Rewriting Russian History

Table of contents :
Preface to the Vintage Edition
Preface
Contents
Abbreviations
Part One. The Evolution of Theory
1. History and Politics in the Soviet Union
2. The Problem of Periodization
3. The Role of the Individual in History
4. The “Lesser Evil” Formula
Part Two. The Application of Theory: Selected Examples
5. The First Russian State
6. Byzantine Cultural Influences
7. The Formation of the Great Russian State
8. Ivan the Terrible and the Oprichnina
9. The Reforms of Peter the Great
10. The Campaign of 1812
11. Bakunin and the Russian Jacobins and Blanquists
12. Allied and American Intervention in Russia, 1918-1921
Appendix: Review of Rewriting Russian History
List of Contributors
Index

Citation preview

REWRITING RUSSIAN HISTORY

To write history well, one must be in a free country. VOLTAIRE

to Frederick the Great

History is a powerful weapon of communist education and it must wholly serve the cause of the struggle for communism. M . A. ZINOVIEV

Soviet M ethods of Teaching History

Vintage R U SSIA N Library Advisory Committee Cyril E. Blacky

P r in c e t o

R obert F . Byrnes, Philip E. M osely ,

c o u n c il

o n

n

u n iv e r s it y

in d ia n a

u n iv e r s it y

f o r e ig n

r e l a t io n s

Ernest /. Simmons , Formerly of C O L U M B IA U N IV E R S IT Y

REWRITING RUSSIAN HISTORY SOVIET INTERPRETATIONS O F R U SSIA ^ PAST V

‫י‬

‫•־‬

Second E dition, R evised

edited by CYRIL E. BLACK

V IN T A G E BOOKS A DIVISION OF RANDOM HOUSE

N ew York

,

F irs t V intage Edition, October 1962

V I N T A G E BO O K S are published by A lfred A. K n o pf , I n c . and R andom H ouse , I n c .

© Copyright, 1956, 1962, by the East European Fund, Inc. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in New York by Random House, Inc., and in Toronto, Canada, by Random House of Canada, Limited. Reprinted by arrangement with Frederick A. Pracgcr, Inc. Manufactured in the United States of America

To PHILIP E. MOSELY

H am let:

D o you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a camel?

P0L0NIUS: By the mass! and 'tis like a camel, indeed. H am let:

Methinks it is like a weasel.

P0L0NIUS: It is backed like a weasel. H am let :

Or like a whale?

P0L0NIUS: Very like a whale!

PREFACE TO THE VINTAGE EDITION

In presenting a Second Edition of this symposium, the introductory chapter has been revised to include a brief survey of the significant developments in Soviet historiography since the death of Stalin. The remaining chapters are reprinted in their original form, and are concerned principally with the Stalin era. As a means of offering the reader a recent sample of the official Soviet view of the questions discussed in this symposium, a review of the First Edition which appeared in the journal Istoriya SSSR in 1959 is reprinted as an Appendix. C. E. Black PRINCETON, N. J. APRIL, 1 9 6 2

PREFACE

The purpose of these essays is to illustrate the main trends in Soviet historical writing in the field of Russian history. The first four essays touch on some general problems of interpretation, and the remaining eight provide examples of the changing Soviet attitude toward selected problems from Russian history, primarily before the middle of the nineteenth century. The final essay departs from this pattern in that it presents a contemporary issue. These prob‫־‬ lems concern aspects of Russia's past which, aside from purely party history, have been of particular concern to the Soviet authorities. This project was initiated by the Research Program on the U.S.S.R., an organization established in 1951 by the East European Fund, Inc., to help former Soviet scholars continue their research and to make the results of such research available to Western students of the Soviet Union. The work of the Research Program has been under the general direction of Professor Philip E. Moselv, of Co‫־‬ lumbia University. The seven essays in this volume contributed by three former Soviet scholars were prepared under the supervision of Alexander Dallin until July 1953, and of Robert Slusser since that date, in their capacity as Associate Directors of the Research Program. There are also five essays bv three scholars trained in the United States and one trained in Europe, whose interests complanent those of their Russian colleagues. The preparation of these papers for publication would not have been

x]

PREFACE

possible without the support of the Research Program. Acknowledgment should be made of the editorial assistance of Peter Doman, of the Research Program. The editor is also grateful for the aid of three student assistants, Walter Kenney, Anthony C. E. Quainton and W illiam L. Blackwell. This volume has likewise profited greatly from the advice and experience of two of the former Soviet scholars: Leo Yaresh, whose contribution has been even greater than that reflected in his five essays; and Konstantin F. Shteppa, who permitted the editor to consuit his draft manuscript on the development of Soviet historiography. Chapters Four, Eight and Nine were presented in a somewhat different form as papers at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association in Chicago on December 29, 1953; and Chapter Five has been reprinted from Speculum (April 1953). The editor is responsible for the general character of the volume. At the same time, the views expressed are those of the individual contributors. It is hoped that this joint Russian-American effort will contribute to an understanding both of Russian history and of the Soviet regime. C. E. Black PRINCETON, N. J. JUNE,

1956

CONTENTS

Preface to the Vintage Edition

vii

Preface

ix

Abbreviations

xiii PART ONE

THE EVOLUTION OF THEORY 1. History and Politics in the Soviet U nion C. E. Black

3

2. T he Problem of Periodization

Leo Yaresh

34

3. T he Role of the Individual in History

Leo Yaresh

77

4. T h e “Lesser Evil” Formula

Konstantin F. Shteppa

107

xii]

CONTENTS

PART TWO

T H E A P P L IC A T IO N O F T H E O R Y : SELECTED EXAM PLES 5. T he First Russian State Alexander V ucinich

123

6. Byzantine Cultural Influences Ihor Sevöenko

141

7. T he Formation of the Great Russian State Leo Yaresh

191

8. Ivan the Terrible and the Oprichnina Leo Yaresh

216y

9. T he Reforms of Peter the Great C. E. Black

233

10. T he Campaign of 1812 Leo Yaresh

260

11. Bakunin and the Russian Jacobins and Blanquists V olodym yr V arlam ov

289

12. Allied and American Intervention in Russia, 1918-1921 John M . Thom pson

319

A ppendix

3 81

List of Contributors

417

Index of Names

419

ABBREVIATIONS Works cited frequently in more than one chapter are referred to in the footnotes by abbreviated titles. The following is a list of the full titles: Bolsh. Sov. Ents.— Bolshaya Sovetskaya Entsiklopediya [Large Soviet Encyclopedia], 1st ed., Moscow, 1926-49 (incomplete); 2nd ed., Moscow, 1950-. C.D.S.P.— Current Digest of the Soviet Press, weekly, 1949 ff., publishes a selection of the contents of the Soviet press, translated or condensed in English. 1st. Zap.— Istoricheskie Zapiski [Historical notes], I(1937-), published by the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences. 1st. Zhurn.— Istoricheskii Zhurnal [Historical journal], IIX (1937-45), monthly, published by the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences, as the successor to Borba Klassov. Istoriya SSSR— Istoriya SSSR [History of the U.S.S.R.], 2 v., Vol. I ed. by V. I. Lebedev, B. D. Grekov and S. V. Bakhrushin; Vol. II ed. by M. V. Nechkina (1 ed., 1939-40; 2 ed., 1947-49; 3 ed. of Vol. II, 1954). Eng. trans, of the first half of Vol. II, 1 ed., by Sir Bernard Pares and Oliver J. Fredriksen, Russia in the Nineteenth Century (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1953). This is the official Soviet textbook for higher educational institutions. 1st.-Marks.— Istorik-Marksist [Marxist historian], numbered consecutively 1-94 (1926-41), published by the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences. Izvestiya AN SSSR— Izvestiya Akademiya Nauk SSSR:

ABBREVIATIONS

Seriya istorii i filosofii [Bulletin of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R.: history and philosophy series], M X (1944-52). Lenin, Sochineniya—V. I. Lenin, Sochineniya [Works] ( 1 ed., 25 v., Moscow, 1920-25; 2 ed., 30 v., 1926-32; 3 ed., 30 v., 1928-37; 4 ed., 35 v., 1941-50); the 4th ed. cited except in Chapter Twelve, where the 2nd ed. is used. Pankratova, History of the U.S.S.R.— Anna M. Pankratova, ed., A History of the U.S.S.R. (3 v.; Moscow, 1947-48), trans, by Bernard Isaacs of Istoriya SSSR (3 v., 4 ed.; Moscow, 1945-47); the official textbook for Soviet secondary schools. Pokrovsky, Russ. ist. s drevneishikh vremen— M. N. Pokrovsky, Russkaya istoriya s drevneishikh vremen [Russian history from the earliest times] (1 ed., 5 v.; Moscow, 1910-13; 8 ed., 4 v.; 1933-34); chaps, to 1725 trans, and ed. by J. D. Clarkson and M. R. M. Griffiths, based on 7 ed. (1924-25), History of Russiat from the earliest times to the rise of commercial capitalism (New York, 1931). Pokrovsky, Russ. ist. v samom szhatom ocherke— M. N. Pokrovsky, Russkaya istoriya v samom szhatom ocherke [Russian history in briefest outline] (1 ed., Moscow, 1920; 10 ed., 1931, reprinted in 1933); trans, by D. S. Mirskv, based on 10 ed., as Brief history of Russia (2 v., New York, 1933). Protiv kontseptsii Pokrovskogo— Protiv istoricheskoi kontseptsii M . N. Pokrovskogo: sbornik statei [Against the historical conceptions of M. N. Pokrovsky: collection of articles], Vol. I (1939); Protiv antimarksistskoi kontseptsii M. N. Pokrovskogo: sbornik statei [Against the anti-Marxist conceptions of M. N. Pokrovsky: collection of articles], Vol. II (1940); a two-volume symposium, ed. by B. Grekov and others, setting forth the official criticisms of Pokrovsky's interpretation, published by the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences.

ABBREVIATIONS

[X\

Rozhkov, Russkaya istoriya— N. A. Rozhkov, Russkaya is toriya v sravnitelno-istoricheskom osveshchenii (osnov sotsialnoi dinamiki) [Russian history from a compara five-historical viewpoint (fundamentals of social dy namics)] (12 v., Petrograd, 1919-26). Shestakov, Short History— A. V. Shestakov, ed., A Shon History of the U.S.S.R. (Moscow, 1938); trans. 01 Kratkii kurs istorii SSSR (Moscow, 1937), the first offi cial textbook of the post-Pokrovsky period. Stalin, Sochineniya— I. V. Stalin, Sochineniya [Works (13 v., Moscow, 1946-51), the official collected editior of most of Stalin's works to 1934; there is an Indey to the Collected Works of J. V. Stalin by Jack F. Mat lock, Jr. (Washington, D.C., 1955); there is also ar official English translation, J. V. Stalin, Works (13 v. ! 9 5 2 - 5 5 )•

Vop. 1st.— Voprosy Istorii [Problems of History], pub lished by the Institute of History of the Academy 01 Sciences, 1945 ff., succeeding the Istoricheskii Zhurnal the volumes, not numbered in the original, are num bered here I-XII (1945-56) for convenience in refer enee.

HISTORY AND POLITICS IN THE SOVIET UNION by C. E. Black

The relationship between historical writing and the Communist Party line offers some valuable insights into the workings of the Soviet system. It touches on the role of Marxism in Soviet policy, and on the question whether Marxism as a working philosophy can be said in fact to offer a guide to historical interpretation. This relationship also illustrates the nature of the controls exercised by the party and state over scholarship, and the uses to which history can be put in propaganda and education. Perhaps most significantly, it provides an example of the extent to which scholars can oppose, evade and counterbalance the massive power of party and state— the extent to which they can, in dealing with the authorities, use the bargaining power represented by their training and knowledge. A thorough study of these problems should properly cover an area as broad as scholarship itself, and in recent years considerable attention has been devoted to this sub-

THE EVOLUTION OF THEORY 4] ject.1 The essays in this volume are limited to history, and in fact to a select field of history: the Russian state and its policies, principally before the nineteenth century. This is the field that has occupied the main attention of historians in the Soviet Union, and it is one in which the changes in the party line and the conflicts between scholarship and politics can best be illustrated. Similar trends can• also be observed, however, in the fields of general nonRussian history, the history of the minority peoples of the U.S.S.R., the history of the people’s democracies of Eastern Europe and of China, and particularly in the history of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

I Russia entered the First World War with a rich heritage of historical scholarship which was an integral part of the European school which had created the modern historical method. The great tradition of social and economic history represented by Klyuchevsky, who died in 1911, was at its height. For another generation or more Russian historical work was dominated by his students, among whom were such diverse figures as the liberal Milyukov and the Marxist Pokrovsky. The rich creativeness of Russian historiography likewise included trends such as that represented by Presnyakov, who emphasized the politicai role of the state, and the influential school of legal historians led by Vinogradov. The members of these two schools were also students of Klyuchevsky, although they did not share his predominant interest in social history. W ithin this community of Russian historians only the very few Marxists such as Pokrovsky and Rozhkov challenged the accepted tenets of historical scholarship. The 1. Carl J. Friedrich, ed., Totalitarianism (Cambridge, 1954), proceedings of a conference held at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Boston, March 1953; Science and Freedom (Boston, 1 9 3 s), proceedings of a conference convened by the Congress for Cultural Freedom, Hamburg, July 1933; Academic Freedom Under the Soviet Regime (M unich, 19 5 4 ), proceedings of a conference held by the Institute for the Study of the History and Culture of the USSR, New York, April 1954.

HISTORY AND POLITICS IN THE SOVIET UNION

[5

great majority devoted themselves to the publication of sources, the production of monographs and the writing of broader interpretive syntheses. Historians who were not politically active were in large measure free from government control, for the regime did not systematically use historical scholarship as a direct and continuous means of implementing its policies. At the same time historians of such opposing views as Milyukov and Pokrovsky were both banned from teaching because of their political activities.2 Russian historical scholarship was deeply affected by the revolution of 1917 and the civil war that followed, but the disruption caused by these events was more a result of the chaotic conditions of life than of the policies of the Soviet government. Many of the leading historians chose to remain in Soviet Russia, and during the first postrevolutionary years their scholarly activity was relatively unimpeded, although the government gave them only limited funds for publication. This was indeed a major difficulty, for between 1917 and 1924 at least half a dozen scholarly journals founded by this group were forced to cease publication for lack of funds, and for another decade many manuscripts were left unpublished for the same reason.3 At the same time, non-Marxist scholars continued to occupy important positions in the profession. Thus the Institute of History, founded in 1921 under the auspices of the University of Moscow, was initially headed by a group of non-Marxists. Even when this Institute was transferred in 1925 under Communist auspices to the newlyorganized Russian Association of Scientific Institutes for 2. Anatole G. Mazour, An Outline of (Berkeley, 1939); M ichael Karpovich, in Russian historiography," Slavonic 31-39; Alfred A. Skerpan, "Modern

Modem Russian Historiography

"Klyuchevski and recent trends Review, XX I (March, 1 9 4 3 ), Russian Historiography,” Kent State University Bulletin, Research Series I, XL (October, 1 9 52), 37‫־‬ 60; the best Soviet accounts are N. L. Rubinshtein, Russkaya istoriografiya [Russian historiography] (M oscow 1 9 4 1 ), and M. N . Tikhomirov, ed., Ocherki istorii istoricheskoi nauki v SSSR [Essays in the history of historical scholarship in the USSR], Vols. I and II (Moscow, 1955-60), of a projected three volumes. 3. A. Presniakov, "Historical research in Russia during the revolutionary crisis,” American Historical Review, X X V III (Jan., 1 9 2 3 ), 248-57.

6]

THE EVOLUTION OF THEORY

Research in the Social Sciences, generally known as RANION from its Russian initials, thp nrm-^rm.qt_historians played a very active role in its work. Some of the^ smaller research organizations, such as the State Historical Museum and the Society for History and Russian Antiquities, remained in their hands for as much as a decade.^ Under such circumstances it was possible for such leading representatives of Russian historical scholarship as Bakhrushin, Bogoslovsky, Gotye, Likhachev, Lyubavsky, Piatonov, Presnyakov, and Tarie to continue until about 1928 as active scholars, despite the fact that they suffered from discrimination on political grounds and experienced great difficulty in obtaining funds for the publication of major works. Parallel to this group of scholars dedicated to the seientific method as applied to history there grew up an official school of Marxist historians under the leadership of Pokrovsky, seconded by Adoratsky, Olminsky, Piontkovsky, Ryazanov and Volgin. As the official historians of the Soviet regime, this group organized a series of commissions and institutes dedicated to the study of such subjects as the diplomatic background of the war, the October revolution, the Communist Party, trade unionism and the preBolshevik revolutionary movement. In addition to publishing several series of documents, of which the most notable was the multi-volume edition of the diplomatic documents of the tsarist and provisional governments, this group also edited several historical journals devoted to these predominantly revolutionary subjects. A Marx-Engels Institute and a Lenin Institute were also established to collect and edit the writing of the Communist theorists. In 1922 Pokrovsky founded Krasnyi Arkhiv [Red Archives], which until its demise in 1941 published 106 volumes of documentary materials. Of more direct consequence for the future of historical scholarship was the establishment in 1918 under Pokrovsky’s supervision of a Socialist Academy for the Social Sciences, soon to be renamed the Communist Academy. This organization became the fountainhead of official doc-

HISTORY AND POLITICS IN THE SOVIET UNION

[ j

trine in a number of fields of study, although it was not until the Institute of History was transferred from RANION in 1929 to the Academy that the latter became a dominant force in historical research. The training of scholars in the Marxist doctrine was the task of the Institute of Red Professors, founded in Moscow in 1921. The ubiquitous Pokrovsky was in charge of the work in history at this Institute, a position which gave him a dominant influence over the younger members of the profession. He also headed the Society of Marxist Historians, founded in 1925 as a branch of the Communist Academy, and edited its journal, the Istorik-Marksist [Marxist Historian] (19264 1 ), which became the official organ of the Communist Party in the field of history. It was fi3ng a1rnost a decade after the revolution before the Bolsheviks were in a position from the point of view of staff and organization to exert a decisive influence on the historical profession, although throughout this period they occupied the “mmmandingTeiglvts” in this field^as. in others through their control of budgetary allocations, publication outlets, research and training institutions, as well as of the^pojjce.^ The traditional historians were not only tolerated during this period, but in fact remained the principal source of scholarship except in those fields connected with the war and revolution in which the Communist Party was particularly interested. The co-existence of these two groups appeared to be feasible as late as 1928, when they appeared together at a special conference of Russian historians organized in Berlin by the Deutsche Gesellschaft zum Studium Osteurppas,4 and at the Sixth International Congress of Historical Studies at Oslo. This situation rame tp ap pr>d in 929 ‫ו‬, when the Communists began to take decisive steps to liquidate their “bourgeois” colleagues. In that year several leading historians were forbidden tô^fëach and deprived 0jLacc£SS_±0 research facilities, and such djstinguished-figures- as-Gotye, Platonov, Likhachev,^Lyubavskyr and^Tarlç, among others, 4. O tto H oetzsch, ed.. Aus der historischen Wissenschaft der SovietUnion, in Osteuropäische Forschungen, N .F . V I (1 9 2 9 ).

ö]

THE EVOLUTION OF THEORY

were arrested and sent into exile. At the same time the Academy of Sciences was formally taken over by the Communists, and non-party members were generally purged from academic institutions. Although as late as 1928 the Communists had pointed to the relative freedom of their “bourgeois” colleagues as evidence of the tolerant attitude of the Soviet regime, these same colleagues were now castigated as enemies of the working class and as potential saboteurs. This about-face was bv no means limited to the historical profession, but was in fact part of a general policy of the party to wipe out “class enemies” with a view to strengthening the body politic for the efforts of the first Five-Year Plan. This new line had been heralded at the fifteenth congress of the Communist Party in 1927, and it was implemented gradually in the ensuing years in the various walks of Soviet life. From now on all historians were required to forsake^5bjectivît\|| and follow the party line, and tneadherents of traditional scholarly methods were censuredTT5r~eclecticism and pluralism when, were not accused of treason.r>5 •‫׳‬

5. Fritz Epstein, “D ie marxistische Geschichtswissenschaft in der Soviet Union seit 1927,” Jahrbücher für Kultur und Geschichte der Slavcn, N. F. (1 9 3 0 ), 78-203; P. Vostokov, “Les sciences historiques en Russie,“ Le Monde slave, n. s. VII (Sept., 1930), 438-68; (O ct., 193 0 ), 79*98; (N ow , 1930), 294-311; (D ec., 1930). 437*60; 11. s. VIII (Fcb., 1931), 265-94; Hans Jonas, “D ie Entwicklung der Gcschichtsforschung in der Soviet Union seit dem Ausgang des W eltkrieges,‫״‬ Zeitschrift für osteuropäische Geschichte, V (1 9 3 1 ), 66-83, 386-96; Josef Pfitzner, “Die Geschichtswissenschaft in der Sowjetunion,‫ ״‬in Bolschewistische W issenschaft und “Kulturpolitik ” (2nd cd., Königsberg and Berlin, 1942), 163-218; “Aperçu sur l'évolution de la conception de l'histoire en Union Soviétique,'' La Documentation française. No. 2341 (October 22, 1957), and No. 2342 (October 23, 195‫ ;)־־‬Günther Stöckl, “Historiker auf Generallinie: Geschichtswissenschaft und Partei in vier Jahrzehnten Sowjetunion,” W ort und Wahrheit, XII (1 9 5 7 ), 511-526; and Konstantin F. Shtcppa, Russian Historians and the Soviet State (New Brunswick, N.J., 1962), which oilers the most compre• hensivc and thoughtful treatment of this subject. The leading Soviet accounts of this period arc M. V . Ncchkina, “Nauka russkoi istorii’’ [Scholarship in Russian history], in OI>shchestvennyc nauki SSSR, 1917‫־‬ 1927, cd. by V. P. Volgin, G. O. Gordon and 1. K. I.uppol (M oscow, 126-62 ,(9 2 8 ‫ ; נ‬Trudy pervoi vsesovu/noi konferentsii istorikov-marksistoy [Proceedings of the first all-union conference of Marxist historians] (■j \ o l s . , Moscow, 1 9 3 0 ) ; and V. P. Volgin, K. V. Tarie and A. M. Paul‫ ׳‬Ml ova, cds., Dvadsat pvat let istoricheskoi nauki v SSSR [Twentyfive \c.1rs of historical scholarship in the U.S.S.R.) (Moscow, 1942).

HISTORY AND POLITICS IN THE SOVIET UNION

[9

II Pokrovsky now emerged as the unchallenged leader of the Soviet historical profession, but his victory was shortlived. He died in 1932, and within two years he was being vilified* by tonner students and colleagues alike as a falsifier of Marxism. W hat is the explanation of these strange events? / / To judge from contemporary Soviet publications», it was primarily a question of the interpretation of Marxism. Pokrovsky himself had of course always been a Marxist. He had gone so far as to assert that “Marx is one of the greatest representatives of the historical method in world literature. Marx is historical to the core, Marxism— is historism.” 0 In reviewing the work of the Society of Marxist Historians in 1930, he noted the continued presence of non-Marxist personnel and urged the desirability of “an ideological check on our specialists.‫ ״‬And he added: “The most important task is to relate the historical work that we are doing to the struggles of the proletariat against wage slavery. Where this connection is not made, there is no contemporary Leninist history.6 7 ‫ ״‬The even more violent attacks of Pokrovsky’s Marxist colleagues against the non-Marxist scholars were likewise made in the name of Marxism.8 Yet when the time came for Pokrovsky’s posthumous liquidation, he too was accused of “anti-Marxist conceptions.‫״‬ One could continue citing accusations and counteraccusations in the name of Marx throughout the thirty years since Pokrovsky’s death, and there are many exam6. M. N . Pokrovsky, “Marks— kak istorik; doklad" [Marx as an historian; a report], Vestnik sotsialistichcskoi A kaclcmii, No. 4 (AprilJuly, 1923), 374• 7. M. N. Pokrovsky, “O zadacliakh marksistskoi istoricheskoi natiki v rckonstruktivny period" [On the tasks of Marxist 11ist01 ical scholarship in the period of reconstruction], 1st.-Marks., XXI (1 9 3 1 ), 7. 8. See for example G. Zaidcl and M. Tsvibah, Klassovyi vrag na istoiichcskom fronte: Tarie i Platonov i ikh shkoly [The class enemy on the historical front: 'Parle and Platonov and their school] (M oscow, 1931); and Sergei A. Piontkovsky, Burzhuaznaya istorichcskava nank i v Rnssii [Bourgeois historical scholarship in Russia] (Moscow, 1 9 0 )

THE EVOLUTION OF THEORY

io ]

pies of this in the chapters that follow, without discovering precisely what is the true Marxist interpretation of history. As a matter of fact, it may well be questioned whether Marx's historical materialism, taken literally, contributes anything substantial to an understanding of history. To say this is not to belittle the position of Marx as one of the pioneering sociologists of the nineteenth century, for his insights concerning the impact of industrialization on modern society have served to stimulate several generations of thinkers. The issue is rather whether Marx’s historical materialism provides any more than a series of broatTgenr erahzations subject to a wide variety of interpretations, and Tndeed whether M arx himself regarded historical materialism as anything more binding or prophetic than a general ^ tfifudé^foward history.9 Non-Marxist thinkers who have devoted serious study to historical materialism, tend to agree that it is speculative and utopian rather than scientific. They recognize its appeal to human aspirations for progress, but note that it is illogical and incoherent in many of its details. They are skeptiral-^hniif tfiç division of h istory into fixed periods, and especially about predictions regarding the future which fail to take into account Jhe possibility of unforeseen discoveries an ^developments. They can also cite well-documenfed examples of the failure of Marx’s predictions to come true, if predictions he indeed intended them to be. It has moreover been amply demonstrated that in areas subject to universally accepted standards, such as mathematics and the natural sciences, neither in the U.S.S.R. or elsewhere has dialectical materialism become a principle • of research.10 The Central Committee has for years been calling upon *. -

■■

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1

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9. Karl Korsch, Karl Marx (London, 1 9 38), 167*8; Isaiah Berlin, Karl Marx: His Life and Environment (2nd ed., London, 1 9 48), 143*4. 10. Important recent contributions to the large literature on this subject are Karl Popper, The Open Society and its Enemies (rev. ed.; Princeton, 1950); M. M . Bober, Karl Marx's Interpretation of History (rev. ed., Cambridge, 1950); Herbert J. Muller, The Uses of the Past (N ew York, 1952); and H. B. Acton, The Illusion of the Epoch: Marxism-Leninism as a Philosophical Creed (London, 1955).

HISTORY AND POLITICS IN THE SOVIET UNION

[1 1

Soviet historians to provide a Marxist interpretation of Russian history, but the historians are not much nearer to a solution of this problem than they were in 1917. W h a t1 is demanded of them is that they identify in Russian his-| tory the evolving economic relations that Marx regarded j as the “substructure” of society, define the social and politicai institutions constituting the “superstructure,” and then demonstrate their relationship and interaction. Even if one assumes that Marx and Engels intended their theories to be used in this fashion, which is most unlikely, the problem is paradoxical for they bequeathed no formula for its solution. They were by no means clear as to the relationship between “substructure” and “superstructure,” although Marx, at least, expressed his theories as though he were a fairly consistent economic determinist who admitted only secondary influence on the part of institutions and ideas. If Soviet historians have failed to agree on a Marxist interpretation of Russian history in this narrow and “scientific” sense» it is not for any lack of intelïïgêhce or zeal. It is because^ the task is impossible. Marxism provides not a scientific law of history but simply a general approach, a point of view, a spirit, and nothing more.11 iFM am sm is nöF a scientific guide to the past, present and future, then what is the source of the policies of the Communist Party and the Soviet state? This is a question which has not been adequately studied and to which there is no simple answer. Communist leaders are doubtless sincere in considering Marxism as a guide to action, yet Marxism provides no such guide, and was not intended to, beyond the broadest outlines. As a body of theory which dealt with some of the fundamental problems of industrialization and which seemed to promise abundance for all in the foreseeable future, Marxism was capable of inspiring great enthusiasm among persons dedicated to the modernization of society and was in many respects transformed and adapted by them to suit their various needs. The Bolsheviks added to Marxism a strong dose of the Russian revolutionary tradition in its most uncompromis11. See especially Chapter II.

12]

THE EVOLUTION OF THEORY

ing form, and this intoxicating blend has continued to inspire two generations of leaders. W hen it comes to policy decisions, however, whether strategic or tactical, it seems pretty clear that the Bolsheviks have been guided by what they considered necessary for the modernization of Russian society and for the preservation of their own political power. These practical decisions have always been presented in Marxist—terminology, but the latter is more a means of expression than a source of ideas. The !motives that Ted hrst to the establishment of Pokrovsky as the dean of Soviet historians and later to his posthumous liquidation, should thus probably be sought not in the writings of Marx and Engels but in the needs of the party and the state. In the first phase of Stalin's struggle for power, he of necessity concentrated on his major rivals and permitted such peripheral fields of state activity as scholarship and the arts to continue along the relatively unrestricted lines established by Lenin and refleeting the spirit of the New Economic Policy. As Stalin became more sure of his power and prepared to launch the economic revolution of the five-year plansr he felt the need to gain further^contrql over scholarship and the arts. This need was reflected in the policy of removing nonMarxist historians from positions of influence in the profession and of giving party members under the leadership of Pokrovsky full control in this field. . The order of the day after 1928 was the monopoly of the party in all phases of cultural life, but this did not resolve the question as to who would control the party. The tightening of the party's grip on the country was accompanied by a tightening of Stalin's grip on the party. The motives and purposes of Stalin's various purges are still a matter of dispute, but in general it was the bureaucratic politicians who replaced the ideologists. This involved a much more TTîfCCt subordination of scholarship and the arts to the immediate purposes of the party and the state. The ideologists had intyrpsted in ideas, derived primaj‫־‬ily_ij30m-the European, tradition of Marxism, and theyTxercised a good deal of individual judgment in

HISTORY AND POLITICS IN THE SOVIET UNION

[1 3

th eir ow n w o rk e v c n th o u g h they were frequently intolerant of non-M arxists. T h e bureaucrats were m ore interested in loyaltv to their leader and in th e im p lem en tation of his program of industrialization, and were prepared to use any m eans to achieve their en d s.

A policy of tins type required pliant instruments, and Pokrovsky was not such a man. A second upheaval in the historical profession starting in 1934 was therefore needed to remove the vestiges of Pokrovsky’s independence and to enforce a more universally compliant attitude on the part of the scholars. Pokrovsky’s name appears many times( in the chapters which follow, and he emerges as a rather1 naive economic determinist who tended in his interpretation to scc.janly ., the, pervasive and rather inechanical _ influence of the productive forces and class relationships ; which form Marx’s “substructure.” He was at the same \ time a great organizer and editor, whose oversimplified sociological schemes did not prevent him from planning and executing a great deal of valuable documentary and archival work. What nevertheless distinguished him most of all, and what ultimately led to his posthumous condemnation, was his relative independence from manipulation by the bureaucrats of the Central Committee apparatus. Pokrovsky’s general interpretation was evolved before the revolution, it had received Lenin’s approval, and it came close to being the official party interpretation of history for a decade and a half or more. E#krovsky’s history was also party history in the sense tharqns interpretation was designed to demonstrate the soundness of Marxism and the inevitability of the Soviet regime, but it was an interpretation that he had evolved independently. He was not a party historian in the Stalinist sense of being willing to adapt his views to every zig and zag of the party line, for his loyalty was more to the spirit of Marxism as he understood it than to the policy of any particular clique of Central Committee bureaucrats. It is significant that Pokrovsky, although officially proclaimed as dean of Soviet historians, was in fact pretty much of a figurehead for sevcrai years before his death in 1932. Some of his principal

14]

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of

theory

ideas were attacked and discarded by his colleagues, and he in fact admitted in 1931 that his interpretation had not been well expressed. He nevertheless continued to maintain that his history was sound Marxism, and to cite the public approval that Lenin had accorded his work.12 The elevation of Pokrovsky thus resembled what later came to be known as a united-front operation: the prestige of his name was used to facilitate the expulsion of non-Marxist historians, but once this was accomplished he was the next on the list of those to be discarded. It is not difficult to understand why this was done, given the aims and methods of the Central Committee. Pokrovsky had portrayed all pre-Soviet institutions and personalities in a sarcastic vein, and had presented his materials in a theoretical and schematic form. This did not meet the needs of a regime that wished to stjm niate patriotjspi by rehabilitating selected personalities, and to present Russian history m an Interesting narrative form suited to secoridary school education. This concern was well stated in the decree of May 16th, 1934, which announced the new line: Instead of the teaching of civic history in an animated and entertaining form with the exposition of the most important events and facts in their chronological sequence and with sketches of historical personages, the pupils are given abstract definitions of social and economic formations, which thus replace the consecutive exposition of civic history by abstract sociological schemes. The decisive condition of the permanent mastery of historv is the observance of historical and chronological sequence in the exposition of historical events, with a due emphasis in the memory of the pupils of important historical facts, the names of historical persons and chronological dates. Only such a course of historical teaching can assure the necessary understanding, fidelity of presentation and real use of historical material; correct analysis and correct presenta12. See the Preface and first Appendix in the 10th edition of Pokrovskv, Russ. ist. v sa mom szhatom ocherke.

HISTORY AND POLITICS IN THE SOVIET UNION

[1 5

tion of historical events leading pupils to the Marxist conception of history, are possible only on this basis.13 The new party line stressed history as indoctrination, and in the years after 1934 a variety of themes were given positive approval. These are set forth in a recent Soviet manual on the teaching of history: “The correct teaching of history must create in the students the conviction that capitalism will inevitably perish. . . . Through the study of history, students become convinced that everywhere, in all spheres of science and art, industry and agriculture, in the work of peace and on the battlefields the Soviet people marchTn the forefront of other nations, and have created values which are unequaled anywhere in the world. . . The study of history helps students to form their patriotic feelings and to find an external expression for them. . Historical material pertaining to wars and military questions is very important for the cultivation of Soviet paÎri01î3m7r"rl” ‫־‬ III The manner in which Pokrovsky and his associates were first given a monopoly in the field of history and were then removed from power within half a dozen years, is illustrative of the mechanisms by which scholarship is manipulated in the Soviet system. The key to this manipulation lies in the concentration of decision-making and power at the summit of the Communist Party, and the implementation of its policies by the party bureaucracy. Such negative controls as the various kinds of censorship and of course the ubiquitous police are too well known to 13. “O prepodavanii grazhdanskoi istorii v shkolakh SSSR” [On the teaching of civic history in the schools of the U.S.S.R .], Direktivy VKP( b) i postanovleniya sovetskogo piavitelstva o narodnom obrazovanii za 1917*19 47 gg. (M oscow, 1 9 4 7 ), 170-1; trans, in Slavonic and East European Review, XIII (July, 1 9 3 4 ), 204*5. 14. M . A. Zinoviev, Soviet Methods of Teaching History (Washing* ton, D .C ., 1 9 5 2 ), 84*92, trans, from the Soviet edition of 1948; see also W illiam K. M edlin, "The Teaching of History in Soviet Schools," The Politics of Soviet Education, ed. by George Z. F. Bereday and John Pennar (N ew York; i9 6 0 ) , 100-116.

THE EVOLUTION OF THEORY

16]

require comment. More significant are the positive controis which center in the budgetary allocations on the part of the Ministry of Higher Education and the Academy of Sciences, and more particularly the manipulation of personnel and ideology by the party bureaucracy. The chain of command through which the control is exerted has its point of departure in the Central Committee of the Communist Party, and more particularly in the Politburo, renamed the Presidium in 1952. The directives which establish the themes for historical interpretation and indicate the types of work which the party wishes to see accomplished are formulated by the Propaganda and Agitation Department of the Central Committee, which was headed by Zhdanov from 1938 until his death in 1948. On very important matters the leaders of the party may announce a new line of policy, as in 1936 when a series of instructions on the teaching of history were issued in the name of Stalin, Zhdanov and Kirov. More commonly, the views of the Central Committee were set forth in the leading party publications in unsigned editorials or in articles signed by secondary officials. The initiative in implementing these views is generally taken bv the party cells in the research institutes and educational establishments. The personnel for this work is trained in the Higher Part) School, which stresses administrative problems, and more recentlv also in the Acadcmv of the Social Sciences of the Communist Party, founded in 1946, which is devoted to theory and ideology. Both of these institutions are directly under the Central Committee, and hence arc distinct from the state system of higher education. Both include general and Russian history in their curricula.1r‫׳‬ In the field of history, as in most other fields of scholarship, the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R. has been the principal agency of party supervision since 1936, when «■

^

15• Louis Ncinzcr, “The Kremlin's professional staff: the 'apparatus' of the Central Com m ittee, Communist Party of the Soviet Union," American Political Science Review, X LIV (March, 1 9 50), 64*85; Mark G. Field, “The Academy of the Social Sciences of the Comimmist Party of the Soviet U nion,” American Journal of Sociology, LVI (Sept., 1950), 13741•

HISTORY AND POLITICS IN THE SOVIET UNION

[17

the Institute of History was transferred to it from the defunct Communist Academy. The Academy of Sciences is ostensibly an autonomous institution, subordinated directly to the Council of Ministers and governed by a General Assembly that meets periodically and a Presidium with interim powers. Party control resides principally in two mechanisms: the Scientific Secretariat of the Academy, which exercises the real executive power, and the Party organization. The latter, subordinated to the Moscow district of the party, has its own secretary and operates through party units at all levels of the Academy organization. W ith both direct management and indirect supervision in its hands, the party thus has a firm control over all aspects of the Academy’s work. The Academy also maintains branches in twelve of the constituent Soviet republics. The Department of Historical Sciences is one of the eight principal divisions of the Academy of Sciences, and in turn includes eight semi-autonomous scholarly organizations of which the most important is the Institute of History. Also within this Department are institutes devoted to ethnography, material culture, Oriental studies, history of the arts, and Slavic studies, as well as the Archives of the Academy and a museum of the history of religion. The Institute of History itself is a complex organization. It includes twelve Sectors divided by historical fields, ranging from History of the U.S.S.R.: Feudal Period, to World History; two Commissions, on the history of historical sciences and the history of agriculture; and five Auxiliary Sections, devoted to post-graduate training, editing and publishing, reference and bibliography, the library, and manuscripts and archives. The Department of Historical Sciences has some fifteen academicians, out of a total of about 140 in the Academy, and an undetermined number of scholars of lesser ranks.16 The functions of the Institute of History embrace research at a scholarly level, the training of scholars for the 16. Alexander V ucinich, The Soviet Academy of Sciences (Stanford,. 1956), 21-41.

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two advanced Soviet degrees of Candidate and Doctor, and a wide variety of adult education and propaganda activities. The latter include the compilation of popular encyclopedias and handbooks, patriotic and exhortative lectures intended for a wide audience, and participation in meetings at the Academy and elsewhere designed to lend dignity to the various propaganda campaigns of the party. The scholarly work of the Institute of History in the Stalin era may be followed in the general publications of the Academy, especially the Izvestiya [News], in its various series, from 1928 to 1952; and after 1931 the Vestnik [Journal]. Among earlier periodicals devoted to Russian and general history, Krasnyi Arkhiv [Red Archives] and Istorik-Marksist [Marxist historian] were both discontinued in 1941. The work of the Institute of History has been reflected more directly in Borba Klassov [Class warfare] from 1931 to 1936, Istoricheskii Zhumal [Historical journal], from 1936 to 1945, and in Voprosy Istorii [Problems of History], which has been the principal historical journal since 1945. The Institute has also published Istoricheskii Arkhiv [Historical archives], since 1936, Istoricheskie Zapiski [Historical notes], since 1937, Vestnik Drevnei Istorii [Journal of Ancient History], since 1947, and Doklady i Soobshcheniya [Reports and Communications], since 1954. The Academy has gradually been given a virtual monopoly of historical scholarship, but some historical work also appears in the learned journals of the larger universities. As is the case with other branches of the Soviet elite, the political loyalty of scholars is assured by a characteristic system of incentives and controls. The incentives include a relatively high base pay, in addition to substantial fees for administrative duties at the Academv, for teaching at one of the higher educational institutions of the party or state, for supervising the training of graduate students, for editorial work on scholarly journals, for advising government departments, and in some cases for such political activities as membership in the Supreme

HISTORY AND POLITICS IN THE SOVIET UNION

[1Ç

Soviet. The academicians are the aristocrats in this society of scholars, with many privileges relating to housing, transportation and consumer goods. They are followed in rank by corresponding members, senior and junior research associates, technical assistants and graduate students. In addition there is a clerical and maintenance staff some two to three times more numerous than the scholars. Scholars rank high in the Soviet hierarchy, and membership in this group offers rare privileges and opportunities. These are indeed so great as to constitute in themselves a major source of discipline, for by denying or threatening to deny one or more of their various sources of privilege and income the party can bring many subtle pressures to bear on a scholar and his family. In addition to these incentives, there are of course many direct controls. There are the general restrictions of party and police which affect all levels of Soviet society and probably constitute the most all-pervading system of supervision that the world has known. There are other controls more particularly adapted to work of scholarship. These include a wide variety of restrictions relating to topics of research; consultation of archival materials, which since 1938 have been controlled by the Ministry of Internal Affairs; consultation of foreign literature; and of course foreign travel and research. The party also censors research at various stages before and after publication, requires certain set forms and procedures in relating all research to Marxism-Leninism, and limits formal discussion among scholars to certain set topics approved in advance or more often recommended. Publications surprised by a changing party line may be withdrawn from circulation, and in at least one instance a Doctor’s degree has been revoked. Historians must not only adhere strictly to all Party directives, but must repeat and elaborate them with marked enthusiasm in print and at public meetings called for this purpose. Through the yearly and five-year plans required of the Academy and its subdivisions, the historians are instructed as to which themes of research are

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THE EVOLUTION OF THEORY

of interest to party and state. The party also designates which students will be allowed to do graduate work, and with which scholar.17

IV Many of the Soviet methods of control are present in some form in other societies, and indeed no large state operation can proceed without plans, budgets, boards of review, priorities, and personnel management. W hat characterizes the Soviet system is the lengths to which these measures are carried and the concentration of all controls in the hands of a highly centralized party. W ith all these instruments of pressure in their hands, the party should long since have converted the historical profession into a willing tool of the party line. Yet, this is not the case. The historical journals and the publications of the Academy have in recent years contained frequent and sharp criticism of the Institute of History, reflecting a general failure on its part to follow party dictates. The Institute has been criticized for negligence in preparing adequate histories for general use, especially textbooks; for the poor organization of its research, resulting in a lack of attention to contemporary history and to problems of theory; for failure to elaborate a satisfactory Marxist periodization of Russian history; and for non-fulfillment of the plans of research, with delays of a decade or more on individual 17. Ibid., 81-124; see also A. A. Avtorkhanov [Aleksandr Uralov], “Polozhenie istoricheskoi nauki v SSSR” [The position of historical scholarship in the U.S.S.R .], M a terialy konferentsii nau chnykh rabotnikov (emigrantov) sostoyavsbeisya v Myunkhenc 11-14 yanvaiya 1951 g. [Materials of the conference of émigré scholars convened in Munich on 11-14 January 1951] (M unich, 1 9 5 1 ), III, 5-53; “Thought control in the Soviet Union,” Department of State Bulletin , X X V (Nov. 5, 1 9 5 1 ), 719-22; (N ov. 26, 1 9 51), 844-51; V . P. Marchenko, Planirovanie nauchnoi rahoty v SSSR [The planning of scholarly work in the U.S.S.R.] (M unich, 1953); Alexander P. Ohloblyn, “Soviet historiography, “Academic Freedom Under the Soviet Regime: A Symposium (M unich, 1 9 5 4 ), 69-77; and, of related interest, Merle Fainsod, “Censorship in the USSR— A documented record,” Problems of Communism, V (March-April, 1956), 12-19.

HISTORY AND POLITICS IN THE SOVIET UNION

[2 1

projects.18 After a generation of party activity since the death of Pokrovsky, is it not strange that party control has met with such resistance? How is this to be explained? A good deal of the criticism of the Institute of History is certainly a reflection of the party's method of operation. The party tends to set impossible tasks and obscure theoretical standards for scholars, and then goes through a ritual of “criticism and self-criticism" designed to keep the scholars on their toes and to demonstrate to higher officials the vigilance of party agents. A totalitarian system seems to require synthetic measures to take the place of the incentives provided by a freer society, for these exercises are very characteristic of the Soviet system of controis. The sudden shifts and inequities of party policy may also be explained by differences of opinion and maneuvering for power on the part of party leaders at the summit of the Central Committee. At the same time it appears that the insubordination of the Institute of History refleets something much more interesting: the training and knowledge of the scholars give them a certain bargaining power with the party. In the 1930's a majority of the scholars were nonMarxist, and even after the Second World War party members may still have been in a minority in the upper echelons. It has been estimated that in the late 1930's no more than five per cent of the academicians and corresponding members of the Academy of Sciences belonged to the party, while at the junior research level about onehalf were party members.19 A totalitarian regime— one 18. Characteristic criticisms of the Institute of History are: A. Mosina, “O rabote Instituta istorii Akademii nauk SSSR” [Concerning the work of the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of th e U.S.S.R .], Vop. I st, IV , 11 (N ov., 1 9 4 8 ), !44-49; A. Pankratova, “Nasushchnye voprosy sovetskoi istoricheskoi nauki” [The vital questions of Soviet historical scholarship], Kommunist, X X X (April, 1 9 5 3 ), 55-69; and ‘4O nauchnoi deyatelnosti i sostoyanii kadrov Instituta Istorii” [Concerning the scholarly activity and status of the personnel of the Institute of History], Vestnik Akademii Nauk SSSR, X X III (April, 1 9 5 3 ), 77-9• 19. V ucinich, Soviet Academy of Sciences, 38.

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that wishes to manipulate all phases of human activity to achieve its ends— must come to terms with those possessing technical skills. There is perhaps no better indication of the nature of Communism than the concessions the party is willing to make to opposing points of view if they can be accommodated to the party line. Many examples of the tug of war between party and scholarship will be seen in the chapters that follow, and indeed this is the main theme of these chapters. The sudden zigs and zags of the party line frequently call into question the integrity of the scholars concerned, who may be required to attack in uncompromising and humiliating terms their own major work of scholarship within a few years after it is published. It should, therefore, be recognized that the explanation does not lie in any particular fickleness on the part of the individuals concerned, but in the extraordinary pressures to which they can be subjected in the Soviet system. Individual scholars may in fact be confronted with the alternative of adjusting their views to the party line or of losing their privileges as members of the Soviet elite, their jobs, their freedom of movement, and in some cases their lives. A number of historians died in prison or exile in the early 1930's and others disappeared in the great purges, although there is no case on record of a formal trial and liquidation on grounds of historical interpretation alone. It is rather the milder and more flexible pressures which are most frequently used, and these gain their effectiveness from the total control exerted by the party over all elements of the scholar's environment. From the individual scholar's point of view, it is a question of finding a compromise between his physical security and his personal views. Each person faces this problem in his own way, but in a surprisingly large number of cases the scholar has been able to make a concession in form to the party line while in substance retaining much of his personal integrity. The distinction between the non-Marxist historian and the partv historian is clear enough in. the published monographs and textbooks. The

HISTORY AND POLITICS IN THE SOVIET UNION

[2 3

former usually present the results of their research in the traditional manner, but within a light framework of partyoriented interpretation. In fact a considerable number of excellent monographs have appeared since the 1930'$ in which there is little trace of the party line, and even less of Marxism, between the introduction and the conclusions. Only at the outset and at the end are references made to appropriate statements of the party leaders and to the Marxist “classics.” By contrast the party historians, who have in fact been relatively few in number, devote themselves primarily to revolutionary and party history. In this category, which lies beyond the scope of the present volume, the most extreme forms of historical revision and suppression of well-known facts and personalities have been employed. W hen the party historians explore the deeper past, it is chiefly to draw upon secondary materials to illustrate some phase of the current party line.20 It was the desire of the party in the later 1930’s to use Russian history as a means of creating in Soviet opinion several attitudes designed to strengthen the regime. This policy gave historical scholarship, and in particular nonMarxist historians, an opportunity to regain a position of influence in research and publication. After 1934 the party stressed such historical themes as the repulsion of foreign invasions, the heroic efforts of Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great in defeating domestic enemies and in centralizing the government, and the territorial growth of Russia. These themes served to provide justification in Russian history for certain policies of the regime, and helped to base these policies on the common historical experience of the Russian people rather than on Marxist doctrine. These developments in the field of history in the 1930’s were thus part of the general trend in Stalinist political thought away from the theoretical determinism of Marxism and in the direction of a voluntarism which as 20. T h e distortions in the history of the Com m unist Party are graphically described in Bertram D . W olfe's ‘4Operation rewrite: T h e agony of Soviet historians,” Foreign Affairs, XX I (O ct., 1 9 5 2 ), 39‫־‬ 57, and “Totalitarianism and history,” in Totalitarianism , ed. by Carl J. Friedrich (Cambridge, 1 9 5 4 ), 262-73.

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THE EVOLUTION OF THEORY

vet had an uncertain theoretical basis. This new emphasis on human consciousness was still expressed in Marxist terms, but non-Soviet scholars are generally agreed that it marks a fundamental departure from Marxist doctrine as understood in the W est.21 In terms of their knowledge and skills it was the older generation of non-Marxist historians who were best able to implement this new line, and they seized the opportunity with vigor. Their names figured prominently in the new collaborative textbook for university students, and under the cover of the new party line they published a number of works which testified to the continued existence of important historical scholarship in the Soviet Union. Some of the most significant of these works were by deceased scholars whose manuscripts could not have been published under Pokrovsky’s regime. Others were clearly the result of more recent and continuing research. Any monograph or compilation of documents could be fitted into the new party line so long as it was not unpatriotic in tone, and avoided all discussion of the achievements of the tsarist government in the century after the Napoleonic invasion. The party historians, who included now a number of reformed adherents of Pokrovsky’s Marxism, had in general a somewhat separate sphere of activity. They wrote the textbooks at the secondary school level, and they concentrated more particularly on certain phases of economic history and on the revolutionary move21. T he developments in this period are treated in Stuart R. Tompkins, 4‘Trends in Communist historical th o u g h t/’ Slavonic and East European Review, XIII (1934*35), 294-319; B. H. Sumner, “Soviet Histor)•/’ ibid., XVI (1937*38), 601-15; XVII (1938-39), 15161; E. F. Maximovic. “Doctrine marxiste-léniniste appliqué à l’étude concrète de l’histoire,” Bulletin de },Association russe pour les Recherches scientifiques à Prague, V II, N o. 46 (1 9 3 8 ), 219*63; Georges Kagan, “La crise de la science historique russe,” Revue Historique, LXV (1 9 4 0 ), 1-35; G. B. Carson, “Changing perspectives in Soviet historiography,” South Atlantic Quarterly, XLVII (April, 1948), 186-95; Georg von Rauch, “D ie Grundlinien der sovietischcn GeschichtsSchreibung im Zeichen des Stalinismus,” Europa Archiv, V (1 9 5 0 ), 3383*88, 3423-32, 3489-94; and Klaus Mchnert, Stalin Versus Marx: The Stalinist Historical Doctrine (London, 1952).

HISTORY AND POLITICS IN THE SOVIET UNION

[2 5

ments of the nineteenth century. The more immediate history of Bolshevism tended to be written by public relations officials specializing in "agitation and propaganda‫״‬ rather than by professional historians, and research in this field involved political risks which few were willing to take. In those aspects of their work where they did not go far beyond the documents, the party historians also produced some valuable scholarship. The influence of the non-Marxist historians reached its height during the Second World War, when many controls were relaxed and the conflicting elements in Soviet society were temporarily united in the struggle against the common enemy. The historical profession was freer than it had been at any time since the revolution, and doctrinal issues were submerged in the upsurge of patriotism. The end of the war nevertheless confronted both state and party with new problems, and the resulting changes in the party line soon made themselves felt in the field of history. The party apparently believed that, once the pressure of German aggression had been removed, the inherent centrifugal forces in Soviet society would again make themselves felt. The friendly relations with the Western allies, the hopes stimulated by the regime for a more relaxed atmosphere after the war, and the extensive personal contacts with the W est on the part of Russian soldiers and civilians, all had to be counteracted if the security of the regime was to be safeguarded. The formal launching of a cold war against the W est in 1946 was the general policy that the party adopted to meet this crisis, and within this framework it singled out certain existing or imagined trends in Soviet historiography for vigorous attack. Thus all indications of respect for the W est and acknowledgment of Western influence in Russia were attacked as "cosmopolitanism,‫ ״‬defined as "a reactionary bourgeois ideology, which rejects national traditions and national sovereignty, advocates an indifferent attitude towards the fatherland and the national culture, and seeks

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the establishment of ‘world government’ and ‘world citizenship/ ” 22 On the other hand, failure to pay lip service to Marxist terminology was attacked as “bourgeois objectivism,” defined as “an interpretation of the conformity of the historical process designed to justify and immortalize the capitalist system.23 ‫ ״‬More specifically, historians were criticized for failure to praise the successes of tsarist foreign policy, for neglecting the advantages derived by the peopies of Central Asia through incorporation into the Russian empire, for ignoring the superiority of Russian cuiture both before and since the revolution, for admitting that foreign ideas or institutions may have been adopted in Russia at any period in its history, and for failing to emphasize the leading role of the Great Russian people within the Soviet Union. The historians also had to take cognizance of the unusually obscure theoretical statements of Stalin in his essays Concerning Marxism in Linguistics (1950) and Economic Problems of Socialism (1952). The burden of these statements, despite certain inconsistencies and contradictions, was to emphasize the ability of the state to manipulate the economic substructure and to transform society. The active role of the state, and hence of the party, had of course long been a fact in Soviet society. This adjustment of theory to practice served to strengthen the hand of the party in its postwar effort to reassert its influence. Indeed, in the last years of the Stalin era there was a very significant tightening of party control over the writing of history. The general patriotic line initiated in 1934 was not changed, but the ways in which it can be expressed were greatly limited. Both Marxist and nonMarxist historians were brought to task for minor infractions of the party line, and the party relied much 22. “Kosmopolitizm” [Cosmopolitanism], Bolsh. Sov. Ents. (2nd e d .), X X III, 113. 23. “Obyektivizm burzhuaznyi” [Bourgeois objectivism], ibid., X X X , 442; “Protiv obyektivizma v istoricheskoi nauke‫[ ״‬Against objectivism in historical scholarship], Vop. ist., IV , 12 (D ec., 1 9 48), 3 1 2 ‫־‬, trans, in C.D.S.P.

