justify the means. For example, welcoming the occupation of Lvov by the Nazis on July 1, 1941, Metropolitan of Galicia Andrey Sheptytsky wrote at the end of August 1942 to Pius XII that "the German regime is more terrible than the Bolshevik one."
In a word, this is a very strange book. On the one hand, it pleases with richness of new and interesting historical material, new issues raised. On the other hand, it raises a lot of questions and doubts about the accuracy of the cited documents, figures and estimates. It seems that many of its authors have remained at the level of the discussions of the early 1990s in their views. The true history of Russia, which was announced in the preface, again failed.
Although, of course, a fundamental departure from the traditional Soviet understanding of the history of our country deserves attention. The only pity is that the new interpretations seem to be made according to a simplified methodology, according to which historical events simply receive assessments that are directly opposite to those accepted in the historical literature of the Soviet period.
And the deological prerequisites for the collapse of the USSR are a little-studied and little-studied topic. The phenomenon of the rapid and powerless collapse of a huge state overshadows the ideological processes that accompanied the crisis of the USSR, "perestroika" and, finally, its collapse. The ideological crisis of the CPSU and the “Soviet model” as a whole seems natural, therefore, in the mass of books, articles and textbooks, they get rid of it with a couple of lines or pages. Of course, the inaccessibility of an important part of the sources (party and government documents) and, at the same time, the vastness of the source base make the task of analyzing recent ideological processes particularly difficult. But a number of aspects can already be successfully reconstructed to one degree or another.
This task is all the more urgent now that now, after two decades, voices are increasingly being heard about the need to conduct a certain “politics of memory” along the lines of European states (first of all, France and Germany are taken as a model here). But there can be no talk of any “politics of memory” in modern Russia, and not because, as it is often said, “there is no agreement in society” regarding a whole series of historical events and processes of the last two centuries. Agreement cannot arise at all if the interpretations of history seriously affect the interests of the opposing strata and classes, the interests of the masses of people. But the point is also that meaningful historical discussions cannot arise on a basis full of myths and direct falsifications.
In this regard, it is important to show how exactly the modern Russian space of memory was formed and what are the features of the perception of history in society. With all the conventionality of saying “for the whole of society”, with all the peculiarities of the group consciousness of various strata, it seems that a number of common features can still be distinguished. First of all, spontaneous agnosticism in relation to history is widespread in modern Russian society. They like to talk about different historical plots very much, but at the same time they are sure that “everyone is lying”, that it is impossible to find out the truth about the past either at all, or in relation to the events of the 20th century for sure. The reason for this confidence lies in the apparent "rewriting of history" that our contemporaries have witnessed over the last quarter of a century, as well as in the high-profile (and often falsified) revelations of dark spots in the recent past. In turn, this created a breeding ground for the so-called folk history, in which nationalist ideologemes play an important role, with which “conspiracy theories” of various types and types adjoin wonderfully: from conspiracy theories of the causes of the 1917 revolution to the mythical “plan Dulles", taken, in fact, from the book of the official Soviet writer A.S. Ivanov "Eternal Call". All this is confirmed not only by observations, but also by the teaching experience of the author of the article. To the question “is it possible to know the truth about the past”, the vast majority of students answer either directly in the negative or with doubt, citing the rewriting of history as arguments, the difficulty of separating the selfish inventions of the ideologists of the past (starting with the chroniclers) from the facts, the destruction of sources testifying against official version, etc. The next feature, already connected with the activities of the historians themselves, is a retreat into naked positivism, the rejection not only of theories, but even of generalizations. From the abstracts of some recently defended dissertations, the previously obligatory paragraph on methodology has simply disappeared. Historians, especially young ones, see themselves as collectors of facts, but the absence of a theory leads them, firstly, to obvious errors in interpreting the collected material, and secondly, to ideologization, since the dominant ideologemes and stereotypes of everyday consciousness inevitably take the place of theory. . The desire to limit oneself to a positivist approach (“interpretations and theories are not the historian’s business!”) Became a kind of response of professionals to rampant falsifications, and on the part of many historians - a completely conscious response. To identify the origins of these phenomena, it is necessary to consider the situation in historical science in the second half of the 80s - early 90s.
