Aspects of the history of Soviet historiography

В статье рассматриваются научные труды известного бирманиста, историка, писателя и коллекционера Игоря Всеволодовича Можейко (1934–2003), известного под псевдонимом Кир Булычев, и исследуется вопрос о его отношении к московской школе востоковедения, в частности, к школе исследований Юго-Восточной Азии, основанной акад. А.А. Губером (1902–1971). Школа А.А. Губера отличалась преимущественным вниманием к изучению социально-экономических проблем. На основании анализа трудов И.В. Можейко, в том числе его монографий и автобиографии, а также на основании воспоминаний его коллег, можно предположить, что он находился вне любой школы, хотя формально работал в Институте востоковедения АН СССР, ныне РАН. Это подтверждается преимущественно научно-популярным стилем изложения, не характерным для академического востоковедения, вниманием к конкретным личностям, а не к социально-экономическим исследованиям, широкими сравнительно-историческими исследованиями, которые не сопровождались теоретическими построениями, считающимися до сих пор признаками серьёзного научного исследования. Но по глубине владения материалом самых разных стран и эпох И.В. Можейко не уступал лучшим энциклопедистам своего времени.
"Igor Mozheiko (Kir Bulychev) and the Moscow School of Oriental Studies", in: Southeast Asia: Actual Problems of Development, Т. I, № 1 (38). Pp. 5–23.
The article examines the scientific legacy of the famous Soviet science fiction writer, historian and collector Igor Vsevolodovich Mozheiko who was known under the nickname Kir Bulychev (1934–2003). His specialty in the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR was the history of Burma (Myanmar). He worked there twice, in 1957–59 and in 1962–63, first in the Soviet Embassy, second as a Soviet journalist. He obtained his PhD in 1965 for the Thesis on the Pagan Empire. But his fields of interest were very diverse. He wrote about European missionaries and conquerors, Buddhist community of Burma and the Burmese state, the Second World War in the Pacific and the greatest architectural monuments of humankind, corsairs and raiders, merchants and politicians… The Moscow school of Southeast Asian studies was founded by the Academician Alexander Guber (1902–1971). Its main sphere was the socio-economic studies in accordance with historical materialism of the Soviet state ideology. But Igor Mozheiko wrote about humans in their true nature. He paid little attention to economic studies. Moreover, his passion was collecting. He collected medals, decorations, orders, stamps, paintings, headdresses, costumes and various military objects, except firearms. He wrote primarily in a popular science genre. Mozheiko occupied a place of his own among Soviet historians of Asia due to his peculiar writing style, breadth of interests and humanizing of history.

В.А. Тюрин. Советское востоковедение: идеология, политика и изучение Юго-Восточной Азии в СССР / подготовка текста, вступит. статья и комментарии А.О. Захарова // Восток. Афро-азиатские общества: история и современность. 2017. № 6. С. 119–142 ["Tyurin, V.A. 'Soviet Orientalism: ideology, policy and the study of Southeast Asia in the USSR: Introduction and Commentary'", in: Vostok (Oriens) 2017, no.6, pp. 119-42] .
В статье публикуются две ранее не издававшиеся рукописи российского историка Юго-Восточной Азии Владимира Александровича Тюрина (1933–2015) «Советское востоковедение: идеология, политика и изучение Юго-Восточной Азии в СССР» и «Идеология и интерес: советский взгляд на Юго-Восточную Азию», написанные на английском языке и по содержанию датируемые серединой 1980-х гг. и найденные в его архиве. В первом тексте В.А. Тюрин предлагал исследовать воздействие «триады» – политики, идеологии и объективности на изучение Юго-Восточной Азии в Российской империи и СССР.  Во втором тексте он рассмотрел изучение Юго-Восточной Азии при помощи дихотомии идеологии и частного интереса исследователя. Рукописи отражают свойственный В.А. Тюрину, начиная со второй половины 1960-х гг., перевод русского слова «востоковедение» английским “Orientalism”, что подтверждается сличением публикуемых рукописей и опубликованных ранее историографических работ автора [Turin, 1967; Tiurin, 1970].
The paper publishes two previously unpublished archival manu-scripts written by Soviet and Russian historian Vladimir Tyurin (Vladimir Tiourine, 1933–2015): “Soviet Orientalism: ideology, policy and the study of Southeast Asia in the USSR” and “Ideology and interest: a Soviet view of Southeast Asia”. They were composed in the mid1980s, as evidenced by their contents. The “Soviet Orientalism” traces the study of Southeast Asia in the Russian Empire and the USSR as a process deeply influenced by the “triad” of politics, ideology, and objectivity. The “Ideology and Interest” views the same process by means of dichotomy “ideology versus private interest of the scholar”. The manuscripts both reflect the translation of the Russian concept “Vostokovedenie”, i.e. Oriental Studies, by the English term “Orientalism”, a rather unique approach of Tyurin who made use of the term “Russian Orientalism” as a name for Soviet Oriental Studies in his earlier papers [Turin, 1967; Tiurin, 1970].