HISTORY AND POLITICS IN THE SOVIET UNION

[

2J

more heavily than before on such devices as requiring historians to participate in formal discussions of such subjects as periodization, and the significance for historiography of Stalin's essay on linguistics.24 The historians adopted various devices to frustrate party controls. They tried to concentrate their work in the Kievan and Muscovite periods, where Marxism has relatively little relevance. They devoted attention to the publication of documents and to annotated editions of important sources, where problems of general interpretation could be avoided. They took advantage of the emphasis on patriotism to publish manuscripts which might not otherwise have seen the light. W hen impossible theoretical tasks were assigned to them, such as providing a Marxist periodization of Russian history in a narrowly literal fashion, they discussed and procrastinated for years before reaching the conclusion that their knowledge was not yet adequate for the task. There are doubtless many other methods, hidden from outsiders, by which party agents can be guided or argued into supporting sound scholarship. All these subterfuges have their limits, for the ultimate power is in the hands of the party, but that they have been so stubbornly employed testifies as to the bargaining power of the non-Marxist specialists. 24. Sergius Yakobson, “Postwar historical research in the Soviet U n io n /‫׳‬ Anna Is of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, C C LX III (May, 1 9 4 9 ), 123-33; R• Schlesinger, “Recent Soviet historiography,‫ ״‬Soviet Studies, I (19 4 9 -5 0 ), 293-312; II (19 5 0 -5 1 ), 3-21, 138-62, 265-88; Horst Jablonowski, “D ie Lage der sowjetrussischen Geschichtswissenschaft nach dem zweiten W eltkriege,‫ ״‬Saeculum, II (1 9 5 1 ), 443-64; Anatole G. Mazour and Herman E. Bateman, “Recent Conflicts in Soviet historiography,‫ ״‬Journal of Modern History, X X IV (March, 1 9 5 2 ), 56-68; G. Shtakelberg, “Otrazhenie politiki SSSR v smene sovetskikh istoricheskikh kontseptsii‫[ ״‬The repercussions of the policy of the U.S.S.R. on the change in the Soviet conception of history], Vestnik Instituta po Izucheniyu Istorii i Kultury SSSR, N o. 2 (M unich, 1 9 5 2 ), 34-53; M . Miller, “Postwar historical science in the U .S.S.R .,‫ ״‬The U S.S.R . Today and Tomorrow (M unich, 1 9 5 3 ), 11-18; Anatole G . Mazour, “Party line history,‫ ״‬American Scholar, X X II (Summer, 1 9 5 3 ), 293-303; Valentin Gitermann, “T he study of history in the Soviet U nion,‫ ״‬Science and Freedom (Boston, 1 9 5 5 ), 202- 11.

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V In historiography, as in other fields, the death of Stalin provided a crucial test as to which of his policies were an inherent part of the Soviet system and which were more temporary reflections of his rather special type of personality. The evidence of almost a decade suggests that the institutional role of the historical profession as it evolved under Stalin is a continuing feature of the Soviet system. At the same time, the extent and nature of the recent changes in this role provide interesting evidence as to the degree of flexibility that is possible within the svstern. Two developments in the post-Stalin era deserve particular attention : the significant increase in the freedom of historians to conduct research and to interpret their findings, and a more purposeful direction of historical work by the Communist Party. Some of these changes were foreshadowed in the last years of Stalin's era, but the developments since Khrushchev’s accession to power have been so significant as to deserve consideration as a distinct era. W ithin a few months after Stalin's death, the editorial directives provided by the official journal Voprosy Istorii began to reflect a more critical and inquisitive spirit, and the characteristic tone of self-satisfied patriotism rapidly gave way to a concern for a more objective treatment of the many controversial issues in Russian history that had until recently been set forth in terms of the doctrinal formulas prescribed by the party. By 1956 the spirit of revisionism assumed significant proportions. In January of that year the editors of Voprosy Istorii held a conference at which the excessive nationalism characteristic of historiographv in the postwar period came under criticism. Then in February, at the Twentieth Party Congress, Mikoyan accused Soviet historians of ignoring well-known facts in their treatment of recent history, and encouraged them to reconsider their condemnation of some of the party leaders purged by Stalin. This theme was then taken up in an address to the Congress by Anna M. Pankratova,

HISTORY AND POLITICS IN THE SOVIET U ^IO N

[2Ç

the chief editor of Voprosy Istorii and one of the most subservient among prominent historians in past years. She now urged her colleagues to base their research on the facts, and to avoid the more extreme forms of political bias.25 These new directives were taken literally by Voprosy Istorii, and E. N. Burdzhalov, the assistant editor, published several articles which dealt frankly with differences of opinion among political leaders in the critical year of 1917 and which urged a frank reconsideration of party history. The ensuing debate soon revealed a greater zeal for revisionism on the part of some historians than the party was prepared to tolerate, and within a year Burdzhalov was dismissed from his editorship. In the subsequent official pronouncements historians were warned that they should not allow revisionism and objectivity to be carried to the point of casting doubt on the historic achievements of the party, and were reminded that Stalin had been an outstanding Marxist-Leninist despite certain personal shortcomings. The outcome of the debate in Voprosy Istorii in 1956-57 revealed that the party did not envisage a general relaxation of its control over the historical profession, but over the years there has nevertheless been a significant broadening and diversification of opportunities for research and interpretation within the still rather narrow bounds of propriety defined by the party.26 Archives, especially those concerned with the more recent periods, have become much more accessible since 1956. Soviet historians had greatly resented the severe 25. T h e speeches of Mikoyan and Pankratova are available in English translation in Leo Gruliow, ed., Current Soviet Policies, II (N ew York, 1 9 5 7 ), 82-88, 146-149. 26. This debate may be followed in the editorials of V op. 1st., and in the comments of Alexander Dallin, “Recent Soviet Historiography," Problems of Communism, V (November-December, 1 9 5 6 ), 24-30; Leopold Labedz, “Soviet Historiography between Thaw and Freeze," T he Soviet Cultural Scene, 1956-1957, ed. by W alter Z. Laqueur and George Lichtheim (London and N ew York, 1 9 5 8 ), 144-166; and Merle Fainsod, “Soviet Russian Historians, or: T he Lesson of Burdzhalov,” Encounter, X V III (March, 1 9 6 2 ), 82-89.

30]

THE EVOLUTION OF THEORY

restrictions on access to the archives imposed by the Ministry of Interior when it took them over in 1938, and in the last few years there has been a noticeable increase in the publication of source materials in the journal Istoricheskii Arkhiv and elsewhere. There has also been greater freedom of discussion at the Institute of History. In debating such questions as the interpretation of the reign of Ivan IV, the Tsarist nationalities policy, and the validity of Russian claims to priority in technological advances, historians now engage in a vigorous exchange of views. The “discussions‫ ״‬organized in the Stalin era invariably had an artificial air of a formalized ritual, but the published reports of historical discussions now reflect a much greater reliance on arguments based on documentary evidence. This expansion of historical activity has been facilitated by the establishment in 1957 of three new scholarly journals of a general character: Istoriya SSSR [History of the USSR], Voprosy Istoni KPSS [Problems of the History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union], and Novaya i Noveishaya Istoriya [Modern and Contemporary History]. There are also several new journals of a more specialized topical or regional character, and there has been some expansion of the publication outlets at the major universities. These changes have been accompanied by a considerable increase in the contacts between Soviet historians and their Western colleagues, and recent histories aimed at a large audience have been translated into English and other foreign languages. The Soviet Union sent delegations to the International Congresses of Historical Sciences held at Rome in 1955 and at Stockholm in i960. Since joining UNESCO in 1954, the Soviet Union has also been active in the International Commission which has been preparing a six-volume History of the Scientific and Cultural Development of Humanity.27 This increased historical activity stands out in sharp contrast to the un-Russian sterility that resulted from the Stalinist straitjacket, but it is important to recognize that 27. T he best account of this period is in Shteppa, op. cit., 361-382.

HISTORY AND POLITICS IN THE SOVIET UNION

[3 1

Soviet historians are still held in tight reins by the party. That the broadening of opportunities for research and interpretation should be accompanied by a maintenance of strict party controls is not as incongruous as may ap‫־‬ pear at first glance. In the Stalin era the party imposed paralyzing restrictions on scholarship and launched devastating attacks on those who, knowingly or unknowingly, overstepped the bounds of a propriety which was never clearly defined and which could be changed without warning. As a creative force in historical scholarship, however, the party had only meager success. A good deal of scholarly work was done in those aspects of national achievement and economic growth which received official encouragement, but the party never succeeded in its effort to obtain from the scholars a fresh Marxist-Leninist interpretation of history. In the Khrushchev era the historians have greater freedom, but at the same time they are under a stronger compulsion to use this freedom for purposes defined by the party. To some extent this new pattern can be explained by the fact that the older generation of historians trained before the Stalin era has been largely replaced by younger scholars who are better attuned to the Soviet political system. The principal reason for the change, however, is that under Khrushchev the party has become a much more vigorous and effective instrument of control.28 The general line of the party’s directives to historians has been that they should contribute to the promotion of communism at home and abroad by demonstrating in the light of Marxist-Leninist methodology how societies have evolved in the past and how they are evolving today. More specifically, this contribution calls for a major effort to interpret the Soviet Union as the first country to solve the problems involved in the evolution from socialism to communism. It also calls for a much greater 28. T h e principal directive to historians in recent years is the in V op. I s t, X V I (June, i9 6 0 ) , 3-9, entitled “T h e Party C om m ittee Resolution ‘On the Tasks of Party Propaganda in Day Conditions' and Historiography,” trans, in C.D.S.P., XII 31, i 9 6 0 ) , 8-10.

editorial Central Present(August

concentration than hitherto on such problems as the development of the Communist movement in other countries and especially the emergence of the new states in Asia and Africa. The role of historical scholarship is thus to assist the party in its task of promoting communism at home and abroad by elaborating a credible theory according to which developments in all societies must conform to the Marxist-Leninist doctrine today and tomorrow as inflexibly as they have in the past. In short, the historians are called upon to make a vital contribution in the realm of scholarship to the continuing propaganda campaign in which the party is engaged. In the Stalin era this campaign was essentially defensive and Russian-oriented. In the Khrushchev era it is much more aggressive and it devotes significant attention to the non-Russian world. This important assignment does not necessarily involve the abandonment of traditional scholarship, but it means that an increasing portion of the historian’s time must be devoted to collaborative work of a generalizing character. Indeed, the specific tasks which the party has set are so extensive that it is difficult to see how they could fail to absorb most the energies of the abler scholars. Starting with the History of the USSR: Epoch of Socialism (1957), the first general work on contemporary Russian history to be published since 1917, renewed attention has been devoted to Russian history with particular emphasis on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. An eleven-volume History of the USSR, a twelve-volume Soviet Historical Encyclopediay and a three-volume Outlines of the History of Historical Scholarship in the USSR are being compiled, along with multi-volume works on Russian art, the cities of Moscow and Leningrad, diplomatic history, the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945, and the Great October Socialist Revolution. Multi-volume histories have already been written of several of the people’s democracies, and others are in progress. Increasing attention is also being devoted to China, India, and the Moslem countries. It is claimed that in the first postwar decade 87,500,000 copies of history textbooks at the elementary and secondary

HISTORY AND POLITICS IN THE SOVIET UNION

[33

school level were published, and 1,775,000 copies of history textbooks designed for higher educational institutions.29 The decisive change of emphasis from individual to collective scholarship has necessitated a reorganization of the Department of History of the Academy of Sciences. As a means of overcoming the barriers between different branches of history, and between history and the other social sciences, special inter-disciplinary councils have been established. At the same time, a particular effort is being made to win over 4*bourgeois” historians and intellectuals in general to the Marxist-Leninist way of thinking. The capstone of this effort is the ten-volume W orld History, of which eight volumes have been published since 1956. Here the attempt is made for the first time to fit all the peoples of the world into a consistent Marxist-Leninist interpretation and to demonstrate the diverse paths by which they are all evolving toward communism. At the International Congress of Historical Sciences at Stockholm in i960, the general editor of the W orld History summarized the Soviet interpretation in a brief paper and invited his fellow historians to cooperate in the further elaboration of this interpretation.30 This challenge is a characteristic example of the political uses to which history is being put in the Khrushchev era, and it is one that is likely to be repeated frequently in the years ahead. 29. Recent developments are reported in A. L. Sidorov, Soviet His‫־‬ torical Science: Its Problems and Achievements (M oscow, 1955); and “Soviet Historiography at a N ew Stage of Developm ent,” C.D.S.P., XII (Novem ber 2, i9 6 0 ) , 6-13, trans, from V op. Ist., X V I (August, i9 6 0 ) , 3-18. 30. E. M . Zhukov, “T h e Periodization of W orld History,” X Ie Congrès International des Sciences Historiques. Rapports (6 vols.; Uppsala, i9 6 0 ) , I, 74-88.

THE PROBLEM OF PERIODIZATION by Leo Yaresh

I One of the central problems faced by Soviet historians is that of fitting the history of their country into the Marxist scheme— of identifying in Russian history the periods of mankind’s development which Marxists regard as applicable to all human society. The adjustment of the history of an individual country to a predetermined universal pattern tends under any circumstances to be awkward, but in this case it is m^de particularly difficult by several complexities. Not the least of these is that Marxism is a system of thought which leaves room for different interpretations of its basic theses. Even more significant, however, is the fact that the political leaders of the Soviet Union have reserved for themselves the right to determine which of these interpretations must be accepted by historical scholarship— and from time to time this official interpretation is changed to meet what they consider to be the requirements of overall national policy.

THE PROBLEM OF PERIODIZATION

[35

It is therefore not surprising that the periodization of Russian history has been a matter of controversy throughout the half-century since Russian Marxists have been writing general history, and that it appears to remain as far from a satisfactory settlement today as it was at the start. The discussion of this problem has been particularly active since the Second World War, and the complex development of this controversy can best be followed by setting forth the official Soviet interpretation during the period of Stalin's ascendancy before examining the alternative views. This official Stalinist interpretation is readily available in the fourth chapter of the History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks) : Short Course which has been claimed as a product of Stalin's personal authorship. The heart of Stalin's presentation of this aspect of Marxism is the statement that “the history of development of society is above all the history of the development of production, the history of the modes of production which succeed each other in the course of centuries, the history of the development of productive forces and of people's relations of production." 1 In amplification of this statement it is noted that “the productive forces are not only the most mobile and revolutionary element in production, but are also the determining element in the development of production."2 These “productive forces," in turn, are defined as “the instruments of production wherewith material values are produced, the people who operate the instruments of production and carry on the material values thanks to certain production experience and labor skill— all these elements jointly constitute the productive forces of society." 3 The conclusion is therefore reached that “The prime task of historical science is to study and disclose the laws of production, the laws of development of the productive forces and of the relations of 1. History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks): Short Course, authorized by the C .C . of the C.PtS.U. (B .), 1938 (M oscow, 1 9 5 0 ), 148. 2. Ibid., 150.

3. Ibid., 147.

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THE EVOLUTION OF THEORY

production, the laws of economic development of society.4 ‫״‬ This official Stalinist interpretation then proceeds to describe in accordance with Marxist doctrine the five types of “relations of production,‫ ״‬generally referred to as “socioeconomic formations‫ ״‬: primitive communal, slave-holding, feudal, capitalist and socialist. It is first shown that the primitive social system was characterized by communal ownership of the means of production, by common labor and collective ownership of the fruits of production. There was no division of society into social classes, and consequently no antagonism leading to the exploitation of one member of society by another. The antagonistic social systems begin with slavery: “The basis of the relations of production under the above systern is that the slaveowner owns the means of production; he also owns the worker in production.5 ‫ ״‬In this period men already have metal tools at their command, and are engaged in pasture and agriculture. At this time also handicrafts develop, and there are signs of division of labor. There is no longer common ownership of the means and fruits of production. Inequality and consequently a class struggle result from the accumulation of the means of production in the hands of a minority. The exploitation of man by man takes the form of forced labor of the unfree laborers in production, in the interests of their rulers. In the third system, feudalism, “the basis of the relations of production . . . is that the feudal lord owns the means of production and does not fully own the worker in production— the serf. . . .6 ‫ ״‬This social systern is characterized by a further development of the means of production, the expansion and technical improvement of agriculture, and the appearance of early industrial-manufacturing establishments. Private ownership is further developed, and the exploitation of the workers in production, who are chiefly dependent on the feudal lord, is slightly mitigated in comparison to the slave-holding system. Exploitation is sufficiently severe, however, to 4. Ibid., 149.

5. Ibid., 152.

6. Ibid., 153.

THE PROBLEM OF PERIODIZATION

[37

bring about a class struggle between oppressed and oppressors" ■ In the capitalist system, “the basis of the relations of production . . . is that the capitalist owns the means of production, but not workers in production— the wage laborers. . . .” 7 The latter do not have the means of production at their command, and sell their labor power to the owners of these means. Private property exists on a broad scale, and there are large industrial establishments as well as capitalist establishments in agriculture. Under capitalism ^the middle and small private owners are inevitably; rujjncd— a fact which results in a contraction of the market and consequently in the periodic crises common to capitalist national economies. The class struggle is sharpened. Finally, the fifth social system is socialism, which according to this interpretation has already been realized in the Soviet Union. “The basis of the relations of production . . . is the social ownership of a means , of producfion.” 8 This system means the return to a jion-antagpnistic society. There is n o .exploitation. The workers in production receive the fruits of production in return, for their work for society. Social relations are marked by an atm osphere of comradely cooperation and socialist mutual assistance. This new type of society knows no crises in the national economy. Concerning the change of one social system into another, Stalin affirms: The rise of new productive forces and of relations of production corresponding to them does not take place separately from the old system, after the disappearance of the old system, but within the old system; it takes place not as a result of the deliberate and conscious activity of man, but spontaneously, unconsciously, independently of the will of man.9 The actual transformation from the old relations of production to the new “usually takes place by means of the 7. Ibid., 153.

8. Ibid.,

155 .

9• Ibid., 157 .

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THE EVOLUTION OF THEORY

revolutionary overthrow of the old relations of production and the establishment of new relations of production.10 ‫״‬ The conscious activity of man in the preparation and actual implementation of the revolutionary overthrow is not excluded. These, in short, are Stalin's teachings concerning the process of mankind's historical development. Economic factors predominate in this formulation of the criteria for distinguishing between different social orders. From the wide variety of manifestations in society, Stalin selects only the material culture for his scheme. He excludes almost entirely differences in the organization of social and political relations in a country and, in the description of the five types of social development, he glosses over distinctions between various types of societies. II The basis for Stalin's conception of history lies in the views of Marx and Engels, the founders of Marxism. Their views, however, were never expressed in the form of a precise or complete formula explaining the historical development of mankind. W hen one speaks of Marx's or Engels' conception of history, one must rely largely on the general orientation and content of their teachings. In order to show specific aspects of their interpretation, it is often necessary to delve into many different sections of their works. This is due to the polemical spirit which pervades most of the writings of the founders of Marxism. Marx's position on this subject was perhaps expressed most concisely in the following oft-cited passage: In the social production which men carry on they enter irtto definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will; these relations of production correspond to a definite stage of development of their material forces of production. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society— the real foundation, on 10. Ibid., 159.

THE PROBLEM OF PERIODIZATION

[39

which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production in material life determines the social, political and intellectual life processes in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, fheir social being that determines their consciousness. . . . No social order ever disappears before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have been developed; and new higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society itself. Therefore, mankind always sets itself only such tasks as it can solve; since, looking at the matter more closely, we will always find that the task itself arises only when the material conditions necessary for its solution already exist or are at least in the process of formation. In broad outlines we can designate the Asiatic, the ancient, the feudal, and the modern bourgeois modes of production as so many epochs in the progress of the economic formation of society. The bourgeois relations of production are the last antagonistic form of the social process of production— antagonistic not in the sense of individual antagonism, but of one arising from the social conditions of life of the individuals; at the same time the productive forces developing in the womb of bourgeois society create the material conditions for the solution of that antagonism. This social formation constitutes, therefore, the closing chapter of the prehistoric stage of human society.11 As is well known, the views of Marx and Engels on the historical process of the development of society assumed a continuity of development from lower to higher forms. The process is a single but chronologically uneven one, since some peoples reach a higher stage earlier than others. Yet fundamentally, the process is predetermined and the sequence in the change of social relations and forms is 11. Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, in Karl Marx: Selected W orks (2 v., Moscow-Leningrad, 1 9 3 5 ), b 356-57•

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THE EVOLUTION OF THEORY

inevitable. The guiding principle of social existence and development is the economic condition of a given society, the. already familiar “productive forces‫ ״‬and “relations of production.‫ ״‬The dominant “mode of production‫ ״‬at any one time determines the course of development of society in different periods, or “socio-economic formations.‫״‬ These formations may be divided into two groups: antagonistic and non-antagonistic types of societies. In the former there is exploitation of man by man, in the latter there is none. Social organization in its first stage takes the form of primitive communism, or of a primitive-communal system. This stage is followed by a series of antagonistic forms of class society, by which Engels meant the slaveholding, feudal, and bourgeois, or capitalist, societies.12 The above-cited passage from Marx referred to an “Asiatic‫ ״‬mode of production, which he characterized as the exploitation of the majority of a country’s population by its government, which controls the basic productive forces of the country. Various types of ground rent also attracted Marx’s attention in connection with his discussion of “socio-economic formations.” He considered ground rent one of the most significant manifestations of an economic system. Nevertheless, since Marx never gave his theory a fully systematic presentation, one finds variations and differences in his formulation depending on the specific issues of the day to which he was addressing himself. A number of different forms and orientations of Marxism have flourished in Russia. These ranged from the “legal Marxists” at the turn of the century to the founders of present Soviet communism. The direct line of development of Soviet theory nevertheless by-passes not only the works of the “legal Marxists” but also the achievements of the Menshevik Social Democrats. It recognizes with some reservations Plekhanov’s works, but its principal foundation is the work of Lenin. Neither Plekhanov nor Lenin, however, developed any new Marxist insights into 12. Friedrich Engels, T he Origin of the Family, Private Property, and Government (Russian cd., St. Petersburg, 19 0 6 ), 121.

THE PROBLEM OF PERIODIZATION

[4 1

the problem of the periodization of human history in general or of Russian history in particular. Plekhanov’s On the Question of the Development of the Monistic View of History13 does not discuss the problem of the periodization of mankind’s progress. His unfinished History of Russian Social Thought14 does in fact divide Russian history into separate periods—but the principle of division, though interesting, is not based on Marxist teachings. The author refers to the fact that Russia, “similarly to western Europe, passed through the stage of feudalism,” 15 thus recognizing the existence of one of the “socio-economic formations.” However, he turned his attention principally in another direction, noting that the Russian historical process “contains peculiar factors which distinguish it markedly from the historical process of all western European countries, and recalls rather the development of the great Oriental despotisms.” These peculiarities, Plekhanov believed, further complicate Russia’s problem, for they “survive as more or less independent factors of development. Sometimes they are stronger, sometimes weaker, and Russia, as a result, fluetuâtes between W est and East.” 16 Accordingly, Plekhanov divided Russian history into three periods, depending on the predominance of European or Asiatic influences: 1) the Kievan period, when Russia was closer to the West; 2) the Muscovite period, when Russia was closer to the East; and 3 ) the Petersburg period, when Russia was again closer to the West. Lenin’s works, which constitute one of the cornerstones of the present Soviet version of Marxism, like the writings of the founders of Marxism, do not contain any precise formulation of mankind’s, or more particularly of Russia’s, historical development. Lenin’s writings are largely polemical, and formulations of a general character are there13. G. V . Plekhanov, K voprosu o razvitii monisticheskogo vzglyada na istoriyu [On the question of the development of the monistic conception of history] (4ed., St. Petersburg, 1906). 14. G. V . Plekhanov, Istorii russkoi obshchestvennoi mysli [History of Russian social thought] (3 v., Moscow-Leningrad, 1925). 15. Ibid., I, 11. 16. Ibid., I, 12.

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THE EVOLUTION OF THEORY

fore to be found in different places throughout his works in corroboration of a variety of specific ideas. An examination of these formulations shows that Lenin simply repeated the propositions advanced by Marx and Engels, without substantially changing or adding to them, and attempts by later Soviet historians to reconstruct his thought on this question do not succeed in demonstrating any independent views of Lenin on the periodization of history. The evidence cited by these authors is fragmentary or incidental, and generally only illustrates ideas expressed by Lenin in a different connection, but fully within the context of the writings of Marx and Engels.17 Still, even chance expressions by one of the originators of contemporary Soviet Marxism assume the form of irrefutable dogma. Thus Lenin's remark that an all-Russian market began to take shape in the seventeenth century became the basis for the subsequent attempts to subdivide Russian feudalism.18 Another one of Lenin's chance observations, was to the effect that the feudal dependency of the peasants upon the landlords was a very old institution in Russia, dating back to the eleventh and twelfth centuries.19 This remark caused contemporary Soviet historians many difficulties, and required them to attempt to prove the existence of serfdom at a time when there is no mention of it in the historical sources.

Ill The historical works of Pokrovsky were designed to present the Marxist interpretation of Russian history which 17. A. G. Prigozhin, 4‘Lenin i osnovnye problemy istori! dokapitalisticheslcikh formats»” [Lenin and the basic problems of the history of pre-capitalist formations], in Problemi istoiii dokapitalisticheskikh obshchestv, No. 1 (1 9 3 4 ), 7*28; and B. D . Grekov, ‘4V . I. Lenin o nekotorykh voprosakh istorii Rossii” [V. I. Lenin on some problems of Russian history], Vop. 1st., No. 1 (1 9 5 2 ), 52-64. 18. V . I. Lenin, “Chto takoe 4druzya naroda' i kak oni boyuyut protiv sotsial-demokratov?” [W hat are the 44friends of the people” and how do they fight the Social Democrats?], Sochineniva, I, 137-8. 19. V . I. Lenin, “Razvitie kapitalizma v Rossii” [The development of capitalism in Russia], Sochineniya, III, 170.

THE PROBLEM OF PERIODIZATION

[43

the political leaders had thus far failed to provide. His “scheme of Russian history‫ ״‬was assiduously supported up to the early 1930’s, and was presented to the rest of Soviet historians as a model to be emulated. Then it came under attack, and was rejected and condemned as unMarxist to the core. Whatever one’s attitude toward Pokrovsky, one must recognize that his scheme was very confusing. Rozhkov indicated the lack of any clear principie of periodization in Pokrovsky’s work, when he wrote: Try to explain the history of any society without dividing it into sharply distinguishable periods (in Russian historical literature we have the example of Pokrovsky’s outstanding and talented work, Russian History from the Earliest Tim es), and you will see that the description loses much in clarity and precision, that it becomes indistinct and contourless.20 Rozhkov’s remark, however, went unnoticed. W hen his book was published, it constituted an attack on Pokrovsky at a time when the latter was still the recognized authority in Marxist history. Later, the views of Rozhkov were discredited by the same changes in the party line which condemned Pokrovsky. Pokrovsky’s two principal works were distinguished by lively and talented descrip‫־‬ tions, and by their consistently sharp and sarcastic polemic with Russian “bourgeois” historians. The author placed much stress on the economic aspects of Russian history, but rarely backed his conclusions with sufficient evidence. His division of the narrative into sections and chapters lacked any discernible principle, and he made no attempt to draw on the Marxist formula regarding “socio-economic formations.” It may be said in Pokrovsky’s defense, of course, that the fragmentary, incidental character of the Marxist formula gave him the right to assume that these concepts did not have to be accepted by all Marxists. Indeed Pokrovsky mentioned the periods of feudalism and capitalism in the history of Russia, but without positing them as. the basis of his periodization. Pokrovsky’s main 20. Rozhkov, Russkaya istoriya, I, 21.

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THE EVOLUTION OF THEORY

criterion for describing or evaluating the economic organization of a particular epoch in Russian history was the development of commercial relations. His one-time student and later critic Pankratova, referring to the theory that each "formation” corresponds to a specific mode of production, wrote that "Pokrovsky, ignoring the ABC of Marxism, considered relations of exchange basic to his scheme.21 ‫״‬ If the relations of exchange are considered particularly important, it follows that they should be used as a basis for the periodization of history. And, indeed, Pokrovsky did this. However, he proceeded differently in each of his two principal works. In his Russian History from the Earliest Times he distinguished a period of special influence of merchant capital upon Russian society and government. He referred to this period sometimes as "merchant capitalism,‫ ״‬and dated it principally in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In his Russian History in Briefest Outline, as Pankratova has pointed out, he "broadens the historical role of merchant capital. The latter becomes the organizer and leader of the entire Russian historical process, but in the period between feudalism and capitalism it ruled autocratically.22 ‫״‬ This employment of "merchant capitalism‫ ״‬clearly exceeded the limits of Marx’s periodization. Thus Pokrovsky either had to achieve a position of equality with Marx and Engels as a Marxist classic, as did Lenin and Stalin, or he would inevitably sooner or later have to join the ranks of heretics and deviationists. Shortly before his death in 1932, it became clear that Pokrovsky would have to share the latter fate. Nevertheless his fate was a relatively happy one, for his views were severely condemned as "anti-Marxist” only after his death. Until then, criticism of his views was relatively mild, and he was permitted to explain his "mistakes” himself. He wrote, for instance: 21. A. M. Pankratova, "Razvitie istoricheskikh vzglyadov M. N . Pokrovskogo” [The development of M. N . Pokrovsky's historical views], Protiv ist. kouts. Pokrovskogo, I, 61. 22. Ibid., I, 65.

THE PROBLEM OF PERIODIZATION

[45

The conception of Russian history, which I called Marxist, never basically departed from that held by Lenin. Otherwise Vladimir Ilyich [Lenin's] praise of Russian History in Briefest Outline— the popular and therefore extremely condensed book in which this conception is outlined— would be inexplicable. At the same time it is perfectly clear that among the different, sometimes very important formulations, the old explanations of the conception sounded altogether un-Leninist, and were sometimes theoretically almost illiterate. Thus for example, the expression “merchant capitalism" is illiterate: capitalism is a system of production, and merchant capitalism produces nothing. . . . Merchant capital which produces nothing cannot give its character to the political superstructure of a given society. That is why the theory that autocracy is merchant capital in disguise, is completely incorrect.23 As was noted by another critic, Pokrovsky forgot to recall that while he had characterized Russian history in the seventeenth century as “the period of merchant capitalism," he had also considered it the period of “feudal reaction" and of the “restoration of natural relations." 24 These difficulties are further illustrated by Pankratova's attempt to outline the theory of periodization found in the works of Pokrovsky, in which she distinguished four main periods: “ 1) clan (or communal family) ownership of land— from the eighth to the tenth centuries; 2) feudalism— from the eleventh to the sixteenth centuries; 3) merchant capitalism— in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; and 4) industrial capitalism— in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries." 25 It must be noted that this periodization was Pankratova's rather than 23. M. N . Pokrovsky, “O msskom feodalizme, proizkhozhdenii i kharaktere absolyutizma v Rossii” [On Russian feudalism, the origin and character of absolutism in Russia], Borba Klassov, N o. 2 (1 9 3 1 ), 79‫־‬8° . 24. K. Bazilevich, “Torgovyi kapitalizm i genezis moskovskogo samoderzhaviya v rabotakh M . N . Pokrovskogo” [Merchant capitalism and the genesis of M uscovite autocracy in the works of M . N . Pokrovsky], Protiv ist. konts. Pokrovskogo, I, 162. 25. Pankratova, ibid., I, 62.

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Pokrovsky's, since the latter nowhere precisely formulated it. The imprecise character of this scheme is also indicated by Pankratova, who in another part of her analysis criticized Pokrovsky for “incorrectly evaluatng the question of slavery in Kievan Russia, by regarding it as a slaveholding society.26 ‫״‬ At the same time other critics noted that Pokrovsky considered the twelfth century and not the eleventh, as the beginning of feudalism;27 that he placed the origin of merchant capitalist relations in the sixteenth and not the seventeenth century;28 and that he considered the first half of the nineteenth century as the time when mercantile and not industrial capital constituted the basic element of economic life.29 Pokrovsky's periodization, as can be seen, was not very precise and was sometimes even contradictory. Closely related to Pokrovsky's views were those of the economic historian Kulisher. W hile he maintained that up to the sixteenth century Russia had a natural economy, Kulisher also admitted the existence of feudal relations in Russia, without however indicating the chronological sequence. According to the author, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were the period of early capitalism; the rule of merchant and credit capital.30 At the same time, Kulisher was forced to admit that capitalist relations in Russia during this period were quite weak, even in comparison with such relatively backward European countries as Austria and Prussia.31 If Kulisher's writing lacked any original conceptions and only repeated generally Pokrovsky's own unclear pe26. Ibid., I, 61. 27. S. Bakhrushin, “Feodalnyi poryadok v ponimanii M. N . Pokrovskogo” [The feudal order in the conception of M. N . Pokrovsky], ibid., I, 122. 28. Bazilevich, ibid., I, 162. 29. N . Druzhinin, ‘4Razlozhenie feodalno-krepostnicheskoi sistemy v izobrazhenii M. N. Pokrovskogo” [The decay of the feudal-serf •holding system in M. N. Pokrovsky's presentation], ibid., I, 337-86. 30. I. M. Kulisher, Istoriya Russkogo narodnogo khozyaistva [The his* tory of the Russian national economy] (2 v., Moscow, 1 9 2 5 ), II, 425-6. 31. Ibid., II, 435

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[47

riodization, this can certainly not be said of Rozhkov's work. Rozhkov established not only an orderly, precise and almost excessively schematic conception, but also offered a, conception that was new, though based in many respects on the fundamental premises of Marxism. The author readily admitted his schematic approach, and gave it a theoretical justification: Science is always schematic. Where there is no scheme, no general unitary principle, no harmony, unity, consistency, there is no science. Any particularity of concrete detail has no scientific meaning in itself, but only as an inalienable, necessary part of the whole.32 According to Rozhkov, the characteristic historical development of every country must be determined first of all by studying its economy. The study of economic development must, however, be complemented by research based on the theory of psychological types: Thus the development of society represents a single, integral process, which develops necessarily and according to principle from the economic conditions; the next link in this chain is formed by the social relations, and here the primary place belongs to the class structure. Its natural extension is the political structure, which expresses the interest of the ruling classes, and the spiritual culture, whose unifying eiement is the psychological type.33 Rozhkov used the comparative-historical method, discussing the factors of general history as they affect numerous countries and peoples, with special reference to the history of Russia. Rozhkov's periodization applied to universai as well as to Russian history. He divided history into nine successive periods: 1) primitive society; 2) savage society; 3) pre-feudal or barbarian society; 4) the feudal revolution; 5) feudalism; 6) the revolution of the court nobility; 7) the rule of the court nobility; 8) the bourgeois revolution; and 9) capitalism.34 32. Rozhkov, Russkaya istoriya, I, 21. 33. Ibid., I, 13. 34. Ibid., I, 21-2.

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As applied to Russian history, the period of savage society lasted up to the sixth century, the pre-feudal from the sixth to the tenth, and the feudal revolution from the tenth to the twelfth. According to Rozhkov feudalism prevailed in Russia during the thirteenth and first half of the fourteenth centuries, but he then digressed somewhat from his scheme by devoting the entire third volume of his work to a new period, which he called “the fall of feudalism in Russia‫ ״‬and dated from the second half of the fourteenth to the first half of the sixteenth centuries. He saw this as a period in which agriculture was still predominant, while at the same time the commercial market was expanding significantly. The “revolution of the court nobility‫ ״‬extended from the second half of the sixteenth century to the death of Peter the Great, and was designated as the period of merchant capitalism. The rule of the court nobility continued to the middle of the nineteenth century, and was marked by the further development of merchant capitalism. Rozhkov limited the period of the “bourgeois revolution‫ ״‬to western Europe, and designated the second half of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries in Russia as the period of “capitalism.‫ ״‬The twelfth and final volume of Rozhkov’s work was devoted to the period of “finance capital in western Europe,” and to the revolution in Russia. As a whole, Rozhkov’s conception of Russian history was no doubt based on an orderly and precise scheme. But was it “Marxist”? One of his critics, Sidorov, expressed the view that the scheme could not be considered Marxist, since Rozhkov’s periodization was not based on Marxist teachings with regard to the changing socio-economic formations.35 It cannot be doubted, however, that Rozhkov’s scheme evolved from the basic principles of Marxism: this was the source of the ideas about the unity of universal historical development, the priority of economic factors in social development, the importance of 35. A. Sidorov, “Istoricheskie vzglyady N. A. Rozhkova" [The historical views of N . A. Rozhkov], Jst.-Marks., XIII (1 9 2 9 ), 184*200.

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the class struggle, and the revolutionary processes in the transformation of society from one period of development to another. Sidorov, to be sure, did not speak of these ideas. For him being a Marxist meant believing every word of the Marxist “classics,‫ ״‬and accepting every word as irrefutable proof and incontrovertible postulate. This being the case, Rozhkov's views could be exposed as a blasphemous perversion of the Marxist truth, and their publication as inadmissible and pernicious liberalism. At the same time Sidorov, to his misfortune, praised Rozhkov in the above-mentioned work for recognizing the decisive role of merchant capitalism, and thus exposed himself in short order also as a “heretic.36 ‫״‬ IV Sidorov was not alone in approaching research activities from the point of view of literal consistency with Marxist dogma. At the end of the 1920's and the early 1930's a full discussion took place “on the historical front" in the U.S.S.R., evaluating earlier works from the point of view of their consistency with this dogma. Rozhkov's views were rejected at once, and even Pokrovsky, “the dean of Soviet Marxist historians," was attacked and subsequently defeated. This debate was initiated by a controversial volume by Dubrovsky, one of Pokrovsky's disciples. This work was first of all intended to clarify the question of a special “Asiatic mode of production," which, as we have seen, had been mentioned by Marx. Incidentally, however, it also touched upon other problems: it raised the question of “merchant capitalism"; it advanced a thesis for the division of general history into periods; and it identified a special period of serfdom distinct from feudalism. In reference to the “Asiatic mode of producton," Dubrovsky believed that Marx's inclusion of this period in the enumeration of “socio-economic formations" was accidental. In his view: 36. Ibid., 200.

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W e must unconditionally reject all anti-Marxist theories, which imagine the Eastern governments as superclass governments, performing a socially useful funetion through a super-class bureaucracy, which only in its further development becomes an exploiting class.37 By an “Asiatic” mode of production Marx . . . did not understand a special form of production peculiar to Asia, but rather in general, productive structures prevailing in the Asiatic countries . . .38 Basically, one must see the same modes of production and the same productive relations among the Asiatic nations, as among other nations.39 This rejection of the “Asiatic mode of production” by Soviet historians is understandable. Its acceptance would have violated the simplicity and unity of the universal historical process. It might have led to the acceptance of the possibility of other civilizational cycles, and with this of other paths of social development, thus jeopardizing the acceptance of the general, simplified scheme. By squelching this embryonic Marxist idea of the possibility of other paths of development, Soviet scholarship excluded the need for complicated structures in the study of other cultural-historical developmental cycles and undoubtedly caused itself incurable harm. Dubrovsky was also the first Soviet historian to cast doubt on the validity of “merchant capitalism” as an historical period.40 Soviet scholarship accepted the denial of “merchant capitalism” as well as the rejection of the “Asiatic mode of production.” Dubrovsky's attempt to construct his own scheme of periodization of world history, on the other hand, met a wave of criticism. He asserted that “on the basis of the exact meaning of everything written by Marx, Engels and Lenin, on the basis of the method worked out by them, one may speak at most of 37. S. M. Dubrovsky, K voprosu o suschnosti “aziatskogo” sposoba proizvodstva, feodalizma, krepostnichestva i torgovskogo kapitala [On the question of the meaning of an “Asiatic” mode of production, feudalism, serfdom and merchant capital] (M oscow, 1 9 2 9 ), 156. 38. /bid., 158. 39. Ibid., 162. 40. Ibid., 115.

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ten forms of production, of ten specific stages.41‫ ״‬He designated these stages as follows: 1) primitive economy; 2) patriarchalism; 3) slavery; 4) feudalism; 5) serfdom; 6) small production economy; 7) capitalism; 8) transitional economy; 9) socialism; 10) universal communist economy. Particularly original in this scheme was his division of the period usually considered feudalism into three periods— feudalism, serfdom and small production economy— which he went to some pains to justify.42 Dubrovsky's book remains undoubtedly even today the most interesting attempt at constructing a Marxist periodization of universal history. Certain of his ideas are now an accepted part of Soviet historiography, without mention of its author, and are included in Stalin's formulations. Others, especially the detachment of “serfdom" from “feudalism," became the subject of further extended diseussions. The connection Dubrovsky made between the economy of serfdom and rent in the form of labor service was absolutely correct, but unfortunately it contradicted the above-mentioned chance remark of Lenin's on the subject.43 In any case, Dubrovsky's attempt which evolved from the “meaning" of the “Marxist classics" and not from their quoted formulations evidently appeared dangerous, since it might have led to heresies and deviations, and it was therefore decisively condemned. Dubrovsky's publication marked the beginning of a heated discussion which lasted from 1929 until 1934. The participants were chiefly Soviet Marxist historians, the overwhelming majority of whom were members of the Communist Party. The discussion took the form of a great battle of quotations from Marx, Engels and Lenin. Facts and specific events of Russian history were sometimes cited as evidence of one or another position, but the discussion remained mainly on an abstract level. This was also due to the fact that many of the participants, though Marxist experts, were not at the same time research scholars. Non-communist historians were not admitted to the discussion. Pokrovsky, the “dean of Soviet historians," 41. Ibid., 19.

42. Ibid., 18-19, 95.

43. See above, note 18.

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also did not participate. His name was rarely mentioned in the discussion, although his fate as a scholar and as the leader of Soviet historians depended on its outcome. This debate greatly influenced subsequent Soviet theory regarding the stages of Russian historical development. It is therefore interesting that Soviet historical scholarship subsequently hushed up the discussion. There is no mention of it in Soviet encyclopedias or textbooks, and there was no reference to it in the extensive debate on the periodization of Russian history, which took place after the Second World War. What is the reason for this silence? The reason has never been formulated, but several conjectures may be offered. W hile the discussion contributed to the elaboration of a precise Marxist dogma concerning the periods of the historical process, it also led to the expression of various formulations which were later denounced as incorrect. Furthermore some of its conclusions anticipated Stalin’s later views, and by concealing them the impression is given that these views were worked out by Stalin himself. Finally, many participants in the discussion were liquidated in the course of later purges and, in the Soviet view, it would not be permissible even to mention their names.44 As already noted, most of Dubrovsky’s critics agreed that merchant capitalism was not suitable as the basis for a distinct 4‘socio-economic formation,” but condemned his proposal that feudalism and serfdom be identified as separate periods.45 Divergent views were expressed in the course of the debate, however, as to whether the serf econ44. T he substance of this discussion is available in four significant collections of opinions: Piotiv mekhanisticheskoi teorii v istoricheskoi literature [Against the mechanistic theory in historical literature] (Moscow, 1 930), the record of a discussion at the Institute of Red Professors following a report by Professor Mints; Sportive voprosy metodo Jogii istorii [Controversial problems of the methodology of history] (Leningrad, 1930); Diskussiya ob aziatskom sposobe proizvodstva po dokladu M . Godesa [A discussion concerning the Asiatic mode of production, following the report of M. Godes] (Leningrad, 1931); and Karl Marks i problemy istorii dokapitalisticbeskikh iormatsii (Karl Marx and the problems of the history of pre-capitalist formations] ( Moscow-Leningrad, 1934). 45. See especially A. Malyshev, “O fcodalizme i krepostnichestve”

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[53

omy represented a weakening or a strengthening of feudal relations.*46 The relationship of Russian autocracy with the “rule of merchant capital‫ ״‬was also discredited, although this view had formed a cornerstone of Pokrovsky's interprêta tion.47 The discussion was summarized in 1934 by Prigozhin, a leading Soviet Marxist historian of the period, who announced authoritatively which conceptions had been accepted and which rejected. Prigozhin reviewed the basic tenets of Marxism and concluded that there were only three types of antagonistic societies: slave, feudal (serf) and capitalist. He definitely rejected the “Asiatic mode of production,‫ ״‬by describing it as merely one of the varieties of feudalism. Prigozhin did make one essential qualification, however. He wrote: W e may conclude from our study of ancient society and of other forms of slave society, that the transformation of the peasant commune into a class society leads, as a rule, to the slave system. But in concrete historical circumstances we may also encounter distinct “variations,‫ ״‬when the peasant commune is suddenly transformed into serfdom.48 fe u d a lis m a n d s e rfd o m ], Ist.-Marks., X V (1 9 3 0 ), 43-73; X V I (1 9 3 0 ), 68-103; a r e p o rt o f d iscu ssio n s o n M a y 17 a n d 24, 1929,

[O n

a t th e S o ciety o f M a rx ist H is to ria n s in M o sco w , in Ist.-M a rk s., X V I (1 9 3 0 ), 104-61; M . Z elen sk y , “ O d v u k h ‘n o v y k h ’ te o riy a k h p ro iz k h o z h d e n iy a i s u s h c h n o s ti k re p o s tn o g o k h o z y aistv a v R o ssii” [O n t h e tw o “ n e w ” th e o rie s o n th e o rig in a n d e x iste n ce o f th e serf e c o n o m y in R u ssia], Ist.-Marks., X X (1 9 3 0 ), 130-63; a n d I. F ro lo v , “ P ro tiv rev izii M a rk siz m a -L e n in iz m a v isto ric h e sk o i n a u k e ” [A g ain st th e rev isio n o f M a rx ism -L e n in ism is h is to ric a l sc h o la rsh ip ], Pod Z n a m e n e m Marksiz m a , N o . 1-2 (1 9 3 1 ), 157-87.

46. E. Cazganov, “Protiv revizii Markso-Leninskogo uchenie o feodalizme i krepostnichestve” [Against the revision of the teaching of Marxism-Leninism concerning feudalism and serfdom], Ist.-Marks., XX II (1 9 3 1 ), 51, challenging especially the afore-cited article by Malyshev. 47. Ist.-Marks., XX III (1 9 3 2 ), 192-200. 48. A. G. Prigozhin, Karl Marks i problemy sotsio-ekonomicheskikh formatsii [Karl Marx and the problems of socio-economic formations] (Moscow-Leningrad, 1933); see also Prigozhin's “Karl Marks i problemy istorii dokapitalisticheskikh formatsii” [Karl Marx and the problems of the history of pre-capitalist formations], in the symposium also entitled Karl Marks i problemy istorii dokapitalisticheskikh formatsii (MoscowLeningrad, 1 9 3 4 ), 22-90.

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In the following year he developed this idea further when he wrote that: The process of feudalism in Eastern Europe began considerably later than the feudalization of the principal west European countries, such as France, Germany, England, Italy, etc. The second peculiar aspect of the origin of Russian feudalism lies in the fact that Russia did not experience the slave-holding formation; Russian feudalism developed as a result of the direct transformation from pre-class society.49 It became the task of another Russian historian, as will be seen, to try to prove this thesis. Prigozhin's articles authoritatively clarified the principies of periodization of universal as well as Russian history, as they were now established by the discussion. This achievement, however, did not accord Prigozhin himself the privilege of clarifying and setting the “correct” Marxist line on this question. After 1935 he is no longer heard from, and it must be assumed that he disappeared in one of the frequent purges. The discussion of 1929-34 had the effect of settling for some time a number of significant problems concerning the periodization of Russian history. First of all, it rejected the theory of the period of “merchant capitalism” in Russian history. Secondly, it established the existence of a single feudal period from the tenth to the middle of the nineteenth centuries, thus rejecting Dubrovsky's attempt to exclude from it the period of “serfdom.” This forced Soviet historical scholarship into the difficult position of having to ascribe identical characteristics to periods many centuries apart, despite the fact that these periods varied widely in character. Thirdly, the discussion as summarized by Prigozhin accepted the thesis, first evidently enunciated by Grekov, that part of human society, ineluding Russia, skipped the “slave formation” in its historical development. 49. A. G. Prigozhin, "O nekotorykh svoeobraziyakh russkogo féodal* izma” [On certain peculiarities of Russian feudalism], Isvestiya Gosu* darstvennoi A kademii Istori! Materialnoi Kultury, N o. 72 (1 9 3 4 ), 13.

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V It is ironical that those Russian Communist historians who destroyed Pokrovsky's conception of history could not enjoy the fruits of their victory. Some of them were liquidated, and the others, though able to save their lives, never again played a significant role in determining the structural principles for the periodization of Russian history. The general formulations of Soviet Marxist dogma on this subject were, as already indicated, set forth by Stalin in 1938, and these became henceforth articles of faith for every Soviet historian. In connection with the specific problems of periodization in Russian history, the most active role from the middle 1930's was taken by Grekov, a scholar who, as a non-party man, had not even participated in the earlier discussion. He was a Russian scholar and historian, who had received his training and started his work before the revolution. As far as is known, he had not distinguished himself by particularly "progressive" views at that time. Grekov's work on periodization dealt primarily with Kievan Russia, and his conclusions agreed with Lenin's observation concerning the existence of rent in the form of labor service in Kievan Russia during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. By making the assumption, which many historians would question, that the semi-free peasants constituted the mass of the population at this time, Grekov reached the conclusion that slavery was not the basic productive relation in Kievan Russia.50 In a discussion at the 50. G re k o v 's view s o n th is s u b je c t a re se t f o r th in th e a c c o u n t o f a n a c a d e m ic d isc u ssio n in 1 9 3 3 , S. B a k h ru s h in , “ N e k o to ry e v oprosy isto rii K ievskoi R u s i” [S o m e p ro b le m s o f th e h isto ry o f K iev an R u ssia ], Ist.-Marks., L X I ( 1 9 3 7 ) , 1 6 5 ; a n d in B . D . G re k o v , “ O c h e rk i p o isto rii fe o d a liz m a v R o ssii. S iste m a g o sp o d stv a i p o d c h in e n iy a v fe o d a ln o i d e re v n e " [S k e tch e s o f t h e h isto ry o f fe u d a lis m in R u ssia. T h e sy stem o f d o m in a tio n a n d su b ju g a tio n in th e fe u d a l v illag e], Izvestiya Gosudarstvennoi Akademii Istorii M a te ria ln o i K u ltu ry , N o . 72 ( 1 9 3 4 ) , 25 -5 9 ; “ B yla li d rev n y a y a R u s ra b o v la d e lc h e sk im o b sh c h e s tv o m ? " [W a s early R u ssia a slave so c iety ?], Borba Klassov, N o . 3. ( > 9 3 5 ) , 6 9 -7 5 ; Feodalnye otnosheniya v Kievskom g o su d a rstv e [F e u d a l re la tio n s in th e K ie v an sta te ] (M o sc o w -L e n in g ra d , 1 9 3 5 ; 2 e d ., 1 9 3 6 ) ; “ S p o m y e v o p ro sy p e rio d iz a ts ii d re v n e i isto rii n a ro d o v S S S R " [C o n -

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Institute of History in 1939, Grekov's views were criticized on the ground that according to Marxism every society must pass through the period of slavery, but Grekov countered successfully by quoting Stalin to the effect that “not every nation must necessarily pass through all forms of social relations known to man . . ." *51 Grekov devoted two later studies to the periodization of Russian peasant history, a topic of particular interest since Russia is predominantly a peasant country and the peasantlandowner relationship remained crucial for many centuries.52 In Grekov's view the peasants were basically free until the ninth century. This was followed by a period of primitive labor service rent, which ended in the eleventh century, and was replaced by rent in kind. From the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries rent in the form of labor service prevailed. Money rent originated in the middle of the sixteenth century, completing the process of attachment of the peasantry. The weakness of such a periodization is obvious. It would seem to result from the author's fear of departing from the Marxist dogma, and from his inability to reconcile dogma with the actual facts of history. According to Grekov, “primitive" labor service rent, performed by slaves, predominated up to the eleventh century. If this is true, then should not the prevailing “systern of production relations" be described as a “slave society"— the term to which the author had so many times troversial problems concerning the periodization of the early history of the peoples of the U .S.S.R .], I s t Zhurn, IV , 6 (1 9 4 0 ), 1-11; “Na zare russkogo gosudarstva” [The dawn of the Russian state], ibid., V I, 7 (1 9 4 2 ), 14-31; and “Obrazovanie russkogo gosudarstva" [The formation of the Russian state], Izvestiy a A n SSSR , II (1 9 4 5 ), 129-39. 51. B. D . Grekov, “Byla li Kievskaya Rus obshchcstvom rabovladelcheskim?” [W as Kievan Russia a slave society?], Ist.-Marks., LX X IV ( 1939), 134*35• 52. D. D. G re k o v , G la vn eish ie e ta p y v isto rii k re p o stn o g o prava v R o ssii [T h e p rin c ip a l stages in th e h isto ry o f serf law in R ussia] (M o sc o w , 1940); a n d " O p y t p e rio d iz a tsii isto rii k resty an v R ossii (iz d re v n e ish ik h v re m e n d o o fo rm le n iy a k re p o s tn ic h e s k ik h o t n o s h e n ii) ‫״‬ [A n a tte m p t a t th e p e rio d iz a tio n o f R u ssian p e a sa n t h isto ry (fro m th e earlie st tim e s to th e fo rm a tio n o f serf r e la tio n s ) ] , V o p . Ist., II,

8-9 (1 9 4 6 ), 3*18.

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[57

objected? Furthermore, the appearance of money rent in the middle of the sixteenth century by no means indicates that it had become the predominant form of rent. Actually rent in the form of labor service was* predominant after the sixteenth century, and remained the principal form of rent up to the liberation of the peasants. Only after that was it replaced by money rent, which tenant farmers paid the landlords for the use of the lands that the latter retained. In his two major, and closely related, publications after the Second World War, Grekov formulated his views on the “stages in the development of primitive society” as follows: 1 ) The clan is the foundation of the social order for all primitive peoples of the world. 2) On the higher level of clan development, and especially in patriarchal clans, there develops a patriarchal family commune, i.e., an organization of single and married people, subject to the authority of the head of the family commune. The commune includes several generations of descendants from one father, and the wives who have been brought in. They all live in one court, jointly work their fields, and are fed from common supplies. The head of the commune is elected, and governs with the advice of a council, comprising all adult members, men as well as women. 3) The agricultural commune originates, while the clan commune disintegrates, as a transitional stage from clan to political organization. However, the patriarchal clan commune or large family continues to exist and prosper without any conflict for a long time after the rise of the peasant commune. 4) The clan and peasant commune did not remain static in the course of their existence. The peasant commune experiences the impact of intra-communal processes and the influence of the state. It adjusts to these factors, and changes itself. 5) Clan society did not advance beyond an alliance

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:of tribes; such an alliance already indicated the beginjning of the process of disintegration. Territorial division took the place of tribal division, and inequality of property replaced equality. These were the prerequisites of a state system.53 Here Grekov rejected again, as he had done in his previous works, any notion of the existence of a slave-holding formation in Kievan Russia, and indicated that peasant indenture existed already at that time. The periodization of peasant history proceeded here also, as in the previous works of the author, by way of changes in the nature of rent. In a discussion held in 1947 Grekov's views were generally supported, but they also encountered some criticism. Yushkov, for instance, “doubted that it is possible to regard the existence of primitive labor service rent as basic to this [Kievan] period." 54 His remark was, in the present writer's opinion, well-founded. Yushkov likewise asserted that tribute was dominant during the early period of the Kievan state, and it may be added that it took the form of rent in kind. Also at this discussion S. A. Pokrovsky expressed the view that at the beginning of the “Kievan period" the peasants were still free, and that one cannot, therefore, speak of the existence of feudal relations at that time. Shortly before his death in 1953 Grekov returned once more to his favorite question, this time with reference to Stalin's last doctrinal pronouncement. He wrote: The “barbarians" did not destroy the internally undermined Roman slave state, in order to create a new slave order on its ruins. They developed and created serfdom— a milder system than slavery— which already prevailed in their country, and which “stood high above slavery" (Engels). Europe was able to take a tremendous step forward thanks to this development, despite the fact that the “barbarian" way 53. B . D . G re k o v , K ievskaya A u s (2 e d ., M o sc o w -L e n in g ra d , 1 9 4 9 ) , 7 6 ; a n d re p e a te d lite ra lly in h is K re sty a n e n a A u s i s d revn cish ik h v re m e n d o X V I I v. [P e asan ts in R u ssia fro m th e e a rlie st tim e s to t h e s e v e n te e n th c e n tu ry ] (M o sc o w -L e n in g ra d , 1 9 4 6 ) , 6 5 . 54• V o p . 1s t , I I I , 8 ( 1 9 4 7 ) , 140.