At the end of the 1980s, the slogan of "de-ideologization" of historical science was put forward. First of all, he was put forward in relation to the historiography of Russian revolutions. V.P. Buladkov already wrote in 1998 that "only an atmosphere of 'deideologization' and 'depoliticization' can mobilize the will to know the truth." Arguing with these words, the author of the article "Modern domestic historiography of the Russian revolution of 1917" N.D. Erofeev showed that
“Calls for “deideologization” and “depoliticization” usually mean liberation only from the ideology and politics of the Soviet era, but it is not always said that historical science cannot be completely deideologized and depoliticized. The historian does not live outside society. Today, the impact on the formation of a liberal interpretation of the revolution is carried out not as before, not so much by direct pressure on historians, but by indirect means, through journalism, the media.
One of the proofs of the absence of "de-ideologization" is the classification of trends in historiography according to ideological criteria. N.D. Erofeev gives several examples of classifications proposed by various historians, but all of them are built in whole or in part precisely in accordance with the political convictions of historians. N.D. himself Erofeev proposes to single out three directions: conservative, liberal and socialist. This very fact clearly demonstrates that the vaunted de-ideologization has failed - and could not but fail. But why did this happen?
To answer this question, we must first pay attention to another aspect of modern historiography. As if naturally, many historians have come to the idea of the leading role of ideas. Back in 1988, the famous historian, biography specialist V.I. Lenina V.T. Loginov recorded:
“There is such a German word “gelerterism”, it means the ability of people to create very harmonious logical schemes that at first glance immediately explain everything. I recently had a discussion in which one of the comrades stated: “Why did the civil war happen? Very simple, everything is clear. Lenin had the Marxian model of socialism in his head. And when the revolution won, they began to introduce this model, as a result they “received” a civil war from the side of the peasantry, the rest of the layers. This is a lovely theoretical discussion. It has all the advantages of logical links. However, there is one small drawback - it does not fit into the real story.
In fact, V.T. Loginov recorded the first consequence of the spread of positivism in the social sciences. If there are no objective, material causes of social change, then in order to interpret events, historians inevitably slide down to the level of 18th century historiography - to the theories of the leading role of ideas and "great personalities". Moreover, if V.T. Loginov spoke about “idealism” in understanding history as a whole, then the dominance of the theory of “great personalities” also became noticeable back in the late 80s:
“At first, the crimes of Stalin and the system he created were justly and sharply condemned. But soon the very folk history, dating back to the time of Stalinism, turned out to be caricatured and covered in mud. Many publicists and historians seem to have returned to the main method of medieval historiography - to write and understand the history of peoples as the history of rulers. And if the ruler is bad, then both the era and the people who lived in the country at that time are bad.
But it would be wrong to assume that this historiographic rollback happened suddenly, by magic, along with the beginning of the "epoch of glasnost". The prerequisites for it were formed long before that - precisely in the Soviet period.
Let us leave aside the fact that since the Stalinist period, the Soviet Historical Diamat was for the most part scholasticism, from which the living grain of Marxist theory was etched out. As is well known, Marxist historiography abroad developed successfully throughout the 20th century, and almost all serious theoretical trends were influenced by Marxism (with the exception, perhaps, of hermeneutics and microhistory, and even then not completely), it is enough to cite the Annales school as an example. , and within its framework, primarily the work of M. Blok on feudalism. In most cases, the use of "Marxist methodology" since the 1950s by Soviet historians has been a mechanical selection of appropriate citations from the classics and the simplest logical schemes, references to the class struggle and other formal things. And the further, the more such “Marxism” discredited itself and more and more turned into just a disguise for the most ordinary positivism (so that the transition of a number of historians in the 90s to positivism took place in advance prepared positions). But it was not only that. Despite ideological control, within the framework of Soviet historical science (as well as in other humanities) really significant theoretical discussions arose. From my point of view, two of them played a particularly significant role in the development of Russian historiography (but to a much lesser extent than they could have). Firstly, this is a discussion about the "Asiatic mode of production", and secondly, the dispute over the so-called "new direction" in the study of imperialism in Russia.
Both of these discussions arose twice in Soviet history: once at the end of the 1920s, the other in the 1960s, and, as is known, were terminated by administrative means in 1932 and 1973. respectively.