The article examines the relationships between the famous soviet historian of Middle Ages A.N. Nasonov (1898–1965) and D.M. Petrushevsky (1863–1942), who patronized him, and examines the professional and personal relationships of specialists in Russian andWorld history in 1920–30s. The representatives of the old historiographical school wished to provide continuity of scientific tradition. That’s why they educated and supported some historians of new generation who would determine the development of the soviet historiography in 1930–70s. The personal factor influenced the relationships between historians. Close relationships between D.M. Petrushevsky and the Nasonov family, which had established in Warsaw at the turn of 19–20th centuries, played the important role. In the letters (1933–1940) to his disciple, the head of the soviet historical science B.D. Grekov (1882–1953) D.M. Petrushevsky defended A.N. Nasonov’s interests because of his personal and professional considerations. The article is based on such historical sources as Russian historians’ memoirs, diaries, letters of the end of the 19th – at the beginning of the 20th century. The author analyzes both the published and unpublished sources from the funds of D.M. Petrushevsky, A.N. Nasonov and S.V. Bakhrushin (the Archive of the Russian Academy of Science).

This study is devoted to the process of preparing the volumes on the ancient world in
The World History of the Soviet Academy of Sciences before the World War II. Despite the
many efforts that were made during the four prewar years, the planned volumes were never
released. The authors attempt to identify the main factors behind this. In this article they
concentrates on the problem of recruiting authors for the ancient world volumes of The
World History and try to analyze the content of these volumes.

Historiography During the Soviet Nation and State Building Process
The concepts of nation and state embody in themselves both normality and artificiality. It is firmly established by historical experience that the human, as the subject of the former as well as the object of the latter, frequently interferes with the content of these concepts. If this intervention stems from ideological reasons, the implication is that the mechanism for providing legitimacy is involved with its focus on historiography. At this stage, the engine of historiography becomes an office for the approval of political power.
Within that context, the fictionalization of history transforms the knowledge of the past to a reproducible product. This understanding means a neglect of the motive to attain the reality of the past; instead, the aim is to become the social engineering required for the continuity of the ideology. In this concise text, alongside the ongoing philosophical debates as to what history is and how it should be laid out, the instrumentality of history in practical terms will be examined with a special focus on the Soviet Union paradigm.
Keywords: Soviet historiography, Soviet nation-state, Territorial historiography, Soviet nationalism.

Основной (со)автор Nikolay Koposov.
Общий взгляд на развитие позднесоветской (и несоветской) историографии сквозь призму медиевистики.
(Не игнорируйте, пожалуйста, сноски: здесь добавлены некоторые факты, характеризующие контекст, события и поведение участников)