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of life was in some respects more primitive than the “civilized‫ ״‬Roman slave society.55 The forced nature of this position in regard to the dominance of the barbarian period over Greek and Roman civilization is all too evident. In general, Grekov's numerous and rather repetitious works on the periodization of Russian history developed the theory that the eastern Slavs advanced directly from the patriarchal-communal order to feudalism, and skipped the “slave-holding formation.‫ ״‬W ith regard to the “slaveholding formation‫ ״‬Grekov was more or less correct. The birth of feudal relations, however, was a much more complicated process of transition— from clan order through tribal order to state order— than the author imagined. Similar in significance to Grekov's views are those of Yushkov, a talented specialist in the history of Russian law who published a number of studies dealing mainly with the law of the Kievan period. Unlike Grekov, Yushkov did not limit his investigations to the early history of the eastern Slavs, but turned his attention also to other periods of the historical process. He more than once expressed his disagreement with parts of Grekov's theory conceming the periodization and characteristics of the Kievan state, and of the period preceding its formation. Yushkov agreed, however, with the basic thesis of Grekov, that there were no signs of slavery.56 Yushkov dated large-scale ownership of land from the ninth century, and the definitive consolidation of feudalism from the eleventh. But even in i:he eleventh century patriarchal relations were still present, since “the peasant communes were not completely dominated and ruled by the boyars."57 According to Yushkov, the feudal lords 55. B. D . Grekov, “Genezis feodalizma v Rossii v svete ucheniya I. V . Stalina o bazise i nadstroike” [The origin of feudalism in Russia in the light of J. V . Stalin's teachings concerning base and superstructure], V op. Ist., V III, 5 (1 9 5 2 ), 38. 56. S. V . Yushkov, Ocberki po istoiii feodalizma v Kievskoi Rusi [Essays on the history of feudalism in Kievan Russia] (Moscow* Leningrad, 1 9 3 9 ). 57. Ibid., 141.

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formed a hereditary class as early as the twelfth century,58 a conclusion which will surprise many students of this period. The statement on the consolidation of feudalism in the eleventh century and its official organization in the thirteenth referred in Yushkov’s view only to the western, Ukrainian and Belorussian, principalities. “A significant part of north-eastern Russia,‫ ״‬he wrote, “had not undergone the process of feudalization up to the time of the downfall of the Kievan state, and had not, as it were, entered the feudal period.59 ‫״‬ Yushkov's disagreement with Grekov's view that the work of free commune peasants formed the base of the barbarian states, was expressed in the following terms: No matter how primitive the barbarian states might have been, pre-feudal states and their formation indicates the presence of classes and of certain conflicts between them. To be sure the barbarian, pre-feudal state had a significant element of free commune members, but the primitive commune was disintegrating. In those communities which united into barbarian states, we may distinguish at first two classes: slaveowners and slaves; later, in the womb of the disintegrating communes, appear the large landowners, usually members of the slave-owning nobility, who exploit the work of slaves settled on the land, and of dispossessed commune members. The class of feudal lords develops from these landowners. In other words, a threefold battle goes on in the pre-feudal barbarian states. It is a battle between the primitive-communal, the slave-owning (patriarchal-slave-owning), and the feudal order, with the latter more and more gaining ascendancv.60 •‫׳‬

Yushkov repeated and elaborated this thesis in subsequent publications, and his views on the later periods can best be followed in connection with the discussion of periodization in the 1940’s.61 58. Ibid., 164. 59. Ibid., 245. 60. S. V . Yushkov, “Borba Rusi za sozdanie svoego gosudarstva” [Russia's struggle for the creation of its state], Vop. Ist., II, 1 (1 9 4 6 ), 142. 61. S. V . Yushkov, “K voprosu o dofeodalnom *varvarskom' gosudarstve” [On the problem of the pre-feudal “barbarian" state], Vop.

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[61

Despite the extensive discussion of periodization in the 1930's, the inconclusive nature of the results was reflected in the textbooks of this period. In the periodization of the prize-winning secondary school text edited by Shestakov, only one of the *'‘socio-economic formations," the capitalist, is mentioned.*62 Instead, the divisions seem to be tied to successes in political development and in strengthening the Russian state, or revolutionary events in the state. The same is true of the '‘Five-volume Plan for the History of the U. S. S. R." made public in 1938,63 which never became a reality. Although the Plan did refer to the feudal and capitalist periods, other criteria of division predominated. Some of these divisions were based on developments in foreign policy, or on events in the development of the Russian state, and others were based on the reigns of certain personalities. During the “Pokrovsky epoch" such a division would have been considered utter heresy. Instead of the Five-Volume Plan, there appeared in 1939-40 a two-volume text under the editorship of three leading scholars.64 W hat has been said regarding the periodization of the Five-Volume Plan and Shestakov's textbook, applies fully also to this work. The principles of periodization are confused, and are based on stages of economic development, on stages in the political development of the Russian state, on revolutionary events and on foreign policy. VI In view of the unsettled state of the periodization of Russian history, a new effort was made by Soviet historians between 1946 and 1954 to find a solution to the problems involved. This debate drew significantly on the earlier disIst., II, 7 (1 9 4 6 ), 45-65; and idem, Istony a gosudarstva i prava SSSR [The history of the state and law of the U.S.S.R.] (3 ed.; Moscow, 1950). 62. Shestakov, Short History', passim. 63. “Pyatitomnika po istorii SSSR" [The five-volume history of the U.S.S.R .], Ist.-Marks., N o. 65 (1 9 3 8 ), 174-204. 64. Istoriya SSSR, 1 ed., 1939-40.

62]

THE EVOLUTION OF THEORY

cussion of 1929-34, even though no mention was made of it. The spirit of patriotism associated with the Second World War offered a certain freedom to non-party specialists, who may have wished to reduce the existing uncertainty. At the same time the political leaders wished to have a firmer basis for orthodoxy in this field than was offered by the existing concepts. The need for adjusting Marxist formulas to the concrete conditions of the Russian historical process was also becoming ever more obvious. The fact that the major part of Russian history had to be included within the single period of “feudalism,” could not but lead to some attempts to subdivide it even though it was united by one common “form of production.” Dubrovsky's theory of a separate period of “serfdom” had essentially been an attempt to answer this need. His failure showed that the task would have to be approached more carefully and more convincingly. The new discussion was preceded by a brief debate in 1940 on the general problem of the absolute monarchy, but it only began in earnest in 1946 with a formal address by Yushkov before the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences. This was followed by another address before the same audience in 1948 by Bakhrushin, and both of these addresses were accompanied by a general debate. A second phase of the discussion was opened in 1949 with two proposals for periodization by Bazilevich and Druzhinin, and ended in 1954. This extended exchange of opinions took the form of a lively series of artides in the learned journals, and principally in Voprosy Istorii [Problems of History], the organ of the Institute of History. Almost all the leading Soviet historians contributed to the discussion, and within the permissible limits a considerable variety of views was expressed. There was no question of challenging the designation of the millennium of Russian history from Kiev to the middle of the nineteenth century as “feudalism,” but discussion centered on the problem of dividing this period into appropriate sub-periods and more particularly on what criteria should be used as a basis for periodization. The mixture

THE PROBLEM OF PERIODIZATION

[63

of economic, political and dynastic, criteria, such as were employed in the textbooks of the later 1930’s, was clearly an unsatisfactory basis for a systematic approach, whether Marxist ox not. Moreover, one discussant was so frank as to recognize that: The works of the Marxist classics do not contain a direct answer to the question concerning the criteria for periodization of the history of the U.S.S.R. during the feudal and capitalist periods. If there were such a criterion, it would long ago have been applied in scholarship and there would be no need for discus^ sion of this subject.65 Proponents for the class struggle, the mode of production, ground rent, and political developments as a basis for periodization all presented their views. The rationale of these alternatives and their suggested application to Russian history may be judged from a review of the various proposals. The brief debate in 1940 was led by Skazkin, who defended the view that absolute monarchy in Russia was basically the rule of the feudal lords. He maintained that the absolute rulers supported both the bourgeoisie and the landowning nobility, but tended to defend the latter when conflicts arose. Other participants discussed various aspects of the role of the bourgeoisie in this period.66 In the address which opened the general discussion in 1946, Yushkov proposed that the period of “feudalism” be divided into three sub-periods. These were the early feudal monarchy, extending from the tenth and eleventh to the early sixteenth century; the “estate-representative monarchy,” from the early sixteenth to the middle of the seventeenth century; and the absolute monarchy which 65. A. Predtechensky, “Voprosy periodizatsii istorii SSSR” [Problems of periodization in the history of the U.S.S.R .], V op. Ist., V I, 12 ( 1 9 5 0 ) , 103.

66. "Obsuzhdenie problemy absolyutizma” [A discussion of the problem of absolutism], 1st.-Marks., LXX XII (1 9 4 0 ), 63-68, summarizes sessions held on March 16 and 20, and April 10, 1940; see also Z. Mosina, “K obsuzhdeniyu problemy absolyutizma" [On the discussion of the problem of absolutism], Ist.-Marks., LXX XII (1 9 4 0 ), 68-74.

64

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)originated in the latter half of the seventeenth century. Yushkov’s concept of an estate-representative monarchy was an original one, but it received the support of Bazilevich, Tikhomirov, and P. P. Smirnov, among others. On the other hand Alefirenko and Rubinshtein pointed out that the assemblies in which the estates participated were not actually representative institutions, and the latter questioned estate representation as a criterion of periodization. There was also disagreement as to the dating both of the beginnings of feudalism and of the proposed period of representative-estate monarchy. At the same time a new theme was introduced by Lebedev, who proposed that the characteristic forms of the class struggle should be the basis for periodization.67 In 1948 an alternative scheme was proposed by Bakhrushin, who distinguished four subdivisions of the “feudal” period. He placed the origins of the feudal order in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,7 and this was followed bv the period of feudal fragmentation in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Bakhrushin’s third period was the centralized Russian state between the second half of the fifteenth and the middle of the seventeenth century, characterized by the increasing attachment of the peasants, a sharpening class struggle, and the creation of an all-Russian national market. Finally, from the middle of the seventeenth century through the eighteenth manufacturing developed and the absolute state was established. This scheme was criticized by Udaltsov as being based on cconomic rather than historical materialism, and Tikhomirov expressed doubts on the validity of detaching the second half of the seventeenth century from the first.68 At this stage in the discussion the editors of Voprosy 67. Reported in “O periodizatsii istorii russkogo gosudarstva" [On the periodization of the history of the Russian state], Vop. 1st., II, 8-9 (1 9 4 6 ), 148-51. 68. “Obsuzhdcnic voprosov periodizatsii istorii SSSR v Institute istorii Akademii nauk SSSR" [A discussion of problems of the periodization of the history of the U.S.S.R. at the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R.], Vop. Ist., V , 4 (1 9 4 9 ), 149*52.

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[65

Istorii published a preliminary summary of the significant points of controversy. They noted in particular that the distinction between the pre-feudal and feudal modes of production in Kievan Russia had not been clearly drawn, and that Yushkov and other historians of law used the term "early feudal monarchy‫ ״‬for the period from the tenth to the sixteenth centuries— a span of seven hundred years in which several types of government succeeded each other. This summary also recommended further study of Yushkov’s concept of an "estate-representative monarchy,‫״‬ in the light of the fact that neither Lenin nor Stalin used this term.69 This summary was premature, however, because in the same issue of Voprosy Istorii two new proposais on periodization were published by Bazilevich and Druzhinin which led to a further exchange of ideas. In subdividing the period of "feudalism,‫ ״‬Bazilevich set himself the problem of reconciling changes in the economic base with those in the political and social superstructure of society. As he expressed it: If history were to concern itself only with the development of progressive modes of production, then the history of all peoples would be as similar as two drops of water. Instead, historical reality is infinitely varied; it pictures different combinations of the eiements of the historical process which, even if they cannot change the conditions of the guiding trend, still leave their original, inimitable imprint on it. This is the reason for national peculiarities in the historical process, even in the presence of general principies.70 On the basis of changes in ground rent, Bazilevich distinguished three subdivisions of "feudalism.‫ ״‬The first was from the ninth to the end of the fifteenth century, in 69. “Osnovnye zadachi v izuchenii istorii SSSR [Basic tasks of the study of the history of the feudal period], Vop. 1st., V , 11 (1 9 4 9 ), 3-12. 69. “Osnovnye zadachi v izuchenii istorii SSSR [An attempt at the periodization of the history ing the feudal period], Vop. Ist., V , 11 (1 9 4 9 ),

feodalnogo perioda” U.S.S.R. during the feodalnogo perioda” of the U.S.S.R. dur66.

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THE EVOLUTION OF THEORY

which rent in labor service and in kind prevailed and Russia passed through the Kievan state and the period of feudal fragmentation. In the second subdivision, from the end of the fifteenth to the middle of the eighteenth century, rent in money developed with the growth in commerce and the beginnings of capitalism. In this stage he noted two succeeding political forms, the formation of the centralized Russian multi-national state from the end of the fifteenth to the end of the seventeenth century, and the absolute monarchy from the end of the seventeenth to the middle of the eighteenth century. Finally came the disintegration of the feudal economy and the inception of capitalist relations, from the middle of the eighteenth to the middle of the nineteenth century.71 Bazilevich also criticized Yushkov's “estate-representative monarchy‫ ״‬on the ground that the term implied a limitation of the tsar's authority by the estates, whereas in fact the estates were an instrument of that authority.72 Among the commentators on the scheme of Bazilevich was Yushkov, who criticized it for not attaching greater importance to the labor service form of rent from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. He also suggested that in the ninth and tenth centuries the Russian state was prefeudal, or barbarian.73 Miroshnichenko urged that the concrete manifestations of the class struggle rather than its forms should be taken into account, and maintained that Bazilevich was wrong when he ignored factors of the politicai and cultural superstructure in his periodization.74 Zimin generally accepted Bazilevich's scheme, on the other hand, although he disagreed with his characterization of 71. Ibid., 89. 72. Ibid., 86. 73. S. V . Yushkov, “K voprosu o politicheskikh formakh russkogo feodalnogo gosudarstva do X IX v.” [On the problem of the political forms of the Russian state up to the nineteenth century], Vop. 1st., V I, 1 (1 9 5 0 ), 71*93; see also his “K voprosu o soslovno-predstavitelnoi monarkhii v Rossii” [On the problem of the estate-representative monarchy in Russia], Sovetskoe Gosudarstvo i Pravo, N o. 10 (1 9 5 0 ), 39*51. 74. P. Miroshnichenko “Po povodu statyi K. V . Bazilevicha ‘Opyt periodizatsii istorii S S SR feodalnogo perioda' " [On K. V . Bazilevich's article “An attempt at the periodization of the U.S.S.R. during the feudal period”], Vop. Ist, V I, 2 (1 9 5 0 ), 89-92.

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[67

the period from the end of the fifteenth century to the first half of the eighteenth as one in which money rent prevailed.75 The other principal contribution at this stage of the discussion was that of Druzhinin, who differed from Bazilevich in concentrating on the problem of capitalism and in employing the class struggle as his basis of periodization. He distinguished between the beginnings of capitalist formation to the 1760^, and capitalist usage from about 1760 to 1861, both of which fell within the accepted “feudal period.” Druzhinin’s third division went beyond this to include the period of capitalist formation, from 1861 to 1917. Unlike his predecessors, Druzhinin not only provided precise dates for his three main sub-periods but also subdivided each one into briefer stages which took into account non-economic factors.76 Druzhinin's scheme was challenged by Gudoshnikov, who proposed that the beginning of capitalist relations in Russia be considered to extend from around 1780 or 1790 up to 1812, and that the period from 1812 to 1861 be described as that of the destruction of feudal serf relations.77 This scheme was also criticized for introducing factors of the class struggle into the process of periodization, since changes in the forces and relations of production may “not coincide with moments of sharpened class struggle.” 78 Druzhinin's proposal was accepted by Bori75. A. Zimin, "Nekotorye voprosy periodizatsii istorii SSSR feodalnogo perioda” [Some problems in the periodization of the history of the U.S.S.R. during the feudal period], Vop. Ist., V I, 3 (1 9 5 0 ), 69*76. 76. N . Druzhinin, "O periodizatsii istorii kapitalisticheskikh otnoshenii v Rossii” [On the periodization of the history of capitalist relations in Russia], Vop. Ist., V , 11 (1 9 4 9 ), 90*106. 77. L. Gudoshnikov, “Zamechaniya na statyu N . M . Druzhinina ‘O periodizatsii istorii kapitalisticheskikh otnoshenii v Rossii ‫[ ׳׳ ׳‬Remarks on Professor N . M . Druzhinin’s article “On the periodization of the history of capitalist relations in Russia”], Vop. Ist., V I, 1 (1 9 5 0 ), 66-70. 78. P . B a k an o v , “ O p r in ts ip e p e rio d iz a tsii i n a c h a ln o m p é rio d e isto rii S S S R k a p ita listic h e sk o i e p o k h i” [O n th e p rin c ip le o f p e rio d iz a tio n a n d th e early stag e o f th e c a p ita lis t p e rio d in th e h isto ry o f th e U .S .S .R .], V o p . Is t., V I , 2 (1 9 5 0 ), 74-78.

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sov,70 but Yakubovskaya expressed doubts regarding the existence of capitalism in its mature form in Russia.7980 Other comments on the problem of periodization ineluded an analysis of west European feudalism,81 and a consideration of the earliest period of feudalism in Russia.82 The latter comment held that references to the collection of tribute testified to the existence of feudal relations in Kievan Russia as early as the ninth and tenth centunes, and concluded that Russia was by no means behind the W est in this regard. On the question of capitalism, Yakovlev suggested that capitalist ferment within a basically feudal society began in the 1630’s, when manufacturing first originated in Russia, and continued through to the 1790’s.83 On a more theoretical level. Miller maintained that the dominant mode of production in each period must form the basis of periodization. To this must be added the factors of the superstructure, exceptional events in the class struggle, struggles for national independence, and stages in the development of national consciousness.84 Miller for the first time introduced these last two factors as bases for a Marxist periodization of history. Their importance is undeniable, and the mass of patriotic Soviet historical literature had prepared the ground for recognizing the signifi79. A. Borisov, "K voprosu o formirovanii kapitalisticheskogo uklada v promyshlennosti” [On the problem of the formation of the capitalist mode in industry], Vop. Ist., V I, 3 (1950 ), 77-78. 80. S. Yakubovskaya, 4‘K voprosu o periodizatsii istorii SSSR” [On the problem of periodization in the history of the U .S.S.R .], Vop. Ist., V I, 6 (1 9 5 0 ), 85-88. 81. N. Kolesnitsky, "K voprosu 0 periodizatsii istorii feodalnogo gosudarstva” [On the problem of the periodization of the history of the feudal state], Vop. Ist., V I, 7 (1 9 5 0 ), 108-25. 82. V . Dodzhenok and M. Braichevsky, “O vremeni slozheniya féodalizma v drevnei Rusi” [On the period of constituting feudalism in early Russia], Vop. Ist., V I, 8 (1 9 5 0 ), 60-77. 83. B. Yakovlev, “Vozniknovenie i etapy razvitiya kapitalisticheskogo uklada v Rossii" [The origin and stages of development of the capitalist mode in Russia], Vop. Ist., V I, 9 (1 9 5 0 ), 91-104. 84. I. Miller, “K voprosu o printsipakh postroeniya periodizatsii istorii S S S R ‫[ ״‬On the problem of the principles governing the periodization of the history of the U .S .S .R .], Vop. 1st., V I, 11 (1 9 5 0 ), 64-75.

THE PROBLEM OF PERIODIZATION

[Ò9

canee of these factors. Consequently Miller's declaration was fully consistent with the general trend. As the discussion developed, a number of alternative schemes of periodization were presented in addition to those of Yushkov, Bazilevich and Druzhinin. Pyankov, for instance, proposed that the periodization of Russian “feudalism" be based on typical manifestations in the organization of the feudal form of production. On this basis he noted three stages, of which the first was from the eleventh to the fifteenth century when rent in the form of labor service was predominant and rent in kind also appeared. This was followed by the period from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, characterized by the complete attachment of the peasant masses accompanied by autocracy and the dictatorship of the feudal landlords. This appears to resemble the period of “serfdom‫ ״‬proposed by Dubrovsky in 1929 and subsequently criticized. Pyankov's third stage, from the middle of the eighteenth century to the reform of 1861, was that of the decline of feudal relations and the beginnings of the capitalist mode of production.85 Another proposal was that of I. Smirnov, who was critical of both Bazilevich and Druzhinin and maintained that neither ground rent nor the class struggle in its abstract form provided an adequate basis for periodization. It was Smirnov's view that “events in political history and state history, being the landmarks of historical development, provide the framework separating one historical period from another." 86 Smirnov therefore divided Russian history in the period of “feudalism" on the basis of changes in state forms into the Kievan state, the feudal state, between the thirteenth and the fifteenth century, and the centralized Russian state after the second half of the fifteenth century. A somewhat different view was expressed by Predte85. A. Pyankov, “O periodizatsii istorii feodalnykh otnoshenii v Rossii” [On the periodization of the history of feudal relations in Russia], Vop. Ist, V I, 5 (1 9 5 0 ), 77-84• 86. I. Smirnov, “Obshchie voprosy periodizatsii SSSR” [General problems of periodization in the Ù.S.S.R .], Vop. I s t , V I, 12 (1 9 5 0 ), 81.

70

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THE EVOLUTION OF THEORY

chensky, whose frank appraisal of Marxism has already been noted. After criticizing the proposals of Bazilevich, Druzhinin and Smirnov, he declared that “we cannot accept any single group of factors in the historical process as the criterion of periodization. The teachings of the Marxist classics require that we accept as the basis for periodization the entire complex of factors, which make up the historical process/87 ‫ ׳‬He observed further that according to Marxist theory “manifestations of base and superstructure are indissoluble and interdependent,‫ ״‬and concluded that “The history of the feudal and capitalist period should be divided into separate time spans according to crises in production, for these lead to crises in the state and crises in social consciousness.88 ‫ ״‬This view was challenged by Druzhinin, who replied that: The class struggle is the measure and index of the development of the mode of production; it is the motive power of historical events, and must.form the basis of division in the history of capitalist relations. Important manifestations of the revolutionary class struggle which have a significant impact on the course of history, must form the dividing lines, separating one period from another. W ithin each period, the development of productive forces and relations must explain the character of the class struggle in all the variety of its political and ideological forms.89 Predtechensky's own scheme of the history of Russian capitalism was based on his view that the feudal serfholding system in Russia experienced a crisis around the 1 7 6 0 ' s . He dated the first stage of capitalist relations within the framework of feudal society from the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth through 1825, and the second stage from 1825 to 87. A. P re d te c h e n s k y , " V o p ro s y p e rio d iz a tsii isto rii S S S R " [Problems o f p e rio d iz a tio n in th e h isto ry of th e U .S .S .R .], V o p . Ist., V I , 12

(1 9 5 0 ), 105. 88 . Ibid., 106. 89. N. Druzhinin, "O periodizatsii istorii kapitalisticheskikh otnoshenii v Rossii [On the periodization of the history of capitalist relations in Russia], Vop. Ist., V I, 1 (1 9 5 0 ), 65.

THE PROBLEM OF PERIODIZATION

[7 1

1861. The third and fourth stages of his scheme, from 1861 to 1900 and from 1900 to 1917, fell within the period in which capitalism prevailed.90 Another significant proposal was that of Pashuto and Cherepnin, who believed that early feudalism should be dated from the ninth to the eleventh century. According to this scheme, developed feudalism extended from the twelfth to the beginning of the seventeenth century, and was subdivided into the stage of feudal fragmentation from the twelfth to the fifteenth century and that of the centralized state from the fifteenth to the beginning of the seventeenth century. The years from the beginning of the seventeenth to the middle of the nineteenth century were characterized as late feudalism.91 An essay by Zaozerskaya on Lenin’s use of the expression “new period” with reference to Russian “feudalism” led to a further proposal for periodization. Since Lenin had used this expression more or less by chance in discussing the rise of capitalism in Russia, and had not indicated any chronological limits, Zaozerskaya considered it her duty to clarify the term. She defined it as extending from the 1620’s and 1630’s to the year 1861, and divided it into three stages. These were the growth of simple commodity production, extending to the beginning of the eighteenth century; the initial transformation of simple commodity production into capitalist production, and the initial utilization of hired labor, from the beginning of the eighteenth century to 1780-1790; and “the period of disintegration and crisis of the feudal formation, under the impact of the developing capitalist mode,” extending to 1861.92 It is clear that Zaozerskaya belongs to the group of Soviet historians who base Russian history on purely economic factors. 90. Predtechensky, 108-9. 91. V . Pashuto and L. Cherepnin, “O periodizatsii istorii Rossii epokhi feodalizma” [On the periodization of the history of Russia during the period of feudalism], Vop. Ist., V II, 2 (1 9 5 1 ), 52-80. 92. E. Zaozerskaya, “K voprosu o sushchnosti i osnovnykh etapakh 4novogo perioda4 v istorii Rossii" [On the problem of the substance and basic stages of the 4‘new period‫ ״‬in the history of Russia], Vop. 1s t, V II, 12 (1 9 5 1 ), 88-117.

1A

THE EVOLUTION OF THEORY

In a summary of this long debate, the editors of Voprosy Istorii observed that: The most important result of the discussion on this question is the fact that the participants unanimously opposed attempts to define and base periods within socio-economic formations purely on factors of the economic base. Periodization based exclusively on economic factors would inevitably lead to economic materialism, a position which can be found even now from time to time in the works of some historians, especially of those engaged in the study of the feudal period.93 This had indeed been one of the positions maintained in the course of the discussion, although not the only one. W hile maintaining that the class struggle was the motivating force in history, the editors were so cautious as to note that “Historians should be warned against regarding manifestations of the class struggle as the only universal facets of the historical process. . 94 This rather bland summary did not satisfy the leaders of the Communist Party, and in Bolshevik, their leading ideological journal, they launched an attack on the discussion as a whole and on the aforementioned summary, in a manner that revealed the relations between scholarship and political authority in the Soviet Union. It was noted that: Many articles have a tendency to detach the class struggle or political and ideological processes from the economic conditions of social development. Other writers, by pointing to the organic bond between changes in the base and the superstructure are indined to construct a periodization based principally on manifestations of the superstructure. Such an approach is as mistaken as the contrary attempt to base 9 3 • “Ob itogakh diskussii o periodizatsii istorii SSSR” [On the results of the discussion concerning the periodization of the history of the U.S.S.R.], Vop. Ist., V II, 3 ( 1951 ), 55• 94• Ibid., 55.

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[73

periodization merely on a few economic facts, in the spirit of vulgar economic materialism.95 Unfortunately, the party did not explain how the “organic bond between changes in the base and the superstructure‫ ״‬is to be achieved, and how it can become the basis for the periodization of Russian history. This was the task which had confronted Soviet historians, and which they had failed to accomplish. Instead of explaining these tasks, the party sternly summarized the discussion in the following terms: The discussion, which achieved no definite (let alone ; definitive or close to definitive) results, may disorganize the cadres of historians, and cause discord in their pedagogic work. Especially the incompleteness of the discussion on periodization of the history of the U.S.S.R. has had these after-effects.96 At the same time the editors of Voprosy lstorii were taken to task for not meeting their responsibilities: The editors had a duty to present a thorough analysis and evaluation of the viewpoints which had been expressed, to summarize the discussion with precision, and to propose a periodization of the history of the U.S.S.R., which would correspond to the contemporary level of scholarship. These tasks the editors failed to meet.97 The editors of Voprosy lstorii could not take issue with the criticism by Bolshevik. However, in their remarks on the critique they did not accept its demand, and again declined to “propose a periodization of Russian history, which corresponds to the contemporary level of scholarship.‫ ״‬Instead they preferred to condemn themselves severely, so as to escape further criticism through penitence. They wrote: 95. L. Maksimov, “O zhurnale Voprosy lstorii” [On the journal Problems of History], Bolshevik, N o. 13 (1 9 5 2 ), 67. 96. Ibid., 67. 97. Ibid., 66.

THE EVOLUTION OF THEORY 74 ] The journal also performed poorly in organizing creative discussions on the most important controversial questions of historical scholarship. The effectiveness of the discussions was substantially reduced by the indefiniteness of the editorial board's positions in summarizing the discussions. Disagreements between the historians remained unsettled, and positive data in articles of discussion were generalized far too insufficiently, so that they could not be used in the : practical work of the historians.98

In 1953 and 1954 the discussion about the periodization of Russian history almost died down, apparently as a resuit of the severe censure of the party. However, since the goal of the discussion had not been achieved, several authors returned to the debate with reference to the analysis of special problems. One of these problems was that of the stages in the development of “feudal" landed property, with regard to which Cherepnin proposed the following division: 1) the feudal period from the sixth to the eighth century; 2) the period of the development of the feudal mode of production from the ninth to the beginning of the twelfth century; 3) the period of the strengthening of the feudal estates and the fragmentation of the state, from the twelfth to the end of the fifteenth century; 4) the period of the attachment of the peasantry and the creation of the centralized state, from the end of the fifteenth to the beginning of the seventeenth century; and 5) the period of commodity production, from the seventeenth century on.99 It appears evident that this outline implies a more general periodization of the Russian historical process based upon the evolution of the most important factor of medieval Russia: the boyar estates. Following Cherepnin, similar specialized topics were 98. Vop. 1st., V I I I , 8 (1 9 5 2 ), 4. 99. L. V . C h e r e p n in , " O s n o v n y e e ta p y raz v itie fe o d a ln o i so b stv e n n o sti n a R u s i” [T h e b asic stages in th e d e v e lo p m e n t o f fe u d a l p ro p e rty in R u ssia ], V o p . I s t , IX , 4 (1 9 5 3 ), 38-63.

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[75

touched upon by Danilov and Pashuto,100 who suggested a periodization of “commodity production‫ ״‬which coincided with their opinions on the general periods in Russian history. Their scheme proposed the following periods: 1) the sixth to the eighth century, the pre-feudal period; 2) the ninth to the eleventh century, early feudalism; 3) the eleventh to the end of the fifteenth century, the period of feudal disintegration; 4) end of the fifteenth to the beginning of the seventeenth century, the time of the development and strengthening of the Russian centralized state. This article was one of the reports at the special “conference on the question of the development of commodify production in Russia at the time of feudalism,101 ‫״‬ which included also reports by Pankratova on “The Genesis of Capitalism in Russia‫ ״‬and by Nechkina on “Commodify Production in Russia in the first half of the Nineteenth Century.‫״‬ Yakovtsevsky’s recent work on merchant capitalism in peasant and feudal Russia also makes a contribution to the problem of periodization. In it the author undertakes to discuss a theme which, since the fall of Pokrovsky, has been considered taboo for Soviet historians. In the opinion of Yakovtsevsky, merchant capital “created in the womb of the feudal system a necessary stage in the development of trade and a distinct concentration of money capital in the hands of various men; it loosened the natural character of feudal society and converted it more and more into one operating in the marketplace; it created a link between the local and regional markets, a link that was both commercial and economic; if united the separate local markets into one market for all Russia; it assisted in the differentiation of the peasantry in the destruction of one part of the wealthy merchant aristocracy and in the isolation of another.102 ‫״‬ 100. M . V . D a n ilo v a n d V . T . P a s h u to , “ T o v a m o e p ro iz v o d stv o n a R u s i” [C o m m o d ity p ro d u c tio n in R u ssia ], V o p . Is t., X , 1 (1 9 5 4 )» 117-36.

101. Vop. Ist., IX , 10 (1 9 5 3 ), 144*8. 102. V . N . Y akovtsevsky, K u p e c h e sk ii k a p ita l v fe o d a ln o -k ie p o stn ich esk o i R o ssii [M e rc h a n t c a p ita l in feudal*serf R u ssia] (M o s c o w , 1 9 5 3 )»

186.

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Yakovtsevsky certainly exaggerates the role of Russian agriculture in the seventeenth-century market, the unification of the local markets into one all-Russian market, and the differentiation of the Russian peasantry. It is possible that his conclusions are applicable to the region immediately adjacent to Moscow, but hardly to the remaining regions of the country. In a formal discussion of Yakovtsevsky's book, Bakanov “expressed his surprise that the book could have appeared in so far as it developed the concept of merchant capitalism." 103 Some of those participâting in the discussion nevertheless considered that the strictures of Bakanov went too far, and it appears that merchant capitalism has been readmitted as one of the possible alternatives in the complex and unresolved problem. VII On the whole the discussion of 1946-54 was extremely interesting, and was conducted on a considerably higher plane than the discussion of 1929-34. This time the question was debated largely by specialists, who worked with concrete data and knew the periods of which they spoke. Nevertheless, the “results" of the discussion, in the sense of establishing a new Marxist dogma— and only such a dogma is the goal of Soviet scholarship— were far fewer than after the first discussion, which had among other things established the division of history into formations, and had rejected “merchant capitalism." This was not the fault of the “disputants," for this time their task required them to construct a periodization based on the actual situation, rather than on dry general schemes. Moreover this latter discussion was inevitably handicapped by many difficulties. The incomplete and frequently offhand nature of the direction provided by the “classics of Marxism" was a constant problem, and inaccurate chance remarks of the doctrinal authorities could not be ignored. At the same time the scholars were limited 103. Vop. Ist., X , 1 (1 9 5 4 ), 162-5.

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[7 7

by the necessity of relying primarily on economic factors regardless of their applicability in a variety of historical situations, and could not take adequate account of the many human factors which— as Russian history well illustrates— can actually bring about astonishing transformations and convulsions in society.

THE ROLE OF THE INDIVIDUAL IN HISTORY by Leo YareshI

I The question of the role of the individual in history is one of the fundamental problems of historical interpretation. The significance of this problem in Soviet historiography is due to the historical determinism of Marxist doctrine and to the need felt by the Communist Party to reconcile with this doctrine the manner in which Soviet society has developed. Marx and Engels did not formulate a special theory of the role of the individual in history, but from their writings there emerges a rather fatalistic conception of social

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development, governed by immutable laws. Consequently, the influence which an individual can have on the course of history is viewed as very limited under these general laws. It further appears, according to Marx, that historical progress is realized by the broad masses of the population. W hen Marx and Engels dealt directly with the problem of the role of the individual in history, they always approached it from a determinist point of view. Let us begin with a passage from The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte which is well known and widely quoted in Marxist literature: Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly found, given, and transmitted from the past.1 In his book on Ludwig Feuerbach, Engels further elaborated this thesis. He admitted that the history of mankind differs from the history of nature, because men are endowed with consciousness and act with definite goals in mind. But after this admission Engels returned to the “unalterable and general laws‫ ״‬: In one important point, however, the history of the development of society proves to be essentially different from that of nature. In nature— in so far as we ignore man’s reaction upon nature— there are only blind unconscious agencies acting upon one another and out of whose interplay the general law comes into operation. Nothing of all that happens— whether in the innumerable apparent accidents observable upon the surface of things, or in the ultimate results which confirm the regularity underlying these accidents— is attained as a consciously desired aim. In the history of society, on the other hand, the actors are all endowed with consciousness, are men with deliberation or passion, working towards definite goals; nothing happens without a conscious purpose, without an in‫־‬ 1. K arl M a rx , S e le c te d W o r k s (M o sc o w , 19 3 5 )» II» 315•

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[79

tended aim. But this distinction, important as it is for historical investigation, particularly of single epochs and events, cannot alter the fact that the course of history is governed by inner general laws.2 In a letter to Starkenberg, written on January 25, 1894, Engels stressed the idea that the actions of people are severely circumscribed by general laws: Men make their own history, but until now they have not made it according to a general will, according to a general unified plan. This has not been so even within the framework of a definite, limited, given society. Their efforts clash, and for that very reason all such societies are governed by necessity, which is supplemented by and appears under the forms of accident. The necessity which here asserts itself amidst all accident is again ultimately economic necessity. This is where the problem of the so-called great man is posed. That such and such a man and precisely that man arises at that particular time is of course pure accident. But remove him, and there will be a demand for a substitute, and this substitute will be found, good or bad, but in the long run he will be found. That Napoleon, just that particular Corsican, should have been the military dictator whom the French Republic, exhausted by its own war, had rendered necessary, was an accident. But that, if Napoleon had been lacking, another would have filled the place, is proved by the fact that the man has always been found as soon as he became necessary: Caesar, Augustus, Cromwell.^ In another letter, written later, Engels repeats almost verbatim the idea that the appearance of any particular man on the historical scene is a very insignificant circumstance: The fact that in a particular country at any particular time a particular individual emerges, and just this individual and not another— that, of course, is a pure accident. But if we would remove this man, a de2. I b id ., I I , 45 6 -7 . 3. K arl M a rx a n d F rie d ric h E n g e ls, Iz b ra n n y e P ism a [S e lec te d le tte rs] (M o s c o w , 1 9 4 7 ) , 4 7 0 -1 ; ita lic s in o rig in a l.

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mand for a substitute would arise, and the substitute would be found tout bien que mal, but he would be found in the long run.4 Marx differed slightly from Engels. He presented his views less categorically. The character and individual traits of men engaged in the historical process have some importance, and the role of accidents is not so insignificant: World history would indeed be very easy to make if the struggle were taken up only on condition of infallible favourable circumstances. It would on the other hand be a very mystical matter if “accidents” played no part. These accidents themselves fall naturally into the general course of development and are compensated for, again, by other “accidents.” But acceleration and delay are very dependent upon such “accidents” which include the “accident” of those who at first stood at the head of the movement.5 Moreover, Engels shifted the emphasis from the great man to the broad masses of the population. They, and not the great men, are viewed as the actual carriers of historical progress. Engels wrote in his book on Feuerbach: When, therefore, it is a question of investigating the driving forces which— consciously or unconsciously, and indeed very often unconsciously— lie behind the motives of men in their historical actions and which constitute the real ultimate driving forces of history, then it is not a question so much of the motives of single individuals, however eminent, as of those motives which set in motion great masses, whole peoples, and again whole classes of the people in each people.6 Engels returned to the question of the relationship between the individual and the masses in the article “The situation in England,” written in connection with Carlyle’s Past and Present: 4. Letter of Engels to Sozialistische Monatshefte, No. 20 (1 8 9 5 ), quoted in S. Yu. Seinkovsky, Marksistkaya khrestomatiya, posobie dlya prepodavatelei i studentov [A Marxist anthology, an aid for teachers and students] (Kharkov, 1924), I, 496. ç. Marx to Kugclmann, April 17, 1871, in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Selected Correspondence (N ew York, 1 9 42), 310*11. 6. Marx, Selected Works, I, 459.

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If he [Carlyle] had comprehended man as man, with all his infinite potentialities, he would not have thought of dividing mankind again into two herds— the sheep and the goats, the rulers and the ruled, the masters and the fools; he then would have come to the conclusion that the true social calling of the man of talent is not to rule through coercion, but to push other people and to march ahead of them. The man of talent must convince the crowd of the truth of his ideas, and then he does not have to worry any more about their realization, because it will come about by itself. Truly, mankind does not pass through democracy in order to return to the point where it started from,7 These are the passages from the works of Marx and Engels which bear directly on the problem of the role of the individual in history. Only occasionally did they concern themselves with this specific problem, and in their writings the role of the individual is seen as narrowly restricted by unalterable general laws of social development, and especially by economic conditions. The role of the individual is identified with historical accidents, and a subordinate place is assigned to. these accidents. It should also be noted that Marx placed more emphasis on historical accidents than did Engels. W ith both writers, the limited role of the individual is contrasted with that of the popular masses, which are considered to be the decisive factor in historical change. II After the death of Marx and Engels the theory of the role of the individual in history was further elaborated and somewhat modified in the works of Plekhanov, the Russian Marxist theorist. The renewed interest in the views of Marx and Engels, and the revision of these views, was caused by the very nature of the political movement which was based on Marxist theory. 7. K arl M a rx a n d F rie d ric h E n g e ls, H isto risch -k ritisc h e G e sa m ta u sg a b e : W e r k e , S c h rifte n , B rie fe ( F ra n k fo rt o n M a in , 1 9 2 7 ), P a r t I , V o l. I I , 429.

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Early in the history of Marxist socialism it became clear that historical development does not proceed according to general and unalterable laws, and that it does not follow the path indicated by Marx and Engels. The inevitable proletarian revolution, which was to result from the impoverishment and increased exploitation of the proletariat, was not taking place. It turned out that the revolution had to be organized, and this itself violated the doctrine of historical inevitability. The insufficient “class consciousness‫ ״‬of the workers and the needs of their political activity required the creation of special groups of socialists and revolutionaries organized into political parties, and the political struggles of these parties favored the emergence of leaders. Marxist theory had to be adjusted to the new situation, and the role and influence of the leaders had to be justified. At the same time, Marxist theory became for its followers a semi-religious dogma providing answers to all questions. Under these circumstances the task of revising the Marxist theory of the role of the individual in history became a very difficult one. Marxists could not contradict the dogma openly. They could modify the Marxist theses only through an exegetic interpretation of the original dogma. They had to quote and restate this dogma constantly, to clarify and supplement it cautiously in order to make explicit what was presumably implicit in it. Plekhanov, the founder of Marxism in Russia, who wrote at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries, undertook a special study of the role of the individual in history. A partial revision of the views of Marx and Engels is set forth in his extensive work on the monistic conception of history, first published in 1895.8 In 1898 he also wrote a separate brochure devoted to this problem.9 This brochure, which we shall cite here in its English 8. G. V . Plekhanov, K voprosu o ra zv itii m o n istich esk o g o vzg/yada na isto riy u [On the question of the development of the monistic con• ception of history] (4 ed., St. Petersburg, 19 0 6 ), 200, 203. 9. G . V . P le k h a n o v , T h e R o le o f th e In d iv id u a l in H isto ry (N e w Y o rk , 1940).

T H E ROLE O F T H E INDIVIDUAL IN HISTORY

[8 3

edition, is the most important Marxist work on the role of the individual in history. Despite the hostile attitude of the Soviet regime toward Plekhanov, the ideas expressed in this brochure had a lasting effect on Soviet thought. This work elaborated and modified the views of Marx and Engels on this question, and it has become a component part of the Marxist doctrine. W e shall quote the most important passages of this work, italicizing those passages which represent a modification or at least a new interpretation of the positions of Marx and Engels: By virtue of particular traits of their character, individuals can influence the fate of society. Sometimes this influence is very considerable; but the possibility! of exercising this influence, and its extent, are deter-j mined by the form of organization of society, by the j relation of forces within it. The character of an individual is a “factor” in social development only where, when, and to the extent that social relations permit it to be such. W e may be told that the extent of personal influence may also be determined by the talents of the individual. W e agree. But the individual can display^ his talent only when he occupies the position in so‫־‬: ciety necessary for this. The possibility— determined by the form of organization of society— that individuals may exercise social influence opens the door to the influence of so-called accident upon the historical destiny of nations.10 No matter what the qualities of the given individual may be, they cannot eliminate the given economic relations, if the latter conform to the given state of productive forces.11 Owing to the specific qualities of their minds and characters, influential individuals can change the individual features of events and some of their particular consequences, but they cannot change their general trend, which is determined by other forces.12 In order that a man who possesses a particular mind may, by means of it, greatly influence the course of events, two conditions are needed: First, 10. Ibid., 41.

11. Ibid., 45.

12. Ibid., 48.

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this talent must make him more conformable to the social needs of the given epoch than anyone else. If Napoleon had possessed the musical gifts of Beethoven instead of his own military genius he would not, of course, have become an emperor. Second, the existing social order must not bar the road to the person possessing the talent which is needed and useful precisely at the given time. The very Napoleon would have died as a barely known general, a colonel, Bonaparte, hgd the older order of France existed another seventy-five years.13 < It has long been observed that the great talents appear everywhere, whenever the social conditions fa' vorable to their development exist. This means that every man_of talent, who becomes a social force^ is ih e product of social relations. Since this is the case, it is clear why talented people can, as we have said, change only individual features of events, but not their general trend; were it not for that trend they would never have crossed the threshold that divides the potential from the real.14 Thus, the personal qualities of leading people determine the? individual featured of historical events; and the accidental element, in the sense that we have ‫ ’׳‬indicated, always plays some role in the course of these events, the trend of which is determined, in the last analysis, by the so-called general causes, i.e., actually by the development of productive forces and the natural relations between men in the social-economic process of production.15 A great man is great not because his personal qualities give individual features to great historical events, but because he possesses qualities which make him most capable of serving the great social needs of his time, needs which arose as a result of general and particular causes.16 r He is not a hero in the sense that he can stop, or change, the natural course of things, but in the sense that his activities are the conscious and free exprèssion of their inevitable and unconscious course. Herein lies all his significance; herein lies his whole 13. Ibid., 50.

14. Ibid., 52.

15. Ibid., 55.

16. Ibid., 53.

THE ROLE OF THE INDIVIDUAL IN HISTORY

[8 5 ?

power. But this significance is colossal, and the power is terrible .17 These passages express the main ideas contained in Piekhanov's work which, as already noted, has become a component part of Marxist doctrine. In this work Plekhanov modified somewhat the conceptions of Marx and Engels, but he did it with an extreme caution. This results in a certain duality of the conception at which he arrives. On the one hand, he stressed heavily the ideas of Marx and Engels and reiterated emphatically that the influence of the great man in history is narrowly limited by the laws of social development. On the other hand, Plekhanov recognized phenomena of the opposite order. He stated explicitly that under certain circumstances the significance of the great man could be "colossal‫ ״‬and his power "terrible.‫״‬ This duality of Plekhanov’s position made it possible for later writers to interpret his ideas in a variety of ways. Some could refer to the passages in which he stressed the correctness of the views of Marx and Engels. Others could seize upon his qualifications in which he admitted the significant role of individuals. I ll The statements of Lenin and Stalin form an even more important guide for Soviet historians than the writings of the earlier Marxists. Lenin himself wrote only a few passages touching on the problem of the role of the individual in history, and these reflect the ambiguities of the Marxist position. He was close to the ideas of Plekhanov when he wrote: Marxism distinguishes itself from all other socialist theories by a marvellous combination of scientific soberness in the analysis of the objective situation and the objective evolution with the most categorical reeognition of the significance of revolutionary energy, of revolutionary creativity, of'the revolutionary initi17. Ibid., 60.

86

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ative of the masses— and also, of course, of single individuals, groups, organizations, parties, which can feel intuitively and carry into effect the link with various classes.18 Xhêideajpf historicaLjiecessity in no way undermines the role. of. the individual.in history: all. history is made up of the action of individuals, who are undoubtedly active figures. The real question that arises in judging the social activity of an individual is: what conditions ensure the success of his activity, what guarantee is there that this activity will not remain an • isolated act lost in a welter of contrary acts? 19 Lenin was closer to Marx and Engels, on the other hand, in the following statement: The discovery of the materialist conception of history, or, more correctly, the systematic extension and application of materialism to the domain of social phenomena, has overcome the two chief defects of earlier historical theories. For, in the first place, those theories, at best, examined only the ideological motives of the historical activity of human beings, without investigating the origin of these ideological motives, without grasping the scientific regularity in the development of systems of social relationships, or disceming the roots of these social relationships in the degree of development of material production. In the second place, the earlier historical theories ignored the activities of the masses, whereas historical materialism first made it possible to study with scientific accuracy the social conditions of the life of the masses and the changes in these conditions. . . . People make their own history; but what determines their motives, that is, the motives of people in the mass; what gives rise to the clash of conflicting ideas and endeavors; what are the objective conditions for the production of material means of life that form the basis of all the historical activity of man; what is the law of development of these conditions— to all these matters Marx directed attention, pointing out the way 18. Lenin, Sochincniya (2 e d .), X II, 32. 19. Ibid., I, 77.

T H E ROLE OF T H E INDIVIDUAL IN HISTORY

[8 7

to a scientific study of history as a unified and regular process despite its being extremely variegated and contradictory.20 Stalin's view of history adhered closely in most respects to the traditional historical determinism of Marx. This view was set forth in the official history of the Communist Party, to which Stalin claimed authorship, in which it is asserted that “if historical science is to be a real science, it can no longer reduce the history of social development to the actions of kings and generals, to the actions of 4conquerors' and ‘subjugators' of states, but must above all devote itself to the history of producers of material values, the history of the laboring masses, the history of peoples." 21 A somewhat different view was expressed, however, in Stalin’s interview with Emil Ludwig, held on December 13, 1931, from which a significant passage deserves to be quoted : Ludwig: Marxism denies that personalities play an important role in history. Do you not see any contradiction between the materialistic conception of history and the fact that you, after all, admit the important role played by historical personalities? Stalin: No, there is no contradiction. Marxism does not deny that prominent personalities play an important role, nor the fact that history is made by peopie. In The Poverty of Philosophy and in other works of Marx you will find it stated that it is people who make history. But of course, people do not make history according to their own fancy or the promptings of their imagination. Every new generation encounters definite conditions already existing, ready-made, when the generation is born. And if great men are ! worth anything at all, it is only to the extent that they correctly understand these conditions and know how to alter them. If they fail to understand these conditions and try to change them according to their 20. Ibid., X V III, 13; the italics are Lenin’s. 21. History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks): Short Course (M oscow, 1 9 5 0 ), 148.

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own fancies, they will put themselves in a quixotic position. So you will see that precisely according to • Marx, people must not be contrasted with conditions., ; It is people who make history, but they make it only to the extent that they correctly understand the con; ditions they found ready-made, and to the extent that they know how to change these conditions. That, at least, is the way we Russian Bolsheviks understand Marx. And we have been studying Marx for a good many years. Ludwig: Some thirty years ago, when I studied at the University, many German professors, who considered themselves believers in the materialist conception of history, taught us that Marxism denied the role of heroes, the role of heroic personalities in history. Stalin: They were vulgarizers of Marxism. Marxism never denied the role of heroes. On the contrary, it admits that they play a considerable role, with provisos that I have just made.22 There is hardly anything new in the idea that men encounter definite social, cultural and economic conditions, and that their actions are in some degree determined by these conditions. The recognition of this truism is hardly a distinguishing mark of a Marxist. For the rest, Stalin's views fit into the general framework of the propositions of Marx, Engels and Plekhanov, which we have examined. However, there is a difference. This difference may appear to be a matter of detail, but it is actually quite significant. Stalin says that the task of great men is to change the social order. As we know, according to Marx and Engels the social order cannot be changed contrary to the general laws of social development. In his interview with Ludwig, Stalin docs not even mention these laws, which form the most essential part of Marxism. The reader is free to guess that the social order can be changed if there is available sufficient physical force to change it, even if the change brought about is contrary to the 22. Joseph Stalin, An Interview with the German Author Emil Ludwig (Moscow, 1 932), 4-5; the italics are Stalin's.

TH E ROLE OF TH E INDIVIDUAL IN HISTORY

[8 9

general laws of social development. If that is so, Stalin's revision of Marxism is radical indeed. The importance of Stalin for the solution of the question of the role of the individual in history, however, does not lie in his explicit statements on this problem. Stalin's role as a political leader and as a statesman, as the “builder" of communism, and as the leader of the Communist movement in Russia and in the entire world, was singularly suited to serve as an illustration of the role of the individual in history. Stalin's role became the touchstone of Marxist theory in this respect, and it disproved this theory. Stalin's role .disproved the Marxist theory , in two xejspects. In the first place, a personal cult of Stalin was built up in the Soviet Union. He was proclaimed the great leader of the Soviet people and a great thinker, the fountainhead for all questions concerning the Communist movement and the building of socialism in the U.S.S.R. At the same time, the role of the masses of the Soviet population was a passive one in the great transformation which took place in the Soviet Union. The Soviet state and the Communist Party denied them the opportunity for taking the initiative. They could neither determine the goals of the Russian revolution, nor influence or control the group of leading Communists around Stalin. In building such a social organization Stalin, whether he wanted it or not, was giving a graphic historical illustration of the role of the “hero" or “leader." Moreover, Stalin's emergence as such a hero contradicted the Marxist theory of the role of the individual in history. Secondly, the social transformation which took place in the Soviet Union under Stalin's leadership was an even greater challenge to Marxist theory. As leader of the Communist Party and of the Soviet state, Stalin was defying boldly the “general laws of social development." In chang- ; ing the social order contrary to the Marxist general laws, Stalin was disproving even Plekhanov’s version of Marxism which, as we saw, admitted a limited role which great men could play. W hen Stalin, like Lenin, organized a

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proletarian revolution in an industrially backward country; when he decided to build a socialist society in one country; when he proclaimed the possibility, for some parts of the country, of a transition from feudalism to socialism, bypassing the stage of capitalism; when he transformed by decree individual peasants into semi-proletarians— Stalin was demonstrating that the role of the individual can be much greater than that anticipated by Marxist theorists, and that the general laws are valid only when and where physical force cannot surmount the obstacles for the time being. IV Did Soviet scholarship recognize the implications of the evolution of the Soviet system? It could not do so openly. An open recognition would have meant to contradict Marxist theory. This was impossible because Marxism provided the theoretical foundation of Soviet communism and of the Soviet state, and because Marxism had become a semi-religious dogma. Consequently, Soviet scholarship had to fit Stalin's totalitarian dictatorship and the initiative he assumed in all fields into the Marxist scheme, despite the fact that the dictatorship was not foreseen by Marxism and could not be justified on the basis of it. To accomplish this task, Soviet scholars were forced to revise Marxist theory somewhat, however carefully. It is no accident that this process of revision began at a time when Stalin’s dictatorship and dominant role in the Soviet state became obvious. The first article on this question, written by Merzon in 1935, began with the statement that “. . . the influence of the individual is not a decisive factor in historical development: the basic factors are deeds and actions of human masses which are divided into classes.” 23 This, of course, is in line with Marx and Engels. But further on Merzon’s thought came closer to Plekhanov, who remained unmentioned: 23. I. Merzon, “Kak pokazyvat istoricheskikh deyatelei v shkolnom prepodavanii istori!” [How historical figures should be shown in the teaching of history in schools], Borba Klassov, N o. 5 ( ! 9 3 5 ) , 53•

T H E ROLE O F T H E INDIVIDUAL IN HISTORY

[9 1

One must give the students a complete picture of the actions and policy of each historical personality, one must show this personality as the representative of his class, and the relation between his policy and the class he represents; one must uncover the class roots of his actions. The historical figures are distinguished from ordinary people by their personal qualities (orator, militarv leader, politician, writer, etc.) jvhich allows .them Jto influence the course of historical event?. All these qualities of the historical figure must be shown in the portrayal, but they must not overshadow those quali: ties which are caused by the social conditions and which determine his actions. The historical figure must remain imprinted in the mind of the student as a living person, a person who acts and struggles, with the personal and social traits peculiar to him.24 At the same time the author instructed his readers to give a negative characterization of non‫־‬Communist historical figures, being unaware that shortly a number of exceptions would have to be made for many Russian tsars and generals: In portraying the representatives of the ruling, exploiting classes who have been idealized by bourgeois historians, who have been pictured as champions of justice, as people inspired by “humanitarian” ideals, etc., we must unmask them before the students with the help of actual facts from their life and activity, we must show their class character, the connection between their activity and struggle and the interests of the ruling, exploiting class. For instance, in characterizing Tiberius Gracchus, the teacher must show that the class interests of the nobility were the main causes of Gracchus' agrarian law and of his fight to put this law into effect. In portraying the open enemies of the working people: Tsars, Pharaohs, oriental despots— one must know how to show through vivid examples the elements of arbitrariness, of cruelty, of robbery, of inhuman oppression of the working peopie, one must show all these traits which are charac24. Ibid., 54.