Marx himself mentioned the “Asiatic mode of production” as the first class formation only a few times, but it is not these scattered and sometimes contradictory references that are important, but the essence of the problem. The discussion about the "Asiatic mode of production" first began in the late 1920s in connection with a specific political occasion - the need to assess the prospects for the Chinese revolution. To do this, it turned out to be important to understand the fundamental differences between Chinese society, its economy and class structure from Russia and European states. It was then that a number of historians and economists came up with an analysis of Eastern societies, in which it was shown that these societies did not go through either a slave-owning or feudal formation, but they had a special formation based on state ownership of the means of production (primarily land). Consequently, the surplus product entered the state apparatus in the form of a hierarchy of officials who acted as the ruling class. The essence of this discussion is forced to remain outside the scope of this article, but it is important, in connection with which this dispute has ceased. And this happened for reasons that were by no means scientific, but purely political: firstly, this theory, for a number of reasons, was built into Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution, and, consequently, was crushed as "Trotskyist"; secondly, "the similarities between the economic structure of the ancient Eastern societies and ... the USSR" were accidentally discovered. During the "thaw" from the second half of the 50s, the discussion resumed, as the censorship weakened, empirical data on the history of the Ancient East did not fit into the Procrustean bed of the official "five-membered". In addition, a similar discussion began among Western Marxists - in the journal Marxism Today. But this time, too, the scientific dispute was terminated by order from above, the official doctrine was declared the winner, despite blatant contradictions with the actual material.
A similar story happened with the discussion about the degree of development of capitalism in pre-revolutionary Russia. It also began in the late 1920s by discussing the report of N.N. Vanaga, who showed that the level of development of monopoly capital in the Russian Empire was much lower than in the capitalist West. However, the development of the theme of underdevelopment and the dependent nature of the development of Russia before the revolution was interrupted - this did not fit into the official interpretation of the revolution as objectively generated by the contradictions of developed capitalism. In the second half of the 1950s, as in the case of the discussion about the "Asian mode of production", it was repeated on a new round, at a new level of mastering the factual material, but with the same result. According to V.V. Polikarpov, “the new direction” “recreated the natural line of development of historiography, made, at a new level of acquaintance with sources, a return to the old subject of the dispute, artificially interrupted in 1931 by Stalin’s shout.” The founders of the "new direction" were the participants in the disputes of the 30s - A.L. Sidorov and I.F. Gindin, they were joined by young historians V.P. Volobuev, K.N. Tarnovsky, A.M. Anfimov, K.F. Shatsillo, M.Ya. Gefter, A.Ya. Avrekh and others. They were united by the notion that the pre-revolutionary Russian economy was multi-structured, that there were many backward elements not only in agriculture, but also in industry, that the state played an enormous role in industry and the banking sector, and, finally, that foreign capital played a more than significant role. Based on their work, it was proved that the idea of the subordination of the state apparatus to monopolies, which was imposed by the official position, has nothing to do with reality. It turned out that capitalism in Russia was by no means progressive, but, in modern scientific terms, was of a peripheral nature. I note that it was at this time, from the end of the 50s. in Europe (G. Myrdal), Latin America (R. Prebisch, F. Cardoso, A. Gunder Frank), Africa (S. Amin), the USA (I. Wallerstein), theories of dependent development and peripheral capitalism arise and develop. But if in the USSR the history of pre-revolutionary Russia served as material for similar conclusions, then the mentioned sociologists and economists studied the modern countries of the "third world", whose citizens they were basically. Thus, in posing the problem of dependent development, Soviet science did not lag behind the world's leading discoveries, but failed to realize this.
The "New Direction" was crushed at the behest of the ideological department of the Central Committee in the second half of the 70s. It, like the theory of the "Asian way", undermined the foundations of the Brezhnev-Stalinist ideological model, even if the historians themselves were not aware of this. Supporters of the "Asian way" approached too closely to the analysis of the class structure of the USSR - since it was no longer possible for an attentive Marxist historian not to see class stratification in it. The participants in the “new direction” showed by their research that the revolution of 1917 did not take place in a developed capitalist country, but in a backward peripheral one, in which - the conclusion, of course, missing from Tarnovsky and his colleagues - was not possible to build socialism, which means that and the system that existed in the USSR was not socialist. And if these radical conclusions were not made by the scientists themselves, then the vigilant instructors of the Ideological Department of the Central Committee felt the threat on an instinctive level.
Looking ahead, I will suggest that the reassessment of the development of capitalism in Russia, approved "from above", became one of the prerequisites for perestroika and post-perestroika lamentations about the pre-revolutionary "prosperity" of the Russian Empire. And, of course, in the forefront were the very historians who acted as persecutors of the “new direction”, which “managed to almost completely physically get rid of, so that neither Tarnovsky nor other historians of his circle could take advantage of the changes that began in the last six months of his life. almost no one did." For example, it is now fashionable to talk about the prosperity of the Russian Empire, that on the eve of the February Revolution, the industrial crisis in the field of armaments was overcome. But it was K.N. Tarnovsky, with the help of a rigorous analysis of sources (journals of the Special Conference on Defense and the Committee for the Metallurgical Industry, operating under the tsarist government during the World War), showed that
"The reverse side of the success of military production was a rapidly developing crisis of underproduction in sectors that provide for the" peaceful "needs of the population, the breakdown of economic ties, and disproportions in the development of the national economy as a whole."