Венгерский византинист Дюла Моравчик (1892–1972) на протяжении жизни был тесно связан с российской и советской исторической наукой. Статья посвящена реконструкции его взаимоотношений с советскими историками после Второй мировой войны (вторая половина 1940-х — начало 1970-х годов). Были обрисованы истоки формирования этих контактов, объяснены причины интереса Моравчика к творчеству ученых из СССР. В статье показано, что прямое влияние на динамику контактов оказывали политические процессы. На конкретных примерах продемонстрированы основные пути интеллектуальных взаимодействий. Венгерский ученый оказывал советским коллегам информационную поддержку, помогал ориентироваться в зарубежной историографии, способствовал печатанию работ советских ученых в Венгрии, а венгерских — в СССР. Творчество Моравчика получило множество благожелательных от кликов в СССР, а сам он внимательно следил за советской научной литературой. В статье обрисован круг советских ученых, с которыми у Моравчика установились наиболее близкие и крепкие отношения (Б.Т. Горянов, Е.А. Косминский, Г.Г. Литаврин, Н.В. Пигулевская, З.В. Удальцова и др.), показано, что Моравчик выступал поборником развития международных научных связей и пропагандистом достижений российского и советского византиноведения. Он всегда разделял науку и политику, а потому драматические повороты истории XX в. не смогли поколебать его позитивное и уважительное отношение к российский и советской исторической науке. Несмотря на то, что далеко не все возможности сотрудничества Моравчика с советскими учеными уда лось реализовать, их результаты следует признать успешными.

В статье анализируются теоретические и мировоззренческие предпосылки к вос-приятию эллинизма как этапа в развитии рабовладения (А.Б. Ранович) и как конкретно-исторического явления (К.К. Зельин), сильные и слабые стороны этих пози-ций и их судьба в науке конца ХХ-начала XXI в. По мнению автора, эллинизм (состояние греческого мира после завоеваний Александра) является не столько эта-пом в каком-либо процессе, сколько конкретной формой выхода греческого полиса из его кризиса в IV в. до н.э. / The paper considers theoretical and mental biases for the perception of Hellenism as a stage in the development of slavery (A. Ranovich) or as a historically specific phenomenon (K.K. Zelyin), qualities and faults of these approaches and their destiny in later research. In author's view Hellenism, i.e. a condition of the Hellenic world after Alexander's conquests, is not a stage in a process but a form of the Greek polis' recourse from its crisis in the 4th century B.C.

It's my new book about Soviet historiography which main topic is the fate of the non-mainstream historians of Antiquity. Book contains three chapters: Periphery as a Catastrophe, Periphery as an Outskirts and Periphery as a Hope. The book tells about the fate of such little-known authors as A.D. Dmitrev, B.L. Bogaevsky, as well as the more famous such as S.Ya. Lurie or N.M. Nikolsky.

The author outlines the way identity perspectives determine the understanding of World War Two in Moldovan society, and the role of historians in this conception. She discusses how historians have adjusted their writing to fit a certain political discourse and have influenced how and what should people ‘remember’. Further questions at stake touch on the standing of Moldovan history writing in comparison with World War Two research published outside the country; the new tendencies in history writing; and whether these emerging currents might lead in the near future to the transcendence of the politicised approaches that are currently dominant.

В первой части очередного выпуска трудов Отделения историкофилологических наук РАН (ОИФН РАН) публикуются материалы научной сессии Общего собрания Отделения «75 лет Атомного проекта: взгляд историка» (7 декабря 2020 г.). В статьях учёных, представляющих различные научные и учебные учреждения страны, показано осмысление исторической наукой политических, хозяйственно-экономических и социокультурных аспектов развития атомной отрасли в России. Во второй части представлены труды членов ОИФН РАН, профессоров РАН, учёных-гуманитариев, в которых освещаются важные вопросы в области отечественной истории, востоковедения, древнерусской архитектуры, литературоведения, языкознания. Третья часть включает статьи по истории науки, посвящённые изучению наследия российских учёных. Для историков, филологов, культурологов, широкого круга читателей.

В статье рассмотрены истоки концепции феодализма на древнем Востоке в трудах Г. Масперо и Э. Мейера, а также проведен анализ работ В.В. Струве – одного из приверженцев этой концепции в 1920-е – начале 1930-х гг. В них ученый не стремился ее обосновать, считая бесспорной, а скорее пользовался ее готовыми понятиями в своих построениях, актуальных в идеологической ситуации того времени. / The article discusses the bases for the concept of feudalism at Ancient Orient in the works by G. Maspero (from the political viewpoint) and Ed. Meyer (from the economical viewpoint). The analysis of works by V.V. Struve, the founder of the Soviet research of Ancient Orient and a devotee of this concept till the early 1930s, shows that he did not try to substantiate it in any way as he considered it doubtless. He rather used its standard notions taking them both from Maspero and Meyer so as to use them in his own schemes, which were topical in the ideological situation of the period.