T H E EVOLUTION O F THEORY

9*]

teristic of the bearers of imperial power, and one must inculcate in the students a hatred for the oppressors.2"‘ Three years later Konstantinov, the prominent Soviet theorist, wrote an article on the role of the individual in history stressing the importance of the work and ideas of Plekhanov on this question. In developing his argument, Konstantinov adhered closely to Plekhanov and even accentuated some of his arguments: The role and social significance of talented, gifted and ungifted people are determined by the nature of the social structure. Accidents, personality traits, abilities of the historical figure have an influence on the course of historical development, but the extent of this influence as well as the opportunity to exert this influence is determined bv the organization of the given society, and the latter depends on the relation of the class forces in the country, which in turn has its basis in the mode of production.?0 Great or outstanding men have always appeared in periods of crisis, in revolutionary periods of world history or of the history of a nation. If there had not been these great social movements which were gencrated by deep-seated needs of society, the great historical figures could not have displayed their talents and abilities. In former times the bourgeoisie advanced outstanding, talented people as their leaders. But this was in the period of their youth, when as a class they served the cause of progress.27 Plekhanov, who until this time had been underplayed by Soviet scholars, was highly praised in Konstantinov’s article. I lis work on the role of the individual in history was characterized as “excellent.” -s Under Soviet conditions it is not possible for an author to undertake himself 2ç.

Ibid.,

çç.

26. F. Konstantinov, “O Marksistkom ponimanii roli lichnosti v istorii’' [On the Marxist conception of the role of the individual in history], Bolshevik, No. 10-11 (1 9 3 8 ), 29. 27. Ibid., 61. 28. Ibid., 51.

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the rehabilitation of a writer who had been deliberately neglected by the Communists, and there is a reason to believe that the central authorities— possibly Stalin himself— initiated at this time a “revival‫ ״‬of Plekhanov. The reason for this could only be the fact that Plekhanov’s version of the theory of the role of the individual in history was more easily reconciled to the personal dictatorship which had emerged in the U.S.S.R. The official rehabilitation of Plekhanov just at this particular time is further evidenced by the republication of his work On the Question of the Role of the Individual in History in the same year. At the same time Bolshevik, the leading journal of the Communist Party, published a long, but unoriginal review of Plekhanov’s book. In this review Plekhanov’s ideas were restated and characterized as “brilliant.” 20 A year later Yudin, one of the leading Soviet writers on questions of philosophy, published an article on the same question in the most authoritative theoretical journal of the Communist Party. This indicates that the Communist Party and Stalin attached great importance to this question. However, Yudin’s article did not say anything new. The author was extremely cautious in developing his argument, and remained strictly within the Marxist framework: The pre-Marxist teachings of society could not arrive at a correct understanding of the general laws of social development as well as of the role of the individual in history, because they were looking for the basic cause of historical events not in society itself, but in all kinds of factors which either were not directlv related to society at all, or which were related to society, but were not basic, were not major, decisive factors.2930 History is made by heroes alone, and not by the 29. L . Ilic h e v , “ 4K v o p ro su 0 ro li lic h n o s ti v isto rii‫ ׳‬G . V . P le k h a n o v a ” [G . V . P le k h a n o v 's “ O n th e Q u e s tio n o f th e R o le o f th e In d iv id u a l in H is to ry ’'], Bolshevik, N o . 13 (1 9 3 8 ), 87-96.

30. P. Yudin, “Marksistoe uchenie o roli lichnosti v istorii” [The Marxist teaching on the role of the individual in history], Pod Znamenem Marksizma, N o. 5 (1 9 3 9 ), 45.

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people— that is the true opinion of Rickert and Weber, a view which has been disproved a long time ago, which is obsolete, archaic, but which is accepted by the ideologists of the present-day reactionary bourgeoisie.31 Yudin's remarks certainly do not do justice to Rickert and Weber, nor to the “ideologists of present-day reactionary bourgeoisie." If the latter term refers to contemporary social science outside the U.S.S.R., then Yudin neglected the great diversity of points of view represented in Western thought. He completely overlooked the extensive empirical research which in one way or another deals with the influence of social conditions on the individual. It is true that a number of Western thinkers believe in the historical role of minorities and elites. The latter point of view is also contrary to Marxism, but Soviet theoreticians never refer to it— maybe not accidentally— in their works on the role of the individual in history. Yudin writes further: If one wants to explain why in feudal Germany of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries there appeared such geniuses of human thought as Goethe, Schiller, Kant, Hegel, Feuerbach— one will find the basic cause of this phenomenon only in the economic conditions of Germany at that time.32 Marx’s discovery of the role of the laboring masses in history signified a complete revolution in historical science.33 Yudin repeated the example given by Engels and Piekhanov that in the absence of Napoleon another general would have appeared to take his place, and then added the example of Kutuzov, the Russian commander-in-chief in the war against Napoleon in 1812, with similar conelusions.34 W e may note at this point that the example of Napoleon fails to carry conviction. Engels and Plekhanov merely asserted that another general would have taken his place, without demonstrating this proposition. One won31• Ibid., 51.

32. Ibid., 54.

33. Ibid., 56.

34. Ibid., 62.

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[95

ders whether Yudin, writing in 1939, would have felt free to substitute “U.S.S.R.‫ ״‬for “France‫ ״‬and “general secretary of the Communist Party‫ ״‬for “general.‫״‬ Yudin's position is summed up in the following paragraph : The individual can modify individual characteristics ! of events and can lend them a certain peculiarity.! An outstanding individual can retard or hasten an historical event, but he cannot modify the historical j laws, he cannot change the whole direction of social! development.35 Despite the trend toward the point of view represented by Plekhanov, Soviet theorists generally contented themselves with repeating familiar ideas.36 After the Second World War, however, a bolder approach was attempted. This new trend was apparent in a provocative article published in 1945 by Gak, in which the author declared that “. . . the increasing role of the popular masses in history is accompanied by an increasing historical role of the great popular leaders.37 ‫ ״‬This is indeed a very original thought because, it would seem, the activity of the leaders limits the initiative of popular masses; and conversely, popular upheavals set limits to the influence of leaders, especially of dictators. Consequently, the burden of proof is on the author to show that the contradiction between the role of the individual and the popular masses is only apparent. Unfortunately, Gak does not do this. As proof of his thesis he states: The major contribution to the victory [against the Germans] was made by the Soviet people, and in 35. Ibid., 64. 36. B. Bernadiner, “Rol narodnykh mass v istorii” [The role of the popular masses in history], Pod Znamenem Marlcsizma, N o. 7 (1 9 3 9 ), 18-32; F. Konstantinov, “Rol idei v obshchestvennom razvitii” [The role of ideas in social development], Pod Znamenem Marksizma, N o. 10 (1 9 3 9 ), 52*85; and E. Gutnova, “Tomas Karleil kak istorik” [Thomas Carlyle as an historian], V op. Ist., I, 5-6 (1 9 4 5 ), 174-81. 37. G. Gak, “O roli lichnosti i narodnykh mass v istorii” [On the role of the individual and of the popular masses in history], Bolshevik, N o. 14 (1 9 4 5 ), 53•

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96]

first place— by the great Russian people. The peoples of the Soviet Union were led to victory by the great Stalin. The example of this great event shows the powerful manifestation of the role of the great man and of the role of the popular masses in history.38 This argument should dispel all doubts of the Soviet reader. But for any other reader this argument is not very convincing, because the problem posed by the author can only be answered after a careful investigation of a great amount of data pertaining to the war. One would have to consider, among other things, the following factors: the stubborn resistance to the Germans, as well as cases of voluntary surrender of Soviet army units in the first year of the war; the resistance to the German occupation on the part of the civilian population of the U.S.S.R., as well as cases of joyful welcome of German troops; the relations between the military and civilian leadership on the one hand, and the popular masses, military and civilian, on the other; the amount of independence and initiative of lower and intermediate military commanders. These factors— and many others— would have to be ascertained, and their importance evaluated. Only after such an investigation could the events of the Second World War be used to answer the question of the role of the individual and of the masses in history. Of course, Gak could not undertake such an investigation. In Gak's opinion the circle of great men in history is very restricted, because only leaders of the proletariat and of other “progressive movements‫ ״‬can be placed in this category : Only the great leaders of the most advanced, progrèssive class— the proletariat— displayed the ability to transcend the limitations of their period. . . . Only the great thinkers and leaders of the working class— Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin— had the genius to discover the Taws of social development and showed the power of scientific foresight. Therefore, these great 38. Ibid., 45.

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men are by far superior to all other great historical figures . . . The reaction never had and never can have great men, because great men are required for a great cause. Truly great men have emerged only from the progrèssive world.39 Gak characterizes in the following manner the influence of the great man on the course of historical events: W hen one speaks of the role of the great man, one poses usually the problem of the limits of his influence on the course of events. History shows that in the absence of such a man this event can either be a little postponed, or the event will not be as complete as it would have been had the outstanding man been there. But it may also happen that in the abscnce of the great man the event, which will take place ultimately, takes place so belatedly, that for a while the historical development can follow a different course from the course it would have followed had the event taken place in due time.40 This is the most independent statement made by any Soviet scholar on the role of the individual in historv. It goes further than preceding statements in revising not only the deterministic conceptions of Marx and Engels, but also the modified and more flexible version of Piekhanov. Gak in fact admits that the accident of the great man can have a decisive influence on the course of events and on entire historical movements. This revision was probably caused by a variety of factors. It is possible that Gak modified the original Marxist theory in the light of historical data. More specifically, he may have had in mind the development in Soviet Russia which, as we have pointed out, contradicted Marxist theory. Moreover, Gak’s revision w‫׳‬as undoubtedly designed to reconcile Marxist theory with the role of Stalin in the Soviet Union and with the all-embracing creative initiative ascribed to him by the ruling strata of the Soviet state. 39. Ibid., 50.

40. Ibid., 56.

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In 1952 Kammari published a volume on the role of the individual in history which is an excellent source book on Soviet writings on this subject during the Stalin period. The author showed great erudition in this field, but he was very cautious in developing his own ideas. As a result his book contains little new despite its bulk. Kammari was faced with the same difficult task with which other writers had previously been faced : to reconcile the views of the founders of Marxism, which he calls “deterministic,” 41 with the development of Soviet society. Since this is an impossible task, his effort represents a form of mental acrobatics and his solutions are superficial and mechanical. Like previous authors, whose writings he examines, Kammari emphasized the importance of Piekhanov’s work and devoted an entire chapter to him.42 He concurred with Gak in restricting the category of great men to leaders of progressive and revolutionary movements.43 The caution Kammari displayed in formulating general propositions did not prevent him from violating openly the Marxist dogma when it came to glorifying Stalin. Stalin is portrayed in his book as literally the creator and initiator of all reforms and accomplishments in the Soviet Union.44 In order to reconcile this with Marxism, Kammari adopted Gak’s idea of the parallel increase of the role of leaders and of the masses: The experience of the Great Socialist October Revolution shows that in the period of the socialist révolution the increased significance of the conscious activity of the popular masses— consequently of every individual, of every worker— is accompanied by an increased role of the outstanding men of the working class, of its political leaders. A study of the Great October Revolution, of the life and activity of its leaders, of its inspirers and organizers, reveals that nobody has ever played such an enormous role, such a 41. M. D. Kammari, Marksizm-Leninizni o roJi lichnosti v istorii [Marxism-Leninism •on the role of the individual in history] (M oscow, 1952),

It.

42. Ibid., 148-57.

43. Ibid., 15-16.

44. Ibid., 303-40.

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role of historical importance as Lenin and Stalin and their closest collaborators.45 Kammari believed that the October Revolution itself" was, despite its historical inevitability, in the last analysis the work of Lenin and Stalin, and that it could not have taken place without them: ‫ף‬

As Lenin and Stalin have shown, the October Revolution was an inevitable event and was caused by his- ! torical laws. But it is now clear for everybody that it could not have taken place by itself, without the organizing and leading role played by the party, with- j out the great leadership of Lenin and Stalin.46 Both Gak and Kammari went further than any preceding Soviet theorist in the direction of an anti-deterministic conception of the influence of “heroes” and “leaders” on history, and the point of view which they expressed was characteristic of the later period of Stalin's leadership. Konstantinov, whose earlier views have already been noted, also adopted this bolder approach in a pamphlet which appeared in 1946 47 He devoted special emphasis to “the role of the leaders of the proletariat in history,” and upheld the glorified role of Lenin and Stalin in the Russian revolution. It is nevertheless noteworthy that Soviet theorists have in general devoted relatively little attention to the role of the individual in history, and most of the writing on this subject is unoriginal and repetitious. It is also significant that, with the exception of Yudin and Konstantinov, the Soviet writers who have concerned themselves with this problem are little known. At the same time it should be noted that Serebryakov attempted to break through the normal stereotyped approach in the analysis of the role of the individual in history by boldly declaring that Marxist scholarship had not yet given a clear answer to this question. He took his starting point not from Marxist 45. Ibid., 340-1. 46, Ibid., 342. 47. F. Konstantinov, Rol lichnosti i narodnykh mass v istorii [The role ■of the individual and of the popular masses in history] (M oscow, 1946).

lo o ]

T H E EVOLUTION O F THEORY

quotations but from personal observations, but his proposais were not particularly radical. The official account gives the following description of his views: In the character of an extremely important methodological principle Prof. Serebryakov put forward the thesis that: “The wider the circle of people who take part in definite affairs, i.e. the more the mass characteristics become defined, the less the significance possessed by the separate individual; on the other hand, the narrower the circle of participants, the greater the role played by each one of them, other conditions being equal.‫ ״‬. . . Accordingly, Prof. Serebryakov denied the fairly considerable role of the individual in the sphere of economics, in so far as its development was characterized by strict necessity and was the least dependent on the consciousness of the peopie, and the development of the productive forces and of the relations of production are distinguished the most by their mass character.48 The essential role of the individual, in the opinion of Serebryakov, is played in the politico-juridical and ideological superstructure. The proposals of Serebryakov, which exceeded the limits of orthodox Marxism, were “received with sharp criticism by the overwhelming majority of the participants in the discussion.49 ‫ ״‬Zaitsev asserted with naive frankness that one must demand from the lecturer a “systematization of the opinions of Marx and Engels, explaining the new ideas introduced by Lenin and Stalin, and finally its formulation in different ways. . . . Prof. Serebryakov did not do this; he did not lean in his reasoning on the most important positions of Marxism-Leninism, and in a series of essential points even contradicted them.50 ‫״‬ Gershovich expressed the view that Serebryakov mechanically tore to pieces the unity of the historical process. His assertion that the more popular the social phenomena become, the less influential is the role of the individual, 48. Vestnik Leningradskogo Gosudarstvennogo Universiteta of the Leningrad State University], No. 2 (1 9 4 8 ), 167. 49. Ibid., 167. 50. Ibid., 167.

[Bulletin

THE ROLE OF THE INDIVIDUAL IN HISTORY

[lO l

is “completely incompatible with the considerable role of the leading individuals in those popular historical movements, as for example the peasant wars. More particularly it contradicts the exclusive organizational, mobilizing and creative roles of Lenin and Stalin in the revolution of the proletariat.51‫ ״‬Only Andreev upheld Serebryakov and thus, according to the official account, aggravated the erroneous situation.52 The report of Serebryakov, appearing as a somewhat independent attempt to solve the problem, represented of course an exceptional event in Soviet scholarship and could not help but provoke loud protests which weakly repeated the principles of the official dogmas. Since the death of Stalin, a new trend has developed' which once again emphasizes the role of the masses rather than the leaders. It appears likely that this trend is the result of the new political situation, since Stalin's personai dictatorship was succeeded by a government in which several leaders shared the power which he had exercised. It is still too early to determine the full nature and extent of this return to the earlier Marxist view, but the character of the change is illustrated by several recent publications. Thus a statement published by the department of propaganda and agitation of the Central Committee of the Communist Party expresses the following view: It is necessary to eradicate from the propagandists ‫׳‬ work of the party the incorrect and non-Marxist explanation of the role of the individual in history which has been expressed in foreign propaganda, that the spirit of Marxism-Leninism is an idealistic theory of the cult of the individual. The cult of the indi-‫׳‬ vidual contradicts the principle of collective leadership and leads to the belittling of the role of the party and to the deterioration of the creative activity of the party masses and of the Soviet people. It has nothing in common with the Marxist-Leninist under51. Ibid., 169.

52. Ibid., 171.

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standing of the great significance of the guiding activities of the leading organs and agents.53 Another statement stressed the refusal of Marx and Engels to become the object of such a special cult, in terms which permitted the reader to make a comparison with the quite different position on this subject of the late leader of Soviet Russia, Stalin: Collective leadership is the highest principle of our party. This principle completely agrees with Marx's well-known opinion on the harm and intolerability of the cult of the individual. Marx wrote that “out of hostility to every cult of the individual, during the existence of the International, I never permitted publicity of the numerous conversations in which my merits were acknowledged and by which I was plagued from various sides. I did not even answer them and certainly from time to time rebuked them. The first entry of Engels and myself into the secret communist society took place under such conditions that everything which was conducive to a superstitious subservience before authority was thrown out of the regulations." 54 In an article entitled “The People— the Creators of History," the leading organ of the Communist Party of the U.S.S.R. recognized that “In our propaganda of the last few years we have deviated from Marxism-Leninism on the question of the role of the individual in history." 55 Similarly, an editorial in the leading historical journal stressed that “The most important task of Soviet historical scholarship is to demonstrate on the basis of concrete historical materials, that the destiny of history is decided by the activities of the popular masses." 56 53. “Pyatdeset let Kommunisticheskoi Partii Sovetskogo Soyuza” [Fifty years of the Communist Party of the Soviet U nion], Pravda, N o. 20712775 (July 26, 1953)• 54. Pravda, N o. 191-12759 (July 10, 1953). 55. “Narod— tvorets istorii” [The people— the creators of history], Kommunist, N o. 6 (1 9 5 3 ), 46. 56. “O nekotorykh vazhneishikh zadachakh sovetskikh istorikov” [On certain most important problems confronting Soviet historians], Vop. Ist., IX, 6 (1 9 5 3 ). 7*8.

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This new approach is also reflected in the latest writings of Konstantinov who, it will be recalled, rehabilitated Plekhanov in 1938 and later even went beyond him in stressing the role of the individual.57 Konstantinov now stresses the familiar propositions that “Marxism considers the development of society a natural-historical process bound by strict scientific laws, independent of the will or wish of any particular historical figure. . and that “Marxism, having established the decisive role of the popular masses in history, has for the first time put sociology on a scientific basis.58 ‫״‬ In another statement Konstantinov likewise asserts that “Marxism is hostile to an idealistic theory of the cult of the individual. The Communist Party and its founder Lenin always waged merciless war against this theory.59 ‫״‬ At the same time, however, he also maintains that “It is incorrect to confuse a recognition of the great role of historical figures and of the leaders of the progressive classes with the cult of the individual. Marxism _does not completely .deny the role of outstanding individuals in history.60 ‫ ״‬Having disproved what he has just written, Konstantinov goes on to proclaim that “the cult of the individual disarms the party in its work of mobilizing the creative initiative of the popular masses; therefore its eradication is the vital problem of the ideological struggle of the party.61 ‫ ״‬This indecisiveness appears to reflect an uncertainty as to how the political situation will develop, and a desire to anticipate further changes in the party line. V As will be seen in subsequent chapters of this volume, changes in Soviet theory are reflected in the writings of 57. See above, note 26. 58. F. Konstantinov, “Narod— tvorets istorii” [The people— the ereators of history], Pravda, N o. 179-12747 (June 28, 1 9 5 3 ), 2-3. $9. F. Konstantinov, R0Ì narodnykh mass v istorii [The role of the popular masses in history] (M oscow, 1 9 5 3 ), 21.

60. Ibid., 21.

61. Ibid., 21.

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THE EVOLUTION OF THEORY

Soviet historians. The deterministic phase is best represented by the work of Pokrovsky, who was a firm and consistent partisan of the Marxist conception of the role of the individual in history. He applied this conception in its most uncompromising form, as illustrated by his treatment of Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great, and denied or minimized the influence of historical figures in all of his works. In one respect Pokrovsky applied materialistic determinism with an unusual degree of consistency: in denying the significance of accidents in history. In this respect he disagreed not only with Plekhanov, but also in part with Marx. W hen the cult of Stalin as the “great leader of the people” became the basic feature of official Soviet ideology in the middle 1930’s, Russian national heroes of the past came into official favor and Pokrovsky’s approach to the role of the individual in history was rejected as antiMarxist and anti-Leninist. The new approach in Soviet historiography was reflected in the university textbook prepared by the Academy of Sciences to replace Pokrovsky’s works. In this textbook the living figures of Russian history were given flesh and blood, and their personal traits of character were described as significant to an understanding of history.62 At the same time this treatment differed from pre-Soviet historiography in the selection of the historical figures. The Russian national heroes now emphasized were those who, in the opinion of Soviet historians, were instrumental in the formation of a strong and unified Russian state, who fought to enlarge its territories, and who conducted military operations against the enemies of Russia. These categories embraced not only such rulers as Vladimir Monomakh, Daniel of Galicia, Alexander Nevsky, Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, and Catherine II, but also statesmen and military leaders such as Ordin-Nashchokin, Golitsyn, Rumyantsev, Suvorov and Kutuzov. Such individuals were frequently the subjects of separate biographical studies, as well as of special attention in textbooks. 62. Istoriya SSSR, passim.

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There was a similar trend in the extensive literature on local history in Ukrainian, Byelorussian, and the other languages of the U.S.S.R. It should be noted in particular that Russian historians have written much about the Ukrainian Hetman Bogdan Khmelnitsky, who placed the Ukraine under the vassalage of Russia in the middle of the seventeenth century. At the same time other types of historical figures have remained in the background. There has thus been no treatment of such ecclesiastical leaders as Nil Sorsky in the sixteenth, patriarch Nikon and archpriest Awakum in the seventeenth, and Feofil Prokopovich in the eighteenth centuries. Similarly generals of non-Russian origin, such as Miinnich in the eighteenth and Barclay de Tolly in the nineteenth centuries, as well as certain of the emperors, have remained unpopular with Soviet historians. The interest of Soviet historians in individual leaders I was bound to diminish their interest in the role of the popular masses, whom the classics of Marxism consider the real heroes of history. This change in attitude toward . the activity of the masses was to be expected. The activity of the masses and of the leaders have a limiting effect on each other despite the assertions of Soviet theorists to the contrary, and the appearance of individual heroes on the scene was bound to push the masses and mass movements into the background. This is illustrated, for example, by the relative lack of interest on the part of Soviet historians in such popular movements as the peasant revolts of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. If the question of the role of the. individual in history is to be revised after the death of Stalin not only in words but also in deeds, it will not be enough for Soviet scholarship to devote more attention to the role of popular movements in Russian history. It must also correlate these movements with the strengthening and expansion of the Russian state, which has been defended and glorified since the 1930,s, and re-examine its own evaluation of the “victorious” Russian tsars and generals whom it has so diligently glorified.

106

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THE EVOLUTION OF THEORY

The position occupied by this theme at the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party leaves no doubt that Stalin's successors are committed to playing down the role of leaders in history. The new party line received characteristic formulation in an encyclopedia article published in September, 1955, in which the late dictator is mentioned only once with reference to “the Central Committee headed by J. V. Stalin.‫ ״‬The central theme of this article is that “Marxism-Leninism values above all the historical initiative and the independent historical creativity of the popular masses themselves.‫ ״‬The role of party leaders is still stressed, but these are distinguished from the traditional heroes of history. Not only are the leaders of the working class “armed with a progressive revolutionary scientific theory,‫ ״‬i.e. Marxism-Leninism, but, “reflecting the basic interests of the working class, the toilers, and supremely devoted to their interests, they are always indissolubly bound to the masses and meet with their support. . . .68 ‫״‬ 63. “Rol lichnosti v istorii” [The role of the individual in history],

Bolsh. Sov. Ents., 2 ed., X X X V I, 642.

4

THE “LESSER EVIL‫ ״‬FORMULA by Konstantin F. Shteppa

Every aspect of historical scholarship in the Soviet Union is subordinated to the political aims of the ruling party, and party policy “on the historical front‫ ״‬reflects more graphically than in any other area the direction of the party line at a given time. In this sense, historical scholarship in the Soviet Union is party scholarship.

I One of the many uses to which historical scholarship is put is that of inculcating the proper attitudes regarding the various national groups which comprise the Soviet Union. As the leading organ of the party asserted in 1953, “The party teaches that the friendship of the peoples of our country should be held sacred and strengthened as . . . the most important source of strength and invincibility of the Soviet state.1 ‫ ״‬The type of “friendship‫״‬ 1. 4TCommunisticheskaya partiya— rukovodyashchaya sfla sovetskogo obshchestva” [The communist party— the leading force in Soviet so• ciety], Kommunist, X X X , 8 (1 9 5 3 ), 21.

which the party advocates is one in which the Russian people are presented as the “elder brother‫ —״‬not “elder‫״‬ in age, of course, but in seniority— and all the other peoples of the U.S.S.R. must follow Russian leadership. The task of historians here consists in showing not only that “seniority‫ ״‬and “leadership‫ ״‬have always belonged to the Russian people, but also that this position was based less on force _than on justice. The return to *patriotism‫ ״‬in official Soviet ideology began as early as 1934, but during the war “Soviet patriotism‫ ״‬in which stress was laid on the “socialist homeland‫ —״‬a patriotism which was originally interpreted as devotion to a system rather than to a people and country— was transformed into patriotism of the usual type, at times frankly taking the form of great-power, Great-Russian nationalism. The most immoderate glorification was undertaken of all those historical events or figures that had contributed to the strengthening of the Russian state or the enhancing of its international prestige, to the defense of its integrity or the expansion of its frontiers. Stalin gave final formalization to this attitude in his toast on May 24, 1945, at a grand reception in the Kremlin, when he said: “I drink, above all, to the health of the Russian people, for it is the most outstanding nation of all the nations forming a part of the Soviet Union. . . . I toast the health of the Russian people not only because it is the leading people, but also because it possesses a clear mind, a steadfast character and patience.2 ‫״‬ The subsequent development of the new party line on the national question found its clearest expression in a series of discussions in the late 1940’s and early 1950's in various fields of Soviet historical scholarship. Almost all discussions on the “historical front" at this time were directly or indirectly related to the nationality policy. Like the debates on cosmopolitanism and on the periodization of Russian history, the discussion of the “lesser evil," with which we are concerned here, expressed with particular force the already fully crystallized party line on the 2. Pravda, May 25, 1945.

THE **LESSER EVIL‫״‬

FORMULA

[ 10Ç

nationality question. It was in this latter discussion that the question of the past relations of the Russian people and those peoples under its "leadership” were touched upon— a question which in the past had frequently occasioned a variety of nationalist deviations. W hen the question arose of interpreting the legitimate and positive character of the Russian people's leading role not only in the present but also in the past, conflict inevitably occurred with such prevalent concepts as that of the "prison of peoples,” as Lenin called old Russia, referring to the colonial policy and all other repressive measures taken by the tsarist government against the nonRussian peoples and nationalities— the "national minorities” and alien races. The facts were common knowledge and could not be ignored, particularly since in the entire preceding period, before the war and even for a time after the war, all Soviet historians concerned with the various peoples making up the Soviet Union, including the Russian people, had been required to lay special stress on precisely those facts which bore on the "national-liberation struggle” of the non-Russian peoples against Russia. There also existed a number of recognized national heroes, such as Shamil in the Caucasus and Kenesary Kasymov in Central Asia, whose right to a certain measure of veneration as leaders against Russian domination was doubted by no one. However, after Russia's entire historical past had been more or less rehabilitated and a great many firmly established Soviet historical notions had, as a result of the overthrow of the Pokrovsky school, undergone radical revision, the imperialistic and centralizing policy of prerevolutionary Russia was also inevitably subjected to revision and re-evaluation. A way out of this dilemma was found in the theory of ~the "lesser evil,” according to which, although the annexation of non-Russian peoples to Russia was an evil— particularly when annexation meant the loss of their national independence— it was a lesser evil by comparison with that which could be expected to have resulted from their annexation to some other large

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THE EVOLUTION OF THEORY

state. Thus the Ukraine's annexation to Russia in the seventeenth century had to be regarded, according to this theory, as an evil, but a somewhat lesser evil than absorption by Poland, Turkey or—later— Sweden would have been. The same applied to Georgia, the other Caucasian peoples, and the peoples of Central Asia. II The theory of the “lesser evil" made its appearance in 1937, but it received no particular currency or official recognition at .that time. Only with the appearance of a statement by Nechkina in 19 51,3 did the theory of the “lesser evil" begin to enjoy general recognition. It now became a subject of lively controversy, until it was sharply condemned as insufficiently radical and as compromising in nature. The occasion for this controversy was the revocation in May 1950 by the Council of Ministers of the U.S.S.R. of a previous decision awarding the Stalin Prize to Guseinov for his book From the History of Social and Philosophical Thought in Nineteenth-Century Azerbaijan .4 It was this action that initiated the radical shift in the party line on pre-revolutionary Russian colonialism and on the struggle of the non-Russian peoples against it. Even before the appearance of Nechkina’s letter, an article on Shamil reflected the truly difficult position in which Soviet historians found themselves, caught between the historical facts and established tradition on the one hand, and the unexpected change in the party line on the other: The basic error of historians who have studied the Shamil movement is that they have represented it as progressive, national-liberationist and democratic. . . . In reality, this movement should be regarded as reactionary, nationalistic, and subordinated to the ex3. M. Nechkina, “K voprosu o formule 4naimenshee zio' ” [On the question of the 44lesser evil" formula], Vop. Ist., V I, 4 (1 9 5 1 ), 44-48. 4. G. Guseinov, Iz istori! obshchestvennoi i Blosotskoi mysli v Azerbaidzhane XIX veka.

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pansionist interests of Turkey and England in the Caucasus. . . .5 It must be understood that correcting errors in the examination of the Shamil movement does not mean doing away with the well-known concept of Russia as the prison of peoples or transforming the colonial policy of tsarism into its opposite. However, at the same time, it must be remembered that Daghestan's annexation to Russia was a very great blessing for our peoples, because the peoples of Daghestan, in spite of tsarism and its colonial policy, joined the great advanced Russian culture, the Russian revolutionary movement.6 W ith the help of this sort of **dialectics," the author attempted to cut the Gordian knot of an unresolvable contradiction: the appraisal of the annexation of non-Russian peoples to a Russia which must be characterized both as a **prison of peoples" and as a **very great blessing" for those peoples. Nechkina was confronted by the same contradiction and resolved it in the following manner: Tsarism was the prison of peoples— that formula is profoundly true. In that prison our country's elder brother— the great Russian people—languished also. . . . In the struggle against the common enemy, tsarism, the friendship of our peoples took shape. . . . It became a brotherhood of peoples based . . . on the construction of a new, socialist society. . . .‫ד‬ In evaluating the results of the incorporation of various peoples into tsarist Russia, historians must pay particular attention to the intercourse among those peoples, to the new and positive element which, in spite of tsarism, the great .Russian people introduced into their economic and cultural life. The task of historians is to depict the historical prospect of unity and struggle of the workers of the various peoples in ; 5. A. Daniyalov, “Ob izvrashcheniyakh v osveshchenii myuridizma i dvizheniya Shamilya” [On the distortions in the interpretation of Muridism and the Shamil m ovem ent], Vop. Ist., V I, 9 (1 9 5 0 ), 3. 6. Ibid., 14. 7• Nechkina, 10c. cit., 45.

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1 the future under the leadership of their elder brother —the Russian people— and its proletariat. . . .8 The concluding words of this quotation from Nechkina’s letter show how she tried to cope with the “dialectical” ambivalence of the “lesser evil” formula, which she had not devised but was zealously defending. Historians, while tacitly acknowledging one part of the formula (the “colonial regime” ), were in practice to concentrate all their attention on the other part, i.e., on the “positive” factor for non-Russian peoples in annexation to Russia. Everything was supposed to be clear. The letter was to leave no doubts. In reality, however, it touched off the most lively discussion, and it had to be acknowledged at last that the very publication of the letter had been a grave political error on the part of the editors of the journal in which it was published. The theory of the lesser evil helped to overcome the point of view according to which incorporation of a nonRussian people in Russia was an “absolute evil,” but it substituted a relative evil for the absolute evil. The Soviet regime, however, needed in this instance to replace the absolute evil not by a relative evil but by an absolute good. The party had no intention of putting the dialectical aerobatics contained in Nechkina’s letter into wide circulation. The question involved had not only a theoretical but a political significance, and to make a dialectical game of it might be very dangerous. The problem was most difficult of all with regard to the evaluation of individual cases from the history of the struggles of the non-Russian peoples against Russia, as shown by the affair of Guseinov and his book on Shamil. It was perfectly obvious that it would not be a matter of reevaluating Shamil alone, but that many other similar heroes of the “national-liberation struggle” would also have to be re-evaluated. Indeed, the next in line after Shamil proved to be Khan Kenesary Kasymov, who had led the revolt of the Kazakhs 8.

I b id .,

47.

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and Kirghizes in the first half of the nineteenth century (1837-1846). The discussion of this subject furnishes one of the best illustrations of the manner in which Soviet historical scholarship serves the political ends of the ruling party. It started with the assertion that “bourgeois scholars, in works on the history of the peoples of Central Asia, advanced nationalist and cosmopolitan concepts. They served as ideologists of Pan-Iranianism, Pan-Turkism, PanIslamism, great-power chauvinism and local nationalism.9 ‫ ״‬This curious juxtaposition of nationalism and cosmopolitanism is matched by the assertion that the culture of the peoples of Central Asia was not only entirely autonomous vis-a-vis Iranian or Arab culture but was actually more important than either of them: “It was not Central Asia that constituted the periphery of the regions to the south but, on the contrary, the latter which, in a number of cases, must be regarded as peripheral to the ancient cultural centers of Central Asia. During the Arab period, the culture of the peoples of Central Asia also developed on the basis of their own traditions and was incomparably higher than that of the Arab conquerors.101‫״‬ At the same time, the question of evaluating the historical significance of the annexation of Central Asia to Russia was raised in regard to the History of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic.u Its authors were criticized for proceeding “from an erroneous conception of Khan Kenesary Kasymov as a progressive figure who fought for 'the revival of a unified feudal Kazakh state/ . . . This characterization is extremely vicious. . . . Khan Kenesary’s revolt was a reactionary, feudal-nationalistic action, aided by forces from abroad hostile to Russia.12‫ ״‬The re-evaluation of the historical significance of Shamil's rebellion in the Caucasus and Kenesary Kasymov's in Central Asia marked 9. “O nekotorykh voprosakh istorii narodov Srednei Azii” [On certain questions of the history of the peoples of Central Asia], Vop. 1st., V II, 4

( 1 9 5 1 ) , 3•

10. Ibid., 4-5. 11. M . Abdykalykov and A. M. Pankratova, eds., Istoiiya Kazakhskoi SSSR (Alma Ata, 1943). 12. Vop. Ist., V II, 4 (1 9 5 1 ), 9.

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the beginning of a general revision of all historical ideas relating to the non-Russian peoples of old Russia. The points of view cited above were only the first shots in the general gunplay which thereupon flared along the entire “historical front.‫״‬ Several examples may be cited of the problems raised by this controversy. Tavakalyan, writing in support of Nechkina's viewpoint, contended that his native Armenia for centuries had vegetated in the sterile patriarchalfeudal backwardness of Persia and Turkey, [and] Russian overlordship meant an escape from the stagnant, closed patriarchal-handicraft atmosphere of IranoTurkish reality to the broad road of progress and civilization, the road of Russian economic development. . . . The great Russian people, which possesses a clear mind, a steadfast character and patience, determined through its beneficent influence the course of development of the social thought of the Armenian peopie, the ideological content of its culture and literature.13 . . . the annexation of Eastern Armenia to Russia was truly a decisive moment in its history and had an indisputably progressive significance for the Armenian people as regards its national (physical) existence, economic, political and cultural development.14 Tavakalyan, although he began his article with a tribute to Nechkina and “her timely and bold initiative,‫ ״‬as he put it, operated essentially not so much with the “lesser evil‫ ״‬concept as with that of the “absolute good,‫ ״‬as was required of him. Viewing Eastern Armenia's annexation to Russia as “an escape . . . to the broad road of progress and civilization," he mentioned only briefly that “the Armenian people, having linked its fate with that of the great Russian people, was subsequently enabled to join the 13. N . Tavakalyan, “Po povodu pisma M. V . Nechkinoi ‘K voprosu o formule “naimenshee zio ‫[ ״ ׳ ״‬Concerning the letter of M . V . Nechkina “On the question of the lesser evil‫ ׳‬formula‫]״‬, Vop. Ist, V II, 9 ( 1 9 5 1 ) , 106. 14. Ibid., 107.

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ranks of the active fighters against tsarism.‫ ״‬But there is not a word about tsarist colonial policy with regard to Armenia. Consequently, he had no reason to speak of Armenia's annexation to Russia as a "lesser evil‫ ״‬for her. In a similar fashion Yakunin, in an article on the nonRussian nationalities in general, declared that "in the works on the history of the peoples of the U.S.S.R. published in recent years, serious errors have been committed in evaluating the significance of the incorporation of the Central Asian nationalities into Russia, while in the works on the history of the peoples of Siberia, the North, and the Far East this question is simply passed over in silence.15 ‫ ״‬He then insisted upon the need for "approaching an evaluation of the significance of this or that people's annexation to Russia, not with a set formula, not with a bare scheme, but in a concrete historical manner, taking into account the international situation and the internal political state of the given country, the given people at the particular historical moment when annexation .occurred.16 ‫״‬ Yakunin was absolutely right. But he did not understand the "line,‫ ״‬he did not sense the spirit of the times. Demanding of historians a concrete historical approach to the facts, he placed them in an unbearably difficult position, advising them to set out on a distant voyage without the compass provided by "formulas‫ ״‬and set schemes. Theoretically the advice was good, but practically it was dangerous and unrealizable. Another typical case is that of Vyatkin, author of Essays on the History of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic,17 who in 1952 confessed that: in evaluating a number of movements, I was not suecessful in completely overcoming bourgeois-nationalist 15. A. Yakunin, “O primenenii ponyatiya ‘naimenshee zio' v otsenke prisoedineniya k Rossii nerusskikh narodnostei" [On applying the “lesser evil” concept in evaluating the annexation to Russia of non-Russian nationalities], Vop. Ist., V II, 11 (1951), 85. 16. Ibid., 84. 17. M. P. Vyatkin, Ocherki po istoiii Kazakhskoi SSSR [Essays on the history of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic] (Moscow, 1 9 4 1 ) •

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errors. My grossest error was in my evaluation of the Kenesary movement, to which I clung until the appearance in Pravda on December 26, 1950 of the article, “For a Marxist-Leninist Examination of the Problems of the History of Kazakhstan/' which subjected E. Bekmakhanov's book, Kazakhstan in the 1820*s to 1840's, to just criticism. This criticism related to me as well. . . . After publication of this article, I acknowledged the error of my evaluation of the Kenesary Kasymov movement. . . .18 It is now clear to me, in the light of J. V. Stalin's work, Marxism and the Problem of Linguistics, that the patriarchal-tribal way of life should be regarded . . . as an extremely operative superstructure. . . .10 As we see, the appearance of the newspaper article, to say nothing of the works of the party leader, was quite enough to produce a fundamental change in Vyatkin's view of this question, his evaluation of this or that fact: up to December 26, 1950, Kenesary Kasymov was in Vyatkin's eyes a revolutionary, but after that date he was transformed into a reactionary. No one will be able to cope fully with this dialectic, but the practical politicians have nevertheless been in a bettér position than the professional historians, since they were willing to take great liberties with the facts of history, selecting from them only those which served their purposes. The historian Mekhtiev, for example, in writing about Azerbaijan's annexation to Russia, quoted from a speech by Bagirov, the former Secretary of the Central Committee of the Azerbaijani Communist party, in which the latter expressed himself more explicitly on the matter at hand: From the Russian people we have learned of the finest traditions of revolutionary struggle. W ith the help of the Russian people we attained Soviet power. From the Russian people we have learned how to build a socialist society. Together with the Russian people 18. M. P. Vyatkin, “Pismo k rcdaktsiyu” [Letter to the editors], Vop. Ist., V III, 2 (1952), !57• 19. Ibid., 159.

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we are building and shall build communism. Headed by the Russian people our great Soviet family has defeated, is defeating and will defeat all enemies. W e can go forward only with the great Russian people.20 I ll Henceforth, the “lesser evil" formula, in its application to the history of the non-Russian peoples of the Soviet Union, was interpreted more and more consistently and forcefully in this very direction: the “evil" was charged exclusively to tsarism and was scarcely mentioned, while the Russian people, in its relations with non-Russians, were credited with rendering all manner of services, which alone were made the subject of historical study. The formula itself therefore lost its original significance and its sense, although it continued to be used and applied to the history of various non-Russian peoples. The formula was used in this very way, for example, in a review of the first volume of the History of the BuryatMongolian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. This review asserted that “Incorporation into the Russian state was the most important progressive event in the history of the Siberian peoples. . . . It assured their permanent security against the threat of foreign aggression, against absorption . . . by imperialist America and Japan." 21 These last words of the quotation explain most graphically the bankruptcy of the “lesser evil" formula from the point of view of party policy: the absorption of eastern Siberia by “imperialist" America or Japan would be an obvious and absolute “evil," but then the only possible means of deliverance from this evil— annexation to the Russian state — could not be regarded as also an evil, even though a “lesser" one. The result was a political absurdity from 20. G. G. Mekhtiev, "Istoricheskoe znachenie prisoedineniya Azerbaidzhana k Rossii” [The historical significance of the annexation of Azerbaijan to Russia], Vop. I s t, V III, 3 (1952), 98. 21. Review of A. P. Okladnikov, ed., Istoriya B uryat-Mongolskoi ASSR [History of the Buryat-Mongolian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic], V ol. I (Ulan-Ude, 1941), in V op. I s t, V II, 4 (1951), 110.

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which no reference to the “class‫ ״‬character of Russian colonialism or to the distinction between the tsarist govemment and the Russian people provided an avenue of escape. The same themes as those in the afore-cited review are to be seen in an article by Stepanov on the Far Northern nationalities. “On the one hand/' we read in his article, “the close contact with the great Russian people exercised a beneficent, positive influence on the entire culture of the Northern peoples. On the other hand, tsarist colonial poiicy preserved archaic, obsolete social forms and relationships, and exercised the most negative influence on the life of the Northern tribes.22 ‫״‬ It was not without reason that the editorial board of the leading Soviet historical journal declared openly by way of self-criticism that, “having undertaken discussion of Prof. M. V. Nechkina’s letter, ‘On the Question of the “Lesser Evil‫ ״‬formula/ [it] had introduced confusion into questions which were by no means subject to discussion, having long since been decided by Marxist-Leninist science.23 ‫״‬ Thus, the formula of the “lesser evil‫ ״‬was repudiated, and became the frequent object of disparaging references. However, the problems underlying it— of the “friendship of the peoples of the Soviet Union‫ ״‬and the role in that friendship of the “elder brother‫ —״‬did not lose their immediacy. At the Nineteenth Party Congress in October 1952, the former Secretary of the Central Committee of the Azerbaijani Communist party, M. D. Bagirov, devoted special attention to the “lesser evil‫ ״‬formula. “The delegate of the Azerbaijani C P (b ), M. D. Bagirov,‫ ״‬noted that “the Institute of History of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences frequently makes an incorrect approach to questions relating to the history of the peoples of the U.S.S.R. . . . 22. N. I. Stepanov, “Istoricheskoe znachenie prisoedineniya narodnostci krainevo severa k Rossii” [The historical significance of the annexation of the Far Northern nationalities to Russia], Vop. Ist., V III, 7 (1952), 85. 23. “O t redaktsionnoi kollegii zhumala Voprosy Istoni” [From the editorial board of the journal Problems of History], Vop. Ist., V III, 8 (1952), 4•

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Instead of . . . fully raising the question of the progrèssive, beneficent nature of the non-Russian peoples' annexation to Russia, the magazine initiated an aimless, abstract discussion of Prof. M. V. Nechkina's letter on the so-called 'lesser evil' formula in the question of the nonRussian peoples' annexation to Russia." 24 The editors of the historical journal added their own commentary to Bagirov's speech at the Nineteenth Party Congress: “Organizing a discussion of the question of the historical significance of the annexation of the non-Russian peoples to Russia, which had long since been decided by Marxist-Leninist science, was a serious ideological-theoretical error on the part of the editorial board. At the same time, the journal did very little to elucidate the incalculable assistance which the great Russian people has rendered and is rendering to all the peoples of our country." 25 Once Nechkina's errors had been discussed at so august a gathering as the Party Congress, the unwritten law of Soviet historians required her to make a public confession. She attempted to do this at a session of the Learned Council of the Institute of History on October 26-28, 1952— a session “devoted to the Institute's tasks in connection with the publication of J. V. Stalin's work, Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R.” However, her statement was not found satisfactory.26 Bagirov returned to the “lesser evil" formula once more in an article entitled “Elder Brother in the Family of Soviet Peoples," noting that “in historical literature there are some incorrect views on the question of the significance of the annexation of the non-Russian peoples to Russia. . . ." 27 But even Bagirov, for all his straightforwardness, could not cope with the dialectics of “tsarism" and “the Russian people." He simply advised mentioning the 24. Pravda, October 7, 1952. 25. 4‘Za dalneishii podem istoricheskoi nauki v SSSR” [For the further improvement of historical scholarship in the U.S.S.R.], Vop. 1st., V IIJ, 9 (1952), 12. 26. For the official report, see Vop. Ist., V III, 11 (1952), 152. 27. M. D. Bagirov, “Starshii brat v seme sovetskikh narodov” [Elder brother in the family of Soviet peoples], Kommunist, XXIX, 3 (1953),

66.

part two

THE APPLICATION OF THEORY: SELECTED EXAMPLES

5

THE FIRST RUSSIAN ST A T E * by Alexander Vucinich

Present-day Soviet historians maintain that the first Slav states were founded during the period of transition from "primitive” kin-bound society to the feudal order. They emphasize that these polities were essentially "barbarian” ox "preTeuda?’ structures, and that they belonged to the *général catégory epitomized by Marx as "Gothic” states, for their "incongruous,” "awkward,” and "precocious” attributes.1 These political structures are regarded as having embodied the elements of both "primitive” and feudal societies. However, since they developed at the periphery of the "dying‫ ״‬Roman world, they are also regarded as having contained slavery as a third element.2 The elements of primeval, kin-bound society were manifested in the social predominance of rural communalism. The budding feudal system found expression in the gradual growth of large *R eprinted from Speculum, X X V III, 2 (April, 1953), 324*34, with the permission of the Medieval Academy of America. 1. B. D. Grekov, Kievskaya Rus [Kievan Russia] (Moscow, 1944), 166-67. 2. "T he ‘barbarian/ prefeudal state emerged in a society which con* tained features of the declining primitive-communal kinship relations, but which also contained slavery.” Ibid., 64.

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land possessions and the institution of serfdom. The large landowners, the forerunners of feudal masters, were engendered by “tribal aristocracy,‫“ ״‬land conquests,‫ ״‬and “debt collections.‫ ״‬Slavery, according to Soviet historians, never constituted a basic feature of Slav societies; yet they acknowledge that traces of it can be historically documented during the entire medieval period. These states, Soviet scholars argue, were results of “independent‫ ״‬social development. They were not, as traditionally maintained, the results of ethnic stratification; that is, of a superimposition of politically organized foreign groups upon the Slav masses. W hile Soviet scholars do not deny a possibility of foreign influence, they extenuate its importance by insisting that the indigenous social development provided the indispensable groundwork for the foundation of the first polities. Foreign influences, they say, may thwart or accelerate indigenous development but they can not play a determining or primary role. The general concern of Soviet scholars with the attributes of the “barbarian‫ ״‬states is directly linked with their efforts to answer the question where and when did the first polities emerge. This paper is restricted to a critical analysis of certain basic methodological tools employed by Soviet medievalists in their efforts to identify historically and geographically the first Russian, or Eastern Slav, state.I I A majority of the leading pre-Soviet students of Russian history maintained that the first Eastern Slav state was either exclusively or primarily an alien creation which occurred not earlier than the ninth or tenth century. As recently as ten years ago many Soviet historians continued to share the opinion that no Eastern Slav state structure existed prior to the ninth century, but they no longer accepted the idea of a preponderant alien influence. Parkhomenko argued that historical documents prove the existenee of a Russian state in 838, but that it is “quite prob-

T H E FIRST RUSSIAN STATE

[1 2 5

able‫ ״‬that it was founded “somewhat earlier.3 ‫ ״‬Derzhavin thought that the incipient Russian state appeared in the ninth century as a “first step‫ ״‬in the development of feudal social relations.4 According to Bakhrushin, Svyatoslav's war adventure against Bulgaria (967) witnessed “the first concrete symptoms of a state organization in Kievan Russia.5 ‫ ״‬To Rubinshtein the “empire‫ ״‬of Vladimir (972‫־‬ 1015) paralleled in its structure the empire of Charlemagne in the W est and the later empire of Genghis Khan in the East.6 All these “empires‫ ״‬allegedly emerged during the period of social transition from kinship organization to the feudal system, and were characterized by an absence of full political consolidation and territorial integrity. At present the “official‫ ״‬theory is that of Grekov, who maintained that the ninth-century Kievan state was a fully consolidated structure, comparable to the empire of Charlemagne, and that accordingly it must have been the result of a long historical process. He set forth the theory that any study of Eastern Slav statehood must begin with Volynia, “a sixth-century great political union‫ ״‬in the western Ukraine.7 This concurs with his general theory that most Slavs created their first states or larger political-territorial organizations by the mid-seventh century, and that “most probably‫ ״‬there was a link between them.8 In 1944 Grekov summed up his argument in an article published by Boisheviky the official organ of the Communist Party, which 3. V. Parkhomenko, “Pervaya izvçstnaya tochnaya data sushchestvovaniya gosudarstva Rusi" [The first known exact date of the existenee of a Russian state], Ist.-Marks., No. 6 (1938), 192. 4. N. S. Derzhavin, Proiskhozhdenie russkogo naroda [The origin of the Russian people] (Moscow, 1944), 95. 5. S. Bakhrushin, “K voprosu o kreshchenii Kievskoi Rusi" [On the question of the baptism of Kievan Russia], Ist.-Marks., No. 2 (1937), 58 ff. 6. N. Rubinshtein, in review of G. E. Köchin, ed., Pamyatnik istorii Kievskogo gosudarstva IX-XII vv. [A monument of the history of the Kievan state of the ninth to twelfth centuries] (Leningrad, 1936), in Ist.-Marks., No. 1 (1938), 131. 7. B. D. Grekov, Borba Rusi za sozdanie svoego gosudarstva [The struggle of the Russians for the creation of their state] (Moscow, 1945), 24 ff. 8. Ibid., 22-23; see also Grekov, Kievskaya Rus, 22.

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may be interpreted as an authoritative endorsement.9 The leading historians at once fell into line, although many unsettled details have continued to provide ammunition for academic sniping and bickering. Yushkov was quick to endorse Grekov's basic con tention, but argued that his overall theory needed more precision, particularly with regard to the problem of class stratification.10 The same difficulty, as well as numerous contradictions contained in Grekov's work, was also emphasized by S. Pokrovsky.11 The new thesis was also endorsed by Mavrodin, at one time a staunch supporter of the Norman theory.12 It also found its way into most textbooks in Russian history published during the last five years.13 The new theory contains several implicit contentions which are not without some connection with the presentday official emphasis on the historical significance of the Russian people. In the first place, it “nullifies" the “myths" of the general Slav lag behind Western Europe. The Slav states were created “somewhat" later but not, as traditionally maintained, centuries after the formation of the western European states. After all, Karl Marx himself had asserted that the empire of Charlemagne and the em9. B. Grekov, “Obrazovanie russkogo gosudarstva” [The formation of the Russian state], Bolshevik, No. 11-12 (194$), 25-34. 10. S. V. Yushkov, in review of Grekov, Borba Rusi za sozdanie svoego gosudarstvo, in Sotsialisticheskaya zakonnost. No. 11-12 (1945), 95; see also Yushkov, Istoriya gosudarstva i prava SSSR [The history of the state and law of the U.S.S.R.] (Moscow, 1947), I, 64. 11. S. Pokrovsky, “Kievskaya Rus v rabotakh sovetskikh istorikov” [Kievan Russia in the works of Soviet historians], Sovetskaya kniga. No. 3-4 (1946), 21 ff. 12. V. V. Mavrodin, “Osnovnie momenty razvitiya russkogo gosudarstva do XV III v.” [The fundamental stages in the development of the Russian state to the eighteenth century] Vestnik Leningradskogo universiteta. No. 3 (1947), 84; see also his “Ocherk istorii drevnei Rusi do mongolskogo zavoevaniya” [Essay on the history of early Russia to the Mongol conquest], Istoriya kultury drevnei Rusi [History of the cuiture of early Russia], N. N. Voronin, M. K. Karger, and M. A. Tikhanova, eds. (Moscow, 1948), I, 10. 13. However, in Istoriya SSSR (2 ed.), I, 43, M. N. Tikhomirov and S. S. Dmitriev identify Volynia as a 4'tribal alliance" which might have developed during the eighth century.

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pire of the Riurikovichi were two analogous structures.14 In the second place, it “establishes,” in contrast to the traditional views, that the Russians were the first Slav group to found a state. The Volynian polity preceded, Mavrodin argues emphatically,15 the Western Slav “state” of Samo, which has been traditionally considered the initial, though abortive, Slav state. W hile the South Slavs, according to Grekov, created their first states after their eastern European cousins, their statehood emerged earlier than has been traditionally maintained. W ithout disclosing any documentary sources for his conclusions, Grekov comes forth with the challenging assertion that in the mid-seventh century, i.e., at the time when the Slav influx into the Balkans was either completed or in its last stages, there were five South Slav states: Bulgaria, Serbia, Dalmatia, Thessaly and Istria.16 All in all, the new theory of the incipient Russian state transcends the boundaries of mere academic discussion. It fits, or is intended to fit, a specific ramification of Soviet ideology as officially defined and safeguarded by Bolshevik authorities. It purports to establish the fact that the Soviet state, a legal continuation of the Russian state, is in no way a comparatively belated addition to the European scene, but is a deeply rooted indigenous structure. Viewed in terms of “universal history”— a theme popular among Soviet historians— Russian statehood is historically and socio-economically second to no extant European state.

14. Grekov, fiorba, 32; see also Kievskaya Rùs, 166. 15. Mavrodin, “Osnovnie momenty,” Joe. cit., 84. 16. Actually, he borrowed this theory from F. I. Uspensky, who asserted that in the mid-seventh century, “we find in the south [i.e. in the Balkans] a consolidation of Slavs in Dalmatia, Istria, and Thessaly" and “the establishment of Bulgarian domination in Moesia.” He also added that, “because of the pressure coming from their neighbors, and of their cultural needs," the Slavs were compelled “to group themselves into tribal alliances and to create initial state organizations." Istoriya Vizantiiskoi imperii [History of the Byzantine empire] (St. Petersburg, 1912), 767-68.

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II It is not our task here to go into the theory of sixthcentury foundations of the first Eastern Slav state as an ideological instrument of the twentieth century. Our task is to see whether this theory has the axiomatic value bestowed upon it by Grekov, his colleagues, and, apparently, ) the Bolshevik hierarchy. W hat kind of data, and what Ì kind of theoretical schemes, are called upon to support the scientific rigidity of the new axiom? First of all, it should be noted that Grekov does not set forth a wholly new theory: he merely elaborates an old idea, and expresses it in the Marxian evolutionary jargon. By his own admission, it was Ewers who at the beginning of the nineteenth century noted, in his Geschichte der Russen, the alleged existence of the sixth-century Eastern Slav state which he regarded as the beginning point of Russian history.17 In more modern pre-Soviet times a somewhat similar theory was suggested by Klyuchevsky. Grekov differs from his predecessors in two important respects. In the first place, to him the idea of a sixth-century Eastern Slav “political union” is not only a possibility, or a working hypothesis, but an indisputable fact, a historical axiom. In the second place, he tries to fortify his axiom by combining the documentary and collateral sources with the Marxian scheme of social evolution. Grekov claims that his sociological generalization has the consolidated support of historical documents, relevant archaeological and linguistic data, and, above all, the “natural law” of social development as defined and incorporated into historical materialism by Engels. There are no direct contemporaneous historical documents which indicate the existence of a sixth-century Eastem Slav state. Grekov quotes Mauricius, Procopius, Bishop John of Ephesus, and Menander Protector, who give sketchy references to Slav (Antic) military leaders, who led their forces against the Eastern Roman Empire. However, these references can not be construed as documen17. Grekov, Borba, 25.