The restructuring of this system "could not be carried out by either the tsarist or the bourgeois Provisional Government: society and the people turned out to be hostages of their not fully calculated economic policy." Now fans of the Russian Empire diligently ignore this conclusion - as well as historical sources.
But the defeat of new scientific directions was connected not only with the protection of ideological orthodoxy. Already in the 70s, part of the party elite was thinking about the coming ideological turn, so they were not interested in the real development of Marxist theory. They were joined ideologically by the already “reorganized” part of the intelligentsia. Yu.I. Semyonov, an active participant in the second discussion about the Asian mode of production, was faced with both. Orthodox officials from science “killed” his article “On one of the ways of the formation of a class society”, in which, on the basis of ethnographic studies of pre-class societies, the socio-economic structure of the Ancient East was analyzed - they found that “parallels between what was in the studied ethnology proto-political societies, and what was observed in our country, clearly suggested themselves. But even on the part of the "liberals" the Marxist texts did not meet with approval:
“Your article,” he (one of the editors of “Problems of Philosophy” in stagnant times - S.S.) told me, “is written extremely brightly and convincingly. After reading it, many will come to the conclusion that the theory of socio-economic formations is correct, that it not only does not contradict the new facts, but, on the contrary, is in full agreement with them. Thus, your article will contribute to the growth of confidence in Marxism, which cannot be allowed. Marxism must be discredited. Therefore, we will not miss it in the journal in any case. Of the articles on historical materialism, we select only the most dull, the most stupid, capable only of completely discrediting this teaching. And if you suddenly want to turn to the editor-in-chief for support, then we will tell him that your article is revisionist, that it is aimed at undermining Marxism.
Of course, we are not talking about another conspiracy theory, but there is every reason to believe that the efforts of the party bureaucracy and the liberal establishment were combined in getting rid of Marxist theory.
With the introduction of the "policy of glasnost", those issues that were previously actually under a ban began to be touched upon, translations of foreign studies of Russian history began to appear that did not fit into the previous officialdom. The heyday of historical discussions came in 1987-1989.
Even in such a seemingly ideologically hardened magazine as "Questions of the history of the CPSU" in 1987, interesting materials began to be published in the spirit of the new time. In No. 7 K.N. Tarnovsky, during the round table “Historical and Party Science: Ways of Perestroika and Further Development”, spoke about the prohibition of studying the problem of “multi-structure”, but he was interrupted all the time - for example, S.S. Volk, and another participant traditionally accused of "denying the applicability of the formational approach." The future political "star" - Yu.N. Afanasiev has so far limited himself to general words about the dominance of "stereotypes" in historical science. In issue 10, a posthumous publication of an article by K.N. Tarnovsky "On the prerequisites for the formation in Russia of a Marxist party of a new type." Throughout the year, the journal publishes materials on the national question in the USSR - but their level is very low. In 1988, in No. 5, the official party historian N.A. Vasetsky is criticized for stupid, "stagnant" criticism of foreign historians. Issue 7 publishes materials of the round table "Lenin's understanding of democracy and modernity", articles about Lenin's latest works. In No. 8, the historian G.N. Bordyugov continues the theme of the "Bukharin alternative", then this theme appears in almost every issue. L.D. Trotsky is still presented as a sinister figure, but Bukharin has already been legalized, and his letters are even published in No. 11 of the magazine.
In the journal "Voprosy istorii" during these two years - a similar picture. In No. 2 for 1988, a letter from B.A. Sumgayit appears. Beknazaryan under the telling title "For history to tell the truth." On the other hand, the next letter - “For Accuracy in the Works of Historians” seems to disavow the previous one - it talks on two pages about inaccuracies in the literature in the presentation of the details of the socialist competition of beet harvesters in 1934. But the “breath of perestroika” is also noticeable in it - the author of the letter, the teacher from the city of Zhashkov, boldly criticizes in the recent past the chief party overseer of historians - S.P. Trapeznikov. In No. 3 for 1988, anti-Stalinist publications appear: memoirs of I.A. Shlyapnikova about her father - one of the leaders of the Bolsheviks, a worker A.G. Shlyapnikov; article by V.P. Danilov about discussions in Western historiography on the subject of victims of collectivization. In No. 5, the editors publish an article by the American "revisionist" historian A. Rabinovich "Bolsheviks and the masses in the October Revolution", and in the same issue - an interview with Metropolitan Philaret of Minsk and Belarus on the 1000th anniversary of the baptism of Russia. This interview is “balanced” by G.V. Ovchinnikov. Almost the entire July issue is devoted to the materials of the conference on the topic "Historians and Writers on Literature and History."