Article is founded on comparison three versions of history early Soviet
historiography of an Ancient East from three significant historians of
Soviet epoch: Vasily Struve, Nikolay Nikolsky and Vsevolod Avdiev. Author
thinks that Struve’s version based on protection of his success by interpreting
it as a logical continuation of Russian historiography which was reinforced
by Marxist method. The main purpose of Nikolsky’s version was to explain
that Struve and his conception is not a real Marxist one. Avdiev’s version
accommodates partly two previous versions and pictured history of Soviet
science as a non-conflict way to the real Marxian methodology.

20. yüzyılın başlarında ulusçu düşüncenin eyleme dönüşmesiyle yeni bir dünya düzeni kurulmuştur. Bu yeni düzende, tarihe şekil veren büyük imparatorluklar yerlerini kendi içlerinden çıkan ulus-devletlere bırakmak zorunda kalmıştır. Yüzyıl başındaki bu değişim Rusya halkları için sadece yönetim biçimiyle sınırlı kalan bir başkalaşımdan ibaret olmuştur. Nitekim imparatorluk ortadan kaldırılmış, fakat beklenen ulus-devletler ortaya çıkmamış, daha doğrusu Bolşevikler böyle bir duruma müsaade etmemiştir. Bu halklar ancak yüzyılın sonunda Sovyetler Birliği'nin dağılmasıyla bağımsızlıklarını elde edebilmişlerdir. Sovyet halkları arasında yer alan Türkdilli halklar geç elde ettikleri bu bağımsızlıklarının meşruiyetini pekiştirmek amacıyla ulusun ve devletin biricikliğine atıfta bulunan toprak, bayrak, dil, tarih ve benzeri objeleri ulusçuluk temelinde yeniden dizayn etmişlerdir. Bu çerçevede siyasal tercihini ulus-devlet anlayışından yana yapan Azerbaycan, ulusçu bir anlayışla tarihine ve kimliğine yeni bir şekil vermeye başlamıştır. Fakat bu süreç bağımsızlık sonrasının siyasi çalkantılarına paralel olarak geliştiğinden Azerbaycan ulusal tarih yazımı kalıcı bir biçim alamamıştır.
Anahtar Kelimeler: Azerbaycan, ulus-devlet, tarih yazımı, ulusal tarih, ulusal kimlik.

At the beginning of the 20 th century, as the nationalist thinking turned into action a new world order emerged. In this new world order, great empires had to leave their autonomy to the nation-states, which arose within those empires. This conversion taking place at the beginning of the century was only a rebellion for Russian nations, which is limited to a change of regime. As a matter of fact the empires were destroyed, but the expected nation states did not emerge, or more precisely the Bolsheviks did not allow them to do so. These nations could only gain their independence after the dissolution of the Soviet Union at the end of the century. In order to consolidate the legitimacy of their delayed independence, the Turkish speaking nations among the Soviet communities redesigned the concepts of land, flag, language, history and similar elements that refer to the uniqueness of the nation and the state, on the basis of nationalism. In this respect, Azerbaijan, which made its political choice in favor of being a nation-state, started to redesign its history and identity with a national perspective. However, since this process developed in line with political upheaval, the national historiography of Azerbaijan could not adopt a permanent shape.

The article concentrated on the problem of the late stage of creative activity N. M. Nikolsky in close relation with history
of the genesis the periphery in the Soviet historiography of the Ancient world. Author analyzed the process of creation the
new collective sourcebook in ancient history for the pedagogical universities from 1947 to 1952 (when it was printed) and
reaction of the Soviet historians on this publication. Author suggests that Nikolsky’s fight for his specific interpretation of
oriental history and his critic of Struve’s conception didn’t work in the way, which Nikolsky was counting, but had another
effect: it contributed to formation of periphery in Soviet historiography of an Ancient world.