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tary verification of the existence of a sixth-century political entity in the western Ukraine. They do not refer, directly or indirectly, to any larger political structures among the Slavs, although they do throw some light on an acute process of tribal militarization. However, the latter references are related to the Slav groups which occupied the territories immediately north of the Danube or migrated to the Balkans. None of these sources intimates that tribal militarization was accompanied by the creation of larger or consolidated political entities. The most that can be said about these documentary fragments is that while they do throw some light on the socio-economic and military organization of the sixthcentury Slavs, they neither prove nor disprove the existence of a larger Eastern Slav political organization in Volynia. It was not before the tenth century that we hear for the first time about the Volynian “state” of the sixth century. The Arab writer Mas’udi, in his book the Meadows of G old, was the first chronicler to mention the “Velanana,” as the principal Slav tribe to which “in the ancient times” were subordinated “all other” Slav groups. This “union” was headed by “King” Majak, to whom all other leaders were subordinated. Subsequently, according to Mas'udi, this “union” disintegrated as a result of intertribal conflicts, and each tribe continued to elect its own leaders. It was Klyuchevsky who came forth with the assertion that the Book of Annals, a twelfth-century document, contains several pertinent facts which not only “confirm” Mas'udi’s statement, but also “amplify” it in three important respects.18 In the first place, it shows that the Volynyane were a more recent tribal group preceded by the Duleby. Then it indicates that the date of the Volynian “union” was during the reign of the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius (610-641). Finally, it ties its disintegration with the Avar attacks. The Book of Annals, however, gives no indication that the Duleby headed a military 18. The pertinent excerpts from Povest vremennikh let [Book of annais] are contained in Khiestomatiya po istorii SSSR [Anthology of the history of the U.S.S.R.] V. I. Lebedev, M. N. Tikhomirov, and V. E. Syroechkovsky, eds. (Moscow, 1949), I, 38-40.

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tribal organization. One question still remains unanswered: are the Velanana of Mas’udi the same as the Volynyane of the Book of Annals? Many scholars, Vernadsky among them,19 refuse to identify the two as one and the same tribal conglomeration. The deadlock is partly derived from the fact that no other source mentions Volynia. Because of this, plus the facts that (a) the Meadows of Gold does not identify in terms of time the existence of the Velanana, and (b) the Book of Annals contains no reference to a political organization of the Duleby (the alleged progenitors of the Volynyane), the tendency among most historians has been to refrain from drawing sweeping generalizations from the scanty data. Klyuchevskv, on his part, was satisfied with the formal .statement that “the military union of the Eastern Slavs is a development which may be placed at the very beginning of our history.20 ‫ ״‬W hile citing Klyuchevsky’s statement Grekov interpolates a clause to the effect that “the very beginning of our history‫ ״‬actually means “not the history of the people but only the history of the state created by that people.21 ‫ ״‬To be sure, Klvuchevsky meant exactly what he said. To him Volynia was not a “political‫ ״‬union, a state formation. The “primordial form of the Russian state‫ ״‬was, according to him, not Volynia but the “Kievan principality of the Varyags,‫״‬ the result of a transformation of the prince [knyaz] and his followers [druzhina] “from an armed force into a political power.” 22 Since Grekov claims more than Klyuchevsky, lie- finds it necessarv to search for collateral evidence, and he turns for assistance to archaeologists and historical linguists. Here, however, he does not weigh the conclusions drawn from different sources, but searches for corroborative statements which, he thinks, reinforce his basic contention. Of archaeologists he relies primarily on Tretyakov, and of linguistic historians on Shakhmatov. 19. George Vernadsky, Ancient Russia (New Haven, 1943), 32z. 20. V. Klyuchevsky, Kurs russkoi istori! [Course in Russian history] (Petrograd, 1920), I, 126. 21. Grekov, Borba, 29. 22. Klyuchevsky, Kurs, I, 175-76. Klyuchcvsky's italics.

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The archaeological data show, according to Soviet historians, that in the sixth century the agriculture of the southwestern areas— including the western Ukraine— was “a very complex economy.23‫ ״‬According to Tretyakov, many sixth-century remains of large settlements, usually protected by walls or ditches, have been preserved in the middle Dnieper region. However, he admits, that thus far these remains have been “very inadequately investigated,” but that “the scanty material which is presently at our disposal, demonstrates the existence of plow agriculture and developed animal husbandry.” 24 This “scanty material,” projected against Rybakov’s hypothetical periodization of ancient Slav history, is sufficient for Grekov to infer the existence of class segmentation and state authority. It is obvious that he is imputing his preconceived theoretical concepts into the archaeological data. It can not be denied that a certain type of archaeological material may be of some value in tracing the development of centralized authority, but nothing of the sort is available for sixthcentury western Ukraine. Grekov elaborates on scanty artifacts pertaining almost exclusively to agriculture. In his effort to prove the existence of the Volynian state by adducing linguistic data Grekov is content with the following citation from a work of Shakhmatov: “Phonetic features, which are common to all the components of the Russian language, may be regarded as an indication of close unity that existed in the primordial habitat [of the Eastern Slavs]. It can hardly be doubted that the life of the population was concentrated around a certain tribal focus, which became the basis of a political organization. . . . It is probable that this center was Volyn in the region of Volynia.” 25 Shakhmatov, to begin with, does not collect proofs, he merely states a hypothesis. The weakness of this hypothesis, however, is that it is actually a non sequitur. W hy 23. P. N . Tretyakov, “Selskoe khozyaistvo i promysly” [Village economy and manufactures], in Voronin, Karger, and Tikhanova, Istoiiya kultury drevnei Rusi, I, 49. 24. Ibid., 50. 25. Grekov, Borka, 29. Grekov’s italics.

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should phonetic unity be a result of political unity— and, consequently, proof of the existence of a state in the ancient habitat of the Eastern Slavs? By applying this type of reasoning one could assert that most preliterate societies must have had a state organization in the time long preceding their present-day tribal status. If one would apply Shakhmatov’s and Grekov’s line of reasoning to the “primordial habitats” of the Polynesians, Bantu, Athabascans, and many other so-called primitive groups with phonetic affinity, he would identify them as political organizations. Modem ethnography is compelled by the sheer weight of evidence, or lack thereof, to guard itself against generalizations of this type. Shakhmatov’s evidence indicates— to this most ethnologists would subscribe— two things: first, that the Slavs (and for that matter the Polynesians, Bantu, and Athabascans) were originally small and ethnically homogeneous groups, and, secondly, that the evolutionary change of any language is an extremely slow process, particularly as far as its structural features are concerned. Ill The evolution of the Volynian state, and Russian statehood in general, was, according to Grekov, an “independent,” i.e., indigenous social development. This means literally that the Eastern Slav state was founded by the Eastern Slavs themselves; that it was not, as traditionally postulated, a result of ethnic stratification. This does not imply, however, that the development of the Eastern Slav can be understood aside from the over-all trend of “universai history.” “To solve the problem of the origin of a state one must know ( 1 ) the stage of development of social relations of a given people; and (2) the universalhistorical nature of the given period.” 26 The foregoing discussion has been confined to Grekov’s answer to the first question. He introduces the second problem— a purely theoretical construct— with a view toward reinforcing his basic postulate. In his treatment of the first problem he 26. Grekov, “Obrazovanie russkogo gosudarstva," 26.

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depends, as has been shown above, on what he considers documentary and collateral evidence, as well as on selected interpretive statements of modem Russian scholars. His answer to the second problem has been formulated in the spirit of the evolutionary theory of Lewis H. Morgan, nineteenth-century American ethnologist and foremost expert on the Iroquoian social organization. Whereas the first problem falls within the field of “history,” the second falls within the orbit of “evolution,” or “universal history.” Logically, “history” denotes the succession of unique events, while “evolution” stands for the unfolding of a universal social process, common to mankind as a whole. The unfolding of the universal process against the Slav social background proceeded, according to Grekov, through the following stages: Stage I: The primordial Slav society was dominated by the maternal clan (rod), “the basic social order among all primitive peoples.” Stage II: At a certain stage of social development the matrix of the social organization became paternal clans, which appeared in the form of patriarchal-family communi ties, organizations of free and urfree persons subjected to the authority of pater familias. Stage III: The preeminence of the patriarchal-family communities was gradually superseded by that of the viiläge communities. This was the initial stage in the transition of kin-bound society to politically integrated society. However, the patriarchal-family community had continued for a long time to coexist with the village community, and to maintain its power. Stage IV: The kin-bound society achieved its highest form in tribal alliances, which were conglomerations of the patriarchal-family communities (the zadruga among the South Slavs, and the verv among the Eastern Slavs). Stage V: The final victory of tribal alliances was simultaneously the beginning of their downfall. They actually paved the way for a replacement of the primeval tribal divisions (kin-bound groups) by territorial divisions. They also substituted an inequality in ownership for the origi-

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nal full equality in property distribution. These were the conditions which laid the foundations for the emergence of first states. Stage VI: The state finally emerged as a result of the establishment of “public authority,‫ ״‬which was not equivaient to tribal authority and which maintained itself by the collection of taxes, a feature completely unknown to primitive society.27 It should be noted that Grekov does not even pretend that the delineation of these six stages is a result of his research into, and analysis and “reconstruction‫ ״‬of, historical data. These evolutionary stages are theoretical constructs derived from Engels' interpretation of the development of the family, private property, and the state. Engels' theory, in turn, is a popularization and, in certain respects, an elaboration of Lewis H. Morgan's evolutionary theory. Since the stages of social development from clan preeminence to a class structure dominated by the state were formulated for him by Morgan and Engels, Grekov is concerned primarily with “filling in" these “stages" with documentary ingredients. After giving a brief characterization of the above-outlined stages, he says: “Such are the basic conclusions derived from the above-named work of Engels [The Origin of the Family], which he wrote on the basis of vast factual material collected and analyzed by Morgan and [Maksim] Kovalevsky. Our task is confined to utilizing all the relevant available Russian [historical] sources and to giving as concrete a picture as possible of the process which led to the creation of classes and states in our territories." 28 In other words, the Soviet historian's principal task is to marshal documentary material corroborative of Morgan's (and Engels') theory of social evolution or, at best, to find out how various Slav peoples complied with the prescribed pattern of social development, and to assign historical dates to various stages. In another reference to Morgan, Grekov states that the American anthropologist's “discoveries" in his studies of certain American Indian tribes “have created the basis for a reconsideration of the 27. Grekov, Kievskaya Rus, 54*55.

28. Ibid., 55.

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questions of the [Eastern Slav] social organization prior to the foundation of the state.29 ‫“ ״‬In the light of this discovery [claims Grekov] it is possible to understand the Slav social system during the period of the Völkerwanderangen.30 ‫ ״‬Thus Grekov recognizes not only the universalistic tenets of unilinear evolutionism but also the full validity of the comparative method. The evolutionist theory, long ago discarded by Western ethnologists, is not a subject of Grekov's inquiry. To him it is the evidence, the “natural law of social development." Accordingly, he uses historical and collateral sources not to test it but to illustrate its working in the Eastern Slav social milieu. He uses it to reinforce his axiom of the sixthcentury Volynian state. There is no need here to go into the reasons which have compelled Western scholars to reject the type of evolutionism expounded by Morgan. The reasons for this rebuttai are contained in most textbooks on cultural anthropology. Western scholars identify Morgan with the nascent stage of scientific ethnography, which was characterized more by scores of provocative assertions and intuitive generalizations than by caution in separating fact from fancy.31 To Soviet scholars, Morgan's theory is simultaneously the beginning of ethnology and its acme. W hile, according to Western scholars, Morgan's principal ideas — those pertaining to evolutionism— are contradicted by 29. Grekov, “Obrazovanie russkogo gosudarstva,” 29. 30. Ibid., 29. 31. T he weakness of Morgan's grand system of universal evolution does not detract either from his valuable contributions to the study of kinship systems, or from his, as yet hardly surpassed, scrutiny of the Iroquoian socio-political organization. For a critique of Morgan's evolutionary postulates see Robert H. Lowie, “Lewis H. Morgan in historical perspective,” in Essays in Anthropology Presented to A. L. Kroeber, Robert H. Lowie, ed. (Berkeley, 1936), 169-81. T he lone present-day exponent of Morgan’s basic ideas is Leslie A. W hite, who feels that the fact that Ancient Society became a Marxist classic “had much to do with the change in attitude toward Morgan that has taken place since his day.” W hite’s concrete contribution lies in his systematic presentation of Morgan’s ideas from a non-Marxian viewpoint. Leslie A. W hite, “Lewis H. Morgan: Pioneer in the Theory of Social Evolution,” in An Introduction to the History of Sociology, Harry Elmer Barnes, ed. (Chicago, 1948), 138-54.

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ethnographic data acquired by the application of seientifically rigorous field techniques, according to Soviet scholars, Morgan’s principal evolutionary postulates may be “improved but not changed.” 32 I The principal assumptions of the Morgan-Engels evouutionary theory which provide Grekov with a theoretical !groundwork for his sociological generalizations are, first, that since social change is a result of indigenous causes, the creation of the state must be attributed to internal conditions rather than to external influences, and, second, i that all societies must pass through the same stages of i development. The first assumption simplifies the entire problem for Grekov, for it leads him to deny categorically any possible major foreign influence on the Slav society. His main problem is linked with the second assumption, for although all societies pass through the same phases of development they exhibit varied tempos of change. Did the ancient Slav society develop with the same rapidity as that of the ancient German tribes? If the answer to this question is positive, then Grekov’s main hurdle has been overcome, for then, by the use of the comparative method (the evolutionists’ main tool), he can draw a full picture of the Slav society during the early Middle Ages. The use of the comparative method would be facilitated by the fact that Grekov entertains no doubt as to the validitv of Morgan’s and Engels’ description of the development of the Germanic tribes and states.33 Grekov and other Soviet historians operate on the assumption that the Slavs played in the East the same role that was played by the Germanic tribes in the West. The Germans and the Slavs, according to them, were the main forces which accelerated the disintegration of the ancient *

32. S. Tokarev, “Engels i sovremennaya etnografiya” [Engels and contemporary ethnography], lzvestiya AN SSSR, III, 1 (1946), 29; see also A. Zolotarev, “O ‘Proiskhozhdenie semi, chastnoi sobstvennosti i gosudarstva' Engelsa” [Concerning Engels' “Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State”], Ist.-Marks., No. 12 (1940), 32. 33. Lewis H. Morgan, Ancient Society (Chicago, 1907), 369-72; F. Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (N ew York, 1942), 122 ff.

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Roman institution of slaveholding and “rejuvenated” the world of antiquity through their “clan democracy” and “village communalism.” 34 Both the Germans and the Slavs took active part in the Völkerwanderungen and both waged successful wars against the Roman world. The two were the principal agents in preparing the basis for the advent of feudalism. Their places in “universal history” were identical, and therefore their polities must have emerged at approximately the same time. Grekov concedes that “the Germanic states appeared somewhat earlier than the Slav states,” but he adds that “all of them were results of one and the same process.” “In the history of mankind [he argues] the Slavs occupied the same place as the Germans.” 35 It should be noted that these assertions do not constitute a set of conclusions from Grekov’s scrutiny of historical fact; they are given in the first pages of his study of the origin of the Russian state in the form of a priori postulates.36 To him they are self-evident facts. In Grekov’s pyramid of conjectures a prominent place is given to Morgan’s concept of military “democracy,” as applied by Engels in his analysis of the development of Germanic tribalism. It is used to locate the approximate date of birth of the first Slav states.37 “Military democracy,” according to Morgan, is the government of tribal confederacies.38 It stands, Engels argues, at the thresh34. A. V. Mishulin, “Drevnie slavyane i sudbi Vostochno-Rimskoi Ira• perii" [The early Slavs and the fate of the Eastern Roman Empire], Vestnik drevnei istorii, I, 6 (1939), 306; see also B. T. Goryanov, “Slavyanskie poseleniya VI v. i ikh obshchestvennii stroi" [The Slavic settlements of the sixth century and their social structure], ibid., I ( 1 9 3 9 ) » 318; and M. V. Levchenko, Istorii Vizantii: Kratkii ocherk [History of Byzantium: a brief sketch] (Moscow, 1940), 113. W hile emphasizing the identical nature of the social “revolutions" in the East and W est, Soviet scholars concede that they did have certain “specific characteristics." The latter, however, did not affect the “social content" of these revolutions. “Metodologicheskoe znachenie vyskazyvanii I. V. Stalina o revolyutsii rabov dlya sovetskogo vizantinovedeniya" [The methodological significance for Soviet Byzantine studies of the déclaration of J. V. Stalin regarding the slave revolution], editorial, Vizantiiskii vremennik, III (1950), 16. 35. Grekov, Kievskaya Rus, 22. 36. Grekov, Borba, 15 ff.; see also Kievskaya Rus, 21-22. 37. Grekov, Borba, 22; see also “Obrazovanie,” 29. 38. Morgan, Ancient Society, 150-52.

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old of civilization, or the creation of “political governments.” 39 Grekov's “reconstruction" of sixth-century Byzantine and other sources “indicates" that the Slav groups referred to by these sources possessed a society characterized by both “clan democracy" and military organization, that is, by “military democracy." In other words, the sixth-century Slav society was at the threshold of civilization. Mas'udi's fragment, when projected against this theory, indicates that Volynia, as a powerful tribal “union," stood at the inception of civilization and that it heralded the pristine stage of eastern European statehood. The Book of Annals makes its alleged contribution by identifying the exact time of the emergence of Volynia: it was during the reign of the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius. The scanty historical documents do not prove Grekov's theory; they only serve to illustrate it. IV Grekov's logical edifice makes room for several inconsistencies. Even the pivotal concept of the state is muffled by contradictions. He is well cognizant of the fact that, according to the Marxian theory, no state can emerge prior to the appearance of class antagonism derived from unequal distribution of property. Says he: “The state does not [necessarily] appear at the time when heroes appear, who are able to create it; the state becomes a historical inevitability at a certain stage of social development, namely, at the time when classes emerge— when an economically and politically powerful class takes over all authority and organizes a ruling apparatus." 40 He even “reconstructs" Tretyakov's archaeological findings to prove the existence of private property and resultant class stratification in Volynia. Yet all this is accompanied by a categorical statement that “at the basis of production" of so-called prefeudal states “stood not the work of slaves but the work of free peasants-communalists [krestyani39. Engels, Origin 0/ the Family, 149-50. 40. Grekov, "Obrazovanie,” 25.

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obshchinniki] 41 At another place he also states explicitly that “at the production basis of these states stood not the work of the serf, but the work of the free communalist [svobodnii obschinnik] 42 This implies that, according to Grekov, the Volynian society was a community of “free peasants‫ ״‬who ( 1 ) fully owned their land, partly privately and partly communally; (2) lived in rural communities governed by democratically constituted councils; and (3) were to a large extent dominated by the “joint family‫״‬ type of kin-bound organizations. This, in turn, implies that both slaves and serfs were virtually non-existent, and that large landowners occupied a minor position, not only in terms of sheer numbers but also in terms of economic power and control. Grekov does not, and can not— so long as he claims, as he does, that his approach is Marxian— answer the question how did the “dominant group,‫ ״‬which organized the “ruling apparatus,‫ ״‬acquire its power, for he himself states that the economic system was dominated by “free peasantscommunalists.‫ ״‬He states that a group of large landowners was gradually formed “from clan aristocracy and other sources.43‫ ״‬However, this “explains‫ ״‬the source from which the large landowners were recruited, but not how they acquired political power. If they did command political power, they could not have derived it from their control over economic production, for this was overwhelmingly in the hands of “village communities.‫ ״‬At any rate, Grekov's Volynian state is a theoretical challenge to Engels' dictum that “the state is an organization for the protection of the possessing class against the non-possessing class." 44 Thus Grekov winds up his argument by challenging— unintentionally, to be sure— one of the principal postulates of the theory which he accepts dogmatically and tries to reinforce by adding new illustrations. Grekov not only accepts dogmatically the social theory known as unilinear evolutionism, but he also streamlines 41. Grekov, Borba, 15. 43, Ibid., 67.

42. Grekov, Kievskaya Rus, 67. 44. Engels, Origin of the Family, 167.

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the latter by introducing a number of convenient shortcuts. In his eagerness to prove his basic point he threads his story with an underlying assumption that the appearance of private property is inevitably accompanied by class stratification, which, in turn, exists only within the framework of a state structure. This is particularly obvious in his interpretation of archaeological data supplied by Tretyakov. Once he “established‫ ״‬the existence of private property in the sixth-century western Ukraine, he is ready to use this fact as substantial evidence for the existence of both the social classes and the Volynian state. It should also be noted that Grekov does not follow the evolutionary stages of social development as particularized by himself on the basis of Engels' and Morgan's theory. On the one hand, he claims that the state actually emerged with the establishment of public authority, while, on the other, he places the Volynian state in the stage of village communities in which, by his own definition, all authority was vested in “the people themselves" and was exercised through mechanisms provided for by the kin-bound organization.

6

BYZANTINE CULTURAL INFLUENCES * by Ihor Sevcenko

I The past decade has not been the first occasion upon which Russian scholarship vigorously debated the question of Byzantine cultural influences in Russia. Nor have Soviet scholars been the first Russian literati to cope with this fundamental aspect of Russian culture. The problem of the Byzantine impact upon Russia and of the attitudes it provoked among her bookmen has a history of nine hundred years. It is against that background, however hastily laid, that the Soviet chapter, the most recent of this history, may be more advantageously narrated. In the recension of 1118 the greatest historical work of early Russia, the Tale of Bygone Years, begins with a * In this chapter “Russia” and “Russians” are employed with referenee to the period up to the fourteenth century instead of the less familiar “Rus' ” as a matter of editorial policy, and without prejudice to the school of thought which favors the latter form on grounds both of terminological accuracy and of historical interpretation.

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lengthy story of the partition of the earth after the Flood. The first part of this story was literally— although probably indirectly— derived from a ninth century Byzantine monkish chronicler. The Chronicle's concluding entry makes mention of the decease of “Tsar Alexei," the Byzantine Emperor Alexius Comnenus. W hen the chronicler establishes the starting point of the Tale's chronology ahd the first precise date when “The Russian land began to be mentioned," he refers to the ascension of another Byzantine emperor, Michael III. The date itself, 852, is wrong, but it was arrived at by an intelligent use of indications contained in a chronological summary written by a ninth-century Patriarch of Constantinople.1 The Tale's dependence on Byzantine letters does not stop with more or less literal borrowings.2 All this will hardly appear astonishing if we remember that the Tale of Bygone Years was composed and rearranged in the two most important monasteries of Kievan Russia. Christianity came from Byzantium; Christianity meant civilization. Up to the beginning of the fifteenth century the metropoly (and later metropolies) of Russia was legally an ecclesiastical province of Constantinople. Byzantine Christianity was inseparable from the Byzantine world view, its propaganda, and its artistic manifestations. The church hierarchy was headed by a Greek metropolitan from the beginning,3 and it consisted, at least in the initial 1. These are not the only references to Byzantine historical events in* directly relating to the local history of Russia. Nor are excerpts from George the Monk and the Patriarch Nicephorus the only Byzantine sources incorporated into the Tale by its compiler— or rather com* pilers. Others range from a life of a tenth-century saint through a seventh- or eighth-century collection of prophecies to one more, this time sixth-century, author of a Byzantine world chronicle. 2. It has been recently pointed out that the Tale's spiritual biographies of some eleventh-century Kievan monks are greatly indebted to motifs drawn from early Byzantine monkish histories. Cf. D. Cyzevskyj, “Studien zur russischen Hagiographie. Die Erzählung vom hl. Isaakij,” W iener Slavistisches /ahrbuch, II (1952), 22-49. 3. W ithin the framework of this short introduction, it is impossible to discuss the stand taken here on the controversial question of the origin of the Russian church. Suffice it to say that the present writer subscribes to the arguments of E. Honigmann, “Studies in Slavic Church History; A. The Foundation of the Russian Metropolitan Church Ac-

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period, partly of Greek bishops. Its missionary and civilizing activities were carried on with the help of Byzantine literary technical works translated into Old Bulgarian in the ninth and tenth centuries. No wonder, then, that the 4‘original‫ ״‬spiritual works of the early period of Russia are often no more than simple compilations. Where ecclesiastical and cultural activity was due to a prince's initiative, the source of inspiration was the same. The Tale of Bygone Years informs us expressly that the first stone church of Kiev, the Tithe Church, was built by masters brought by Vladimir “from among the Greeks.‫״‬ The Kievan church of St. Sophia, constructed during the reign of Vladimir's son Yaroslav the Wise, may be considered a worthy specimen of the Byzantine art of the Macedonian period;*4 at least to the same extent to which the twelfth-century Norman churches of Sicily must be viewed as reflecting the art of the Comneni, and Serbian frescoes that of the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Palaeologian renaissance. Among the works which we may attribute to the “Translation Commission" established in Kiev by Yaroslav the W ise in the second quarter of the eleventh century are renderings of Byzantine historical and “scientific" works, and of such Greek books as were among a cultivated Byzantine's obligatory reading, like Josephus Flavius' Jewish W ar. In early secular literature, of which but little remains, less Byzantine influence should be expected a priori. Yet the famous Igor Tale, a work striking by its “pagan" character, makes use of Byzantine eschatological prophecies on the seventh millennium. In the north, attempts at forming a new center in defiance of Kiev's ideal political and real ecclesiastical sucording to Greek Sources,” Byzantion, X V II (1944-1945), 128-62, esp. 142-58. 4. Not only did St. Sophia’s interior religious decoration derive from Byzantine iconography and display exclusively Greek explanatory inscriptions, but its lay motifs, the Hippodrome frescoes of the staircases, are also inspired by, if they are not even themselves specimens of, Constantinopolitan imperial imagery. Cf. A. Grabar, “Les fresques des escaliers à Sainte-Sophie de Kiev et l’iconographie impériale byzantine,” Seminarium Kondakovianum, V II (1935), 103-17.

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premacy fall into the twelfth century, the time of Andrei Bogolyubsky. It was in the Suzdal principality that the political theme stressing the loftiness of the princely power first appeared, later to culminate in the imperial ideology of Ivan the Terrible's Moscow. The first articulate formulation of these claims, dating from about 1177 and stating in substance that “though an Emperor in body be like all other, yet in power he is like God,‫ ״‬is a literal borrowing from a sixth-century Byzantine political theorist of sorts, Agapetus. Agapetus’s admonitions were later to make a serious impact upon the political writings of Muscovite Russia, but his hour did not strike until the very beginning of the sixteenth century.5 In the meantime, thirteenthcentury panegyrists of local princes mentioned the latters' great love toward the “Tsars of Greece‫ ״‬among their princely virtues.6 The indirect “Byzantinization‫ ״‬of Russian letters in the fifteenth century, due to the influx of Balkan intellectuals, is a matter of common knowledge. W hen Maxim the Greek, the “Illuminator of the Russians,‫ ״‬addressed Ivan the Terrible on matters of political theory a century later, he recommended to him assiduous reading of the famous epistle which the ninth-century Patriarch of Constantinople Photius addressed to the newly Christianized barbarian ruler of the Bulgars BorisMichael.7 It is not known how Ivan reacted to this unwittingly tactless proposal. But we know that parts of another ninth-century Byzantine political admonition, said to have been written by Emperor Basil to his son Leo, v

5. Cf. I. Sevôenko, "A Neglected Byzantine Source of Muscovite Po* liticai Ideology,” Harvard Slavic Studies, II (1954), 141-79. 6. Reference is made to the Talc of the Sack of Ryazan by Batu. For the relevant passage, see N. K. Gudzv, Khrcstomatiya po drevnei russkoi literature XI-XVII vekov [Anthology of early Russian literature of the eleventh to seventeenth centuries] (5 ed., 1952), 153. A century later a Muscovite prince was compared not only to Constantine and Justinian, but even represented as an imitator of Manuel Comnenus on account of his love for books. Cf. The Praise of Grand Prince Ivan Kalita, cd. by I. Sreznevsky, "Svedcniya i zametki o maloizvcstnykh i neizvestnykh pamvatnikakh” [Information and remarks regarding little known and obscure monuments] in Prilozhenie k XXXI V tonni Zapisok Imp. Akad. Nauk (1879), no. 86, 143-48. 7. Cf. Sochincnia prep. Maksima Grcka [Works of the reverend Maxim the Greek], II (1860), 351, cd. by the Ecclesiastical Academy of Kazan.

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were incorporated into Ivan the Terrible's coronation ritual. W hen some hundred years later the Patriarch of Moscow, Nikon, tried to bolster up his aspirations with a theory of co-equality of the patriarchal with the tsar’s power, he turned to the Donation of Constantine,8 and to a ninth-century legal compendium, the Epanagoge, where the Byzantine equivalent of the western medieval doctrine of the “two swords” was expounded. But significantly enough for the change in the cultural climate, the Epanagoge was translated at Nikon’s bidding from a printed edition, prepared in western Europe by a German humanist. And the translator was a Ukrainian scholar.9 Only a few decades separated Nikon’s time from the accession of Peter the Great, who began his rule as the Orthodox Tsar of Muscovy, crowned by God, Byzantine style, to end it as the August Emperor of Russia, Western fashion. The elite ceased to turn to Byzantium for cultural inspiration. This however was only the official aspect of things. In the old times, Byzantium was so supreme in the political and cultural geography of the writers of Russia, that the relations of the sack of Constantinople in 1204 and 1453 are the two longest excurses on roughly contemporary events abroad to be read in Russian chronicles. Now the elite considered western capitals as the center of the world. But the Constantinople-centered world view continued its subterranean existence among the half-educated layers of the Russian people well into the nineteenth century.10 8. The Donation, whose authenticity nobody in Russia doubted at that time was introduced there in the fifteenth- century, through a late Byzantine legal text. 9. Cf. G. V. Vernadsky, “Die kirchlich-politische Lehre der Epanagoge und ihr Einfluss auf das russische Leben im XVII Jhdt.,” ByzantinischNeugriechische Jahrbücher, VI (1928), 119-42. 10. A. N. Ostrovsky, the best expert on this crepuscular world, who immortalized the mid-nineteenth century merchant milieu of Moscow, will help to substantiate the point. In the first piece of the famous Balzaminov trilogy, A Dream on the Eve of a Holiday Comes True Before the Midday Meal, Balzaminov is engaged in polite conversation with Nechkina, a Muscovite merchant’s widow (Act III, Scene 3): N. And Palestine, is it big? B. Sure. N. Is it far from Constantinople? B. N ot too far. N. Must be sixty versts. . . . They say that the dis-

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To present fairly adequately the manifold aspects of the cultural relations between Byzantium and the eastern Slavs, the above sketch needs to be corrected and supplemen ted. True, the Tale of Bygone Years derived its first precise date from a Greek source. But it did it in order better to establish the time of the first attack of the Russians on Constantinople. In the Tale the princess Olga, the grandmother of Vladimir the Great, is made to receive baptism in Constantinople, which hardly corresponds to reality. But we also are told with a somewhat naive pride that the Byzantine emperor himself was so impressed by her wisdom that he wanted to marry her; it was only Olga’s witty repartee that put him in his place. After the description of a Byzantine cunning message, some recensions of the Tale add “for the Greeks are wise even to the present day,” but two others substitute “crafty” for “wise” and this seems to be the original reading.11 Metropolitan Hilarion, an eleventh-century native of Kievan Russia, construes his Sermon on Law (i.e., the Old Testament) and Grace (i.e., the new Testament) after a Byzantine pattern and likens Vladimir to “New Constantine,” an epithet of many a Byzantine emperor before and after this prince, but the Sermon contains a most proud eulogy of the “Russian land.” Hilarion’s twelfth-century succèssor, Clement of Smolensk, a prelate who was acquainted with Plato and Aristotle through Byzantine compendia, was ordained metropolitan in open disobedience to the Patriarch of Constantinople. One of the arguments brought forward to justify his independent ordination was that Kiev’s principal relic, the head of Pope Clement, was just as sanctifying as the hand of John the Baptist, by which metropolitans were consecrated in Constantinople. A similar ambiguity prevailed upon the territories which were the cradle of the modem Russian nation. W hen the Muscovite Prince Ivan Kalita was likened to the Byzantance from all such places is sixty versts . . . only Kiev is further away. Jusha (a thirteen year old boy) : Constantinople, Auntie, this is the navel of the world, isn't it? N . Q uite so, sweetie pie.

11. sub anno 971.

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tine Emperor Manuel Comnenus (1143-1180), this was a compliment. A different type of compliment of Vladimir Monomakh (d. 1125) was meant by the thirteenth-century author of the Tale of the Ruin of the Russian Land, perhaps a Novgorodian, when he said, somewhat twisting the chronology, that “Manuel of Constantinople was afraid, wherefore he sent large gifts to him (i.e., Vladimir), so that the Grand Prince Vladimir would not take Constantinople away from him.‫ ״‬Toward the middle of the fourteenth century, Simeon the Proud of Moscow could write the Emperor Cantacuzenus that “the Roman (i.e., Byzantine) Empire is the source of all piety and teacher of Law.12‫ ״‬But towards the end of the century, the Patriarch of Constantinople had severely to reprimand a Muscovite prince for having ordered his church to omit the name of the Byzantine emperor, the sole ruler of the Orthodox Christians, during liturgy.13 The first deliberate Russian attempts to transform Rus-lj sian princes into the counterparts of Byzantine emperors fall into the middle of the fifteenth century. And it is at the very time that Byzantium was disavowed for its surrender to the Papists at the Council of Florence, and the ; first hints were made that the ideal rule over the Christian ; world passed from conquered Constantinople to M oscow,‫׳‬ the upholder of the true faith. This development culmi‫־‬/ nated in the well-known doctrine of Moscow the Third Rome, propounded by Philotheus of Pskov towards the beginning of the sixteenth century. Philotheus was by no means the official mouthpiece of the Muscovite princely court. At first Muscovite princes were not interested in officially assuming the Byzantine heritage. The only clear fifteenth-century statement that the rights to the Byzan12. Sim eon’s declaration may be reconstructed from the reply Canta* cuzenus made to his letter in 1347. Cf. Franz Miklosich and Joseph Müller, Acta et diplomata graeca medii aevi, I (1 8 6 0 ), 263. 13. T h e famous letter of Patriarch Antonius IV to Grand Prince Vasily I of Moscow. Cf. p. ex. Miklosich and M üller, Acta et diplo mata . . . II (1 8 6 2 ), 189*92. English translation of relevant parts in A. A. Vasiliev, '4W as Old Russia a Vassal State of Byzantium?” Specu* lum , V II (1 9 3 2 ), 358-59•

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tine throne had passed to the Grand Prince of Moscow is to be read in a Venetian source, since it was by such means that the W est thought to entice the Muscovite ruler into participating in an anti-Turkish crusade. Still, when Ivan the Terrible decided to have himself crowned tsar, he found it opportune later to secure the confirmation of his new title by the “Byzantine” Patriarch of Constantinople

(1 5 6 1 ). Most of the expressions of national pride and attempts at asserting independence in church and cultural matters grew out of the desire to equal the corresponding Byzantine models. It was tempting to emulate the capital on the Bosporus. It was more difficult to be weaned from it. This kind of tension between the giving and the receiving culture was strictly paralleled by the attitude of the Sicilian Normans in the twelfth century and of the Bulgarians in the tenth and the fourteenth. It is in Norman Sicily that the following lines were written: “Cease to exist, Rome, and the City of Constantine . . . your light and your pride is extinguished by the rising Sicilian brilliance”— only that the poem is written in Greek and in the purest Byzantine tradition.14 II W hen the problem of the Byzantine impact upon Russia became a subject for scholarly investigation, some of the tension between the giving and receiving cultures, which had permeated the attitudes of the learned men of Kievan Russia and later of Muscovy toward Byzantine culture, was inherited by Russian scholarship. However, a distinction must be made at the very outset. The divergent opinions as to the cultural independence 0F early Russia expressed in pre-revolutionary Russian scholarship remained within what by Western standards would be called differences in sfress and interpretation. Soviet scholarship 14. The quotation is from the poem by Eugenios of Palermo on W illiam II (1166-1189). Cf. Leo Stembach, "Eugenios von Palermo,” Byzantinische Zeitschrift, XI (1902), 451.

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of the past few years has adopted a position which brings it nearer both in tone and exactitude to the thirteenthcentury author of the passage on the fearful Manuel Comnenus. In 1925 Uspensky, one of the two principal representa-' tives of Russian pre-revolutionary Byzantine studies, wrote that this field of scholarship had and always would have special tasks of its own connected with the duty of th e 1 Russian people to know itself.15 He went on to say that almost all Russian Byzantinists chose subjects related to Slavic and early Russian history. This was true. Along with the social and ecclesiastical history of the Eastern Empire, the fields of Byzantine relations with the Slavs and more particularly with the Russians were domains where pre-revolutionary Russian scholarship achieved such brilliant results that a western Byzantinist of Krumbacher's fame thought it necessary to master the difficult Russian language. But Byzantine-Russian relations were by no means a monopoly of the Byzantinists. Kievan and Muscovite Russia's direct and indirect Byzantine heritage was also one of the central problems to occupy the attention of Russian philologists and literary historians, especially those studying the period prior to the middle of the seventeenth century. Outside the academic world, “Byzantinism" was also vividly debated, since its understanding was deemed of great importance for the assessing of Russia's origin, its cultural independence from the W est and its national individuality. The evaluation of “Byzantinism" did vary of necessity, but it was characteristic that in the nineteenth century the extent of Byzantine influence was not seriously questioned in the controversies raging among the Slavophils and the Westerners. 15. F. Uspensky, “Notes sur l’histoire des études Byzantines en Russie,” Byzantion, II (1925), 1-53, covering the period 1870-1914. For a brilliant characterization of Russian pre-revolutionary Byzantine studies, see H. Grégoire, “Les études byzantines en Russie soviétique,” Acad. Royale de Belgique, Bull. de la Classe des lettres, V e série, XXXII (1946), 194 ff., to be read along with the violent rejoinder by B. Goryanov, “Po povodu vystupleniya professora Greguara” [Concerning the article of Professor Grégoire], Vop. I s t, IV, 1 (1948), 110-12.

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In Byzantine studies, there was no split comparable to that between the historical schools of the Normanists, who attributed an important role to the Scandinavians in the founding of the Russian state, and the anti-Normanists, whose convictions and national pride led them to deny this role. In his doctoral dissertation of 1870 the Slavophil scholar Lamansky opposed the Greco-Slavic world which among other things he based on Byzantine Orthodoxy and mysticism to that Hegelian construction, the GermanoRomanic world.16 A Slavophil professor, Grigorovich, could extoll the originality and independence of the views held by ancient Slavs on religious, political and family matters. But he also was a first-rate expert on Byzantine sources, perhaps more a Byzantinist than a Slavicist, and had a deep reverence for the old Byzantine culture.17 In the opposite camp, the Westernizer Granovsky declared in 1850 that it was the Russians" duty to evaluate the history of Byzantium, to which they were so much indebted.18 Herzen, another Westernizer, expressed the hope that Russia would take Constantinople, for it was only fitting— so he wrote in his Diary— that the place from which Russian culture had sprung should become the center of the future Slavic commonwealth. The greatest of the Russian Byzantinists, Vasilyevsky, refuted the patriotic anti-Normanist Ilovaisky by showing that for the Byzantines, “Russians‫ ״‬and “Varangians"" were at first the same thing.19 But Vasilyevsky also believed in the existence of “Russian"" attacks on Constantinople prior to 16. V. I. Lamansky, Ob istoricheskom izuchenii Greko-Slavyanskago mira v Evrope [On the historical study of the Greco-Slavic world in Europe] (St. Petersburg, 1871). 17. On Grigorovich, see I. V. Yagich, “Istoriya slavyanskoi filologii," [The history of Slavic philology], in Entsiklopediya slavyanskoi filologi!, I (1910), 4 5 9 , 479 -84 • 18. Sochineniya [Works], II (Moscow, 1856), 138-40. On Granovsky, see the now proscribed book by O. L. Vainshtein, Istoriografiya sredn ikh vekov [Historiography of the middle ages] (Moscow, 1940), 297 -9 9 . 19. V. G. Vasilyevsky, Varyago-russkaya i varyago-angliiskaya diuzhina v Konstantinopole XI i XII v. [The Varangian-Russian and VarangianEnglish guard in Constantinople in the eleventh and twelfth centuries] (1874-75); now in Vasilyevsky's Trudy [Works], I (St. Petersburg, 1908), 174 *377 •

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the one of 860, a view now abandoned by practically all Russian and non-Russian Byzantinists except the Soviet.20 The literary historian Veselovsky, whose scholarly horizon and fame transcended the boundaries of Russia and who felt equally at home in the Italian Renaissance and in Russian Romanticism, may have been in his youth an ardent reader of Feuerbach, Herzen and Buckle. But his studies on the Byzantine origins of Russian religious popular poetry, on the traces left by the Byzantine epos in the Russian epic, and on several Byzantine sources of the early Russian literature, are among the masterpieces of his comparative historical research, which stressed the importance of “wandering motifs.‫״‬ The first attempts at a synthetic treatment of the Byzantine impact upon the culture or literature of Russia date from the sixties. Ikonnikov's youthful essay entitled An Investigation on the Cultural Importance of Byzantium in Russian History,21 about six-hundred pages long, happily leaned towards the dry-as-dust approach at an epoch when the scholarly treatment of Byzantine studies was at its beginnings in Russia. It deplored, somewhat naively, the low level, the restricted area of penetration, and the uniformly ecclesiastical character of early Russian culture. Arkhimandrite Amfilokhii's “On the Influence of 20. See Vasilyevsky's Trudy, II (1909), 297-427. Recently this question gave rise to a sharp, although somewhat onesided, controversy between Henri Grégoire and his school and Soviet scholars, who seem to interpret doubts as to the authenticity of the “pre-860" attacks as a willful slighting of the Early Russians' valor; see G. da Gosta-Louillet, “Y eut-il des invasions Russes dans l'Em pire Byzantin avant 860?" Byzantion, XV (1940-41), 231-48; E. E. Lipshits, “O pokhode Rusi na Vizantiyu ranshe 842 g." [On an expedition of Russians against Byzantium before 842], 1st Zap., XXVI (1948), 312-31; M. V. Levchenko, "A. Greguar i ego raboty po vizantinovedeniyu" [H. Grégoire and his work in the Byzantine field], Vizantiiskii Vremennik. III (1950), 230-45; idem, “Falsifikatsiya istorii vizantino-russkikh otnoshenii v trudakh A. A. Vasilieva" [The falsification of the history of Byzantine-Russian relations in the works of A. A. Vasiliev], Vizantiiskii Vremennik, IV (1951), 149-59. N either the “pre-860" attacks nor the controversial one by Oleg of 907 will be discussed in the present article, as its scope is limited to the cultural aspects of Russian-Byzantine relations; however, see note 121 below. 21. V. S. Ikonnikov, O pyt izsledovaniya o kultum om znachenii V izantii v russkoi istorii (Kiev, 1869).

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Greek Script Upon the Slavic between the Ninth and the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century22 ‫ ״‬was an article by a zealous dilettante. The Kievan university student Zavadsky-Krasnopolsky even risked a series of articles on the Influence of the Greco-Byzantine Culture on the Develop‫־‬ ment of Civilization in Europe, in which he described Russia as a Byzantine province and Byzantium as its intellectual mentor.23 W hen the Kievan professor Temovsky investigated the knowledge of Byzantine history in early Russia, he stressed the “tendentious‫ ״‬use to which it was put there.24 Such syntheses were not undertaken at a later stage, for it was felt that they should be preceded by clearing up particular points. Among Byzantinists, it was Vasilyevsky who gave expression to this attitude in his whole scholarly activity, exclusively analytical. The view of an undisputed and unilateral Byzantine influence was not absolutely predominant in pre-revolutionary Russian scholarship. Uspensky, a pupil of the Slavophil Lamansky, observed that this influence was paralleled by the impact exerted by Slavdom upon the Eastern Empire. In the field of early Russian cultural history, Priselkov put forward a highly ingenious, though hypothetical, interpretation of the literary and ecclesiastical events in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, according to which they had to be viewed as a struggle between the pro-Byzantine and the anti-Byzantine trends at the princely court among the ecclesiastics and in the monasteries of Russia.25 It was 22. “O vliyanii grecheskoi pismennosti na slavyanskuyu s IX v. po nachalo XVI veka,” Trudy pervago aikheologicheskago syezda (Moscow, 1872), 860-73 and plates. 23. A. K. Zavadsky-Krasnopolsky, “Vliyanie vizantiiskoi kultury n?. razvitie tsivilizatsii v Evrope,” Universitetskie Izvestiya of Kiev (June, 1866 and later issues of the year); see especially the issue of October, 1866, 11 ff. 24. F. Ternovsky, Izuchen/e vizantiiskoi istorii i eya tendentsioznoe prilozhenie v drevnei Rusi [Study of Byzantine history in early Russia and its tendentious application there], I-II (Kiev, 1876). Temovsky’s work is useful even today. 25. M. D. Priselkov, "Ocherki po tserkovno-politicheskoi istorii Kievskoi Rusi X-XII vv.” [Sketches of the ecclesiastical-political history of Kievan Russia in the tenth to twelfth centuries], Zapiski Ist.-6I. fakulteta Imp . S.-Peterburgskago Universitcta, CXVI (1913).

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of course essential for Priselkov’s construction, published in 1913, that not only national, but also equally uncom* promising pro-Greek, tendencies should have left an imprint upon the literary documents of the early period. Thus on the eve of the First World War the question ; of cultural relations between Russia and Byzantium still awaited its solution. It is still regarded as very obscure by some today.26 But in spite of the difficulties, some general propositions were widely adhered to by pre-revolutionary scholars. Byzantine influences were viewed as emanating from a cultural metropoly towards a "cultural colony.‫״‬ The Christianization of the Russians, an act by which Russia joined the family of civilized peoples, was viewed as a decisive factor in the formation of early Russian culture. This culture was considered to have been relatively low, at least at the beginning, and limited to a restricted milieu. Moreover, it was at a disadvantage as compared, say, with the Bulgarian culture of the First Empire, which could profit from its proximity to Byzantium. The “original” Russian literature owed its inception to Byzantine models, transmitted either by Bulgarian or local translations. Often, its originality consisted in combining patterns and motifs ultimately received from Byzantium. More particularly, the historical writings of Russia were greatly indebted to Byzantine historiography. Even the very idea of composing a chronicle was ascribed by some to the initiative of the Greek Metropolitan of Kiev. The script of Russia, as that of many other Slavic countries, was of Byzantine origin in both its forms, glagolitic and cyrillic. Literacy in general started after 988 or 989, the date of adoption of Christianity by Prince Vladimir. It was agreed that in the domain of art the Byzantines gave Russia the best the metropolis had to offer. In monumental art, Kievan Russia owed to Byzantium the introduction of stone architecture. Up to the sixteenth century, local, if existent, Romanesque, Cau26. V. Moshin, “Russkie na Afone i russko-vizantiiskie otnosheniya v XI-XII vv.” [The Russians at Athos and Russian-Byzantine relations in the eleventh and twelfth centuries], Byzantinoslavica, IX (1947-48), 55.

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casian and later Renaissance elements were mere, and not frequent, additions to structures of a basically Byzantine type. Many scholars traced the Muscovite theory of theocratic absolutism back to Byzantium, and pointed to the Greek church hierarchy as a transmitter of Byzantine legal and state notions.27 I ll The First World War, the revolution, and the ensuing dozen years dealt a severe blow to Russian Byzantine studies.28 The Russian Institute in Constantinople, founded in 1894, had to be abandoned. At home, material conditions and the ideological climate were highly unpropitious. Byzantine studies were widely regarded as an offshoot of classical studies, the very pursuit by which some tsarist ministers of education had attempted to keep the minds of the youth off the revolutionary movement. For revolutionary leaders, “Byzantinism” was a term of abuse. Moreover, in those idyllic anti-imperialist days, a discipline which sometimes appeared as an ideological weapon in tsarist aspirations to rule over the Dardanelles, was bound to be regarded with suspicion.29 Between 1918 and 1928, only two volumes of the professional journal, Vizantiiskii Vremennik, appeared. Even this activity could 27. M. Dyakonov, Vlast moskovskikh gosudarei [The power of the Muscovite rulers] (St. Petersburg, 1889), passim. Idem, Ochcrki obshchestvennago 1 gosudarstvennago stroya drevnei Rusi [Essays on the social and governmental structure of early Russia] (St. Petersburg, 1908), 399, 405• 28. See H. Gregoirc’s article quoted in note 15 above; A. A. Vasiliev, "Byzantine Studies in Russia, Past and Present,” Amer. Hist. Review, XXXII, 3 (1927), 539-45; G. Lozovik, "Desyat let russkoi vizantologii (1917-1927)” [Ten years of Russian Byzantine studies (1917-1927)], Ist.-Maiks., No. 7 (1928), 228-38; N. S. Lebedev, "Vizantinovedenie v SSSR za 25 let” [Twenty-five years of Byzantine studies in the U.S.S.R.], in Dvadtsat pyat let sovetskoi istoricheskoi nauki (1942), 216-21. The latter report gives a rosier picture of Byzantine studies than the one presented here, since it stresses the developments since ! 939•

29. Cf. the quotation of Uspensky in A. A. Vasiliev, History of the Byzantine Empire (Madison, 1952), 36, and Lozovik's article referred to in the preceding note, 228-9, 238.

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not go on. In 1928, this journal, since 1894 a worthy competitor of Byzantinische Zeitschrift, ceased to exist with its twenty-fifth volume. In a letter to the Academy of Sciences written in 1924, Uspensky used the ominous phrases “if Russian Byzantine studies are doomed to perish,‫ ״‬and “in Europe they begin to count Russian Byzantine studies as dead.‫ ״‬It is noteworthy that at a time when scholarly activity had to be reduced to a minimum, what remained as a core was the Russo-Byzantine Historical and Lexicographical Commission, whose main task, in addition to gathering material for a reshaping of Du Cange's late Greek dictionary, was the study of Byzantine-Russian relations.30 This Commission was dissolved in 1930.31 Eight years later, Ostrogorsky, today one of the leading Byzantine historians, deplored the complete interruption of Byzantine studies in a country which brought forth a Vasilyevsky.32 If in the twenty years between 1918 and 1938, studies related to Byzantine-Russian cultural relations shrank in scope, they did not fundamentally change in character. True, we meet with a good deal of sociologizing, but interest in social problems and the social approach were characteristic of Russian pre-revolutionary Byzantine studies and Russian literary criticism as well. In the theory of literary influences, Veselovsky was still regarded as the leading authority. By 1929, if he was criticized at all, it was for using such “vague‫ ״‬sociological notions as “nation‫ ״‬or “national culture.‫ ״‬As for foreign literary influences, it was believed that an independent literary development within one country was almost a non-existent 30. V. N. Beneshevich, “Russko-Viz. Komissiya. Glossarium Graecitat is” [The Russian-Byzantine Commission. T he Greek glossary], Vizantiiskii Vremennik, XXIV (1923*26), 119*20, and his “Russko-Viz. istoriko-slovamaya komissiya v 1926*27 g.” [The Russian-Byzantine historical-lexicographical commission in 1926-27], Vizantiiskii Vremennik, XXV (1927), 165-70. 31. M. V. Levchenko in Vizantiiskii Sbomik (1945), 4. 32. G. Ostrogorsky, “V. G. Vasilyevsky kak vizantolog i tvorets noveishei russkoi vizantologii” [V. G. Vasilyevsky as a Byzantinist and creator of modem Russian Byzantine studies], Seminarium Kondakovianum, XI (1940, but written in 1938), 235.

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phenomenon, since in the final analysis, literary activity was international.33 It is not difficult to speculate on the reason for such a state of things. The formative and, to a great extent the creative, years of scholars prominent in that field fell into the pre-revolutionary era. Such was, for example, the case of Istrin and Orlov in the field of early Russian literature. On the other hand, questions of national or Slavic pride lay outside the ideological preoccupations of the hour. Among historians, Pokrovsky ruled supreme with his critical attitude toward the Muscovite state and what he termed the primitive intellect of its scholarly propagandists.34 In retrospect it seems ironical that in the 1920’s it was a Western scholar who criticized his Soviet colleagues for adopting a too cautious attitude on the questions of early Russia’s cultural independence, such as the “originality” of Kievan and Muscovite architecture, and for renouncing all nationalist tendencies.35 It was also a Western scholar who pointed out in 1923 that Byzantine influence upon the Tale of Bygone Years, the greatest historical work of early Russia, was often over-estimated and who stated that Nestor’s horizon was much broader than that of one of his Byzantine sources, George the Monk.36 33. Literaturnaya Entsiklopediya [Literary Encyclopedia], II (1929), col. 255 ff., article “Vliyaniya, literatumye" [Influences, literary], by A. G. Tseitlin, see especially cols. 256, 263. 34. Pokrovsky, Russ. ist. s drevneishikh vremen, I, 126, 148. In 1930 a theoretical publication echoed the nineteenth-century views of Zavadsky-Krasnopolsky (cf. above, n. 23) when one of its contributors asserted that in the course of several centuries the history of eastern Slavic Europe could be largely considered as the history of a recondite Byzantine province. Cf. A. K. Berger in Arkhiv K. Maricsa i F. Engelsa, V (1930), 450. 35. Emmy Haertel, reviewing A. I. Nekrasov's Vizantiiskoc i russkoe iskusstvo dlya stwitelnykh fakuitetov vysshüch uchebnykh zavedenii [Byzantine and Russian art for the engineering faculties of higher educational institutions] (Moscow, 1924) in Byzantinisch-Neugriechische Jahrbücher, VI (1928), 560-62. About a quarter of a century later Haertel's wishes were more than fulfilled; see the remarks by V . V . Mavrodin, Obrazovanic edinogo russkogo gosudarstva [The formation of the unified Russian state] (1951), 285. 36. M. Weingart, Byzantské Icronücy v literature drkevnéslovanské. . . . [Byzantine chronicles in Church Slavic literature] II, 1 (1922• 23), 120.

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In 1938, at the very time when Ostrogorsky regretted the demise of Russian Byzantine studies, the first attempts at resuscitating that discipline were being undertaken in the Soviet Union. In that year Zhebelev, a well-known classicist, published a dignified plea for rehabilitating Byzantine studies.37 A year later, a Byzantine Section was created at the Institute for History of the Academy of Sciences,38 and shortly a brief History of Byzantium was published which proclaimed itself as “Marxian‫ ״‬but was in fact a very commendable piece of work.39 The German invasion delayed the publication of a collection of Byzantine papers, which although ready by 1941 did not appear until 194$, but the voice of Russian Byzantinists was not absent from the patriotic upsurge in the latter phase of the war. In 1944, the leading historical journal, Istoricheskii Zhumal, carried a number of articles advocating the renaissance of Byzantine studies and justifying the plea by purely scholarly arguments, and by stressing the undeniable contributions to Byzantine studies and the problem of Byzantine-Russian relations made by Russians in the past.40 Finally, in 1947, after an interruption of twenty years, Vizantiiskii Vremennik resumed publication. As if to underline the continuity of the discipline in Russia, the volume of 1947 carried a double number: I (X X V I). Moreover, its leading editorial made it plain that students of Byzantium in Russia were rejoining the scholarly community of nations. 37. S. A. Zhebelev, “Russkoe vizantinovedenie, ego proshloe, ego zadachi v sovetskoi nauke” [Byzantine studies in Russia, their past and their tasks in Soviet scholarship], Vestnik Drevnei Istori!, No. 45 (1938), 13-22. It is interesting to note that the first articles extolling the “rejuvenating" role played in Byzantine history by the Slavs and their “autochthonous culture” appeared also in 1938 and 1939• Cf. V. I. Picheta, “Slavyano-vizantiiskie otnosheniya v VI-VII w . v osveshchenii sovetskikh istorikov (1917-1947 g g )” [Slavic-Byzantine relations in the sixth and seventh centuries as viewed by Soviet historians (1917-1947)], Vestnik Drevnei Istorii, No. 3 (1947), 95*99, esp. 97. 38. M. V. Levchenko in Vizantiiskii Sbom ik (1945), 6. 39. M. V. Levchenko, Istorìya Vizantii (Moscow-Leningrad, 1940). A French translation appeared in Paris in 1949. 40. These contributions are reviewed in H. Grégoire’s article, cited in note 15 above, on 207 ff.