The ninth issue is the first "ideological" call, indicating that "perestroika" will go much further than "returning to Leninist norms." In this issue, along with the materials of the round table devoted to new trends in the study of the NEP, an article by the philologist B.V. Sokolov about the losses of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War, where the official count of losses was declared many times (!) underestimated. Even then, the method of calculating B.V. Sokolov should not have been left without a comment from the professionals. Criticism, leaving no stone unturned from Sokolov's constructions, appeared, but much later. A logical question arises: why, if earlier materials new to the reader were accompanied by comments or polemical articles (successful or not very - it doesn’t matter), specific controversial or previously forbidden subjects were presented in the form of “round tables” of historians, philosophers and public figures, then from a certain moment "innovations" appear without any discussion? But in the absence of comments, they were actually supported by the authority of the publication.
Along with real historical discussions in scientific journals, texts appear that are obviously aimed at discrediting not only the “anti-perestroika” forces, but also at creating new - already openly anti-Soviet - myths, often copying the corresponding settings of the right wing of Western Sovietology, supporters of the theory of totalitarianism. The appearance of an article by B.V. Sokolov in 1988 looks like either an accident or a "trial balloon". In the future, publications of this kind, as well as much more "sensational" ones, will become the norm.
A brief overview of the restructuring of two historical journals is highly revealing. The abundance of round tables, debatable articles gave rise to hope for a real deliverance of historians from dogma, but very soon the situation changed. And if there were active disputes around the role of Bukharin, Trotsky, Lenin both in scientific journals and in the mass press, then soon the actual scientific discussions began to fade away, they were replaced by sheer, as they said then, “slander”.
In 1987, an avalanche-like growth of journalistic works on problematic issues ("blank spots") of Russian - primarily Soviet - history begins. The two main "perestroika" publications - Ogonyok and Moscow News - become a platform for sensational revelations, the rest of the publications are being pulled up as far as they can. But the role of professional historians was not great, and there were not as many discussions of new approaches, foreign studies, new sources as one might suppose. In 1990, at a round table in "Questions of History" V.T. Loginov warned:
Diagnosis V.T. Loginov set absolutely correctly:
“The chronic delay of historians is the result of all the previous development of our science, or rather, of what it has been turned into. And now our historical science is on the defensive. However, the majority of professional historians also fell into the trenches. Each lies in his individual cell and, under a hail of bullets, bends his head lower and lower to the ground. Do we really need any new research in order to resist attempts to glorify the "innocently murdered Emperor" or Stolypin? Can't historians make their contribution to the search for truth in the atmosphere of general enthusiasm for the “Red Terror” by telling at least a little about the “White Terror” and about the socio-psychological climate that the long-term and bloody war gives rise to?
V.T. Loginov was one of those few historians who understood the impossibility of "de-ideologization" from the very beginning, the need for a professional - precisely for the sake of establishing the truth! - “go into politics”, but precisely as an educator, and not a manipulator. In this he was supported by P.V. Volobuev:
“There is a mass renunciation of former champions of socialism and active figures of the period of stagnation from Marxism and socialist values. You can't call it anything other than betrayal. This is now gaining momentum. And vice versa: those who were under attack during the stagnation are now among the defenders of socialism. Appeals to Stolypin are also unproductive. The level of incompetence of economists, who do not distinguish the Prussian version of the development of capitalism from the farmer's, is surprising. So, two years ago, a popular science book about Stolypin was handed over to the Nauka publishing house and prepared for publication. The publishing house at first wanted to let it go along the “green street”, but now the matter has slowed down for a long time. Apparently, some people follow the lead of the immature part of society, and finally, of “Pamyat”, for which Stolypin is a national hero.