In The Slavic Dossier, Iurie Stamati’s objective is to understand the reasons for the emergence of two different discourses on the place of the Slavs on the territory of Moldova and their role in the genesis of Moldovans and their culture during the medieval period in the Soviet archaeology. His analysis goes beyond the utilitarian perception of Soviet archeology. To achieve this, Stamati not only questions the political contexts in which these discourses emerged, but also looks at the history of the Moldovan archaeological field, personal profiles of archaeologists, their theoretical and ideological attachment, relationships and interactions with each other inside and outside the archaeological field.

The article represents the story of the discussion between two Soviet academicians: Vasilii Struve (1879–1965) and Nikolai Nikolskii (1877–1959) on the problem of social system in Ancient Near Eastern societies. Nikolskii argued for feudalism in Ancient Mesopotamia and discovered many drawbacks in Struve's slave system conception. But the next generations did forget Nikolskii' role in formulating these ideas. The main reasons for it were geographical location of Nikolskii in Minsk, not in Moscow or Leningrad, and weakness of his discourse as well as his theoretical and factual errors.

Российского государственного ар хива новейшей истории описывается оставшийся вне поля зрения историографов эпизод обсуждения монографии А.А. Зимина «Слово о полку Игореве». Несмотря на резкую критику в адрес построений А.А. Зимина, руководство АН СССР сочло воз можным обнародовать его изыскания, передав книгу на правах рукописи в Фундамен тальную библиотеку общественных наук АН СССР. Показано, что фактический за прет на обнародование монографии исходил от Идеологического отдела Ц К КПСС. Ключевые слова: А.А. Зимин; П.Н. Федосеев; «Слово о полку Игореве»; история; идеология; Академия наук СССР; Идеологический отдел ЦК КПСС.

This review provides an assessment of the first generalizing monograph on the institutional
history of Soviet historical scholarship which appeared in the post-Soviet period.
The novelty of the methods, careful work with rare documents and respect for the previous
tradition characterize the new book.

School education in many ways creates the basis of images of a particular historical period, which is fixed in the public consciousness. Soviet ideology assumed the creation of unified image of the past, correlated with Marxism. Accordingly, the best way to extend the ideology was precisely school education. In this article author was made an attempt to study the process of formation of the image of the past on the example of describing the Mesopotamian history in the textbooks by F.P. Korovkin and N.M. Nikolsky. The main attention was given to the peculiarities of the “school” image of
Mesopotamia and the factors that influenced its occurrence.

The author discusses the main problems of using methods of the narrative analysis to study the history of Soviet historical scholarship. In the first part he gives an overview of basic trends in Russian history of science in last decades noting the increased attention to the history of scholars (anthropological turn) and to the relative weakness of the history of texts (narrative turn). The second part of the article is devoted to the possibilities of applying
the observations of researchers of historical narrative to the history of Soviet historiography.
In the third part of the article, the author identifies the main problems in the study of
the Soviet historical narrative, proposing to divide them into questions of the technical
formation of the text and into questions of its content.

While cases which get wide media coverage usually are getting described without serious attempt to analyze legal arguments of rival participants, this article contains detailed description of provocative actions of the lawyer Ivan Pavlov, who helped prosecution to defeat his own client by giving up hearings without serious effort to protect historian Mikhail Suprun from false accusations (the latter was accused of violation of personal data by using archival sources about ethnic Germans who had been removed to USSR after II WW).  Knowing in advance that the archivist - colonel Alexander Dudarev, who was accused of giving Suprun an access to these files, will be inevitably condemned if the historian is found guilty, the lawyer cynically facilitated for prosecution to produce the conviction. Then on-going trial threatened Russian archivists across the country even before the verdict was announced in December, 2011, and when historian and archivists were found guilty, Russian archivists frightened by the results of this precedent trial, immediately toughened the restrictions which complicated further access to documents of Soviet times.

The article deals with the problem of periphery in historical science in Soviet period. Firstly, author gives definitions to the main terms: mainstream (core) and periphery in science and discuss the uniqueness of the Soviet historical tradition. It had some specific features, including lower autonomy of science in Soviet society and very close ties with political regime. Second, author proposes a set of parameters for classification of  the “peripheral” historians: external (publication, geography, corporative relation) and internal (theory, theme, style). Thirdly, author emphasizes the importance of the periphery for the Soviet historiography: it served as a source of new ideas, but could not be the basis for a fundamental renovation of historical science.