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Again in its beginning this new phase hardly betrayed anything unexpected in approach, method, or conception. Soviet Byzantinists proclaimed themselves as adherents of the Marxian faith and this observance was to determine their choice of topics for research. This was a consistent attitude. The first innovation, as compared with the preceding two decades, was the accusation leveled at Pokrovsky’s school, authoritative until 1934, that it had deliberately stifled the pursuit of Byzantine studies in the Soviet Union.41 It must be said in all fairness to Pokrovsky that he was, if anything, too pro-Byzantine on the subject of the Empire’s impact on Russia. He readily admitted Greek influences upon early Russian Slavs. Following in the foot‫־‬ steps of his teacher Klyuchevsky and the church historian Golubinsky, he attributed the growth of the theory of political autocracy, unifying and formulating the instinerive “gathering of Russian lands” by Muscovite princes, to ecclesiastical literature and propaganda, which in turn was inspired by Byzantium.42 Pokrovsky’s real sins, it may be said, lay somewhere else, in the often too cavalier stand he took against Greater Russian jingoism. Now the study of Russia’s past, no'longer to be mistrusted, but rather lovingly admired, required a closer interest in those Greeks of Tsargrad whose names appear so prominently in the early annals. Thus a second innovation of the early post-war period was the official endorsement with which Russia’s cultural dependence on Byzantium was now to be investigated. In a programmatic article on “The Tasks of Contemporary Byzantine Studies,” Levchenko informed his readers that Byzantium had exerted an immense influence upon the culture of early Russia, and that there was a time when Muscovite Russia as well experienced a strong influence of Byzantine culture. Nor was an appropriate, if obvious, scriptural quotation found wanting. The readers were asked not to forget 41. M. V . Levchenko in Vizantiiskii Sbomik (1945), 4; editorial in Vizantiiskii Vremennik, I (X X V I) (1947), 3-4. 42. Pokrovsky, Russ. ist. s drevneishikh vremen, I, 11, 147, 155.

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Marx's saying to the effect that “Russia's religion and civilization are of Byzantine origin." 43 To the present writer's knowledge, this quotation never reappeared in any subsequent Soviet publication. About the year 1947, a sharp reversal occurred dealing with various aspects of Russian-Byzantine cultural relations. The astonishing new trend grew in intensity as the years went on, and remained, until 1953 at least, the official attitude. IV There was a reason behind the attention paid by recent Soviet scholarship to the otherwise academic question of Byzantine influences on Russia. The answer to this question has a decisive bearing on the origin of what is officially considered “Russian" culture. And questions of origin are indissolubly linked with the problem of originality. In a lecture on the “Basic Tasks in the Study of Early Russian Literature as Reflected in the Works of the Years 1917-1947," Adrianova-Peretts exposed as false the thesis of pre-revolutionary literary historians that early Russian literature originated in the eleventh century under the influence of Byzantine-Slavic models. This might be true of religious and didactic literary works, but not of the historieal writings which alone should be considered as the beginning of Russian literature and which were characteristic of it from the very origins up to the sixteenth century. These writings had deep popular roots and originated in the local oral literature. Thus the re-interpretation of the relationship between written and oral literature was dedared to be among the urgent tasks of Soviet literary historians. Pre-revolutionary literary criticism was interested only in the way the Byzantine and South Slavic culture passed to Russia. Yet in Russia itself the assimilation of cultural achievements of its medieval neighbors was of a 43. Vizantiislcii Sbom ik (1945), 4-5.

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creative character. In fact, early Russian culture had profound national peculiarities. True, Soviet literary historians had begun to study the mutual relationship between these cultures, and the influence of early Russian literature on others. But even they were not free of error. They were burdened with a false approach to the problem of literary influences in their continued application of Veselovsky's comparativist methodology.44 In the Byzantine field proper, the delayed appearance of the new Vizantiiskii Vremennik, ready by 1944-1945 but printed in 1947, amounted to a major scandal, since it was reprimanded in numerous articles,45 not to speak of the editorial of volume II (XXVII) (1949) recanting the sins of its predecessor. These sins, of a rootless cosmopolitan nature, were first, the thesis that Soviet Byzantine studies were the heir of the Russian bourgeois tradition in this field and, second, the attempt to establish a common front with Byzantine studies abroad, a discipline which represented a reactionary trend in scholarship. This was the more inadmissible as western bourgeois scholars denied the autochthonous character and the importance of early Russian culture. In Byzantine studies, as elsewhere, the principles of objectivism had to be rejected and replaced by true Marxist-Leninist objectivity. Another pitfall the editors of the second volume of Vizan44. V . P. Adrianova-Peretts, “Osnovnye zadachi izucheniya drevnerusskoi literatury v issledovaniyakh 1917*1947 gg." [The basic tasks in the study of early Russian literature as reflected in the works of the years 1917*1947], Trudy O td e la drevne-russkoi lite ra tu ry , VI (1948), 5*14. The T r u d y will be quoted in subsequent notes as TODRL.

45. Z. Udaltsova, “Obsuzhdenie pervogo toma ,Viz. Vremennika' na zasedanii gruppy po istorii Vizantii pri Institute istorii AN SSSR” [Consideration of the first volume of the Byzantine Journal by the Byzantine history group of the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R.], Vop. Ist., IV, 1 (1948), 152*54; F. Rosseikin, ,,V iz a n tiis k ii V r e m e n n ik . . . t.I (X X V I)" [The Byzantine Journal, Vol. I (X X V I)], ib id ., IV, 3 (1948), 127-34; A. P. Kazhdan in Izvestiya AN SSSR, V, 1 (1948), 115*17; "V otdelenii istorii i filosofii AN SSSR. Scssiya po voprosam istorii Vizantii” [In the section of history and philosophy of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R. The session on problems of Byzantine history], ibid., 127; “Protiv obvektivizma v istoricheskoi nauke" [Against objectivism in historical scholarship], Vop. 1st., IV, 12 (1948), 6.

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tiiskii Vremennik promised to avoid was narrow empiricism and deadening factology.46 In the streamlined second volume of the Vremennik, Levchenko asserted that, however important Byzantine contributions to Russian culture may have been, one should not exaggerate them. The great Russian culture had an independent origin and a world importance of its own. Russia was made great by the Russian nation, not by Byzantine Orthodoxy.47 Levchenko's statements of 1945 now belonged to the remote past. In his opening remarks pronounced at the Congress of Soviet Byzantinists late in 1950, Kosminsky noted that, while in their falsifications bourgeois scholars spoke almost exclusively of influence exerted by Byzantium upon other Slavic peoples, Soviet Byzantinists were bringing out the influences produced by Slavic and oriental peoples upon Byzantium.48 Among those Slavic peoples, Russia did much more than influence the Empire. In a 1951 version of what in historiographical folklore may be termed the antemurale christianitatis motif, a motif used at one time or another by historians living between the Volga and the Pyrenees, it was stated that by stopping the nomadic Pecheneg advance in the late eleventh century Russia saved Byzantium and western Europe.49 The originality and high level of early Russian culture became apparent in all domains. Rybakov, the author of a serious work on Handicrafts in Early Russia,50 was com46. “Protiv burzhuaznogo kosmopolitizma v sovetskom vizantinove* denii” [Against bourgeois cosmopolitanism in Soviet Byzantine studies], Vizantiiskii Vremennik, II (X X V II) (1949), 3-10. For a full French translation of this remarkable document, see M. Canard, “Vizantiiski sbornik et Vizantiiski Vremennik, tomes I-XXVI (1947) et II-XXVII (1949),” Byzantion, XXI (1951), 471-81. 47. M. V. Levchenko in Vizantiiskii Vremennik, II (1949), 337. By 1950, Levchenko reminded one of his opponents that Marx had called Byzantium “the worst of states," a strange quotation for a Byzantinist to use. See Vizantiiskii Vremennik, V (1952), 300. 48. Vizantiiskii Vremennik, V (1952), 292. 49. AN SSSR, Institut istorii materialnoi kultury, Istoriya kuitury drevnei R usi. Domongolskii period [A history of early Russian culture. The pre-Mongol period], II (1951), 512. This work will be referred to in subsequent notes as Istoriya KDR. 50. B. A. Rybakov, Remeslo drevnei Rusi (Moscow, 1948).

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mended in 1949 for having convincingly refuted the reactionary theories of bourgeois scholars, who usually explained the high level of early Russia's material culture by foreign influences. Rybakov was said to have stressed the national and autochthonous character of this culture and its priority with respect to the material culture of various western states.51 But not all authors had the advantage of having published their research at the right time. Lazarev's History of Byzantine Painting, one of the best works of its kind in the hands of scholars, was criticized in 1952 for exaggerating the extent of Byzantine and other influences upon the art of Kiev and Novgorod.52 In the same year came the declaration by Likhachev, an able literary historian, to the effect that Byzantine culture represented only a thin layer in the body cultural of Russia, and that it underwent a sharp reinterpretation, becoming Russian in idea if not in form, because it was enlisted in the service of the early feudal Russian state. Even this formula of “Byzantine in form, Russian in content," reminiscent of a more famous prototype, was to be qualified with respect to certain genres of literature. True, literary works translated from Greek influenced the development of forms and genres of early Russian literature. But even in its form, this literature reflected only the general ecclesiastical world-view and the demands of the Russian Christian cult, not directly Bvzantine models. Applied to Russian hagiography, this meant that this most Byzantinized of all literary genres was in a sense original.53 W e are told by a generally respected authority that the culture of early Russia, hitherto viewed as a result of the “grafting" of Byzantine culture, has a long east Slavic prehistory. For Grekov, the official historian of Kievan Russia, an original east Slavic, or Antes, or Russian culture expressed itself as early as the sixth or seventh century. It 51. By G. B. Fedorov, in Izvestiya AN SSSR, V I, 2 (1949), 189*91. 52. By A. V. Bank, reviewing V. N. Lazarev’s Istoriya vizantiiskoi zhivopisi, I-II (1947*48), Vizantiiskii Vremcnnik, V (1952), 266. 55. D. S. Likhachev, Vozniknovenie russkoi literatury (The emergence of Russian literature] (M oscow, 1952), 126, 150*51. This work will be quoted in subsequent notes as Vozniknovenie.

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would be, therefore, grossly erroneous to assume that it was the Greek clergy who first taught the Russians to think and develop their culture. The first Greek metropolitans had already met with a Russian tendency towards shaking off the ecclesiastical dependence of Byzantium. Russian Christianity itself was an example of the Russian \ nation's ability to create its own culture and transform elements taken over from other nations.54 In writings dealing with the problem of Russian-Byzantine relations certain expressions appear with astonishing uniformity and simultaneity. Here belong the substitution of “interaction” for “influence,” shibboleths like the device of putting the word influence in quotation marks, “creative reinterpretation,” “originality,” “elements of realism,” “Russian reality,” “patriotism,” “progressive”; clever oxymora like “active reception,” “creative assimilation,” and above all the almost untranslatable samobytnost and narodnosty perhaps to be rendered by “autochthony” and “national character” respectively. The principal, though posthumous, villain of this period turned out to be Veselovsky, the same scholar who in the late 1920’s was mildly reproached for operating with such notions as “nation” and “national culture.” Lately, however, it appears that Veselovsky separated literary phenomena from their national and historical background by means of “borrowings,” “influences,” and “wandering motifs.” Moreover, in his works, permeated with bourgeois and cosmopolitan ideas, he belittled the great role of Russian culture and in fact denied its national and autochthonous character.55 Official and still valid attitudes on the topic under discussion here were succinctly formulated in two works published in 1951: the new edition of the Large Soviet Encyclopedia, which for our purposes ranks as a primary source of great consequence, and in the second part of 54. B. D . G r e k o v , Kievskaya Rus [K ie v a n R u s s ia ] ( n e w e d ., 1 9 4 9 )» 386, 372, 393, 387, 390. 55. Bolsh. Sov. Ents. (2 ed.) V II, 543-44, article “Veselovsky, A. N .” Veselovsky's official disgrace was proclaimed about 1948.

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the History of Early Russian Culture, an impressive and useful volume edited under the auspices of the Academy of Sciences.56 Discussing Russian-Byzantine relations from the ninth to the eleventh century in the Encyclopedia, Levchenko pointed out that Byzantium was in turn saved by Russia, scared by it, forced to yield to it, and treacherous to it on occasions.57 Russians appear as powerful and victorious. As for Christianization, it was an ideological expression of the strengthening of the feudal class in Russia. For Byzantium, it amounted to an attempt to subordinate Russia politically and culturally. However, these attempts failed and the autochthonous Russian cuiture and state developed independently. The passages related to Byzantium and Russia are to be read in the coneluding and synthesizing chapter of the second volume of the History of Early Russian Culture. The central one, a masterpiece of nuance and stylistic parallelism, deserves to be translated in its entirety: Yet, a separate and specific place in the formative process of Russian culture belongs to cultural and political relations with Byzantium. The old bourgeois and nobiliary scholarship viewed these as unilateral influence of Byzantium, as a contribution made by a leading civilization to the life of a “retrograde,” “barbaric” land, as the grafting of the imperial culture upon Russia, as imitation of Byzantine models by the Russians. The art of Kievan Russia was presented as a “provincial ramification” of Byzantine art on Russian soil. The beginnings of early Russian literature were presented as indebted to the Greek translation literature; Russian music and its oldest written documents were attributed in their entirety to Byzantine influence, etc. To be sure, Russia is indebted to Byzantine culture in many respects, but it is sufficient to observe how and what the Russian culture derived from that source in order to be convinced that these reactionary, cosmopolitan views are false and tenden1tious. Observing this process, we sec how boldly Russian 56. See note 49 above.

57. Ibid.,

VIII,

33-34.

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culture takes in new elements, how it assimilates progressive and enriching elements of the other nation’s experience, elements that contribute to its growth and correspond to the needs and the level of development of the Russian society. It is no accident that in its cultural construction the Kievan state turned towards the culture of Byzantium, the most advanced country of medieval Europe, towards the most complicated and highest “models”. This culture was a match toi the Russian people and corresponded to the high\ requirements of its development. No less indicative is the active and creative character of this reception— Russia employs the borrowings from Byzantium for the struggle with it, for the strengthening of its in- j dependence from “East Rome.” 58 Judging by the Essays on the History of the U.S.S.R., a large synthesizing volume devoted to the feudal period, the militant phase in re-evaluating the problem of RussianByzantine cultural relations seems to have been concluded by the middle of 1953. W hat in the immediately preceding period constituted polemically tinged new assertions, is now taken for granted and forms the background on which the picture of Russia’s autochthonous culture and its prominent place in the medieval world is calmly outlined.59 V Rapid as it was, the change .in scholarly attitudes towards the assessing of the role of Byzantium in Russian 58. Istoriya KDR, II (1951), 514. All the quotation marks and italics are those of the original. 59. Ocheiki istorii SSSR. Period feodalizma IX-XV vv. (Moscow, 1953), B. D. Grekov's chapter on ‫ ״‬The place of early Russia in world history" (I, 258-64) devotes 9 lines to Russia’s contacts with Byzantium, of which 4 are “anti-Byzantine.” The provinces seem to lag slightly behind the center. The History of the Ukrainian S.S.R., published in Russian by the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences and sent to the printer in December 1953, still vigorously inveighs against mendacious cosmopolitan inventions of bourgeois scholars who pretended that early Russiap culture was formed as a result of Byzantine influence. Cf. AN USSR‫ ״‬Instytut Istorii, Istoriya Ukrainskoi SSR, I (Kiev, 1953), 82-86.

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culture has a history of almost a decade and an even longer pre-history. Both deserve to be outlined in some detail for, if true, the conclusions proposed during the last years would revolutionize our views on Kievan and Muscovite Russia. It might be convenient to enregister here the recent changes as reflected in the treatment of some particular aspects of our problem in Soviet scholarship. These are: the beginnings of early Russian literature and especially its historiography, the origins of the use of the script in Russia, and the independence of early Russian art. In 1900, Shakhmatov pondered over the origin of the Hellenic Chronicle, a Slavic compilation made on the basis of a number of Byzantine sources and transmitted in late manuscripts of Russian provenience. Was the compilation made in Russia or in the Balkans? Assuming its Russian origin, one would have to presuppose the presence of ten to fifteen different Byzantine sources in early Russia. Should they even have been available, it is doubtful whether a local scholar would have been able to disentangle and use properly such variegated material. Therefore Shakhmatov attributed the Hellenic Chronicle to tenth-century Bulgaria.60 Shakhmatov's thesis was contested by Istrin, who postulated a “local‫ ״‬solution. Istrin’s general views, however, did not essentially differ from those of his older colleague. In his History of Early Russian Literature in Outline, Istrin observed in 1922 that proven “local‫ ״‬translations of Byzantine texts were few in number, the majority being of unknown origin. He had no illusions as to the erudition of early Russian scholars. Tenth-century Byzantine theological controversies were incomprehensible to them, so that they confused the simplest things. The bulk of early Russian literature consisted of compilations, which outweigh original works several times. The tendency towards compilations appeared to Istrin as one of the distinguish60. A. A. Shakhmatov, "Drevnebolgarskaya entsiklopcdiya X veka” [An early Bulgarian encyclopedia of the tenth century], Vizantiiskii Vremennik, VII (1900), 1-35.

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ing traits of early Russian literature, as opposed to that of the south Slavs. Since the supply of Byzantine literature was not as plentiful in Russia as it was in the Balkans, the Russian scholars had to combine and rearrange the works once translated. Of the few “original” early Russian literary works, all but the Igor Tale were based on ready material directly or indirectly Byzantine and often borrowed mechanically. Particularly in the lives of Russian saints, whole episodes were copied from Byzantine hagiographical texts. Of course, the simpler the content of the original works, the less dependent they were on Byzantine models. In some fields, such as natural sciences and geography, one could not, strictly speaking, postulate an influence, since in these matters no original activity was possible in Russia for lack of knowledge on the part of local scholars. Works on these subjects were pure translations from Greek. But Istrin had a qualification to make: notwithstanding the Byzantine impact, almost all of the original works of early Russian literature were prompted by events affecting contemporary Russian society. This was an obvious point which, however, was destined for an unprecedented career.61 Orlov's Early Russian Literature in the Eleventh to Seventeenth Centuries appeared in 1945. In fact the book was a revised edition of shorthand notes taken from the author's lectures delivered in 1934-35— a period when Pokrovsky's disciples were still allegedly attempting to stifle Byzantine studies and Marr's followers were brazenly denying the existence of any kind of borrowing and influence. Orlov paid the required attention to the sociological aspects of literary creation. Otherwise his exposition was conventional and he often and freely stressed Byzantine influences. To Orlov, Byzantium and Bulgaria appear as organizers of the initial stage of early literature, since the overwhelming majority of texts imported into Russia reflected Byzantine or Bulgarian ideology, and influenced local original and translated works. Even the “Russian‫'׳‬ 61. V. M. Istrin, O cheik istorii drevnemsskoi /iteratury (Petrograd, 1922), 7 5 3 ‫־‬, passim.

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alphabet was a facsimile of the Greek one, and had been perfected in Bulgaria. No less positive was Orlov’s verdict on single original literary works, like the "Petition of Daniel the Prisoner” (Molenie Daniila Zatochnika), a somewhat enigmatic text of the twelfth or thirteenth century, whose very genre in Orlov’s opinion was most probably taken over from Byzantine literature. Orlov judged the so-called second south Slavic influence of the fifteenth century positively. In this period, the south Slavic texts brought to Russia the last flourishing of Byzantine culture, and the rich rhetoric and political ideas of the Greco-Slavic states. Orlov regretted, however, that the level of Russian fifteenth-century imitations of south Slavic works was lower than that of the originals.62 Adrianova-Peretts’ interesting and useful Essays on the Poetical Style in Early Russia may serve as an example of the rather short "transition period” to be dated about the year 1947. Her book is a hybrid formation in the sense that the material collected in it does not justify the asserrions of the preface or bear out the conclusions. Even in the body of the book one senses a dichotomy. The preface stresses the "national peculiarity” of early Russian culture, and the narodnost of the Russian literary process. But the author’s thesis is a comparatively conservative one. She admits the impact of the heavily Byzantinized "bookish language” upon the style of early Russia, but she also postulates influences coming from the folklore, or as she puts it, the "indigenous oral poetics.” She grants that the Byzantinized bookish culture provided the nascent Russian literature with models of literary genres, but she hastens to remark that at that early period the oral poetry already possessed a variety of lyrical and epical forms of its own. For instance, elaborate Byzantine forms were not taken over, because the chief subject matter of early Russian literature was historical and as such was modeled on the exprcssional devices of the historical epic poetry. For many metaphors, Adrianova-Peretts admits a double 62. A. S. Orlov, Drevnyaya russkaya literatura XI■XVII vekov (Mos* cow, 1 9 4 5 ), 16, 136*37, ! 39 -40 , 209*10.

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source, a Byzantine and a popular one. Such is the case with sun, moon, stars as metaphors for persons, or the eagle as the image of a hero. The difficulty is that as popular parallels she quotes late folksongs which may have been influenced by “bookish” literature. She herself grants such a possibility and later on ascribes certain types of metaphor, such as winter and summer allegories of paganism and Christianity respectively, and the sea-tempestship metaphor, to Byzantine influence alone.63 After all this, the reader is astonished to hear in conelusion that the metaphors of literature from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries were a continuation of the devices used in oral poetry or were created in its spirit. Of course, the parallels at hand come from late folklore texts but as these parallels were absent from Byzantine literature, they must have come from the folklore. The stylistic development of early Russian literature from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries is in line with the national development of artistic style.64 Such ambiguous points of view disappear in later years. For reasons not devoid of a certain consistency, but hardly binding for Western scholars, the conventional conception concerning the formation of Russian literature was scornfully rejected by Likhachev, one of the outstanding representatives of the younger generation, as shallow, naive, anti-scientific and directly contradictory to the methodological foundations of contemporary Soviet literary scholarship and the elementary requirements of Soviet historiography. The determining factor in the formation of early Russian literature was Russian historical reality “in all the Russian autochthonous peculiarity of its aspects,” rather than Byzantine influences. The role played by translation literature, although undeniable, was not so great as bourgeois scholars would have it. Moreover translation, if originating in Russia, sometimes bordered upon “creative reshapings.” This meant that translators took 63. V. P. Adrianova-Peretts, Ocherki poeticheskogo stilya dievnei Rusi (Moscow, 1947), 10 ff., 18-19, 24, 30, 42, 48-49, 84. 64. Ibid., 118ff.

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great liberty in arranging, abbreviating, correcting, and interpolating their originals, in short, adjusting them to the needs of their readers. The very selection of translations was dictated by the demands of “Russian reality.‫ ״‬The creative attitude of Russian literati toward Byzantine historical sources also appears from the fact that compilations made from them were supplemented by extraneous material and rearranged, often with the elements of the very Byzantine chronicles. In conclusion we learn that the European literature which came to Russia through Byzantium, joined the wide current of the independent Russian literature, moving along independent channels of its own, having its sources in the pre-written, oral literature and folklore, and encompassing and reshaping works of translation literature in its powerful movement.65 As regards the origins of historical writing, Istrin assumed that Russian historiography started as a compilative arrangement of Byzantine sources such as George the Monk and Malalas, augmented by data referring to local history, mostly those connected with Byzantium, like the expeditions against Constantinople. These data were arranged within the framework of “universal,‫ ״‬i.e. Bvzantine history. In time, Istrin speculated, entries of local interest were separated from this large compilative work under the influence of national aspirations, and formed the first recension of what later became the Tale of Bygone Y ears.66 However widely this conception may have differed from Shakhmatov’s elaborate and convincing reconstruction of the early stages of the Tale,67 both views ac65. Likhachev, Vozniknovenie, 13, 120, 129, 131, 136-37; idem, chapter “Literatura,” in Istoriya KD R, II (1951), 167-68, 170 ff., 176. 66. V. M. Istrin, “Zamechaniya o nachalc russkago letopisaniya” [Remarks on the beginnings of Russian annalistic writing], Izvestiya Otd. Russ. Yaz. i Slov. Rossiiskoi Akad. Nauk, XXVI (1921), pubi. 1923, 45-102; idem, Ocheik istorii drevnerusskoi literatury, 8, 142-45. 67. A. A. Shakhmatov, Razyskaniya o drevneishikh russkikh ietopisnykh svodakh [Studies in the earliest recensions of the Russian annals (1908). Idem, cd. of Povest Vremcnnykh let [Tale of bygone years (1916). See for example D. S. Likhachev, “Shakhmatov kak isslcdovate russkogo letopisaniya" [Shakhmatov as a student of Russian annalistic • writing], A. A. Shakhmatov in Trudy Komissii po istorii An SSSR, 3 (1 9 4 7 ), 253-93.

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corded an important place to Byzantine influence, since Shakhmatov established a connection between the earliest recension of the Tede, which he dated into 1039, and the foundation by Constantinople of the metropolitan see in Kiev, which he believed with the chronicle to have occurred about the same time. As late as 1940, Priselkov, a follower of Shakhmatov, went a step further. In his excellent History of Russian Annalistic W riting in the Eleventh to the Fifteenth Centuries he imagined that the Tale's first recension of 1037, in accordance with the customs of the Greek church, must have been a memorand urn on the history of the new metropoly. Following his earlier theory of alternate pro- and anti-Byzantine currents in the eleventh century, Priselkov saw in the recension of 1037, where he detected the scornful attitude of a Greek towards the people whose history he wrote, an expression of the point of view of a Greek institution. He similarly singled out as “graecophile” certain sources supposed to have been incorporated into the recension of the Tale dating from 1093. As to the translations of Greek chronicles undertaken in the eleventh century, Priselkov attributed them to the initiative of the Greek Metropolitan of Kiev, who wanted to acquaint his flock with the greatness of the Empire.68 The contributions made by Byzantine chronicles to the cultural and literary development of Kievan Russia could still be acknowledged in 1945.66 Again, as elsewhere, 1947 is a liminary date. In the Russian Chronicles and Their Significance for Cultural History, published in that year, Likhachev, proceeding in a quite dignified although somewhat scholastic way, refuted Istrin’s and Priselkov’s theses.70 Nevertheless, he admitted that the annalistic 68. M. D. Priselkov, Istoriya russkogo letopisaniya XI-XV w . (Leningrad, 1940), 26, 28, 34, 29. 69. S. I. M a s lo v a n d J. P. K y ry ly u k , N a r y s istoiiyi ukrainskoii liteiatu r y [A s k e tc h o f t h e h is to r y o f U k r a in ia n li te r a t u r e ] (K ie v , 1 9 4 5 ) , 41 •

70. D. S. Likhachev, Russkie letopisi i ikh kultumo-istoricheskoe znachenie (Moscow-Leningrad, 1947), 60-62. T he refutation is brought about by first countering Istrin’s and Priselkov’s theses with the views of N. Nikolsky, who stressed the western Slavic influences in the Tale of Bygone Years, and then eliminating Nikolsky’s views as un-

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genre of Russia “had ready-made model at its origins,‫״‬ but later changed under the impact of the “Russian‫ ״‬life. Modifying Shakhmatov's theories, Likhachev postulated a “Narrative on the Introduction of Christianity in Russia‫״‬ as the nucleus from which the Tale of Bygone Years subsequently developed. He claimed the “Speech of a Philosopher before Vladimir,‫ ״‬a part of the Tale, as the core of his hypothetical “Narrative.‫ ״‬He vaguely doubted the originality of this “Speech,‫ ״‬and declared that it belonged to a genre widespread in Greek literature. He quoted, not always pertinently, parallel Byzantine dialogues, and coneluded that the author of his postulated nucleus of the Tale may have used ready-made models, unfortunately unknown.*71 In Likhachev's opinion, the author of the postulated “Narrative‫ ״‬was anti-Greek. So was Nestor, one of the later editors of the Tale of Bygone Years. W hat is more, Nestor, the first Normanist in history, excogitated his theory of “the calling of the Varangian Princes‫ ״‬by the Slavs for the sole purpose of spiting the Greeks who claimed a decisive share in shaping the culture of Russia, and asserting Russia's independence from Byzantium.72 One cannot deny this hypothesis a certain ingenuity and even elegance, as with one blow it scored a victory on both fronts on which Soviet scholars had chosen to fight their battles.73 It was duly appreciated by critics of founded. For a positive opinion on Nikolsky's findings, see R. Jakobson in Harvard Slavic Studies, II (1954), 45-46. 71. Likhachev, Russkie letopisi, 62, 73, 75. 72. Ibid., 159 f. 73. W hether this anti-Scandinavian and anti-Byzantine battle array is correct scholarly strategy is open to question. It presupposes the existence of two independent cultural centers from which cultural influences could conceivably have radiated so as to converge in early Russia. It is then asserted that influences originating from these centers w‫׳‬ere non-existent or negligible. This underlying assumption must be qualified since it has been proven that some legendary motifs common to Scandinavia and early Russia wandered not from north to south, but from Byzantium via Russia to Scandinavia. In some cases instead of two centers of potential influences on Russia we obtain one, the Byzantine area; Russia would only act as an intermediary to the north. For this important change in perspective, cf. Ad. StenderPetersen, Varangica (Aarhus, 1953), 10-11, 241, and chapters X, XI.

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Likhachev's book74 and was repeated by him later.75 Likhachev is a prolific writer. Thus by necessity his works often incorporate with significant adjustments whole passages from the preceding ones. In the edition of the Tale of Bygone Years published in 1950, he took up again the question of its sources. As no new factual material ‫׳‬ had turned up since 1947, Likhachev operated with many of the same quotations. But his tone became virulent in exposing the errors of the “bourgeois" and “nobiliary" scholarship. The argument of the creative and “active" use of Byzantine sources made its appearance. Oral eiements were held to be the main sources for the Tale of Bygone Y earsf whose authors were at the same time a match for Byzantine literature, the most highly developed in the European Middle Ages. The “ready-made models," which in the 1947 version might have been at the origin of Russian annalistic writings, disappeared from an otherwise analogous passage in the 1950 book. As for the sources of the “Philosopher's Speech before Vladimir," the arguments professed were much the same but for a surprising conclusion: “Therefore, the Philosopher's speech is a Russian work." From now on, the only channel along which the Tale developed was “the channel of Russian reality." 76 By 1952 it became quite clear to Likhachev, that the Tale was an autochthonous “Russian” genre of historical literature.77 As long as they remain in the realm of generalities, the findings of recent Soviet scholarship are not particularly disturbing to the professional historian, who is tolerant of broad hypotheses when they lack the rigorous apparatus of proofs and, therefore, avoid the danger of violating rules of the craft too flagrantly. W hen, however, the same type of speculation is applied to concrete points, where strict 74. S. Yushkov, reviewing Likhachev in Vop. 1st., III, 4 (1947), 111. 75. V. P. Adrianova-Peretts, ed., Po vest viemennykh let [Tale of by‫־‬ gone years], II (1950), 113, with articles and commentaries by Likhachev. 76. Ibid., 143 ff., 90, 330-31, to be compared with Likhachev's Russkie letopisi, 60-61, 62, 72-75. 77. Vozniknovenie, 166.

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argumentation is a prerequisite, the professional historian feels more uncomfortable. This is well exemplified by the new attitude towards the origin of the script. Of the two Slavonic scripts, the glagolitic still presents a puzzling problem.78 But the origins of the cyrillic seemed so obvious to the editors of the pre-revolutionary Encyclopedia of Slavic Philology that they simply asked the famous paleographer Gardthausen to write a chapter on “Greek Script of the Ninth and Tenth Centuries/' Gardthausen’s starting point was the consideration that history knew no case in which a people received its culture from one nation and its script from another.79 As for Russia, even Soviet scholars held that literacy as well as literature appeared there after the country’s Christianization late in the tenth century. In Orlov’s opinion, tenthcentury eastern Europe possessed no alphabet corresponding to the phonetic particularities of the Slavic language, no literary language, no literary genres.80 But already in 1936, Obnorsky, who analyzed the language of the Slavic version of treaties between the “Russians” and Byzantium, dated at 911 and 945 respectively, arrived at the conelusion that they were written not in Church Slavonic but in “Russian” with an admixture of Bulgarianisms, or Church Slavonisms, decreasing in number from one treaty to another.81 The implication of such finding was obvious and soon it was taken up by Grekov. For him, the existence of literacy among early tenth-century Russians became, as it were, certain.82 The “Russian letters” with which St. Cyril is 78. C f., in the last instance, W . Lettenbauer, “Zur Entstehung des glagolitischen Alphabets,” Slovo, III (1 9 5 3 ), 35-50; a survey of previous theories and a new one, advocating a W estern origin for the glagolitic script. 79. V . Gardthausen, ',Grecheskoe pismo IX-X stoletii” [The Greek script of the ninth and tenth centuries], Entsiklopcdiya slavyanskoi Slologii, III, 2 (1 9 1 1 ), 37-50• 80. Orlov, Drevnyaya russkaya iiteratura, 14, 17. 81. S. P. Obnorsky, “Yazyk dogovorov russkikh s grekami” [The language of the Russian-Greek treaties], Yazyk i myshlenie, V I-V II (1 9 3 6 ), 101 ff. 82. Grekov, Kievskaya Rus (3 ed., 1 9 39), 11; the clause “as it were“ disappeared from the 1949 edition of the book, 12.

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aid to have come in contact in the Crimea in the latter îalf of the ninth century, may have been Greek letters, >ut the Psalter written in these letters and read by Cyril vas obtained from a “Russian” and must have been writen in “Russian.” 83 Compared to what was to follow, Grekov’s was almost a timid standpoint. In subsequent 'ears it was asserted that the literary early Russian Ianjuage was formed long before Christianization; that this anguage, it is to be assumed, developed when there aleady existed a standardized script; that the cyrillic script ippeared in Russia a few decades before Christianization; :hat the treaty of 945 was undoubtedly written in Kiev; :hat “some indices” point to the fact that Eastern Slavic ;cript was of local and even earlier origin; that this script vas glagolitic, since the Psalter read by St. Cyril in the Drimea was written in glagolitic; that, consequently, the jlagolitic script was created not by St. Cyril, but somevhere on the northern shores of the Black Sea as a result )f a prolonged development; that the glagolitic alphabet ;tands in direct relationship to the cuneiform script and s also related to undeciphered signs of the northern Black Sea shore, dating from the first to the.seventh cen:ury.84 Concerning the cyrillic script, Likhachev informed 1is readers that writing in Russia came about not as a esult of individual inventions, but as a response to the îeeds which had appeared in a class society, although iteracy itself did not have a class character. This need nay have given simultaneous birth to scripts in different Darts of the East Slavic world; thus early script may have !3. Kievskaya Rus (new ed., 1949), 384. But there seems to have >een nothing “Russian" about those letters which were most probibly “Syrian letters.” Cf. A. Vaillant, “Les ‘lettres russes' de la Vie le Constantin,” Revue des Études Slaves, XV (1935), 75*77; and R. akobson, “Saint Constantin et la langue syriaque,” Annuaire de i'Intitut de Philologie et d ’Histoire Orientales et Slaves, V II (1944), .81-86. I4. See P. J. Chernykh, chapter “Yazyk i pismo” [Language and cript], in Istoriya KDR, II (1 9 5 1 ), 121-22, 130-31, 134; and V. V. /inogradov's review of various recent hypotheses on the origin of ‘Russian” literacy in his preface to L. P. Yakubinsky, Istoriya drevneruskogo yazyka [History of the early Russian language] (Moscow, 1 9 5 3 ), r ff. based on lectures delivered in the thirties.

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been polyalphabetical, cyrillic and glagolitic.85 In other words, the way was paved to connect the invention of even the cyrillic script with the Russian language.86 All these were rather amazing assumptions. One would expect a more sober attitude in dealing with the tenth and later centuries in which our paleographic documentation is sufficiently abundant to leave but little leeway for extravaganzas. So closely is the resemblance between the early cyrillic and Byzantine scripts that even a relatively trained eye wandering from a tenth century Byzantine uncial manuscript to some of the earliest specimens of the cyrillic uncial has to pause for a moment before deciding in which language the respective texts are composed. Until 1950 the reasons for this similitude seemed evident. But in that year Mrs. Granstrem raised the question of whether Slavic uncial manuscripts are an imitation of the Byzantine uncial or a product of independent development. Under the influence of other alphabets, she maintained, the Byzantine uncial script could assume local characteristics as in the case of the Coptic, the western European, the Georgian, and finally, the postulated paleo-Slavic variant of the Byzantine uncial script. Although none of the spedmens of this “paleo-Slavic‫ ״‬type of Byzantine uncial can be shown to come from Slavic territories, she reached the conclusion that the earliest Slavic cyrillic manuscripts are the product of an independent graphic creation of Slavic nations, and the type of Byzantine uncial from which the cyrillic uncial was believed to derive is on the contrary but a Byzantine reflection of the formative process undergone by the Slavic script.87 A similar attitude was displayed with regard to early Russian art. In order better to acquaint his readers with 85. D. S. Likhachev, “Predposylki vozniknovcniya russkoi pismennosti i russkoi literatury,” Vop. ist., V II, 12 (1951), 34 ff., discussed by Vinogradov, in Yakubinsky, op. cit., 10-11. 86. This is an observation of Vinogradov, in Yakubinsky, 11. Vinogradov views such a procedure as lacking proof and not based on any new data. 87. E. E. Granstrem, “O svyazi kirillovskogo ustava s vizantiiskim untsiaium” [On the relations of the cyrillic script with the Byzantine uncial], Vizantiiskii Vrcmennik, III (1950), 218-29.

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the magnificence of early Russian culture, Grekov invites them into the cathedral of St. Sophia in Kiev. This imaginary visit also serves the purpose of introducing the problem of the origins of Russian civilization. To Grekov’s mind the solution to this problem would be incomplete if one explained the thriving state of eleventh-century Russian architecture by the activity of Greek architects alone. Architects are helpless without a host of skilled workers, and those must have been of local origin. Also a craftsman is only the executor of an order; the commission for a work like St. Sophia came not from Byzantium but from the Kievan state itself. Greek builders and artists of the tenth and eleventh centuries had to adjust themselves to the tastes of the prince of Russia and his entourage.88 Again, these abstract speculations of 1949 seem acceptable enough. The next year, however, brought a technical article of a more disturbing nature, especially since it bore the signature of Brunov, a respected art historian trained in the pre-revolutionary school. The article’s by now ritual preamble branded as false the views of the majority of “bourgeois” historians that St. Sophia of Kiev is a monument of Byzantine art on Russian soil, just as “bourgeois” scholarship was wont to ascribe all of the outstanding achievements of Russia’s past to foreigners. According to Brunov, St. Sophia is an architectural monument of independent artistic value and a creation made possible only by a previous architectural tradition in Russia going back to pagan times.89 From the silence of the Tale of Bygone Years as to the importation of Greek architects to build St. Sophia, Brunov deduced that the cathedral was constructed by Russian builders, partly trained in the tradition of the large number of local craftsmen who had assisted in the construction of the tenth-century Tithe Church, but mainly continuing the millenary tradition of Russian wooden architecture and 88. Grekov, Kievskaya Rus (1 9 4 9 ), 368-69, 391. 89. N . I. Brunov, “Kievskaya S06ya— drevneishii pamyatnik russkoi kamennoi arkhitektury” [St. Sophia of Kiev— the earliest monum ent of Russian stone architecture], Vizantiiskii Vremennik, III (1950)» 154-200, esp. 155, 188, 199.

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earth works, earthen fortifications, and funerary mounds. In all seriousness, sketches of pre-Christian mounds were provided by the author and juxtaposed with the silhouette of the Kievan cathedral in order to prove the derivation of its outline. Boasting such ancestry, St. Sophia was said to surpass Byzantine models and contain new characteristics peculiar to Russian architecture. Since a perfect artistic work must be not only national but also popular in its essence, we learn that St. Sophia’s thick pillars express the sound popular feeling for the bodily principle and are closer to the ancient Roman architecture than are the more delicate but decadent Byzantine forms far removed from the sources of popular creativity.90 Brunov’s melancholy performance still remains unsurpassed. W hile the new views on St. Sophia’s architecture appeared in a developed form from the outset, it is possible to follow an evolution with respect to one particular problem, that of the contents of the “Hippodrome” frescoes decorating the cathedral’s staircases. According to Orlov, Byzantine jongleurs were represented on the walls of St. Sophia;91 in the art chapter from the History of Early Russian Culture the question, Byzantine or Russian, was left unsettled;92 in 1952, Likhachev had no doubt that the scenes depicted games at the court of a Kievan prince.93 90. Ibid., 182, 199, 200, see also N. N. Voronin and M. Karger, “Arkhitektura” [Architecture], Istoriya KDR, II (1951), 249, 253, 261-62. Previous to his treatment of 1950, Brunov had dealt with the origin of St. Sophia in a number of articles dating from the late twenties. As between 1950 and the late twenties, his arguments are often identical, but his conclusions, vastly different. It is true that in these earlier essays Brunov denied a direct Constantinopolitan inspiration for the cathedral's architecture. But he looked for parallels in Asia Minor, viewed St. Sophia as a monument of Byzantine art, more exactly as a “Christian-Oriental” modification of the Constantinopolitan type. W hile he stated that the existence of important Russian features in St. Sophia could be proved, he also found a great affinity between this Kievan church and western Romanesque structures. Cf. as an example, Brunov's “Zur Frage des Ursprunges der Sophienkathcdralc in Kiev,” Byzantinische Zeitschrift, XXIX (1929-30), 248-59• 91. Drevnyaya russkaya literatura (1945), 139. 92. Istoriya KDR, II (1951), 351. 93. Vozniknovenie, 84.

VI A kind of textual criticism applied to modern Soviet works and practically amounting to a comparison between subsequent editions of the same book, may best exemplify the direction in which the changing Soviet views evolve and illustrate the techniques by which this change is brought about. Gudzy’s History of Early Russian Literatute,94 now in its fifth edition, is an aptly written textbook provided with a critical apparatus and destined for Soviet universities. For our purposes, the third edition, that of 1945, and the fourth, that of 1950, are of importance since the time elapsing between them encompasses the decisive turn of 1947. The changes to be observed are not due to the accumulation of new factual material. Radical as they sometimes are, they occur mainly in the evaluating passages. Thus while in 1945 Gudzy thought that before the middle of the seventeenth century oral poetry only rarely found its way into written texts and only partly influenced the Byzantinized written literature, he omitted the latter passage from the fourth edition, added a chapter on early Russian oral poetry, and concluded it with the assertion that there was no doubt but that the rich devices of Russian folklore favorably influenced early Russian literature.95 In the third edition, Veselovsky was praised at length as the principal literary historian of the past century who laid the foundations for a sociological study of literature.96 Instead of eliminating the praise, the edition of 1950 omitted the whole chapter on the history of the studies of early Russian literature, where Veselovsky figured so prominently. To take care of other references to the Byzantinizing Veselovsky— he was mentioned twenty-three times throughout the body of the 1945 edition— phrases like "we should assume, following Veselovsky . . were re94. Istoriya drevnei russkoi literatury (3 ed., 1945; 4 ed., 1950). There exists an English translation by S. W . Jones of the 2nd edition of 1941: N . K. Gudzy, History of Early Russian Literature (N ew York, 1949)• 95. Ibid., 3 ed., 11; 4 ed., 11, 14. 96. Ibid., 24.

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placed by ‘V e should assume that . . .” 97 In one place, the words “as Veselovsky has shown‫ ״‬were omitted in the 1950 edition, as was the footnote referring to his work, and the verbatim quotation was faithfully paraphrased and now appears as Gudzy’s own words.98 These were omissions for the layman, for whom Veselovsky should simply disappear as damnatus memoriae. For the refined reader, his spirit had to be exorcised. Thus even the words “wandering motifs,‫ ״‬one of Veselovsky’s pet terms, redolent of foreign influences, reappear in 1950 in the properly trimmed form “fairy tale motifs.99 ‫״‬ In 1945, Gudzy praised Byzantine culture as much higher than pre-Christian Russian culture. As by 1950 Russian culture could be second to none, these words were changed at the corresponding page of the fourth edition into the assertion that “Christian literature was the product of a culture higher than the pagan culture.100‫״‬ Another change exhibited an even finer touch. According to Gudzy’s view expressed in the third edition, the choice of Byzantine translations which found their way into Russia was determined by the latter’s cultural level. The implication of this pronouncement was obvious even to a university student who knew that the Greek works translated into Slavic did not on the whole rank highly in the body of Byzantine literature. The edition of 1950 replaced the embarrassing sentence by an enigmatic dictum that the choice of Byzantine translations was determined by “what Byzantium provided Russia with.” 101 The evolution of the years 1945-1952 may best be summed up in the subsequent treatment of the two quotations found in the works of two Soviet historians. In 1945 Gudzy quoted from Marx and Engels that “Kiev imitated Constantinople in every respect, and was called 97. For example ibid., 3 ed., 41; 4 ed., 27. 98. Ibid., 3 ed., 41; 4 ed., 28. 99. Ibid., 3 ed., 255; 4 ed., 248. 100. Ibid., 3 ed., 26 with 4 ed., 17. 101. Ibid., 3 ed., 27 with 4 ed., 18; similar, although much milder changes may be found by comparing the different editions of Grekov's Kievskaya Rus: compare 249, 250, 252, of the 1939 edition, with 473, 4 7 !, 473 of the 1949 edition.

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the second Constantinople.102‫ ״‬This remark, Gudzy thought, may have referred to Adam of Bremen's famous saying about Kiev's being a rival of the Constantinopolitan sceptre, and a brilliant adornment of Greece. This implied, it may be added, that in the medieval German chronicler's mind, Kiev belonged to the Eastern Empire's sphere of influence. Five years later, Gudzy, repeating the two quotations, omitted Marx's first clause concerning the imitation of Constantinople by Kiev.103 In 1952, Likhachev, taking both authorities up again, proved even more suecinct: to him, it was no chance that Adam of Bremen saw in Kiev a competitor of Constantinople and that Marx and Engels called it “the Second Constantinople." 104 In reversing their views on the level and originality of ‫י‬ Russian culture, Soviet scholars also resorted to techniques more sophisticated than doctoring up quotations or mere scissors and paste procedures. They extolled the neighbor's merits whenever they could not plausibly deny them or when they might even indirectly make Russia appear in an advantageous light. Russia may have withstood Byzantine attempts to enslave it culturally, but Byzantium was the most enlightened and advanced among Europe's contemporary states.105 Learning in Russia was influenced by Byzantium, but as a result is differed but little from that of the Eastern Empire; in fact, both were on the same level.106 The influence of Byzantine translations upon local literature may have been grossly exaggerated by non-Soviet scholars, but it remained that the “Russian" language had thus assimilated the best works of European medieval literature.107 To Istrin and Priselkov the few Byzantine world 102. Istoriya drevnei russkoi literatury, 3 ed., 8. 103. Ibid., 4 ed., 8. 104. Vozniknovenie, 126. 105. For example Grekov, Kievskaya Rus (1 9 4 9 ), 403. 106. N . S. Chaev, article “Prosveshchenie” [Education], Istoriya KD R, II (1 9 5 1 ), 216 ff., 243; see also Ocherki istorii SSSR, I (1 9 5 3 ), 3‫ג ג‬ (by G rekov). From the presentation of cosmological views attributed to people living in the Kievan period the uninitiated reader cannot realize that Grekov is quoting and paraphrasing a translation from a Byzantine source. 107. Likhachev, article “Literature” [Literature], Istoriya KD R, II, 164.

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chronicles translated for the readers of Russia were often ill-chosen, and all were of a popular and lowbrow character. Historical monographs for refined readers were not divulged since they described events not quite flattering to the Empire.108 For once Likhachev shows a distinct proByzantine bias when he finds that, as a result of using Byzantine texts, world history was represented to “Russian readers‫ ״‬through skillfully executed compilation of all the best sources available at the time.109 He comes close to his pre-revolutionary predecessors in maintaining that the twelfth-century Bishop Cyril of Turov not only used the skillful techniques of Byzantine preachers, but possessed a profound knowledge of the Greek language.110 The cathedral of St. Sophia may have surpassed its contemporary Byzantine counterparts, yet its builders were familiar with the newest achievements of Constantinopolitan architecture, and art which, decadent as it may have been, was the best of Europe in the tenth century.111 ‫ ז‬Here also belongs the introduction of fine verbal distinctions which enable a Soviet author to maintain his surprising theses intact. In assessing Russian-Byzantine relations, we are told, the use of the term “influence‫ ״‬is inexact, as it presupposes an activity on the part of the giver and a passive attitude of the receiver. In Russia the reverse was the case.112 Whenever influences cannot be denied, ; they are localized and sanctioned. It becomes important to realize at what level they took place. Since it was the Russian feudal upper crust which turned to the Byzantine feudal ruling class for formulae of use for consolidating 108. Istrin, Ocherk istorii drevnerusskoi literatury (1 9 2 2 ), 86*7; Priselkov, Istoriya russkogo letopisaniya (1 9 4 0 ), 29. 109. Istoriya KD R, II, 174; Idem, Vozniknovenie, 136. 110. Istoriya K D R , II, 196; that Cyril knew and read Greek, was asserted by M . I. Sukhomlinov, O sochineniyakh Kirilla Turovskogo [On the writings of Cyril of Turov] (1 8 5 8 ), reprinted in Sbomik Otd. Russ. Yaz. i SIov. Imp. Akad. Nauk, L X X X V (1 9 0 8 ), 275-349, but strongly doubted by A. Vaillant, 4*Cyrille de Turov et Grégoire de Nazianze," Revue des Études Slaves, X X V I (195°)» 49*50, and G . P. Fedotov, The Russian Religious M ind (1 9 4 5 ), 70*71• 111. Brunov in Vizantiiskii Vremennik, III (1 9 5 0 ), 184; Istoriya KD R, II, 250. 112. Likhachev, Vozniknovenie, 125, 130, 154*55» 233.

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their “superstructure,‫ ״‬it was not a question of a superior “national‫ ״‬culture influencing a less developed national culture.113 As in Soviet historiography the ever-shifting present seems to hold up its mirror to the past, which therefore shifts correspondingly, we hear that the grafting of Byzantine upper class cultural elements on the feudal culture of Russia was a progressive phenomenon, because it strengthened the Russian state by increasing its centrcdization, in which not only the feudal lords but even the “people‫ ״‬were partly interested.114 N ot all of the speculative techniques employed by Soviet scholars to enhance the self-sufficiency of early Russian culture can be treated as verbal exercises. In the field of reconstructing the earliest period of Russian historiography, where the main evidence available consists of one text and where hypothesis is pitched against hypothesis, it is impossible to reject any solution on the basis simply of its strange and speculative character. Thus the reconstruction attempted by Likhachev has to be given the same attentive consideration which, say, Shakhmatov's hypotheses received in their time. Still, it is essential to state, for the purpose of the present survey, that Likhachev’s postulated nucleus of the Tale of Bygone Years is such as to be interpreted as anti-Byzantine, and its composition dated into the forties of the eleventh century.115 Shakhmatov, we remember, attributed to his nucleus the date of 1039 and connected its compilation with the establishment of the metropolitan see in Kiev by the Byzantine patriarchate. In two operations, a reconstructed document purportedly illustrating the impact of Byzantine culture was changed in Likhachev's system into an antiByzantine manifesto. The somewhat ironical element is that both Shakhmatov's hypothesis and Likhachev's rearrangement are closely connected with the belief, shared by both scholars, that the metropolitan see of Kiev was 113. Ibid., 122 ff., 128. 114. Likhachev, Voznilcnovenie, 127. 115. Likhachev, Russkie letopisi (1 9 4 7 ), 70-71, 76; edition of Povest vremennykh let (1 9 5 0 ), 77; Vozniknovenie, 161, in a somewhat weakened form.

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founded about 1037. As this no longer can be upheld with any certainty,116 the main Soviet innovations appear irrelevant to the question of the pro- or anti-Byzantine attitude of the earliest chronicles of Russia. VII N o matter how improbable the Soviet hypotheses may appear, they should not in the last analysis be dismissed without a demonstration of their extravagance by proofs of universal cogency. This cannot be done within the scope of the present essay, and it should be noted that it is of slight use to refute the theoretical foundations on which Soviet scholars base their hypotheses in view of the basic divergencies between them and Western scholars in this area. It should nevertheless be added that such binding demonstration is quite feasible. Obviously, it can yield only limited results, for it implies the tackling of specific problems at a technical level where certain rudimentary methodological assumptions are professed in common. These include the validity of clear textual evidence and the importance of chronology, where proofs cogent for both sides appear possible. Faced with the remarkably synchronized and apparently general reversals in evaluating the whole field of RussianByzantine cultural relations, one cannot help looking for voices of dissent from the officially accepted interpretations and wondering about the attitudes and “real” beliefs of serious Soviet scholars. As for the first point, the present writer was able to discover, but not to explain, one nonconformist statement by a relatively obscure scholar made in passing but unmistakable in its tenor.117 Among the 116. See E. Honigmann, “Studies in Slavic Church history; A. T he foundation of the Russian metropolitan church according to Greek sources,‫ ״‬Byzantion, X V II (1 944-45), 128-62. 117. Y. N . Dmitriev, “Meletovskie freski i ikh znachenie dlya istorii drevne-russkoi literatury‫[ ״‬The M eletovo frescoes and their meaning for the history of early Russian literature], TODRL, V III (1 9 5 1 ), 403-12. On 410 we learn that the staircase frescoes of St. Sophia in Kiev were painted by a non-Russian artist, do not represent scenes of Russian life, and therefore the jesters depicted there are not Russians.