The trend was clearly marked. Until now - more than 20 years after the speeches of Volobuev and Loginov - the "reformed" "historians" who replaced the cult of Lenin with the cult of Stolypin set the tone. And here one should pay attention to the words of P.V. Volobuev about the book, the publication of which "slowed down". This, apparently, is about the monograph by A.Ya. Avrekh "Stolypin and the fate of reforms in Russia", which had a difficult fate in the midst of "perestroika" and the removal of censorship bans. AND I. Avrekh, the leading specialist in the political history of Russia before 1917, completed this study shortly before his death at the end of 1988. The book, however, came out only two and a half years later! We find an explanation for this strange fact from the failed author of the preface to it, an outstanding specialist in the agrarian history of Russia of the 20th century, V.P. Danilova:
"AND I. Avrekh approached me with a request to become the editor of this book and write a preface to it. He managed to submit the manuscript to Politizdat shortly before his death in December 1988. The author found only the beginning of the ideological campaign to elevate Stolypin and his agrarian reform, but even then he was able to appreciate the severity and significance of the problem that had arisen. His book showed the real content of the Stolypin reforms, their subordination to the interests of the landlords, and the administrative-coercive nature of their methods. That is why the publication of the book was delayed by almost three years, and the content was subjected to rough editorial editing, many texts that did not meet the new ideological guidelines were withdrawn. I was forced to refuse to participate in the publication of such a distorted book by the late author. My preface was rejected by the publisher."
A similar fate befell another "anti-Stolypin" book by the historian A.A. Anfimov, whose original name was: "Reform on Blood":
“It was a very accurate name, since the reform was caused by the first Russian revolution and was carried out after its suppression. The publishers demanded that the title of the book be changed. The second name was very calm - “P.A. Stolypin and the Russian Peasantry”, but not a single publisher accepted the manuscript.”
This ideological censorship was due to the fact that by that time the ruling circles in the USSR and personally the “architect of perestroika” A.N. Yakovlev has already chosen a new ideological vector. What could be truly dangerous for the “perestroika course” should not have become a subject of public discussion. Actually, discussions began to fade away in public journals, and instead of heated discussions in Questions of History, R. Conquest’s The Great Terror, A.I. Denikin, in "Questions of Philosophy" appeared N.A. Berdyaev and - already at the end of 1990 - the ideologist and forerunner of neoliberalism F. Hayek.
I emphasize that there was nothing shameful in ideological (ideological) "pluralism" in itself. But instead of a discussion space, new cult figures, new mythologemes were created, which did not differ from the old ones in terms of methods of implementation (and in terms of their initiators). “Someone who follows the lead of the immature part of society” was a layer of the party nomenklatura who was preparing an ideological revolution.
A few examples of the methods by which the myth of Stolypin was created. This propaganda was started by A.I. Solzhenitsyn in exile, and then - V.G. Rasputin, speaking with an apology for Stolypin at the first Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR. Since 1990, books and articles have been published in which praises of Stolypin differ little from recent praises of the leaders of the CPSU:
Z.M. Chavchavadze:
“It is necessary to hide from the public consciousness that Russia embarked on this very path of socio-economic progress and that it was only necessary not to interfere with its implementation at those grandiose rates that not only amazed the world, but frightened it. It is precisely this truth that those political forces that are extremely uninterested in reviving the ideals of building a national home on the basis of historically established traditions and specific experience accumulated by Russians over the long centuries of their statehood are trying to hide from the consciousness of the Soviet people, intoxicated by seventy years of purposeful lies. It is this truth that is revealed in its entirety in the results of the deeply thought-out and bold reformatory activity of the largest statesman and the greatest patriot of Russia - Pyotr Arkadyevich Stolypin. His very personality and tireless activity for the good of the country still remain in Russian historiography disfigured by the most shameless and frankly shameless lies.
V.V. Kazarezov:
“Look into the face of the man whose portrait is reproduced on the cover of this book. His features radiate intelligence, strength, will, inflexibility, dignity. Such was Pyotr Arkadyevich Stolypin, and everyone recognized this: both his like-minded people, associates, and his secret and open enemies.
S.Yu. Rybas and L.V. Tarakanov found that in his speeches Stolypin "appeals to us in decades," and as a result of Stolypin's decrees, "an economic bloodless, but the most profound revolution" began in Russia.