М. А. БАЗАНОВ ДИСКУССИЯ О ПРОЦЕССЕ ОБРАЗОВАНИЯ РУССКОГО ЦЕНТРАЛИЗОВАННОГО ГОСУДАРСТВА (1946 г.): О РЕЦЕПЦИИ ДОРЕВОЛЮЦИОННЫХ ИССЛЕДОВАТЕЛЬСКИХ СТРАТЕГИЙ СОВЕТСКОЙ ИСТОРИОГРАФИЕЙ В статье на основе материала одной из дискуссий показаны каналы легитимации чуждых марксизму концептуальных построений советской историографией. Вопервых, это манипуляции цитатами из трудов основоположников марксизмаленинизма; во-вторых, идея Ф. Энгельса о возможности влияния надстройки на ход исторического развития общества. Ключевые слова: советская историография, «буржуазно-дворянская» историография, марксизм, цитата, базис, надстройка, легитимация.

In the article, the researcher investigated the problems of interpretation of the “canon of Soviet art history” in the scientific works of Mikhail Alpatov. The author paid special attention to the elements of populist strategies in his legacy and possible sources of Alpatov’s “populist” cultural concept (ideas of Fedor Buslaev, Pavel Muratov, Nikolai Punin, Wilhelm Worringer). The researcher revealed the heterogeneous nature of the scientific methodology of Mikhail Alpatov within the framework of the general dominance of conservative and essentialist discourses. The author also focused on the most relevant and promising components of the scientific heritage of Alpatov, to one degree or another associated with comparative, semiotic, and post-structuralist studies. The researcher discussed in detail the study “Artistic Problems of the Art of Ancient Greece” and the opposition Russia / West in Alpatov’s work. The author examined the components of the German “conservative revolution” (in particular, Oswald Spengler’s cultural studies) in the scientific works of Mikhail Alpatov as well.

The article discusses the features of the genesis and functioning of a special type of historical narrative in Soviet scholarship, which gained particular strength in the 1930s and gradually exhausted by the late 1940s. For conven-ience of characterization, the author focuses on Soviet works about ancient history and analyzes the main attitudes of their authors (“old” Marxists, scholars who coverted to Marxism, and the Soviet generation of historians), and the reasons and features of their appeal to the genre of historical and journalistic narratives about the past eras. This type of narrative is therefore associated with the formation and flowering of the Stalinist regime. The changes of the 1930s are all the more remarkable as we can compare the style of historians who wrote before and after this time. Using the examples of A. Tyumenev or B. Bogaevsky, the reader can see how respectful and loyal attitude to foreign scholar-ship was replaced by loud criticism of the limitations of “bourgeois” historians, in whose works Soviet historians certainly found features of “reactionary”. On the example of the books by N.I. Nedelsky and A.V. Mishulin, the au-thor shows how historians who did not engage in scholarship before the revolution took the same path. In conclusion, the author gives the general characteristics of the genre, as well as an explanation of why it was doomed to gradual self-exhaustion, not only because it depended on external (political) but also because it was influenced by internal reasons.

We wrote a book as the “guidebook on science”, with the aim of giving the reader a very general overview of various spheres of Soviet historiography of antiquity, including general characteristics of Soviet historical science. The book tells the story of the structure of scientific institutions that carried out studies of ancient history; tells about life, social circles, the daily concerns of the historians of antiquity in the Soviet period. Of course, we also talked about the main ideas that determined the development of Soviet science for seven decades.
The book will be useful both to readers interested in the history of science, specifically “history of a history”, as well as scholars, students and professors, for whom it can become a source of not only general information, but also knowledge of what our ideas about the past of their science.

Рецензия на: Алаев Л.Б. Историография истории Индии. М.: Институт востоковедения РАН, 2013. 472 с. // Восток. Афро-азиатские общества: история и современность. 2014. № 4. С. 188–194. = Zakharov, Anton O. Review of Leonid Alayev, Istoriografia istorii Indii (Moscow: Institut vostokovedenia, 2013, 472 pp.), in Vostok (Oriens) 2014 No 4, pp. 188–194