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more renowned scholars, a strange duality may sometimes be detected. In discussing various recent hypotheses dating the beginning of “Russian‫ ״‬script and literacy far into the pre-Christian era, the distinguished linguist Vinogradov called them “unfortunately as yet unfounded‫ ; ״‬many of them, he thought, could not be ranged among the sure achievements of Soviet philology. He attacked some of Likhachev’s statements on the subject as arbitrary, subjective and contradictory. And yet, in the same breath Vinogradov rejected the traditional viewpoint connecting the introduction of script with Christianization and BulgarianByzantine influence, as questionable and historically onesided, since it did not take into account “the achievements of Eastern Slavs in the domain of script.118 ‫״‬ One is reduced to guesses as to the reason which may have caused Vinogradov’s surprising critique followed by a return into the fold of orthodoxy of the day. In another similar case, that of the art historian Igor Grabar, some plausible explanations can be offered. Reviewing Lazarev’s valuable Art of Novgorod, Grabar stressed that Lazarev ascribed only the frescoes of the Saviour Church to the late fourteenth-century Byzantine Theophanes the Greek. Paintings in other churches are, in the author’s opinion, to be attributed to Theophanes’ Russian pupils. Grabar acknowledged that Lazarev’s arguments were weighty, but remarked that this assumption should lead to a critical examination by specialists. Such a rather qualified adherence to a patriotic thesis is something unusual in recent Soviet scholarship. As if to compensate for this, Grabar objected further on that Lazarev’s book sometimes created a basically wrong impression that the chief impulses in the history of Novgorod painting lay outside of Russia, especially in Byzantium.119 In order better to understand Grabar’s somewhat contradictorv attitude of 1949, it is worthwhile to remember 118. V . V . Vinogradov in L. P. Yakubinsky, Istoriya drevnerusskogo

yazyka (1 9 5 3 ), 7, 10-11, 30. 119. I. E. Grabar, review of V . N . Lazarev’s IsskustvQ Novgorod a (T he art of Novgorod) (1 9 4 7 ), in Izvestiya AN SSSR, V I (1 9 4 9 ), 372*7 5 •

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his own field work in Novgorodian churches. In 1922 he published a pamphlet in which he praised Theophanes' influence on Russian art and credited him with bringing realistic and even salutary forces to the Russian north. Grabar claimed as a certainty that Theophanes was the author of frescoes in several churches of Novgorod.120 W ith the more important Soviet scholars, then, personal convictions can be discerned under the seemingly uniform façade of programmatic statements. In the Soviet Union I as elsewhere, it seems easier to conform to new general trends than to discard one's personal scholarly findings. ; Freedom, the most human of passions, expresses itself, however faintly, in the protest against the unsound meth‫־‬ ods of those who violate the sacred rules of the art, and in the defense of one's own theories. Still, even in those cases a ransom in official theses must be paid for nonconformist hints if they are to be expressed at all. This brings up the final question. To what extent do serious Soviet scholars believe in the patriotic assertions and anti-Western tirades which seem to contradict the previous stand of Russian or even Soviet scholarship and appear so outlandish to scholars outside the Soviet Union? Here the answer should be very guarded. In East and W est alike, patriotic feelings have often exerted a potent soporific action upon the scholarly conscience. W hen Levchenko violently attacks Grégoire's theories on the spurious character of Prince Oleg's campaign against Constantinople of the year 907 it must be assumed that he performs this service with full conviction since he has behind him, aside from official sanction, a whole tradition of Russian-Byzantine studies, Soviet and non-Soviet, as well as a segment of Western scholarship.121 Similar considera‫ו‬

'

120. I. G r a b a r , F e o /a n G relc (K a z a n , 1 9 22). I k n o w th is p a m p h le t o n ly th r o u g h J. S trz y g o w s k i's lo n g re v ie w in B y z .- N e u g r ie c h is c h e J a h r b ü c h e r , I V (1 9 2 3 ), 153*58. 121. M. V . L e v c h e n k o , “ R u s s k o -v iz a n tiis k ie d o g o v o ry 907 i 911 g g .” [ T h e R u s s ia n -B y z a n tin e tr e a tie s o f 907 a n d 911], V iz a n tiis k ii V r e m e n nilc, V (1 9 5 2 ), 105-26; f o r o r ie n t a ti o n in t h e lo n g c o n tro v e rs y , se e A . A . V a s ilie v , ,‘T h e S e c o n d R u s s ia n A tta c k o n C o n s t a n t i n o p l e / ' D u m b a r to n O a k s P a p e r s , V I (1 9 5 1 ), 163-225, a n d H . G r é g o ir e , “ L 'h is t o ir e e t la lé g e n d e d 'O l e g , p r in c e d e K i e v / ' L a N o u v e lle C lio , I V (1 9 5 2 ), 281-87; cf. ib id ., 384-87.

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tions apply to scholars like Lazarev, who seem to follow the official trends with some reluctance. But when a Brunov traces back the silhouette of St. Sophia in Kiev to the shape of a prehistoric mound, it must be equally strongly assumed that he is only desperate, since he himself knows better. Between these extreme examples lies a whole gamut of cases where academic considerations are mingled in an ever varying degree with extraneous motives which on occasion culminate in hoaxes. For all that, we must avoid passing judgment on a situation where individuals may be exposed to pressures which we ourselves would not be able to withstand. W hat are then from the Western point of view, the contributions of recent Soviet scholarship to the problem of Russian-Byzantine cultural relations? If we define this problem as one of assessing the impact of Byzantine cuiture upon Russia, then these contributions are of necessity of a limited scope. Looking everywhere for manifestations ; of original Russian or Slavic genius, Soviet scholars may conceivably be successful in tackling anew still unsolved problems such as that of the glagolitic script or correcting exaggerations of previous research, whenever it stressed Byzantine influences too much. Such results, however, will be accidental and will be paralleled by misconceptions arising from the prescribed negativistic attitude. The main positive contribution which may be expected from Soviet scholarship lies in^ adducing new evidence to corroborate tTie thesis of the high level of autochthonous cultural development in Russia. Here certain results have been achieved. Recent excavations in Novgorod have yielded ample material, justifying a revision of our views on the extent of literacy among Russian artisans and merchants,122 and synthetic works like Rybakov's Handicrafts in Early Russia gave an impressive picture of the material culture of the early period. In this connection, certain plans of Soviet scholars— in particular that of ultimately publishing a corpus of early 122. See M. N . Tikhomirov, “Gorodskaya pismennost v drevnei Rusi XI-XIII vv.” [Urban literacy in early Russia of the eleventh to thirteenth century], TO D RL , IX (1 9 5 3 ), 51-66.

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Russian writings123— deserve general recognition. If carried out, they would benefit research in the Soviet sphere and the W est alike. In recent years, investigations of manuscript collections have grown in intensity, as has the number of articles in which complete manuscript evidence for a text is enumerated. Still, to be performed well, the task of singling out original achievements of Russian cuiture must be coupled with a thorough familiarity with its extraneous elements, which means a sound knowledge of things Byzantine. Unfortunately, Soviet scholars do not always meet this requirement, as witnessed by a number of factual errors contained in their works. Even when interesting finds are forthcoming, they are not put into their proper framework, since their Byzantine antecedents seem unknown to Soviet scholars. Such is the case of the “Oldest Russian Riddle‫ ״‬recently discovered on a fourteenthor fifteenth-century vessel in Novgorod, which is in fact a simple translation of a Byzantine one.124 Finer “Byzàntine‫ ״‬points in early Russian texts go unnoticed sometimes because of the inability of the commentators to cope with them. A propensity toward finding early Russian culture original and ancient may be reinforced by the relative innocence of one of its important roots. VIII In the preceding survey of trends predominant in Soviet scholarship no attempt has been made to correlate Soviet works in Byzantine-Russian relations with developments in other areas of Soviet historical studies, or with simultaneous Soviet political pronouncements. But it should be apparent from other chapters in this volume that the ultrapatriotic tone in this field is only one aspect of a uniform 123. C f . V . P . A d r ia n o v a - P e r e tts in T O D R L , V I ( 1 9 4 8 ) , 7. 124. P u b lis h e d in A . V . A rts ik h o v s k y a n d M . N . T ik h o m ir o v , N ov* gorodskie g ra m o ty n a bereste [ N o v g o ro d ia n d o c u m e n ts w r itte n o n b irc h b a rk ] (M o s c o w , 1 9 5 3 ) , 4 3 . C f . R . J a k o b s o n , ' 4V e s tig e s o f t h e e a rlie s t R u s s ia n v e r n a c u la r ," S lav ic W orld, V I I I ( 1 9 5 2 ) , 3 5 4 5 5 ‫ •־‬By* z a n t in e o rig in a l v e rs io n in C . F . G . H e n r ic i, “ G r ie c h is c h - B y z a n tin is c h e G e s p r ä c h s b ü c h e r u n d V e r w a n d te s . . . " A b h . der K ö n ig /. Sächsischen Akad. der Wissenschaften, phil.-hist. Klasse, X X V I I I , 8 ( 1 9 1 1 ) , 37, 6 6 .

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pattern. That the ultimate inspiration for laying out this pattern is political can be read in as many words in programmatic articles appearing in Voprosy Istorii, the organ which serves as a relay between the party and the community of Soviet historians. In 1948 and 1949 Voprosy Is- / torii had some very precise things to say against what was termed the mendacious version concerning the lack of originality of Russian culture and the exaggeration of Byzantine influences upon Russia.125 A Byzantinist is not qualified to juxtapose Soviet statements on Byzantine culture with Zhdanov’s anti-cosmopolitan pronouncements of 1946-47 or Stalin’s linguistic revelations of 19 50.126 This is a task for contemporary historians. But another type of correlation remains to be hinted at, that with past Russian historical thinking, espedally since the affinities may not always be felt by the Soviet scholars themselves. The anti-Normanist theory is not a Soviet,jiiventioh.‫׳‬ Nor is the attempt to connect thi^Russians” with peoples inhabiting the northern Black Sea shores in antiquity. As for the terms samobytnost and narodnost, so prominent in recent Soviet writings, they have a familiar ring for anyone even superficially acquainted with Russian nineteenthcentury thought. The insistence upon the originality of Russian culture is curiously related to the proposition, advanced by a Russian about 1867, that cultures do not borrow essential elements from one another. Thus, if we choose to remain within the .poshEctrine period, an ideal 125. “ P r o tiv o b y e k tiv iz m a v is to r ic h e s k o i n a u k e ,” V o p . Ist., I V , 12 (1 9 4 8 ), 3-12, e sp . 5-6, 10-11; “ O z a d a c h a k h s o v e ts k ik h is to rik o v v b o r b e s p ro y a v le n iy a m i b u r z h u a z n o i id e o lo g ic ” ib id ., V , 2 (1 9 4 9 ), 3-13, e sp . 4 ff-, 8 , 13. 126. A Byzantinist, however, cannot dispense with the knowledge of Stalin’s Marksizm i voprosy yazykoznaniya [Marxism and the problems of linguistics], if he is to grasp the finer points in recent Soviet publications on his subject. Likhachev’s chapter 4‘On the problem of the ‘Byzantine influence’ in Russia” (Vozniknovenie, 119 ff.) must be read along with Stalin’s pamphlet. It is also in this light that we can understand why literacy in Russia is said not to have had a class character and why stress is laid on the active quality of early Russia’s superstructure and the influence it exerted upon its base (Ocherki istorii SSSR, I (1 9 5 3 ), 2 0 6 ).

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scholarly genealogy may be traced between Lomonosov, a historian by avocation, HussiaY firsFanti-Normanist, who proudly pointed to the wars of Russia against the Byzantines and had the Slavs derive from the Sarmatians, the _Slaypphils like the writer and scholar K. S.. Aksakov, the Slavophil epigones Grigoryev and Danilevsky, and current Soviet scholarship. Of course, the Slavophils took an exf fremely pro-Orthodox and therefore pro-Byzantine stand, : mostly in order to create a counterweight against the corrupt West. But their construction simultaneously extolled Slavic, meaning Russian, autochthonous qualities, and was therefore somewhat contradictory. This contradiction was resolved in the Soviet anti-Western and anti-Byzantine theories of recent years. Both the Slavophils’ and Soviet scholars’ admiration for Lomonosov is no mere •chance,127 nor is it chance that an anti-Slavophil liberal literary historian of the last century like Pypin is frowned upon in v Soviet publications. For all its bizarrerie, the spectacle scholars have been witnessing for the past few years is to be taken seriously. This is a rewriting of the history of Russia’s origins such as has not been seen since the late fifteenth and sixteenth : centuries. At that time the activity passed almost unnoticed abroad. Only the sixteenth-century Polish poet Jan Kochanowski ironically referred to the historical validity of Ivan the Terrible’s claims to descent from Emperor Augustus.128 But Kochanowski’s seems to have been a lone 127. See K. S. Aksakov, “Lomonosov v istorii russkoi literatury i russkago yazyka‫[ ״‬Lomonosov in the history of Russian literature and the Russian language] (written in 1846) in Aksakov's Pol noe sobranie sochinenii, II, 23-389; and D . Gurvich, “M . V . Lomonosov i russkaya istoricheskaya nauka" [M. V . Lomonosov and Russian historical scholar* ship], Vop. Ist., V , 11 (1 9 4 9 ), 107*19. Lomonosov is especially praised for unmasking the “false objectivism" of his eighteenth-century German opponents and inveighing against their “cosmopolitanism" and “anti-patriotic attitude” (110, 113). Cf. also P. K. Alefirenko and E. P. Podyapolskaya, review of the sixth volume (published in 1952) of Lomonosov's Collected W orks, containing his historical writings, in Vop. Ist., IX, 9 (1 9 5 3 ), 136-41• 128. “Jezda do Moskwy” : [Ivan claims to be] “T h e fourteenth descendant of the Roman Emperor Augustus. W h o knows where he unearthed that chronicler.” Cf. /ana Kochanowskiego Dziela polskie, ed. Jan Lorentowicz (Warsaw, no d ate), I, 218.

FORMATION OF THE GREAT RUSSIAN STATE

voice. Today historians have the opportunity to watch the birth of a new vulgata!» and a ..duty to study its making 'closely.

7 THE FORMATION OF THE GREAT RUSSIAN STATE by Leo Yaresh

I The creation between the fourteenth and sixteenth cen- ‫■י‬ turies of a single Great Russian state with the principality of Moscow as its nucleus, and the further expansion of this state into a multi-national empire, is one of the centrai problems of Russian history. In the middle of the thirteenth century, the majority of the numerous principalities united by the Rurik dynasty were either raided or laid waste by the Tatar invasion, or had submitted and become vassals of the Tatar khans. The process of losing their independence, except for the W hite Russian principalities and the Novgorod territory, was accompanied by profound internal changes in their social structure. Politically, the principalities were increasingly dismembered into

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smaller territories, the so-called appanages, with the result that relations between the separate appanage princes resembled more and more those of an international nature. The development of the immunity rights of landowners gave this structure a still more pronounced feudal character, although conditional landownership, one of the basic features of feudalism, developed here much later, at a time when the other features of the feudal order were already disappearing. This process of feudalization and dismemberment was accompanied by a weakening of cultural ties, closed economic systems in the numerous principalities, and a severe restriction of their foreign trade. Gradually, however, forces began to operate within this disintegrating society which counteracted this trend, and by one means or another the principalities merged to form larger political units. The southwestern principalities achieved unity in the fourteenth century by absorption into the grand duchy of Lithuania, in which the old W hite Russian tongue became the official language. Similar tendencies toward the overcoming of feudal disintegration also existed in the Great Russian principalities in the north and northeast. But here it was uncertain for a long time which of the centers contending for supremacy would overcome the others and become the capital of a unified state. The chief contenders were Moscow, Tver, Novgorod the Great and, to a lesser degree, Ryazan. As we know, Moscow was victorious. It seems clear that, except for Ryazan, the rival centers differed to some degree in social systems and cultural and political orientations, and that the ascendancy or decline of each of them also meant the triumph or defeat of their respective characteristics. Thus Tver, as the capital of a grand principality which was a rival to Moscow, persistently sought to assert itself as the chief center of the Great Russian lands and differed from Moscow in its strong ties with its western neighbor, the grand principality of Lithuania. Similarly, the ties between Novgorod the Great and the Lithuanian princes with the Hanseatic League, and also with the Scandinavian countries, would in turn have

FORMATION OF THE GREAT RUSSIAN STATE

[19?

assured greater intimacy between Russia and the west Eu-*! ropean world through a victorious Novgorod. Moreover,! at the time when there was a tendency toward the weak‫;־‬ ening of the boyar social oligarchy, a political system of a more republican type such as that of Novgorod, might have stimulated the preservation of democratic elements in the development of Russian society to a much larger extent. Moscow's victory was achieved with the assistance of the Tatar khans, who failed to see in the Muscovite grand princes their future conquerors and rulers. The internal structure of the Muscovite principality, uniting the Russian lands under its authority, tended toward an increase in the power of the grand prince, a reduction in the influ‫־‬ enee of other organs of power, and a centralized levelling of the feudal diversity in the Russian territory now united around Moscow. The victory of the grand principality of Moscow was initiated by Vasily II (1425-62), and com‫־‬ pleted during the reigns of Ivan III (1462-1505) and Vasily III (1505-33). At the same time, subjection to the Tatars was finally ended. In the sixteenth century the Muscovite state, uniting under its authority all the lands of the Great Russian people, went on to annex numerous non-Russian territories. By the end of the sixteenth century the feudal remnants in the social and political structure of the country were destroyed and many of the feudal nobles killed. Moscow's victory over its Great Russian rivals and its j conquest of the Tatar lands prepared the ground for the ! establishment of a multi-national empire. During the period under examination, Moscow's strongest and most dan‫־‬/ gerous rival was the grand principality of Lithuania, which itself aspired to the same role. However, Lithuania's aliiance with Poland, the acceptance by the Lithuanian grand princes of the Polish crown, and the conversion of the Lithuanian princes and a considerable number of Lithuanian nobles to Catholicism, predetermined both the strengthening of west European influence in this state and at the same time the weakening of its chances for victory

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in the struggle for supremacy in an east European cultural and political environment.

II The period of the centralization of the Russian principalities under Moscow was described by a number of pre-revolutionary historians. Certain,of these devoted special attention to external political events, and above all to the struggle with and liberation from the Tatars. Others described the process of the unification of the Russian lands and sought to explain the reasons for Moscow's vietory. The favorable geographic situation which early made Moscow an important trade center was among the reasons noted. At the same time, it was shown that the Muscovite princes knew how to use the help of the Tatar Horde. Historians of law investigated a number of problems of the political structure of the Russian principalities in general and the Muscovite grand principality in particular. An event of particular importance was the publication at the beginning of the present century of the work of PavlovSilvansky, which postulated the existence in thirteenthand fourteenth-century Russia of a feudal social order differing only in detail from the feudal order of western Europe.1 For some years after the revolution of 1917, research devoted to this period continued along the lines of prerevolutionary methodology. Of particular value was Presnyakov's monograph on The Formation of the Great Rus~ sian State, in which the author insisted on the necessity of devoting special attention to the history of the strictly Great Russian lands, unobscured by an account of events in Kievan Russia. Presnyakov described the historical process in the lands of northeastern Russia in detail and paid special attention to the question of the accumulation of power by the princes, particularly those of Moscow. His 1. N. [F eu d al

alizm v

P . P a v lo v -S ilv a n sk y , Feodalnye otnosheniya v udelnoi Rusi re la tio n s in a p p a n a g e R u s s ia ] ( S t. P e te r s b u r g , 1 9 0 1 ) ; Feodd r e v n e i R u s i [ F e u d a lis m in e a rly R u s s ia ] ( S t. P e te r s b u r g , 1 9 0 7 ) •

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conclusion was that "the concentration of all power in the ‫ י‬hands of the Moscow sovereign was achieved by means of the factual demolition and the negation in principle of the forces of customary law in the interests of the patrimonial autocracy.2 ‫״‬ Equally significant was the study by the noted Russian historian Lyubavsky on The Formation of the Basic State Territory of the Great Russian People. In contrast to Presnyakov, Lyubavsky was not interested in the problem of " ‫״‬the strengthening of political power, but in the settling of the Great Russian principalities in the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries. Only in passing did he treat the broader questions, especially the reasons for the ascendancy of Moscow. In his opinion, the reason for this ascendancy : was the central position of Moscow in the Great Russian lands, which provided it with comparative security and, in turn, compelled Muscovite power to seek new territories for this population and thus forced it along the path of expansion. The author did not agree with the previouslyexpressed views on the influence of trade routes on Moscow's growth: "It is doubtful that the transit trade which passed through the Moscow principality was enough to occupy the broad masses of the local population and provide it with great material resources.3 ‫״‬ Both of these studies exhibit characteristic differences ‫ן‬ from subsequent Soviet historiography on the same subject., They are based on carefully collected, voluminous docu-j mentary material. They focus attention on individual [ events and phenomena, and analysis of these phenomena and events is not always provided, and if provided is scanty and cautious. The work of later Soviet historians dealing ‫י‬ with the period from the fourteenth to the beginning of 2 . A . E . P re s n y a k o v , O b r a z o v a n ie v e lik o ru s sk o g o g o sudarstva. O c h e r k i p o isto rii X I I I - X V s to le tii [ T h e F o r m a t io n o f t h e G r e a t R u s s ia n s ta te . E ssay s o n t h e h is to r y o f t h e t h i r t e e n t h to f if t e e n th c e n tu r ie s ] (P e tro * g ra d , 1 9 1 S ) , 4 5 8 . 3. M . K . L y u b a v s k y , O b r a z o v a n ie o s n o v n o i g o s u d a rs tv e rin o i terntorii velikoTusskoi narodnosti. Chast I. Z a s e /e n ie i obyedinenie tsentra [ T h e f o r m a tio n o f t h e b a s ic p o litic a l te r r ito r y o f t h e G r e a t R u s s ia n n a t io n . P a r t I. T h e s e t t l e m e n t a n d u n if ic a tio n o f t h e c e n te r ] ( L e n in g r a d , 1 9 2 9 ) , 38.

196

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the sixteenth centuries is to a large degree concerned with general conditions and general conclusions. Separate historical events^ facts and phenomena ,are, selected-more or *less to substantiate position^ that have already been stated. This is the source of the comparative weakness as well as the comparative strength of these works; strength insofar as phenomena and events can be better related to one another by a method of investigation based on comparative historical considerations. In this sense the Marxist method, with its one-sided point of view, led to certain « positive results. Finally, there is one more difference: the works of Presnyakov and Lyubavsky are not written in the emotional, patriotic style which characterizes contemporary Soviet historiography. They are sober and impartial and their authors, who doubtless had their own political convictions, did not consider it permissible publicly to reveal these convictions in their writings and make them the cornerstone of all research. In subsequent Soviet historiography on this period, Veselovsky is the only scholar who proceeds from a similar position of careful and limited historical research. He is the author of a short study of the origins of the patrimonial system of land tenure,4 two significant studies on the period of Ivan the Terrible,5 and a major work on Feudal Landholding in Northeastern Russia.6 The latter study is based on a great deal of research, but only the first volume has been published. Veselovsky has a tendency to divide his work into separate topics, insufficiently unified by a common interpretation. He nevertheless states his opinions on these topics with a scholarly caution which 4. S. B. Veselovsky, K voprosu o proiskhozhderni votchinnogo rezhima [On the question of the origin of the patrimonial system] (M oscow, 1926). 5. S. B. Veselovsky, “Pervyi opyt prcobrazovaniya tsentralnoi vlasti pri Ivane Groznom” [The first attempt to transform the central government under Ivan the Terrible], 1st. Zap., X V (1 9 4 5 ), 56-69; and “Poslednie udely v severo-vostochnoi Rusi” [The last appanages in northeastern Russia], ibid., XXII (1 9 4 7 ), 101-31. 6 ‫״‬. S. B. Veselovsky, Fcodalnoe zem/ev/adenie v severo-vostochnoi Rusi [Feudal landholding in northeastern Russia] (Moscow-Leningrad,

1947).

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stems to a certain extent from the work of Presnyakov and Lyubavsky, and makes his work stand out from the ordinary style of contemporary Soviet historical writing. Although the general views on historical events required by Marxism are undoubtedly to be found in Veselovsky’s works, they nevertheless evoked a number of criticisms. Even in the unsigned introduction to his work on feudal landholding, which was probably prepared by the administration of the Institute of History of the Soviet Academy of Sciences which published the book, it is pointed out that the author employed a number of “erroneous formulations” in discussing the decline of feudalism, in suggesting economic backwardness as one of the reasons for the formation of the Great Russian state, in defining immunity as emanating from juridical categories at a time when it was “in reality” one of the forms of exploitation, and in other matters. In a special review of Veselovsky’s monograph, Smirnov ascribed its methodological defects to the influence of “bourgeois” historiography.7 In particular, Veselovsky was found guilty of ignoring the teachings of classical Marxism on the forms of landholding in feudal society, and especially of not knowing that communal landholding was one of the prevailing forms of landowning in pre-feudal and early feudal society. Veselovsky was also accused of deriving the very conception of immunity only from conferral by royal authority and thus distorting its origins. In addition, Smirnov reproached Veselovsky. .for his failure to cite from the works of contemporary Soviet histonansT” III W ith regard to historical writing based on a Marxist j interpretation, it is important to note that in this field as in others some of the most significant work was done before 1917. Thus Rozhkov’s principal work was written before the revolution, although published shortly thereafter.8 ,■ 7. I. S m irn o v , “ S p o z its ii b u r z h u a z n o i is to rio g ra fii” [ F r o m t h e p o s itio n o f b o u rg e o is h is to r io g r a p h y ] , V o p . Is t., I V , 10 ( O c t ., 1 9 4 8 ) , 113*24• 8 . R o z h k o v , R u s s k a y a is to riy a , I I , I I I , a n d I V .

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1

In his view, the economic base of the political unification of the Great Russian principalities was to be found in the /development of internal trade, the establishment of a money economy, and the creation of an extensive domestic market. Similarly Marxist in interpretation, but rather pretentious and superficial, is Olminsky’s monograph on The Statef Bureaucracy, and Absolutism in Russian History.9 Of greater interest are the views of Pokrovsky, who discussed the question of the formation of a unified Russian state in a number of works of which his Russian History from the Earliest Times is the most important. In this work he referred to the period of feudalism in Russia in the following terms: Modern scholarship, in the main, attributes three characteristics to feudalism. These are, jirst of alI7 the_ prevalance of large-scale landowning; secondly, jh e "connection between landowning and political power — a connect10n~so close that in a fetfdai‫“־‬$ffcîëfy TFls impossible to imagine a landowner who was not in some degree a sovereign, or a sovereign who was not a large landowner; and thirdly, those peculiar relationships which existed between these landowner-soverèigns— the existence of a certain hierarchy of land“owners in which the smaller ones depended on the most powerful and on them, the still smaller, etc.— the entire system resembling a ladder. The question of whether feudalism existed in Russia comes down to the question as to whether these three basic features ,were present in early Russian society. If the answer is yes, then one may comment on the peculiarities of the Russian historical process as much as one likes, but it is necessary to admit the presence of feudalism in Russia.10 Pokrovsky described the Muscovite state of the fifteenth century as “a huge association of feudal landowners which swallowed up all the other associations owing to specially S. Aleksandrov], Gosudarstvo, Byurokratiya i absolyutizm v istorii Rossii [The state, bureaucracy and absolutism in Russian history] (1 ed., M oscow, 1910; 3 ed., 1925)• 10. Pokrovsky, Russ. ist. s drevn eishikh vremen, I, 30. 9. M.

Olminsky

[M.

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favorable conditions/' 11 He gave as the reasons for the victory of the Muscovite “association of feudal landawners‫ ״‬the favorable p ositional Moscow at the crossroads of trade, and the support of the Tatar Jkhans. Inasmuch as botlf of these explanations coincided with the views of some pre-revolutionary historians, and since the second was insufficiently patriotic, later Soviet critics of Pokrovsky's “mistakes‫ ״‬frequently referred to them with indignation. In his interpretation Pokrovsky paid little attention to the process of political unification and the accompanying destruction of feudal landowners in this period, and asserted that “W e only find political unity among the Great Russian people at the beginning of the seventeenth century under the influence of economic conditions, much later than 'the extinction of the last appanages.' 12‫ ״‬He believed that the destruction of feudal society was the resuit of the transformation of a natural economy into a trade economy and the creation of a much broader market, and he placed the destruction of the old Muscovite feudalism in the middle of the sixteenth century.13 In a later article he also differed from the earlier patriotic historians in noting the high percentage of Finns on the territoty of the Muscovite state, who had been subdued and denationalized by the Slavic conquest.14 It was in the period when Pokrovsky was still the lead-| ing Marxist historian that the first fragmentary observa‫!־‬ tions of Stalin on the Great Russian state were published; These appeared almost unnoticed at the time, but in later/ years they became “classics of Marxism‫ ״‬and Soviet his-;: torians had to take them as a guiding dogma in their research. As early as 1913 Stalin wrote: W hile in the W est the nations developed into states, in the East, multi-national states were formed, each consisting of several nationalities. Such for example 11. Ibid ., I, 121. 12. Ibid., I, 144*45• 13• Ibid., I, 204. 14. M. N . Pokrovsky, “Vozniknovenie Moskovskogo gosudarstva i ‘veliko-russkaya narodnost/ ” [The rise of the M uscovite state and the “Great Russian nationality‫]״‬, Ist.-Marks., X V III-X IX (1 9 3 0 ), 14*28.

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‫ ׳‬are Austria-Hungary and Russia. . . . In Russia, the role of welder of nationalities was assumed by the Great Russians, who were headed by an aristocratic military bureacracy, which had been historically formed and which was powerful and well-organized . . . This peculiar method of formation of states could take place only where feudalism has not yet been eliminated, where capitalism was feebly developed, where the nationalities which had been forced into the background had not yet been able to consoli.date themselves economically into integral nations.15 A number of mistakes in this statement should be noted. It is incorrect, for instance, to associate Austria-Hungary with Russia as a comparable political system. In reality, a large part of Austria-Hungary was a part of west European civilization, which cannot be said of Russia. Nor is it correct to contrast the “national‫ ״‬western European states with the multi-national ones of eastern Europe. In the process of the creation of England, France and Spain, we can also see multi-nationality and even multi-racial composition: the English, Scots, and Welsh Celts in England; inhabitants of Provence, the Bretons, and the French in France; the Castilians, Catalans, Galicians, and Basques in Spain. Finally, the reference to capitalism, even “weakly developed,‫ ״‬in connection with the formation of a Great Russian state (fifteenth and sixteenth centuries) contains elements of the teachings of Pokrovsky on “mercantilecapitalism‫ ״‬and violates Marx's conception of “socialeconomic formations.‫״‬ Stalin repeated these ideas in February, 1921, when he wrote: Wherever the formation of nations coincided by and large with the formation of centralized states, the nations naturally took on the state form and developed into independent bourgeois national states. This is what happened in England (without Ireland), France and Italy [sic]. In eastern Europe, on the contrary, the formation of centralized states, accelerated by the 15. Stalin, “Marksizm i natsionalnyi vopros” [Marxism and the national question], Sochincniya, II, 303*4.

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[2 0 1

needs of self-defense (invasion by the Turks, Mongols, etc.), took place before the elimination of feudalism, i.e., before the formation of the nation. In view of this fact, nations did not develop here and could not develop into national states, but formed several mixed, multi-national bourgeois states usually comprising one powerful, dominating nation and a number of weak subordinate ones. Such were Austria, Hungary, Russia.16 One month later the same statement was repeated nearly word for word by Stalin in his report to the Tenth Party Congress.17 Although there is no direct reference to “capitalism‫״‬ this time, the fact that Stalin speaks of “bourgeois multinational states‫ ״‬in referring to the time of formation of multi-national states, makes it clear that he is repeating the same idea. This time, however, his definition is supplemented by mention of the reason for the formation of the multi-national state, which in his opinion is the interest of mutual self-defense. In 1927, Stalin dropped his reference to the “bourgeois‫״‬ character of the newly-formed Russian state and to the “capitalism‫ ״‬attributed to this period. He did not refute himself, but simply changed the formulation by omitting the reference to capitalism. Referring to the statement in 1921 cited above, Stalin wrote: “I only said that the proc- ’ ess of the formation of a centralized state in eastern Europe, because of the need for defense, proceeded at a more rapid pace than the process of drawing the people together into a nation, and because of this, multi-national states were formed before the elimination of feudalism.18 ‫״‬ It must be remembered that under conditions where all 16. Stalin, “Ob ocherednykh zadachakh partii v natsionalnom voprose: tezisy k X syezdu R K P (b ), utverzhdennye TsK partii" [On the next tasks of the party in the national question: theses for the tenth congress of the R C P (b ), approved by the Central Com m ittee of the party], ibid., V , 15-16. 17. Stalin, “Doklad ob ocherednykh zadachakh partii v natsionalnom voprose” [Report on the next tasks of the party in the national question], ibid., V , 33-4. 18. Stalin, “Pismo k tt. Tsvetkovu i Alypovu” [Letter to comrades Tsvetkov and Alypov], ibid., IX , 176.

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of Stalin’s statements were accepted as obligatory dogma, these brief observations became before long an essential part of all interpretations of the formation of a centralized Russian state. This applied particularly to the 1927 statement associating the formation of the Russian state with the feudal epoch and explaining the resultant “anomaly.” IV For some years after the death of Pokrovsky no great interest was shown in the centralization of the Great Russian state from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries. By the eve of the Second World War, however, the changed political situation helps to account for the renewed interest of Soviet scholars in this period. This development was facilitated by a recognition on the part of the political authorities of the exceptional importance of the state system in general, and of the significance of a new appraisal of the Russian state as a basis for the building of the new Soviet society. The example of the centralizing tendencies of the Muscovite principality was particularly valuable from the point of view of the political leaders of a Soviet state in which centralization was consistently practiced. The new interpretation stood out in sharp contrast to the views of Pokrovsky, who had stressed the economic causes of the process of unification, tended to emphasize the negative aspects of the process, and in his writings opposed all nationalistic tendencies. It was now necessary to acclaim all manifestations of the successes and strengthening of the Russian state, and the significance of defense as a cause of unification was emphasized. At the same time, the elements of “class struggle” in this period were not particularly stressed, and the significance of Tatar aid and influence was minimized. In general, the new interpretation was closer to that of the pre-revolutionary historians than to Pokrovsky’s. Moreover the new interpretation also defined as “feudal” the entire period to the middle of the nineteenth *

FO R M A TIO N O F TH E GREAT RUSSIAN STATE

[20?

century, again in contrast to Pokrovsky’s views. This confronted historians with a serious dilemma, since the “dassics of Marxism” at the same time stipulated that centralized states are created after the destruction of feudalism. Soviet scholars were forced to meet this problem as best they could by relying on Stalin’s authority, without opposing either of these contradictory positions. One of the first historians to challenge Pokrovsky’s views was Efremov, who wrote: The gathering of the Russian lands under the authority of Moscow had progressive significance, since the creation of a centralized state, uniting under its authority territories populated by Great Russians, represented a great step ahead in comparison with appanage-feudal dismemberment. The struggle of the Muscovite princes against the Tatars, which terminated in 1480 with the destruction of the Tatar yoke, also had progressive significance: the necessity for selfdefense also accelerated the formation of a centralized state.19 This assertion corresponded to Stalin’s formulation of the reason for the early formation of a centralized state in eastern Europe and in general remains the currently accepted view. The official case against Pokrovsky was also presented by Bakhrushin, Bazilevich, Nasonov and Mavrodin.20 19. P. Efremov, “Moskovskoe gosudarstvo nakanune sotsialnogo krizisa nachala XV II v.” [The Muscovite state on the eve of the social crisis at the beginning of the seventeenth century], Borba Klassov, N o. 5 (1 9 3 6 ), 16. 20. S. V . Bakhrushin, “Feodalnyi poryadok- v ponimanii M . N . Pokrovskogo” [The feudal order as conceived by M. N . Pokrovsky], Piotiv kontseptsii Pokrovskogo, I, 117-39; K. V . Bazilevich, “Torgovyi kapital izm i genezis Moskovskogo samoderzhaviya v rabotakh M. N . Pokrovskogo [Merchant capitalism and the genesis of M uscovite autocracy in the works of M . N . Pokrovsky], ibid., I, 140-78; A. N. Nasonov, “Tatarskoe igo na Rusi v osveshchenii M . N . Pokrovskogo” [The Tatar yoke on Russia as described by M. N . Pokrovsky], ibid., II, 59-90; and V . Mavrodin, “Iskazhenie M. N . Pokrovskim istorii obrazovaniya Russkogo gosudarstva” [The distortion by M . N . Pokrovsky of the history of the formation of the Russian state], Uchenye Z apiski Leningradskogo Gosudarstvennogo Universiteta, N o. 19 (1 9 3 8 ), 163-85.

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Representative of the new interpretation is the work of Mavrodin, who explains the stated position of Russian historiography and the indications of historical sources to the effect that the feudal landowning nobility itself in no small way contributed to the elimination of feudal dismemberment. This was achieved bvj the nobilitv’s “desire . . . to create a strong authority at the head of the entire feudal hierarchy which, sweepng away partitions between the principalities which had made it impossible for feudal lords of other principalities to seize runaway peasants on an unlimited, ‘all-Russian" scale, would secure, strengthen and preserve their right to the land and the peasants.21 ‫״‬ This explanation is ingenious, however little it is supported by historical sources. The cause of the Muscovite principality's victory over its rivals and opponents, according to Mavrodin, is to be found in a combination of different reasons: the density of the population, a favorable geographic position, the close family ties of the princely dynasty, the support of the church, and the successful policy toward the Tatar Horde. However, even while the Muscovite principality was gathering the feudal lands, it was overcoming its own feudal dismemberment only very slowly.22 The successful struggle of Prince Dmitri Donskoi and his successors against the Tatars secured the predominance of Moscow in the fourteenth centur^ The reforms of the great princes, Ivan III and Vasily III,'which transformed the system of administration, created the cadres of a professional bureaucracy, secured economic unification by the creation of a single monetary system, and introduced the first legal norms binding on all of the Great Russian territory, created a firm basis for a single Great Russian state. How then is the process of unification to be appraised? Mavrodin answers as follows: ‫׳״‬

21. V . V . Mavrodin, Obrazovanic edinogo russJcogo gosudarstva [The formation of a unified Russian state] (Leningrad, 1 9 5 1 ) , 59; Mavrodin lias also published two briefer works in this field: Obrazovanic russkogo natsionalnogo gosudarstva [The formation of the Russian national state] (Moscow-Lcningrad, 1 9 3 9 ); and Formirovanie russkoi natsii [The forming of the Russian nation] (Leningrad, 1 9 4 7 ). 2 2. Mavrodin, Obrazovanic edinogo russkogo gosudarstva, 98.

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Inasmuch as the state of Ivan III and Vasily III set as its primary task to hold in check the peasantry and the artisans, that is, the exploited majority, introduced St. George’s Day, created the Law Code of 1497, encouraged feudal exploitation and_usury, : dooming the masses to misery and a lack of rights, so the masses, the producers of material wealth, struggled ) against the feudal lords, opposed authority and the' state, took flight and “banded together,” joined the “heretics” and stirred uprisings. But the creation of a powerful state helped defend Russian soil against the attacks of other states, against any and all “foes,” helped preserve the independence of Russia, helped throw off the strangling chains of the Tatar yoke, helped recapture Russian lands from the Tatars and Lithuanians, furthered the formation of the Great Russian nation, the growth and strengthening of the rich and many-sided culture of the Russian people.23 Such being the case, “The Russian people had an interest in the results achieved by Ivan III.” 24 However, does not this assertion by contemporary Soviet historians of the progressive character of the formation of a unified Russian state require simultaneous justification of the formation of such western European states as England, France and Spain, and recognition that “the English, French, Spanish and other peoples” had an interest in their creation? Does it not also require an expianation as to why a national— and then multi-national— state in some cases should be justified while the analogous attempts of the “Lithuanians” (W hite Russians) or Tatars, referred to in the citation just mentioned, must be condemned? If we follow Mavrodin’s reasoning, should not the supposedly misguided opposition of the Russian “masses” to the basically positive actions of the state also be condemned? On the whole, Mavrodin’s book is a detailed exposition of events and phenomena from the fourteenth to the beginning of the sixteenth centuries, based on sources and material already known. 23. Ib id ., 310.

24. Ib id ., 311.

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The work of Bazilevich on foreign policy in the second half of the fifteenth century uses some new sources, but is based largely on those already known. The introductory section in large measure deals with problems of an economic nature. According to Bazilevich, “Although political dismemberment was largely overcome with the unification of the Russian lands around Moscow and the development of a centralized state system at the end of the fifteenth century and the beginning of the sixteenth, the economic dismemberment characteristic of a feudal economy was only eliminated finally in the seventeenth century in the process of the formation of an all-Russian market.25 ‫ ״‬The process of overcoming political dismemberment accelerated the process of economic development of the country: “If the development of the productive forces, evident from the end of the fourteenth century, contributed to the success of the unification policy of Moscow, so, in its turn, the formation of a single Russian state created favorable conditions for its economic development.26 ‫״‬ Another interesting work on the period with which we are concerned is an article by Porshnev on Russia's place in the European state system. The author believes that: W hile Russia was working itself free from [Tatar] bondage, with which European progress was purchased, Europe not only did not come to her aid, but painstakingly erected against her what later came to be called “the eastern barrier." This barrier was originally composed of that offshoot of the German empire, the Teutonic-Livonian order, papacy-supported Poland, and finally, many Russian, Ukrainian and W hite Russian principalities split off from the rest of Russia and artificially set against it under the name 25. K. V . Bazilevich, Vneshnaya p o litik a russkogo tse n tra lizo v a n n o g o V to ra ya p o io vin a X V veka [The foreign policy of the Russian centralized state. T h e second half of the fifteenth century] (M oscow, 1952), 18; Bazilevich is also author of O b ra zo v a n ic russkogo n a tsio n a ln o g o gosudarstva. Iva n I I I [The formation of the Russian national state. Ivan III] (M oscow, 1946). 26. Bazilevich, Vncshnyaya politika russkogo tse n tra lizo v a n n o g o gosu‫־‬

gosudarstva.

darstva, 19.

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of the Grand Principality of Lithuania, although according to the basic composition of the population, according to culture and even official language, it was Russian, not Lithuanian.27 W hat then was the purpose of this barrier? The author replies: “The purpose of the ‘eastern barrier’ system was not so much to defend European progress from Asiatic backwardness as it was to maintain Russia’s backwardness, at any cost to prevent her from making up for lost time and so not allow her to realize her historic right to take part in the life of Europe.” 28 Porshnev thinks that the reactionary elements of European society, and the Holy Roman Empire in particular, were especially interested in the isolation of Russia. One cannot deny the ingenuity of this position, which reverses the hitherto existing view that it was Muscovite Russia which tried to isolate itself from Europe and hinder the penetration of western European cultural influence into its territory. W hat is not clear is just how the author expects to cope with the historical facts, especially with, the plentiful evidence of the Moscow government’s active; opposition to the intercourse of its peoples with western European culture. As long as these facts exists the “eastern! barrier” will face riot from W est, to East, but from East to West. W hy exactly did the reactionary elements of western Europe fear the entrance of the Muscovite state into the life of Europe? Because,. Porshnev thinks, Russian pressure on Europe aided Europe’s revolutionary forces.29 Reeognizing, however, the necessity of somehow reconciling Muscovite Russia of the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries, far from an ideal structure from the point of view of a contemporary Marxist historian, with its function of aid27. B. F. Porshnev, “K voprosu o meste Rossii v sisteme evropeiskikh gosudarstv v X V -X V III vekakh” [On the problem of Russia's place in the European state system in the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries], U c h e n y e Z a p is k i A k a d e m ii O b s h c h e s tv e n n y k h N a u k [Transactions of the Academy of Social Science] (M oscow, 1 9 4 8 ), Voprosy v se o b s h c h e i isto rii [Problems of general history], 7. 2 8 . Ib id ., 7. 29. I b id ., 12.

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ing the “European revolution/’ Porshnev creates a theory which distinguishes between the objective and subjective significance of the “Russian danger.” “Objectively,” he writes, “Russian pressure on Europe aided revolution, but subjectively Russia not only was not an ally of the révolutionists, that is, the most progressive elements of European society, but on the contrary, the Moscow government was profoundly indignant with the seditious Dutch ‘muzhiks’ and inflicted as much damage on them as was possible in the diplomatic field . . . Only in the event that its own social structure had been progressive would its blows on the blank wall of Europe have blended with the blows from within and the forces of European reaction have inevitably collapsed.” 30 Only Russia’s need to concentrate its basic forces at first for defense against the East, and afterwards to advance in the East, permitted western Europe to consolidate its reactionary forces.31 The author, unfortunately, does not explain why Russian “pressure” on western Europe would have led to the victory of revolution.32 V The position of contemporary Soviet scholarship in regard to this period is revealed by a lively debate that took place in 1946 in the leading historical journal. It began with an article bv the noted Soviet historian, P. P. Smirnov, who asserted that the reasons for the political success of the Muscovite principality lay in the radical changes introduced in the methods of agricultural production. These changes were, in his opinion, the introduction of the three-field system and the invention of the plow. The Muscovite princes were good proprietors, especially Prince Ivan Kalita, and their economic power created the necessary condition for the attainment of political hegemony. Favorable economic conditions attracted landowners, peasants and artisans to the Muscovite principality, according to this writer. Therefore, it was “not a favorable position '

j

30. Ibid., 12.

31. Ibid., 9.

32. Ibid., 18.

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on the trade routes, not the collection of tolls from transient merchants, and, of course, not deceit and cheating which enriched the Muscovite princes, but the plough, scythe and manure on the peasant's field." 33 “In Moscow there was something for everyone to do and bread was cheap. . . . Here the slaves went freely and St. George's day was promised to all the peasants. Moscow became the economic, state and national center of the country." 34 Smirnov's interesting, although often controversial artieie provoked a lively debate in which, on the whole, the participating scholars subjected his views to criticism. The first of these, a namesake of the author, I. Smirnov, wrote a reply which asserted that this interpretation was purely speculative in nature: Having proclaimed the thesis that the appearance of a Russian national state was the result of the development of the productive forces, a growth which brought about changes in the political order, P. P. Smirnov develops a directly contradictory point of view in the concrete part of his presentation by portraying the growth of productive forces itself— the invention of the plow and the development of the fallow land system— as a consequence of the policy of Ivan Kalita, conditioned in its turn by such a manifestly political factor as the Tatar tribute.35 The conclusion: “Smirnov's experiment in creating a new theory of the formation of a Russian centralized state should be recognized as unsuccessful." 36 Mavrodin agreed with P. P. Smirnov that “in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries great improvements take place in the agricultural economy of northeastern Rus33. P. P. Smirnov, “Obrazovanie russkogo tsentralizovannogo gosudarstva v X IV -X V v.v.” [The formation of a Russian centralized state in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries], V op. Ist., II, 2-3 (1 9 4 6 ), 89. 34. Ibid., 90. 35. I. Smirnov, “O putyakh issledovaniya russkogo tsentralizovannogo gosudarstva” [On the lines of research concerning the Russian centralized state], Vop. I s t, II, 4 (1 9 4 6 ), 36. 36. Ibid., 43.

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s ia /'37 but asserted that the dating of the introduction of the three-field system in the fourteenth century is unfounded. Moreover, Mavrodin considered it inadmissible, that the formation of the Russian state was brought about by an increase in the productivity of agriculture: “There is no direct road riom the plow to the state; connecting ‘Im H ^re‫ ״‬necessary.” 38 Smirnov, in this critic's opinion, underestimated the importance of the development of the towns, and did not understand the decisively important fact that ja strong authority was needed b j the jEeudal landowners to strengthen ìheir power over the exploited majority. Smirnov also underestimated, according to Mavrodin, the significance of the awakening of a Russian national consciousness: “Russia awakened, its strength grew, national consciousness matured. This is why all progrèssive elements of the old Russian society . . . gravitated toward the Grand Prince who personified the unity of Russia, with the course of time concretely— towards the Prince of Moscow." 39 In another contribution to this debate, Yushkov noted Smirnov's error in attempting to ignore completely the geographic factors, and especially the trade routes, which contributed to the strengthening of the Muscovite principality. He also found it inadmissible to ignore the question of the formation of a Great Russian nationality simultaneously with the creation of the Great Russian state.40 Finally, Bazilevich pointed out that Smirnov's conception was contrary to historical facts since agriculture in the Muscovite principality was less developed than in its rivals, Novgorod and Tver, and the material means of 37. V . V . M a v ro d in , “ N e sk o lk o z a m e c h a n ii p o p o v o d u sta ty i P . P . S m irn o v a ‘O b ra z o v a n ie russk o g o tse n tra liz o v a n n o g o g o su d a rstv a v X I V X V v .v / ” [S o m e re m a rk s o n th e a rtic le b y P . P . S m irn o v o n “ T h e fo rm a tio n o f a R u ssia n c e n tra liz e d s ta te in th e f o u r te e n th a n d fifte e n th c e n tu rie s “ ], V o p . Ist., I I , 4 ( 1 9 4 6 ) , 4 9 . 38. I b id ., 50. 39. I b id ., 52. 4 0 . S. Y u sh k o v , “ K v o p ro su o b o b ra z o v a n ii russkogo g o su d a rstv a v X IV -X V I v e k a k h ” [O n t h e q u e s tio n o f t h e fo rm a tio n o r th e R u ssia n s ta te in th e f o u r te e n th to s ix te e n th c e n tu rie s ], V o p . Ist., I I , 4 ( 1 9 4 6 ) ,

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Moscow were acquired precisely from adversaries subject to or weaker than it. In Bazilevich's opinion, the history of the formation of the Russian state should be divided into three periods. The first period, the first half of the fourteenth century, was a time of the strengthening of the Moscow principality. This strengthening “had not yet destroyed those interrelations on which the entire political system of the grand principality of Vladimir rested." 41 The second period— the second half of the fourteenth century and the first half of the fifteenth— saw the destruction of the Vladimir principality and the gradual elimination of the appanage princely estates. In the Muscovite principality this liquidation of appanages took place earlier than in the other principalities. The extemal danger transformed the Prince of Moscow into the representative of the national principle. During the third period, the second half of the fifteenth and the first quarter of the sixteenth centuries, the productive forces of the country came into conflict with the feudal principles. A single state was created, and the process of its creation was accelerated by the external danger— an idea suggested by Stalin. In the interpretation of Bazilevich the vassal relations of the feudal landowners were now replaced by the relations of taxpayers to the monarch, and organs of a central administration were created. VI Soviet historical writing on this period has been concemed primarily with problems of interpretation, and relatively little original research has been done. Even in the task of interpretation, the requirements of non-objectivity and of uncritical nationalism imposed by party and state have not permitted very satisfactory results. At the same time a few Soviet scholars, working in specialized fields, 4 1 . K . B a z ile v ic h , “ K v o p ro su o b isto ric h e s k ik h u slo v iy ak h o b raz o v an iy a R ossiiskogo g o su d a rstv a ” [O n th e q u e s tio n o f th e h isto ric a l c o n d itio n s o f th e fo rm a tio n o f th e R u ss ia n s ta te ], V o p . I s t , I I , 7 ( 1 9 4 6 ) , 43•

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have made important contributions to our knowledge of this period. New and interesting materials have been unearthed and searching analyses of the sources have been made. The special emphasis of Soviet scholars on the significance of economic factors has also led to a new understanding of the changes in Russian social and political life from the fourteenth to the first half of the sixteenth centuries, resulting from the decline of feudal political relations. An outstanding contribution is the work of Cherepnin on the archives of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries which, although highly specialized, is fortunately combined with a general characterization of the period. In this characterization, the author tries to present his own views within the framework of the official Soviet interpretation. This is especially apparent in his attempt to divide the formative years of the centralized Russian state into periods and to justify such a division. He writes: The history of the unification of the Russian lands around Moscow as the political and cultural center and the formation of a centralized Russian state can be divided into several basic stages. The first extends from the end of the thirteenth century to the second half of the fourteenth century; the second embraces the period from the second half of the fourteenth century to the second quarter of the fifteenth century; the third falls in the second quarter of the fifteenth century; the fourth begins in the middle fifties and ends in the eighties of the fifteenth century.42 During the first period, Cherepnin believes, the lack of a single market facilitated the political dismemberment of the Russian lands. Opposing tendencies towards unification were strengthened by the need to concentrate forces 4 2 . L. V . C h e r e p n in , R u ssin e fe o d a ln y e a rk h iv y X /V - X V vekov [R u ssian fe u d a l arch iv es o f th e fo u r te e n th a n d fifte e n th c e n tu rie s] (2 vols., M o sco w , 1 9 4 8 -5 1 ), I I , 386; h e is also th e a u th o r o f “ Iz isto rii d rev n e-ru ssk ik h fe o d a ln y k h o tn o s h e n ii X IV -X V I v .v .” [F ro m t h e histo ry o f early R u ssian fe u d a l re la tio n s fro m th e fo u r te e n th to t h e s ix te e n th c e n tu rie s ], 1s t Z a p ., IX ( 1 9 4 0 ) , 31-80.

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for the struggle against the Tatars. It was in this period that the Muscovite principality gained first place. In the second period a number of economic changes can be observed. W e see the growth of the social division of labor, the augmentation of land held feudally, the intensified exploitation of the peasants, and the strengthening of their subjection to the feudal landowner. Limitation of the immunities of the landowners began at the same time. During this period the importance of the Muscovite principality grew, it increased its territory, secured predominance over other Great Russian lands and entered upon the struggle with the foreign enemies of the Russian people: the Tatars and the “Lithuanians.” The third period encompasses the creation of a unified feudal monarchy. The formation of the territory of a single Great Russian state is completed in the fourth period. In this period a single general public law is created, and measures are taken for the centralization of the administration and courts. The country frees itself from subjection to the Tatars. The development of conditional landowning proceèds, accompanied by further limitations on the freedom of the peasants.43 This periodization contains much that is good if we ignore the desire, come what may, to make economic phenomena the basis of division. Cherepnin's work adds new sources and works to those that are already known. It is undoubtedly interesting and solid research of the type which makes a permanent contribution to scholarship, and the author's adherence to the established scheme in Soviet historiography does n o t adversely affect that part of his monograph which is purely research. It has been noted that the chief rivals of the Muscovite principality in the drive for unification were Novgorod, Tver and the grand principality of Lithuania. To them should be added the political organization which for two centuries united these principalities and in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries still tried to defend this union 4 3 . C h e r e p n in , R u s s k ie fe o d a ln y e a ik h iv y , I I , 386-9 3 .

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against insurrection and revolt. This was the Tatar state, the Golden Horde, which maintained its yoke on Russia from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries. Two interesting volumes co-authored by Grekov and Yakubovsky are devoted to its history and the history of its struggle with the Russian principalities and especially with the Muscovite principality.44 Yakubovsky’s contributions to these volumes are particularly valuable, and provide much original material on the once-mighty state of the Tatarspeaking Mongols.45 On the other hand the work of Grekov in this field, which deals more specifically with the relations of the Tatars to the Great Russian principalities, contains almost nothing that is new and is generally superfidai.46 Other valuable contributions to scholarship in specialized fields in this period include several works on Novgorod,47 and others on a variety of topics.48 Many articles on this period in scholarly journals nevertheless frequently 4 4 . B . G re k o v a n d A . Y ak u b o v sk y , Z o lo ta y a O r d a (o c h e rk isto rii U 1usa D z h u c h i v p e r io d slo zh en iya i rastsv eta v X I I I - X I V v .v .) [ T h e G o ld e n H o r d e (a sk e tc h o f th e h is to ry o f U lu s D z h u c h in t h e p e rio d o f its fo rm a tio n a n d p ro sp e rity in th e th ir te e n th a n d f o u r te e n th c e n tu r ie s ) ] (L e n in g ra d , 1 9 3 7 ) , p u b lis h e d also in a F re n c h e d itio n (P a ris, 1 9 3 9 ) ; a n d Z o lo ta y a O rd a i e e p a d e n ie [T h e G o ld e n H o r d e a n d its fall] ( M o sc o w -L e n in g ra d , 1 9 5 0 ) , w h ic h is a n e n la rg e d a n d rev ised e d itio n o f th e fo rm e r v o lu m e . 4 5 . Yakubovsky wrote the chapters on “T he G olden Horde" in both

volumes, and the new chapter on “T he fall of the Golden Horde" in the second volume. 4 6 . G re k o v c o n tr ib u te d th e c h a p te rs o n “ T h e G o ld e n H o rd e a n d R u ss ia " in b o th v o lu m e s. 4 7 . D . L ik h a c h e v , N o v g o r o d V e lik i [N o v g o ro d th e G re a t] (L e n in g ra d , 1 9 4 5 ) ; A . V . A rtsik h o v sk y , “ K isto rii N o v g o ro d a ” [O n th e h isto ry o f N o v g o ro d ], 1st. Z a p ., II ( 1 9 3 8 ) , 1 0 8-31; I. L . P e re lm a n , “ N o v g o ro d skaya d e re v n y a v X V -X V I v .v .” [T h e N o v g o ro d c o u n try s id e in th e fifte e n th a n d s ix te e n th c e n tu rie s ], 1st. Z a p ., X X V I ( 1 9 4 8 ) , 1289 7 ; a n d A . M o n g a it a n d G . F e d e ro v , “ V o p ro sy isto rii V e lik o g o N o v g o ro d a " [P ro b le m s in th e h isto ry o f N o v g o ro d th e G r e a t] , V o p . 1s t., V I , 9 ( 1 9 5 0 ) , 105-19. 4 8 . B . T ik h o m iro v , “ K v o p ro su o g e n ez ise i k h a ra k te re im m u n ite ta v fe o d a ln o i R u s i" [O n th e q u e s tio n o f th e g e n esis a n d c h a ra c te r o f im m u n ity in fe u d a l R u ssia ], Ist.-M a rk s., I l l , N o . 55 ( 1 9 3 6 ) , 3-25; I. I. S m irn o v , “ V o sto c h n a y a p o litik a V asiliy a I I I " [T h e e a ste rn p o licy o f V asily I I I ] , 1st. Z a p ., X X V I I ( 1 9 4 8 ) , 18-66; th e w ork o f D . L ik h a c h e v o n R u ssia n c u ltu re in th is p e rio d is d isc u sse d in C h a p te r Six.