A huge number of such pathos texts appeared in the press, and the facts in them were completely ignored. In one of the first such publications called "The Forgotten Giant", which appeared in the right-wing magazine "Our Contemporary", the author simply used the term "anti-Russian genocide", speaking of Stolypin's opponents, but at the same time confused the amounts of loans from the Peasant Bank, did not focus on the distribution of land in 1905 and claimed that Stolypin did not destroy the community at all. The beginning of this process was laid "from above", by the "architects of perestroika" themselves. V.P. Danilov, who was included in the commission of the Central Committee of the CPSU on agrarian reform, the formal head of which was M.S. Gorbachev (actually E.S. Stroev) testifies how Gorbachev's meeting with the commission took place in August 1990:
“It all started with the fact that the members of the commission who had gathered in front of the meeting room began to bypass the head of the agricultural department of the Central Committee of the CPSU I.I. Skiba and each individually exchanged two or three phrases about something. When he reached me, he confidently informed me that they would give me the floor to speak if I was ready to advocate the introduction of private ownership of land and its inclusion in commodity circulation. Hearing in response that I was against both, Skiba immediately lost interest in me, walked away and in the same confidential tone carried on a conversation with someone else... General Secretary, who expressed regret in his opening speech that he did not have such an instrument of land reforms as Stolypin had - land management commissions. They were supported by N.P. Shmelev, who ardently demanded a "transition from words to deeds." At the same time, he allowed himself to impatiently pound his fist on the table. (As the knowledgeable participants in the meeting later said: “Not otherwise than on behalf of the Secretary General.”) Only ironic, and often harsh remarks by V.A. Starodubtsev resisted organized pressure on the Secretary General, who agreed with everyone (however, not excluding Starodubtsev).
There was no talk of any scientific analysis at all, except perhaps only formally. And this was far from being the case only with the agrarian question and the personality of Stolypin.
In the autumn of 1988, a group of historians was assembled to write a new history of the CPSU. It included famous scientists P.V. Volobuev, Yu.A. Polyakov, V.P. Danilov, V.I. Startsev, G.Z. Ioffe, V.T. Loginov, S.V. Tyutyukin, E.G. Plimak - no doubt, this group included the best personnel of the then Soviet historical science. Among other things, A.N. Yakovlev, who personally supervised the work of the group, promised these historians access to previously closed archives, however, he did not keep his promise.
The work of the group was delayed, the Institute of Marxism-Leninism was removed from work with it, at the same time A.N. Yakovlev blocked the publication in the IML of a popular book on the history of the party. This was followed by an attempt to completely disperse the IML, and the Ideological Department of the Central Committee not only gave the initiative into the hands of the “democratic press”, but actually interfered (by blocking access to the archives) with full-fledged scientific research and discussions.
At the next meeting of the historians-participants of the group with A.N. Yakovlev, they received a definite instruction: “We do not need to set ourselves the task of contributing to the stabilization of the situation,” although it was at this time, according to G.Z. Ioffe,
“It was difficult for us to get away from one historical lie, and another was already rolling in. Democratic propaganda acted prudently. From the almost century-old history of Bolshevism, the Stalinist period with its repressions and terror was pulled out and superimposed on everything previous and subsequent. The purposeful search for everything negative went on with increasing force.
Historians have lagged behind completely. April 1991
“An international symposium on Lenin and Leninism was held in the new luxurious “President Hotel” on Yakimanka. The American historian R. Pipes stood out, who under Reagan was his special adviser on Russian affairs. Previously, he was listed as one of the most malicious "falsifiers of history." Now aged but unchanged, Pipes seemed to feel like a winner. “Pipesism” became almost a model of historical truth in the interpretation of Russian events in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Yesterday's "falsifiers" turned before our eyes into bearers of historical truth.
A new history of the CPSU was not written - since the work of historians was no longer of interest to the authorities. This story has already been written by R. Pipes and his supporters, the creators of the "theory of totalitarianism." Actually research work was not needed.
The same fate befell the sixth collected works of V.I. Lenin, which began to be prepared in 1986, but lasted until the August 1991 coup. Not the last role in this delay was played by the General Department of the Central Committee, which armed Lenin's critics, who spoke directly about the bloody orders of the Bolshevik leader hidden from the people. When, in 1999, the duly prepared volume “V.I. Lenin. Unknown Documents” was finally published, no sensation happened. But historians were once again decisively late, and the circulation of this book, excellently compiled and annotated, was only 1,500 copies ...
Summing up, we can state that at the end of the 80s, it was not de-ideologization that took place, but an ideological revolution in historical science, supported by liberal intellectuals with the help of part of the party nomenklatura. The freedom of historical discussion was, in fact, significantly limited. Also, Soviet (and after it Russian) historical science turned out to be unprepared to overcome dogma, since the most scientifically fruitful theoretical groups in the post-war period were strangled, their members were subjected to administrative persecution, and sometimes persecution. The tone was set by yesterday's pursuers of innovators, for example, V.I. Bovykin, an active pogromist of the “new direction” before perestroika, now began to accuse his opponents of ... ensuring a turn towards neo-Stalinism(highlighted by me - S.S.) in the mid-60s. Of course, the author of the article is far from underestimating the value of the “archival revolution” that took place in the 1990s, when hundreds of thousands of previously classified documents became available to researchers, many thousands were published and are being published. But writing the socio-economic history of the 20th century, a holistic understanding of political processes is impossible without methodology, without historical theory, the role of which, of course, schemes borrowed from other disciplines cannot claim.
Those who "rebuilt" from Soviet dogma to anti-Soviet became at the head of "scientific" trends and academic institutions. Of course, no one denies the possibility of changing views or ideological evolution. But the behavior of A.N. Yakovleva, D.V. Volkogonov, A.N. Sakharova, V.I. Bovykina, A.N. Bokhanov and many other figures from among those who began to set the tone in historical science in the 90s, while being in official positions and writing textbooks, can serve as examples of anti-scientific opportunism. On the contrary, an example of scientific honesty is the self-condemnation of A.M. Anfimov in his own book - without the slightest attempt at justification:
“The author of these lines swung towards the main direction - in 1980 he recognized capitalist relations in Russian agriculture as victorious, and this covered himself with shame, primarily in his own eyes.”
One cannot but agree with V.I. Miller, who summed up the restructuring in historical science as follows:
“The gradual liberation from historical assessments that could not stand the test of the entire set of accumulated facts was replaced by a refusal, supported by some historians, not only from a significant part of the observations and conclusions accumulated by historical science, but also from well-known facts.”
All of the above can only serve as an approach to the problems of studying the ideological processes of the recent past, without studying which it is impossible to understand either the state of affairs in modern social sciences or the features of the current political situation. The reasons for the obvious degradation of domestic historical science (related to the general situation of science - both humanitarian and natural) - not only in the reduction of funding, small circulation of scientific monographs and periodicals, the difficulty of access of provincial scientists to central archives and libraries, the general decline in the quality of school and university education etc. The reasons also lie in the fact that many researchers (consciously or not - it doesn’t matter) have abandoned the “battles for history”, the educational mission of their science, duty to educate , yielding this field to professional ideologists, falsifiers, journalists, as well as the least clean and most opportunistic representatives of their own guild.
September - December 2011
The article was published in the journal Svobodnaya Mysl No. 4, July 2013, pp. 5–19.
Electronic publication on the website of the journal "Free Thought"
[Original article]
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Notes
Volodikhin D.M. The Folk History Phenomenon // International Historical Journal. - No. 5. - 1999.
Possible reproaches for the “outdatedness” of such a formulation of the question, for the very vagueness of the concept of truth, for a misunderstanding of the original subjectivity of historical knowledge, and so on. the author of the article dismisses from the threshold as a manifestation of the intellectual fashion for post-structuralism, which as a methodology for the historian is slightly less than completely useless. See: Tosh J. Pursuit of Truth. How to become a historian. - M.: Ves Mir, 2000. - S. 151–184.
The so-called Leningrad school of studying the revolutions of 1917, headed by V.I. Startsev, G.L. Sobolev, O.N. Znamensky, which was under pressure throughout its existence and was practically dispersed in 1984.
Ermolaev S.A. Formation Theory in the 20th Century (Socio-Philosophical Analysis). Diss. for the competition uch. step. k. philos. n. - M., 2007. - P. 130. See this dissertation about this discussion, as well as an article by the same author: Ermolaev S.A. Disputes about the Asian mode of production in domestic Marxist literature // Vestnik MGOU. Series "Philosophical Sciences". 2006. No. 4. P. 142 - 150.
On the discussion around the position of N.N. Vanaga, see: Lanskoy G.N. Domestic historiography of the economic history of Russia at the beginning of the 20th century. - M.: RGGU, 2010. - S. 204-215.
Questions of history. - No. 1. - 1990. - S. 10-11. . There. pp. 165-166.
Smirnov G.L. Decree. op. pp. 213-214.
IN AND. Lenin. unknown documents. 1891 - 1922 - M.: ROSSPEN, 1999. - 607 p.
Polikarpov V.V. Decree. op. S. 17.
For example, the concept of "red turmoil" by V.P. Buldakov, who collected a huge amount of factual material on the history of the Civil War, explaining it from ... Freudian positions. See: Buldakov V.P. Red confusion. The nature and consequences of revolutionary violence. M., 2010.
Anfimov A.M. Decree. op. S. 232.
Miller V.I. Revolution in Russia. 1917 - 1918 Problems of study // Miller V.I. Beware: History! - M.: ETC, 1997. - S. 8.