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tend to be very general and even popular in character.49 This criticism applies in particular to the six-volume History of Moscow, in which the formation of the Russian state is treated by Tikhomirov in an essay of a very general character.50 It applies also to the elaboration of this theme in the multi-volume Essays on the History of the U .SS.R .51 4 9 . S. V . B a k h ru s h in , 4‘M o sk v a — ts e n tr , o b y e d in y a y u sh c h ii ru ssk ii n a ro d ” [M o sco w — th e c e n te r, u n itin g th e R u ss ia n p e o p le ], Izv e stiy a A N S S S R , V , 4 ( 1 9 4 8 ) , 3 2 3 -3 6 ; M . N . T ik h o m iro v , “ N a c h a lo v o zv y sh en iy a M o sk v y ‫[ ״‬T h e b e g in n in g o f M o sc o w 's a sc e n d a n c y ], ib id ., I , 3 ( 1 9 4 4 ) , 9 7 -1 0 8 ; N . Y ak o v lev , 44D m itr i D o n s k o i” [D m itri o f th e D o n ] , 1s t Z h u m ., N o . 5 ( 1 9 4 2 ) , 1 3 8 -4 5 ; S. B e z b a k h , “ K u likovskaya b itv a ” [T h e b a ttle o f K u lik o v o ], ib id ., N o . 1 ( 1 9 3 8 ) , 52-60; V . G a lk in , 44V e lik o e m o sk o v sk o e k n y a z h e stv o ” [ T h e g ra n d p rin c ip a lity o f M o s c o w ], ib id ., N o . 9 ( 1 9 3 8 ) , 4 8 -6 2 ; a n d V . L . S n e g irev , Iv a n T r e tii i ego vrem ya : o b ra z o v a n ie ru ssk o g o n a tsio n a ln o g o g o su d a istv o [Iv a n th e T h ir d a n d h is tim e s : t h e fo rm a tio n o f t h e R u ssia n n a tio n a l sta te ] (M o s c o w , 1 9 4 2 ) . 50. M . N . Tikhomirov, in Istoriya M o s k v y [History of M oscow], I , P e rio d fe o d a lizm a X I I - X V I I v.v. [Period of feudalism from the twelfth to the seventeenth centuries] (M oscow, 1 9 5 2 ) , 26 -8 0 . 51. O c h e rk i isto rii S S S R : P e rio d fe o d a lizm a I X -X V w . [Essays on th e

history of the U.S.S.R.: the period of feudalism from the ninth to the fifteenth centuries], I I (M oscow, 1 9 5 3 ) , 2 5 -2 7 0 .

8

IVAN THE TERRIBLE AND THE O P R IC H N IN A by Leo Yaresh

I “The entire upper stratum of the population was removed and taken to Moscow, while alien newcomers took its place. All local peculiarities and traditions were completely uprooted— with such success that no heroic legends of the past have been preserved in the popular memory. The small homelands lost the historical coloration which is so characteristic of them everywhere in France, Germany and England. All Russia merged into Muscovy, the monotonous territory of a centralized authority. . . .” 1 It is with these words that the talented Russian historian and journalist Fedotov, who recently died in the United States, described the process of overcoming feudal fragmentation and creating a centralized state in Russia. In referring to the liquidation of the “small homelands" in the sixteenth 1. G . P . F e d o to v , N o v y i g rad : sb o rn ik sta te ! [T h e n e w city : c o lle c tio n o f a rtic le s], ed . b y Y u . P . Ivask (N e w Y o rk , 1 9 5 2 ) , 14 7 .

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century, Fedotov had in mind primarily the creation of a unified Russian state. However, in the mid-sixteenth century it was no longer a question merely of Russia, a circumstance of which Soviet historical science has taken note. A unified, centralized, multi-national state of eastern Europe as a whole was being created. Something unknown to the W est thus came into being: a great multi-national empire, based on the principle of centralization and of the subordination of local national cultures to the united, dominant culture of this centralized empire.. Obviously, this process had its political, geographical and psychological foundations an^d causes. Moreover, it cannot be related merely to one historical figure or several, merely to one decade or several. However, in seeking the culminating point in this process one inevitably chooses the age of Ivan IV, known as the Terrible, who was born“ in 1530 and reigned from 1533 until his death in 1584. !}The basis for this is not only that it was Ivan who carried out in a most drastic fashion the policy of destroying the local feudal centers and physically annihilating the bearers of the feudal traditions, but also that it was during his reign that the Russian state advanced beyond its national frontiers and launched a policy of conquering and annexing to Russia the other nationalities of eastern, Europ^^Fhe events of the mid-sixteenth century in Russia were only an episode and the personality of Tsar Ivan IV himself was a chance expression of certain psychological traits, but those events and that personality lent a certain tone to the transitional era which directed eastern Europe onto a definite path of historical development. This is what makes them important and interesting. It also explains the attention paid to Ivan and his age by pre-revolutionary and by contemporary Soviet historiography, and it should endow this period and this question with interest for historians everywhere. Ascending the throne while still a child upon the death of his father Vasily III in 1533, Ivan IV was at first a nominal ruler, with power wielded in his name first by his mother, then by warring groups of boyars, which

‫יי־‬

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rapidly succeeded one another. Casting off the influence of these groups upon attaining his young manhood, Ivan displayed his initiative above all in the choice of his advisers who, under the name of the Selected Council, directed the country from 1549 to 1559. The period in which Ivan ruled with the aid of the Selected Council was one that witnessed a whole series of administrative, judicial, financial and ecclesiastical reforms. These included the creation of a unified code of laws for the entire country— the Sudebnik of 1550— the reorganization of military affairs and military service, and the establishment of a ramified and cumbersome but extremely effective system of central administrative and judicial organs, the so-called prikazy, which supervised every aspect of life. On the whole, this was a period of broadly conceived reforms, carried out according to a definite plan, which helped strengthen the unity of the state and curbed the influence of remnants of the old feudal appanage system. In 1565 the tsar, who had already freed himself from the Selected Council, divided the country into two territories : the zemshchina and the oprichnina. In the former, i the previous system of administration was retained. In the oprichninaf however, new institutions closely subordinated to the tsar himself were established. There the class of landowners known as “serving people,‫ ״‬who were obligated to render certain services to the state, received land inhabited by peasants. The estates of “serving people‫ ״‬who had not been taken into the oprichnina7 and those of feudal landholders, were confiscated and their owners allocated lands in the zemshchina. The “serving people‫ ״‬of the oprichnina, who came to be known as oprichniki, were assigned special tasks of surveillance over the rest of the population and “tracking down traitors.‫ ״‬Ivan now embarked upon the bloody extermination of these “traitors‫״‬ — a term which was made to include not only individuals and families from the “serving‫ ״‬and boyar nobility who were suspected of disloyalty to the tsar but also persons who simply displeased him.

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Together with representatives of the feudal nobility were destroyed large numbers of their dependents, not exeluding their peasants. In a number of cases, broad sec‫־‬ tions of the population of localities and towns suspected of insufficient loyalty to the tsar were wiped out, as in the case of Novgorod. In a great many instances, the initiators of the “liquidation” of certain families were the oprichniki themselves, who were motivated primarily by considerations of personal gain. In 1572 the oprichnina was abolished and the tsar au-j thorized the return of land patrimonies to their former ! owners, granting the latter the right to recover their losses ! from the oprichniki in court. The division of the country! into two parts, however, remained in effect until 1576, with the territory which had been allotted directly to the tsar now known as “the Court.” The remaining zem-! shchina territory was temporarily placed under pseudotsars from among Russia's Tatar vassals. Their existence, however, was concealed from western Europe. The era of Ivan the Terrible was one of protracted wars. One of these, the Kazan and Astrakhan campaigns (15521556), was successful and resulted in the annexation to Russia of the broad expanses of the middle Volga region. The next wars— the Livonian and Polish-Lithuanian (1558-1583)— were successful only in their first stages, and the attempt to enlarge the Russian state toward the west was defeated. The last decade of Ivan the Terrible's rule was marked by a grave economic crisis, caused by the wrecking of the country's national economy during the oprichnina period and by the strain of major wars. The central area of the country was exhausted and devastated, and its population sharply reduced, the chief productive class— the peasantry — having fled to the borderlands. II This period of Russian history and the vivid personality of the tsar who ruled during it could not help arousing

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J the intense interest of Russian historians. During the pre! Soviet period, despite a great variety of interpretations and opinions, there were essentially two approaches. One group of scholars, which included Karamzin and Kostomarov, and of which the most prominent exponent was ; Klyuchevsky, sought the reasons for the oprichnina in the character of Ivan himself, regarding him as a pathological maniac. These historians took a very unfavorable view of the oprichnina and its effects. Another group, which ineluded Kavelin, Solovyev and Platonov, tried to find a justification 0FlTœ~ltyncKnina terror Tn Russia's “state interests," which demanded that the remnants of feudal fragmentation be overcome regardless of means. The oprichnina terror, in their opinion, served this end, physically annihilating or driving from their old estates the princes and boyars. Soviet historiography, having inherited the task of evaluating the era of Ivan, was not always uniform in its approach to the question. During the first years of the Soviet regime, works on Ivan by scholars of the pre-Marxist school appeared. Among these are the monographs of Vipper and Platonov. Both of these works continued the traditions of the second of the afore-mentioned groups in appraising the tsar and his actions. For Vipper, the first edition of whose study of Ivan the Terrible appeared in 1922, Ivan's policy of expanding the Russian state beyond its national boundaries corresponded to the sixteenth-century western European expansion beyond the limits of the European continent. The author praised “the broad, or‫ ׳‬derly system of centralization" and justified the government's coercive measures: “It would be difficult to find another state system that would have made possible to such a degree the employment of the various classes of society for the pursuit of a specific goal." 2 The Livonian war “was just." 3 The founding of the oprichnina was “a major military-administrative reform."4 Vipper spoke 2. R . Y u . V ip p e r, Iv a n G ro z n y ï [Iv an th e T e rrib le ] L e n in g ra d , 1 9 4 4 ) , 22-23. 3. Ib id ., 4 5 . 4. I b id ., 58.

(3 e d ., M o sco w -

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most approvingly of Ivan: “Before us rises full-length the great figure of a ruler of peoples and a great patriot.” 5 Publishing his book at a time when liberal Russia was disintegrating in civil war, Vipper found it expedient to ridicule the very question of Ivan the Terrible's extreme cruelty: “The intense emphasis on Ivan's cruelties, the stem, withering condemnation of his personality, the tendency to regard him as mentally unbalanced— this belongs to the age of sentimental enlightenment and fashionable liberalism.'' 6 In contrast to Vipper, whose interest in Ivan the Terrible was incidental, the author of the second work on Ivan,7 Platonov, was a noted authority on the history of Russia in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries who had already given a favorable interpretation of Ivan's career in his excellent monograph on the revolts in the Muscovite state in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.8 His work does not have the tendency toward un< critical glorification of Ivan that we find in Vipper's book. Platonov saw the positive aspects of the tsar's action as centered chiefly in the reforms carried out during his youth, especially in the period of the Selected Council. “This was a policy of grand scope, always marked by bold initiative, by breadth of planning and energetic execution of measures once conceived.''910The oprichnina, in Platonov's opinion, achieved its purpose: “The landownership of the feudal princes was destroyed. . . .10‫ י י‬However, this purpose could have been achieved by other methods, and Ivan did not choose the best one.11 In particular, the terror was unnecessary and harmful. It resulted in “the dislocation of internal relationships in the country” 12 and in a grave economic crisis. Ivan, who in Platonov's 5. Ib id ., 57. 6. I b id ., 148-49. 7. S. F . P la to n o v , Iv a n G r o z n y i [Iv an th e T e rrib le ] (P e tro g ra d , 1 9 2 3 ) . 8. S. F . P la to n o v , O c h e r k i p o isto rii s m u ty v M o sk o v sk o m g o su d a rstv e X V I - X V I I v.v. [Essays o n th e h isto ry o f th e rev o lts in th e M u s c o v ite s ta te in th e s ix te e n th a n d s e v e n te e n th c e n tu rie s] (S t. P e te rs b u rg , 1 8 9 9 )• 9 . P la to n o v , Iv a n G r o z n y i, 23. 10. Ib id ., 132. 11. Ib id ., 133.

12. Ib id ., 137.

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opinion was not mentally deranged but suffered from a persecution mania, resorted to the oprichnina terror because he was afraid of the Selected Council.13

Ill The task of evolving a new interpretation of Ivan’s reign necessarily belonged to the Marxist historians, who stressed in their works the predominant influence of economic conditions and of the social and economic organization of society. The major exponents of this position were two Marxist historians, both with records of prerevolutionary research, Rozhkov and Pokrovsky. The former, who had been a Bolshevik for a time before the Revolution, then a Menshevik, and at length— under the Soviet regime— a non-party man, treated the subject with which we are concerned here in his general history of Russia.14 Regarding the mid-sixteenth century in Russia as marking the start of the transfer of influence and power to the court nobility (dvoryanstvo) , which drove out the old feudal landowners, the so-called “revolution of the court nobility,‫ ״‬Rozhkov linked the era of Ivan the Terrible with precisely this process. He regarded the period of the Selected Council’s rule as one of compromise between the feudal princes and boyars and the new class of landholding court nobles. Later this compromise was broken, and in his view it was the court-noble party that organized the oprichnina. The latter “frequently persecuted people [and] fought against individuals rather than institutions and the social order: such is the fate of all terrorism, of all power not based on law but resting on personal discretion.” 15 However, on the whole it “produced a tremendous upheaval in land tenure and a resultant political change.” 10 Rozhkov regarded the tsar himself as a paranoiac who was in “a state close to mental 13. Ib id ., 152. 14. R o z h k o v , RussJcaya isto riy a, I V , p a r t 1. 15. I b id ., I V , 1 33. 16. I b id ., I V , 13 5 .

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illness/' These were nevertheless individual traits, and scientific history has a right “to disregard them.” 17 If we find in Rozhkov a strictly Marxist appraisal of the age of Ivan the Terrible and, at the same time, a positive evaluation of his achievements and rejection of his methods, we will not find this latter element of condemnation of the blood and teitor in the other leading Soviet Marxist historian, Pokrovsky. To Pokrovsky, a Boishevik and hence an advocate of “Jacobin methods” of class struggle, the use of terror against the representatives of the “dying class” was highly expedient and therefore fully justified. Pokrovsky regarded the sixteenth century in Russian history as a period of the dominance of “merchant capital.” The reforms and the oprichnina of Ivan the Terrible he considered a necessary step in the process of consolidating this dominance. Pokrovsky considered the period of the Selected Council reforms to be one of class compromise among the feudal aristocracy, the bourgeoisie and the small court-noble landowners. In 1564, the bourgeoisie and the landowners “carried out a revolution.” 18 “The path of the voinstvo [the court-noble oprichniki] lay across the body of old Muscovite feudalism, and this made the voinstvo progressive, regardless of the motives that prompted them.” 19 Pokrovsky's interpretation also illustrates the Marxist view that denied the influence of the individual in history and considered its real heroes to be the “toiling masses,” whose class interests ultimately determined the role of the leaders.20 Thus although, according to Pokrovsky, the oprichnina resulted in a strengthening of Ivan's power, it appears thaf lie did not play a leading role in its establishmerit. W hile recognizing the extent of the terror, Pokrovsky maintained that “This of course does not mean that 17. Ib id ., I V , 152. 18. P o k ro v sk y , R u ss. ist. s d r e v n e is h ik h v re m e n , I , 2 0 6 ; R u ss. 1st. v sa m o m s z h a to m o c h e rk e , 4 4 . 19. P okrovsky, R u ss. ist. s d r e v n e is h ik h v re m e n , I , 2 0 4 . 20 . S ee a b o v e, C h a p . I I I .

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Ivan himself was exceptionally cruel or that his part in the revolution was particularly prominent. The struggle was not between individual men, but between classes.21 ‫״‬ In his view Ivan appeared as merely one of the leaders of the movement, “he was one of the publicists who spoke out at that time,22 ‫ ״‬but not as an autocratic ruler feared by all his subordinates.* IV W ith the change in Soviet historiography that came in the mid-1930's, the theories of the “court-noble révolution" and of “merchant capitalism" were repudiated. A single, unified period of “the feudal method of production" was recognized as having extended throughout the entire history of Russia from the tenth century to the mid-nineteenth. The history of the Russian state began to be appraised differently, henceforth being presented from a highly patriotic point of view. A whole series of historical works were now devoted to glorifying various outstanding events in Russian history and certain political and military leaders. Among the latter was Ivan the Terrible. Ivan now became one of the favorite heroes of Soviet historiography. Novels were written about him and an ambitious motion picture, ordered by the Politburo, was devoted to his glorification. A number of significant historical studies were also written about Ivan and his age. During this period, the surviving historians of the prerevolutionary era again won leading positions. The very fact that a number of “old specialists" were brought back to historical research put the study and description of the era in question on a new plane. If in the works of Rozhkov and Pokrovsky we find above all a specific, preconceived scheme which all the available material is made to fit, the works of the historians who succeeded them could not be confined to this. Their authors tried to find new material 21. Pokrovsky, R u ss. 1st. v sam o m s z h a to m o c h e rk e , 44. 22. I b id ., 4 4 .

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[225

and sought, by more careful analysis, to unearth points in the known material which would throw new light on historical phenomena and events. This is their undeniable merit. On the other hand, all these scholars, some to a greater extent, others— the bolder ones— to a lesser, were still bound by certain positions established “by the party and the government.‫ ״‬These were glorification of Ivan\ the Terrible and justification of the oprichnina terror, and C any deviation from this “line‫ ״‬was out of the question. \ The tone of the new interpretation is reflected in the special decree of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of September 4, 1946, “On the Motion Picture Great Life.‫ ״‬It stated, among other things: “Producer S. Eisenstein in the second part of the film Ivan the Terrible, displayed ignorance in the portrayal of historical facts, representing Ivan the Terrible's progressive army of oprichniki as a band of degenerates resembling the American Ku Klux Klan, and Ivan the Terrible, a man of strong will and character, as a Hamlet-like person of weak character and will.23 ‫ ״‬The naivete of this accusation and the absurdity of describing the oprichniki as a “progressive armv‫ ״‬could not conceal the basic fact: Soviet art had been prescribed a specific road to travel, and Soviet scholarship had to follow it as well. It had to associate the glori- \ fication of Ivan the Terrible and the oprichnina massacres I in a single concept: the beneficial effects for Russia of ‫י‬ creating a completely centralized regime, justification and ) glorification of the wars of conquest, which Pokrovsky had sharply condemned, and justification of the creation of a unified state system for all of eastern Europe, with its logical result— the creation of a dominant culture uniting the entire area of the great empire. Among the historical works published on this period, special mention should be made of the studies of Veselov23 . “O kino filme ‘Bolshaya zhizn’: postanovlenie TsK V K P (b ) ot 4 sentabrya 1946 goda" [On the motion picture “Great Life” : decree of the Central Com m ittee of the C .P .S .U .(b ) of September 4 , 1 9 4 6 ], B o lshevik, X X I I I , 16 ( 1 9 4 6 ) , 52; an English translation is available in George Counts, T he Country of the Blind: T he Soviet System of M ind Control (Boston, 1 9 4 9 ) , 125-29.

226 ]

APPLICATION OF THEORY: SELECTED EXAMPLES

sky, which deal with survivals of the feudal appanage system under Ivan the Terrible, with the period of the Selected Council reforms, and with the oprichnina period.24 The officially approved line of glorifying Ivan is followed here to the very minimum extent. Also significant are Sadikov’s Essr‫״‬ T h e guideposts to a “ correct” interpretation of interven tion erected in th e party’s ou tlin e history of th e civil war did n o t pass u n n oticed by individual intervention historians, as th e changing views of M in ts during th e early thirties d em o n stra te.[M in ts, th e m ost prolific historian o f intervention in this period and a leading authority on th e history of th e Soviet state until his gradual disgrace after j

52. Istoriya grazhdanskoi voiny, 23*37. 53. Ibid., 79, 65, 73• 54• Ibid., 66-67, 72, 120-22. 55. Ibid., 84, 121-22, 124 ft. and passim.

INTERVENTION IN RUSSIA, 1 9 1 8 - 1 9 2 1

[345

1947, com p iled and ed ited tw o selections o f in terven tion d ocu m en ts w hich were published in Krasnyi Arkhiv in 1929 and 1930. In in trod u cin g th ese d ocu m en ts, M in ts presented relatively m oderate and balanced appraisals of in terven tion w h ich differed very little from th e standard interpretations advanced in S oviet in terven tion historiography o f th e 19 2 0 's.56 In 1931 M in ts com p leted a rather disorganized b u t w ell-d ocu m en ted and occasionally useful m onograph on

English Intervention and the Northern Counter-revolution .57 W h ile M ints' views in this work were som ew hat m ore critical o f th e A llies than th ose h e expressed in his in trod u ction s to th e Krasnyi Arkhiv articles, they were still q u ite m ild w hen com pared to th e strong anti-A llied appraisals developed by th e party's ou tlin e history of th e civil war a year later. M in ts did m ake a fleetin g and poorly substantiated attem p t to show th at E n glan d offered support to th e forces o f counter-revolution as early as th e sum m er o f 1917, b u t on th e w h ole h e interpreted A llied policy toward Russia in 1917 and early 1918 as b ein g at least partly inspired by anti-G erm an m otives and h e acknow ledged th at prior to Brest, E n glan d and th e U n ited States opposed Japanese in terven tion , fearing it w ould drive th e B olsheviks in to G erm any's arm s.58 A lth ou gh M in ts described briefly and n o n com m ittally th e actual fact o f early cooperation b etw een th e M urm ansk Soviet and th e A llies, h e carefully refrained from lin kin g this local action to th e policy of th e central S oviet governm ent and h e m ade no m en tio n w hatever o f Trotsky's role in con d o n in g th e M urm ansk lan d in gs.5^ -S in ce M in ts probably com p osed this b ook during or shortly after Trotsky's expulsion from th e S oviet U n io n and before th e “ correct" treatm en t o f Trotsky's past had b een prescribed by Stalin and th e party, h e apparently d ecided th at th e safest course 56. K ra sn yi A r k h iv , X X X V II, 69-100 and X X X IX , 3-46. 57. I. I. M in ts, A n g liiska ya in te rv e n tsiy a i sevemaya kontr-revolyutsiya (M oscow , 1931). 58. Ib id ., 10-16, 17, 27, 38, 38 n. 1, 39. 59. Ib id ., 4 2 .

340 J

APPLICATION OF THEORY: SELECTED EXAMPLES

was to avoid any definite stand on Trotsky's actions in the Murmansk affair. Like G ukovsky, M in ts d en ied th at th e A llies intervened primarily to recover their loans and in vestm en ts in R ussia, and claim ed that th e A llies' ch oice o f north R ussia as a locale for in tervention is im portant evid en ce show ing th at p olitical and strategic considerations, n ot eco n o m ic interests, determ ined th e geographic direction o f th e Allied attack.60 M in ts argued th at th e repudiated debts could n o t have b een a decisive reason for in terven tion since th e French did n o t even claim this as a pretext u n til Septem ber, 1918, lo n g after in tervention had actually b egun, and since th e A llies never show ed any interest in accep tin g th e Soviet governm ent's repeated offers durin g 1919 to settle th e debts qu estion . In M in ts' view , th e A llies u tilized th e financial issue chiefly as a slogan w ith w hich to arouse petit-bourgeois support for in terven tion . T h e sm all investor was prom ised an eco n o m ic “sop" if h e w ould m ake th e n ew sacrifices in tervention required. For M in ts, th e class interest of th e im perialists and n o t th e recovery o f loans was th e basic m otivation b eh in d in terv en tio n .61 In his view , th e A llies feared th at th e exam ple and influence o f th e proletarian revolution in R ussia w ould u n derm ine their ow n unstable system unless they destroyed th e B olsheviks first.

Throughout the book Mints maintained that the paramount objective of England's intervention policy was to weaken and dismember Russia, her former imperialist rival in Asia. In Mints' view, England wanted to carve out of Russia’s borderlands a group of small independent states which, under English domination, would serve as a check to the expansion of either a Bolshevist or a capitalist Russia. Consequently, according to Mints, the English pursued a Machiavellian policy toward the Whites, providing them with just sufficient support so that they could harass and weaken the Bolsheviks, but never giving them 60.

Ibid.,

18*19, 22.

61.

Ibid.,

19*25.

INTERVENTION IN RUSSIA, 1 9 1 8 - 1 9 2 1

[347

en ou gh to perm it th e a ch ievem en t of th e W h it e goal of a u n ited , pow erful R ussia.62 T o such previously standard explanations of th e Soviet victory as im perialist disunity and th e revolutionary attitu d e o f A llied workers and soldiers, M in ts added on e I oth er factor— th e h eroic struggle o f th e to ilin g m asses o f/ R ussia, led by th e proletariat and th e party. B u t h e listed this reason last and placed little em phasis on it.63 Y et on ly tw o years later, after th e appearance o f th e party's o u tlin e history o f th e civil war, M in ts suddenly changed his m in d . In th e in trod u ction to a co llection of d ocu m en ts on in terven tion in th e north issued in 1933, h e attributed th e S oviet trium ph to th e heroism and self-sacrifice of th e R ed Arm y, guided by an o m n ip o ten t party under Stalin. O th er factors were m en tio n ed on ly as a kind o f w hispered aside.64 In th e sam e in trod u ction M in ts attacked th e bestial, plundering nature of th e interventionists' occupation and, in a burst o f patriotic effusion, h e defiantly warned th at th e party and th e R ed Army, inspired by their glorious victories in th e past, w ere prepared to lead ! th e valiant peoples o f Russia in routing any new in te r -‫׳‬ v en tio n ist a ttem p t. / B y 1934 M in ts' view s on in terven tion had m oved even closer to th o se espoused in th e party's o u tlin e o f civilwar history published tw o years earlier. In th e in trod u ction to a docum entary com p ilation on Japanese in terven tion in th e Far E ast, M in ts p ain ted th e policy o f th e A llied and Japanese in terven tion ists as totally w icked and glorified th e role o f Stalin and th e party in vanquishing th e im perialist invaders. M in ts w en t on to m ake th e patriotic b u t u n fou n d ed claim that th e victories o f th e R ed Arm y and o f th e partisan m o v em en t were m ore im portant fac62. I b id ., 150, 151, 154, 157, 166-70; th e docum ents published in G reat B ritain, Foreign Office, D o c u m e n ts o n B ritish F o reig n P o lic y , 1919-1939, Series 1, V oi. I l l (L ondon, 1 9 4 9 ), substantially refute M in ts' argum ents. 63. I b id ., 162-65. 64. I. I. M ints, ed., In te r v e n ts iy a na severe v dokum entakh [Intervention in th e n o rth in docum ents] (M oscow , 1 9 3 3 ), 3, 8-9.

34 ^]

APPLICATION OF THEORY: SELECTED EXAMPLES

tors in th e d efeat of K olchak than were th e insufficiency of his foreign support and his ow n internal w eaknesses. M in ts concluded w ith a stern warning to all foes o f th e S oviet U n io n and w ith a paean of praise to th e great leader, S talin .65 T h is trend in Soviet intervention historiography was greatly accelerated in 1937 by th e report of th e governm en t com m ission established to judge textbooks on th e history of th e U .S .S .R . T h is com m ission set th e seal of official approval on a num ber of interpretations of th e history o f th e Soviet U n io n . In regard to th e h an d lin g of th e period of civil war and foreign in tervention , th e com m ission urged th at m ore em phasis be placed on h ow th e R ussian landlords and capitalists, ab etted by their M en sh evik and Social R evolutionary hirelings, and “ sold o u t‫״‬ Russia to th e foreign im perialists and h ow th e party from th e earliest days of the revolution had had to struggle against “wreckers,‫ ״‬spies and T rotskyite subversives. In ad d ition , S oviet historians of in tervention were exhorted to describe th e creation of th e m igh ty, technically equipped R ed Army and to d ep ict m ore vigorously th e role of th e B olshevik Party and th e S oviet G overn m en t “in rousing all th e peoples to th e d efen se of th e fatherland against attacks by foreign bourgeois powers, [and] in saving Russia from foreign en slavem en t and b ondage by im perialist countries. . . .66‫״‬ T h e im pact of th ese recom m endations is strikingly illustrated by a com parison of tw o encyclopedia interpretations of in tervention , published only tw o years apart and by the sam e author, G ukovsky, yet as different as n ig h t and day. In 1935 in his sum m ary of intervention for th e second ed ition o f the Small Soviet Encyclopedia, G ukovsky, contradicting his 1928 views, rejected A llied excuses concerning th e necessity o f re-establishing an Eastern Front. H ow ever, he did adm it that A llied intervention in 65. I. I. M ints, com p., Y a p o n ska y a interventsiya v 1918-1922 gg. v d o k u n ie n ta k h [Japanese intervention in 1918-1922 in docum ents] (Moscow, 193 4 ), 3. 11, 12. 66. K izucheniyu istorii: S b o rn ik [Toward th e study of history: a syin• posium] (M oscow, 1937), 35-37.

INTERVENTION IN RUSSIA,

1918-1921

[349

Russia before th e Brest peace w ould have drawn som e G erm an forces eastward and h e con ced ed that L en in considered th e possibility of u tilizin g A llied aid against Germ an y.67 B u t in 1937 in his survey of in tervention for th e first ed ition of th e Large Soviet Encyclopedia, G ukovsky sum m arily dropped even th ese lim ited qualifications concerning th e anti-Soviet nature o f early A llied policy toward Russia and instead charged th at as early as m id -1917 E n ten te agents intervened in R ussian affairs by supportin g G eneral K ornilov. H e also m ain tain ed th at m ore direct anti-B olshevik in tervention began im m ed iately after th e O ctober revolution w hen th e A llies interfered w ith Soviet orders to th e army com m ander, G eneral D u k h o n in , and w hen they sen t representatives and aid to K aledin, to th e U krainian Rada, and to other counter-revolutionary groups.68 W h ile G ukovsky in 193$ sim ply cited w ith o u t co m m en t L enin's appraisal of A llied m otives in unofficially offering aid to Soviet Russia prior to Brest, in 1937 h e attem p ted to show th at such A llied offers w ere part of a nefarious p lo t h atch ed by Trotsky and Bukharin, w ho h op ed to destroy Soviet Russia by tricking th e Bolsheviks in to resum ing th e war against G erm any.69 T h e version of 1935 d ep icted Trotsky's con d on in g o f A llied landings at M urm ansk as an adventurist distortion of L enin's February, 1918, d ecision to accept E n ten te aid, b u t th e 1937 article charged Trotsky w ith outright treason.70 O n th e w hole th e U n ited States was treated rather favorably in b oth articles, although G ukovsky's criticism o f th e intervention policies of E n glan d , France and Japan was m uch sharper in 1937 than it was tw o years earlier.71 T h e later article accused E ngland and France of organiz67. Malaya Sovetskaya Entsiklopediya [Small Soviet Encyclopedia] (2 ed.; Moscow, 1 9 3 5 ), IV , cols. 784-85. 68. A. Gukovsky, “ Interventsiya protiv velikoi Oktyabrskoi proletarskoi revolyutsii v R ossii” [Intervention against th e great O ctober proletarian revolution in Russia], Bolsh. Sov. Ents . (1 e d .), X X V III, col. 641. 69. Ibid., cols. 642-43 and Malaya Sovetskaya Entsiklopediya, 2 ed., cols. 784-85. 70. Loc. cit. and Bolsh. Sov. Ents. (1 e d .), col. 652. 71. O n Gukovsky's appraisal of A m erica’s role in intervention as less aggressive and largely anti-Japanese, ibid., cols. 656-57, 666-67.

3 5°J

APPLICATION OF THEORY: SELECTED EXAMPLES

in g a h u ge and w ell-planned conspiracy against th e Soviet governm ent and o f b ein g w illin g to let post-arm istice G erm any participate in their anti-Soviet crusade. T o substantiate this lin e o f his argum ent, G ukovsky brazenly cited as fact W in s to n C hurchill's w holly im aginary accou n t o f a postwar m eetin g b etw een Lloyd G eorge, W ilson and C lem en ceau , w hich dep icted th e B ig T hree as candidly and ruthlessly p lo ttin g th e destruction of Soviet R ussia.72 In his 1935 interpretation G ukovsky analyzed th e failure of intervention in accord w ith th e L en in ist explanations w idely accepted by Soviet historiography in th e 1920's— im perialist contradictions, th e dissolution o f th e A llied armies sen t to Russia, and th e h eig h ten in g o f th e revolutionary m ov em en t in E u rop e.73 In 1937, how ever, h e barely m en tio n ed th ese factors. Instead h e attributed th e Soviet trium ph to th e brilliant leadership of Stalin and to th e fact that th e A llies were driven ou t of Russia by ! th e Bolshevik-led partisan m ovem en t and by th e m igh ty [ R ed A rm y.74 r ‫ ־״‬T h e party-sanctioned appraisal o f A llied intervention I w hich em erged after 1932 reached its fullest d evelop m en t in 1937 and 1938 in tw o volum es: Shestakov’s history of th e U .S .S .R . designed for secondary schools, and th e offid ai history o f th e B olshevik Party. In Shestakov’s textbook th e R ed Army was hailed for expelling th e interven tion ists, and the exploits of heroes of th e intervention and civil war were glow ingly described. Party stalwarts o f th e caliber o f Stalin, Kirov and O rdjonikidze, and such m ilitary leaders as V oroshilov, Frunze and B udenny were glorified, usually w ith an accom panying ben ign photograph. Shestakov especially em phasized th e friendly cooperation o f the fraternal peoples of the U .S .S .R .— R ussians, Ukrainians, B elo-R ussians, O irots, Yakuts and B uryat-M ongoïs— in th e struggle against im perialist enslavem ent, and h e warmly praised th e role of the party and 72. I b id ., cols. 648-51 and 653-54. 73. M alaya S o vetska ya E n ts ik lo p c d iy a , (2 e d .), cols. 789*90. 74. B o lsh . S o v . E n ts . (1 e d .), cols. 657*59, 661, 667, 671.

INTERVENTION IN RUSSIA, 1 9 1 8 - 1 9 2 1

[3 51

th e R ed Arm y in h elp in g to liberate th e p eop le o f C entral Asia and th e C aucasus from th e foreign oppressors and their lackeys, th e local separatists and n ation alists.75

The History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks): Short Course im m ed iately upon its pu b lication in 1938 b ecam e th e official source o f party doctrine on th e history o f tw entieth-century R ussia, and its authority was even strengthened in later years w hen its authorship was attributed to Stalin. In th e sim ple and repetitious style characteristic o f Stalin's w ritings, th e official history o f th e party m ain tain ed th at th e principal objective o f th e in tervention ists was th e destruction of th e S oviet governm ent, w hose con tin u ed existen ce and success they feared as an “ in fectiou s exam ple," stim u latin g th e m ass craving for peace and dangerously encouraging th e desire of th e toilers of th e w h ole world for an end to capitalist and im perialist exp loitation . A t th e sam e tim e it was ad m itted th at a subsidiary m otive for th e initial intervention was th e A llies' desire to annul th e Brest peace and re-establish a m ilitary front against G erm any.76 T h e official party history stressed th e lin k b etw een th e foreign invaders and th e perfidious W h ite s, w ho were accused of “ betraying" Russia to th e im perialists. It d ep icted Trotsky's strategy as m istaken and treasonous, and Stalin's civil-war generalship as w holly brilliant. H eroes other than §talin .were b a rely m en tio n ed .77 A lm ost a quarter of th e chapter on th e civil war and in tervention was devoted to an analysis o f B olshevism 's victory over its foreign and internal foes. E ig h t reasons for that trium ph were listed, each b eg in n in g “T h e R ed Arm y was victorious because . . ." As an in d ication of th e 75. Shestakov, Short History of the U.S.S.R., 203-21; the 1945 and 1952 Russian editions of this text were checked against the 1938 translation, and no changes in the treatment of intervention were found. 76. Central Com m ittee of the Communist Party of the Soviet U nion (Bolsheviks), History of the Com m unist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks): Short Course (M oscow, 1 9 4 5 ), 225-48; this 1945 translation was compared with the Russian-language editions of 1938 and 1952, and the chapters on intervention were found to be identical. 77. Ib id ., 226-27, 231-32, 236-41.

352 J

APPLICATION OF THEORY: SELECTED EXAMPLES

principles and attitudes w hich Stalin was trying to inculcate in th e Soviet peoples during a period o f threatenin g international danger, these explanations are worth presenting in som e detail. T h e first, and presum ably m ost im portant, reason given for the B olshevik victory was that th e Soviet governm ent's policy was a correct one w hich corresponded to th e interests o f th e people, w ho con seq u en tly gave it their fullest backing. Secondly, th e R ed Arm y was victorious because “ if it [the R ed Army] is faith fu l to its people, as a true son is to his m other, it w ill have th e support of the p eople and is bou n d to w in." In th e third place, th e B olshevik cause trium phed because of the ability o f th e Soviet governm en t to m uster the w hole of th e h o m e front beh in d th e R ed Army and thus to turn Soviet Russia in to a m igh ty armed cam p. T h e fourth reason was essentially a restatem en t of the first: th e fact that th e R ed Army m en recogn ized th e justice of th e aims and purposes o f th e war strengthened their discipline and fighting efficiency and led th em to display “ unparalleled self-sacrifice and unexam pled mass heroism ." F ifth ly, th e R ed Army w on because its core was th e B olshevik Party, “ u n ited in its solidarity and discipline, strong in its revolutionary spirit and readiness for sacrifice in th e com m on cause, and unsurpassed in its ability to organize m illions and to lead them properly in com plex situations." T h e sixth reason was primarily a paean o f praise to the organizational and agitational work of the m ilitary com m issars under th e guidance of L enin and Stalin. In seventh place was th e struggle of th e partisans behind the W h ite front, and as a final reason the sym pathy given to Soviet Russia by the proletarians of the w hole world was n oted . N o t a single word was devoted to the L eninist interpretations of im perialist disunity and contradictions or to the inherent ^weaknesses of th e W h ite and separatist m ovem en ts.78 A fter 1938 the dogm a o f Stalin's historical interpre‫ ־‬tations held Soviet historiography in a pervasive and dcm anding grip. Soviet historians of m odern Russia cited 78. Ib id ., 243-46.

INTERVENTION IN RUSSIA, 1 9 1 8 - 1 9 2 1

[ 353

Stalin's “history" more often than any other source and Stalin's views of intervention, as set forth in the history of the party, dominated almost all subsequent Soviet work on intervention. Stalin's appraisals of intervention led a remarkably charmed life, surviving major changes in the international position and alliances of the Soviet Union and abrupt swerves in the official “line" of Soviet historiography. Aside from the obvious circumstance of Stalin's position as an absolute dictator, the remarkable durability and viability of Stalin’s intervention interpretations can be explained by three circumstances. In the first place, Stalin's views were so simplified and so general that they remained applicable despite fairly radical changes in the party “line." For instance, Stalin's conclusions concerning imperialist fears of Bolshevism’s example, the valor of the Red Army, and the correctness of the Soviet government's policies are analyses that could still be cited even when Soviet historiography was busily reshaping the details of the intervention picture. Secondly, Stalin's treatment of intervention was so brief that some questions, which have subsequently formed the basis for an entirely new interpretation of intervention, were barely mentioned or were not touched on at all in his history of the party. Thus, the Short Course has been no embarrassment to recent Soviet attempts to vilify the United States, since Stalin simply did not deal with the question of America’s role in intervention. Finally, Soviet historians of intervention have always been permitted to use the official party history with discrimination, quoting what suited their current purposes while completely ignoring contradictory passages.79 79. Reflections of the official viewpoint may be seen in P. Lisovsky, SSSR i k a p ita lis tic h e sk o e oJcruzhenie [The USSR and the capitalist en‫־‬ circlement] (M oscow, 1939); the brief article on intervention in P o litic h e s k ii Slovar [Political dictionary], ed. by G. Aleksandrov (M oscow, 1 9 4 0 ), 147-49; Pankratova, H isto ry o f th e U .S .S .R ., III, 226*303; this translation of the 1947 Russian edition was compared with the Russian editions of 1940 and 1948 and no differences were noted; the English-language pamphlet V . Parfenov, The I n te r v e n tio n in S ib e ria , 1918-1920 (N ew York, 19 4 1 ); see also the popular brochure of G. Mymrin, M . Pirogov, and G. Kuznetsov, Razgrom interventov i

354 ]

APPLICATION OF THEORY: SELECTED EXAMPLES

T h e sw eep in g criticism o f Pokrovsky, w h ich was a feature o f this stage of S oviet historiography, in clu ded a disorganized b u t interesting essay by Lutsky on Pokrovsky's interpretation of th e civil war and in terven tion . In this essay Lutsky accused Pokrovsky of espousing th e view th at th e socialist revolution could n ot b e victorious in R ussia alone; o f con sisten tly m in im izin g th e w orld-w ide significanee and socialist character o f th e R ussian revolution; o f falsely describing in terven tion prior to th e arm istice as m otivated by th e desire o f th e A llies to re-establish an Eastern Front; of failing to show that A llied offers of aid to th e B olsheviks before Brest were part o f a nefarious conspiracy through w hich T rotsky and Bukharin h op ed to destroy th e S oviet state for th e b en efit o f b oth th e E n te n te and o f G erm any; of p ain tin g Japan's bloody, plundering attack on th e R ussian Far E ast “as an inoffensive stroll in th e vicin ity o f V lad ivostok to gather som e forget-m enots"; o f failing to d ep ict A llied efforts to en list th e Germ an m ilitarists and capitalists in an anti-Soviet crusade; and o f incorrectly evaluating th e S oviet trium ph by ascribin g it solely to such secondary and external factors as im perialist d isunity and assistance from th e international proletariat, instead o f giving “ th e m ost im portant and decisive reason"— th e brilliant leadership o f Stalin and th e B olshevik Party.*80 S in ce Pokrovsky's views w ere typical o f th ose advanced in m ost Soviet accounts of in tervention during th e 1920's, L utsky’s in d ictm en t represented an officially-sponsored rejection o f alm ost everything early So: viet historiography had to say about th e problem s o f in! terven tion . In view o f th e v io len t attacks w hich were later to b e directed against Pokrovsky for his favorable account of Am erica's role in th e in tervention , it is im portant to n o te th at Lutsky did n o t q uestion Pokrovsky’s interpretation on this score. Indeed, in several passing remarks h e even supported Pokrovsky’s appraisal by describing W ilso n as reb elo g va rd eitsev n a s e v e re [ T h e r o u t o f t h e in te r v e n tio n is ts a n d W h i t e G u a r d s in t h e n o r th ] (A r c h a n g e l, 1 9 4 0 ) • 80. P ro tiv Icontse p tsii P o k io v s k o g o , II, 457*85.

th e

INTERVENTION IN RUSSIA, 1 9 1 8 - 1 9 2 !

luctant to intervene and by ascribing largely anti-Japanese motives to United States actions in Siberia.81 T h e p u b lication of works o f scholarship and of original d ocu m en ts on th e in terven tion period was n o t brought to a h alt after this revolution in S oviet historiography, b u t it was profoundly affected by th e party's grow ing in sisten ce th at all historical work be devoted to clarifying and supporting current propaganda. T h e contem porary interests of S oviet foreign and d om estic policy, n o t th e objective curiosity o f th e researcher, ten d ed increasingly to d ictate th e ch o ice o f topics or geographic areas on w hich interven tio n d ocu m en ts were to b e issued. W h ile such works som etim es presented useful “ raw” d ocu m en ts, they were generally m uch less valuable for th e objective study o f interven tion than th e docum entary com p ilation s issued in th e 1920's and early 1930's. T h e d ocu m en ts in th ese later collectio n s w ere usually carefully selected, although n o t fabricated or falsified so far as can b e ascertained, for th e primary purpose o f buttressing th e p osition s o f current party policy. As a result, th e picture o f in terven tion w hich th ey p ain ted ten d ed to be distorted and m islead in g.82 A fter th e S econ d W o rld W a r en gu lfed th e Soviet U n io n , m o st o f th e work o f S oviet in tervention historiography was in itially con cen trated on th e problem of Germ an in terven tion in Russia in 1918. H ow ever, in late 1944 and early 1945, apparently as a m eans o f preparing th e S oviet public for th e possible entry o f th e U .S .S .R . in to th e war against Japan, th e S oviet press printed a flood of m aterial, in clu d in g lurid atrocity stories, con cern in g Japanese in terven tion in th e R ussian Ear E ast during 19181 9 2 2 .83 B u t, q u ite understandably, little or no work on W estern in tervention in 1 9 1 8 -1 9 2 0 was produced during th e war. W in s to n C hurchill, w hom Soviet historiography had previously vilified as on e of th e bitterest foes o f Soviet 1 81. Ibid., II, 467-68, 475. 82. T h u s docum ents on Japan’s participation in th e intervention were published in 1937 in Kiasnyi A ikhiv, LXXXII and in 1940 on th e role of R um ania and F inland, ibid., X C V III, C l and C II, respectively. 83. F. C. B arghoom , T h e Soviet Image of the United States: A Study in Distortion (N ew York, 1 9 5 0 ), 59.

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APPLICATION OF THEORY: SELECTED EXAMPLES

Russia and a ch ief instigator o f in tervention , was now hailed in th e Soviet press as a b en evolen t friend o f th e U .S .S .R . and th e leader of “ progressive‫ ״‬forces in E n glan d . In his m em oirs C hurchill presents a m ost am using accou n t of his discussion of th e intervention issue w ith Stalin in A ugust, 1942. C hurchill ad m itted to Stalin th at h e had h elp ed organize A llied intervention in 1919 and asked, “ H ave you forgiven m e?‫ ״‬Stalin's interpreter replied: “Prem ier Stalin, h e say, all th at is in th e past, and th e

f

ast belongs to God.84 ‫״‬

T h e afterglow o f th e war-tim e alliance b etw een th e Soviet U n io n and th e W e s t was undoubtedly a factor in soften in g th e strictures o f Soviet intervention historiography in th e im m ed iate postwar period. T h e chapters on intervention in three books published shortly after th e Second W o rld W a r reflected a curious com p ou n d in g o f th e tem perate and relatively accurate appraisals current in the 1 9 2 0 ’s w ith the censorious and distorted interpretations d om in an t in th e late 1 9 3 0 ’s.85 For exam ple, in discussing A llied intervention in the official textbook on th e history o f diplom acy, M in ts asserted th at th e E n ten te organized conspiracies and undertook indirect in tervention against S oviet Russia im m ed iately after th e O ctober revolu tion . A t th e sam e tim e, h e ad m itted that the Eastern Front argum ent o f th e A llies had som e validity and h e strongly h in ted th at certain leaders in th e W e st, and especially in th e U n ited States, were sym pathetic to th e Soviet governm ent's p light and seriously considered coopérâting w ith th e Bolsheviks against th e G erm ans.86 O n th e one hand, M in ts argued th at the unofficial A llied offers of aid to th e Soviet governm ent were part of a treasonous T rotskyite p lot designed to destroy the Soviet state by luring Russia in to renewed h ostilities w ith G erm any; on th e 84. W in sto n C hurchill, T h e H inge of Fate (B oston, 19 5 0 ), 493. P . P o te m k in , e d ., Istoiiya diplomata [H is to ry o f d ip lo m a c y ] (3 v.; M o s c o w , 1941-45), I I a n d I I I ; I. M . L e m in , V n e s h n y a y a politika VelikoSritanii ot Versalya do L o k a r n o , 1919-1925 [ T h e f o r e ig n p o lic y o f G r e a t B r ita in f ro m V e rs a ille s to L o c a r n o , 1919-1925] ( M o s c o w , 1947); a n d V . L a n , SSH A o t p e r v o i do vtoroi mirovoi v o in y [U .S .A . fro m t h e first to t h e s e c o n d w o rld w ars] ( M o s c o w , 1 9 4 7 ) . 8 6 . P o te m k in , o p . c it., I I , 3 7 7 -9 4 . 85. V .

INTERVENTION IN RUSSIA, 1 9 1 8 - 1 9 2 1

[357

other, h e acknow ledged th at L en in h im self was w illin g to accept such aid from th e A llies against G erm any.87 Like L em in in h is m onograph o f British foreign p olicy in th e early interwar period, M in ts con ced ed th at som e o f th e m ore farsighted W estern leaders felt in tervention was a m istake and th at W ilso n and L loyd G eorge, th ou gh forced to it by unrest in th e army and am on g labor groups, did adopt a m ore conciliatory attitu d e toward Soviet Russia after th e arm istice.88 N everth eless, only a few pages later M in ts co n ten d ed th at th e B ig F ou r’s proposal for a R ussian peace con feren ce on th e Prinkipo Islands was a d eceitfu l trap, and th at th e W estern leaders were cou n tin g on a S oviet refusal o f th e in vitation to provide a pretext for further A llied in tervention in R ussia.89 M in ts’ con clu sion concerning th e failure of in terven tion was also a hybrid affair. In part M in ts fell back on reasons w idely accepted in th e tw en ties b u t generally m in im ized or om itted in th e thirties— im perialist disunity and th e frailties o f th e W h ite m o vem en t. In ad d ition h e revived an old “ M arxist” explanation occasionally advanced in th e early 1 9 2 0 ’s— th e claim th at A llied in tervention collapsed because o f th e postw ar eco n o m ic and p olitical crisis in the capitalist world and because o f th e cap italists’ desperate n eed to trade in th e R ussian m arkets. M in ts also m en tio n ed th e E uropean workers’ sym pathy for Soviet R ussia, n o ted th e virtues of th e R ed Army, and en d ed by in trod u cin g a n ew ingredient all his ow n— the skill of S oviet d ip lom acy.90 N o ta b ly absent from M in ts’ analysis o f th e S oviet victory, and in fact from his w hole section on in terven tion , were such hallow ed Jandm arks of prewar in tervention historiography as th e role o f th e B olshevik Party, th e genius o f Stalin, and the valor o f Soviet heroes and partisans. M in ts presented a relatively balanced picture of Am erican participation in in tervention , citin g W ils o n ’s distrust o f Japanese in ten tio n s in Siberia and his reluctance to in87. Ib id ., II, 377-78. 88. Ib id ., I l l , 56, 64; L em in, o p . cit., 217-22, 229. 89. Potem kin, o p . c it.. I l l, 59. 90. I b id ., I l l , 67-74, 88.

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tervene until forced to do so by fears of unilateral Japanese action.91 This appraisal corresponded to the standard interpretations of this issue advanced by Soviet historiography ever since 1919, but within a few years it was j to become the worst heresy. The quality of Soviet work on intervention declined sharply in the years between 1929 and 1947. Except for the publication of some source materials, Soviet historiography in this period contributed nothing to the objective study of Allied intervention. Independent analysis of the history of intervention, which had produced some careful research and relatively original interpretations in ! the 1920's, was gradually stifled. Instead, Soviet historians were required to recast their treatment of intervention to conform to Stalinist decrees on the correct writing of history and to fit the needs and purposes of the current party line. History became a chief preceptor to the Soviet peopies, charged with instilling in them attitudes and principies which would further the monolithic control and the foreign and domestic policies of Stalin and the party elite. IV T h e sw eeping ideological “clean sing” o f . Soviet society w hich began after 1946 can be traced to th e alm ost pathological preoccupation w ith th e survival o f their regim e w hich has always characterized th e Soviet elite. T h is preoccu p ation doubtless stem s in part from their narrow escapes in 1918-20 and 1941-44, bu t its postwar m anifestation was rooted m ore im m ed iately in th e need o f th e Soviet regim e to tigh ten its m o n o lith ic control over th e Russian p eop le and to check disintegrative ten d en cies w hich had arisen in the Soviet system due to th e laxity and strain o f the war em ergency. U nless such control were assured, th e regim e w ould n ot possess the freedom o f action necessary to avoid th e dangers o f th e postwar period and to take advantage o f its opportunities.

As a prerequisite of this postwar ideological trend. So91. Ib id ., II, 380-82; III, 146-47.

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[359

v iet culture and propaganda had to adhere rigidly to th e view o f M arxism -L eninism exp ou n d ed by Stalin and Zhdanov, and to stress “ partyness‫ ״‬as th e gu id in g principle of S oviet life. S oviet and R ussian patriotism , u n q u estion in g loyalty to th e party, and reverence for th e in fallib le w isdom o f Stalin w ere vigorously p rom oted . T o justify in part th e n ew sacrifices w hich reconstruction and con tin u ed rapid industrialization dem an d ed o f th e already exhausted and overtaxed S oviet p eoples, th e past ach ievem en ts and future prom ise o f th e S oviet system were eu logized and th e bogey of foreign im perialist attack was revived. A t th e sam e tim e, by vilifyin g every aspect o f W estern and particularly A m erican civilization and by attributing th e basest antiS oviet designs to th e postwar foreign policies o f Britain, France and th e U n ite d States, th e S oviet elite tried to exp u n ge th e S oviet peoples' war-nurtured feelin g o f sympathy and adm iration for th e W e st. It was n o t strange th at th e U n ite d States was selected as th e ch ief target o f th ese x en o p h o b ic thrusts o f postwar S oviet ideology. T o th e S oviet leaders, th e U n ited States, th e b iggest and strongest o f th e rival powers, appeared as th e logical leader o f any anti-Soviet grouping th at m igh t develop and as th e ch ief obstacle, in term s o f b oth id eology and power, to S oviet d o m in a tio n o f th e postwar world. T h is id eological storm did n o t en gu lf th e field o f historiography u n til 1948, and in d eed in th e im m ed iate postwar period references in S oviet historical w riting to A llied and A m erican in tervention were relatively restrained.92 It is nevertheless in teresting to n o te tw o in cid en ts in th e period before 1948 w h ich presaged th e radical ch an ge in th e interpretation of in terven tion w hich was soon to com e. O n S eptem ber 2, 1945, on th e occasion of Japan's capitulation to th e S oviet U n io n , Stalin addressed a victory proclam ation to th e S oviet peoples. In totalin g th e past 92. See th e separate volum e of th e Bolsh. Sov. Ents. (1 ed.) en titled Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik [U nion of th e Soviet Socialist R epublics] (Moscow* 1 9 4 7 ), cols. 640-55; and th e articles by I. I. M ints on th e E n te n te and B. E . Stein on th e Versailles peace in Diploma tic h e s k i slovai [D iplom atic dictionary] (2 v.; M oscow, 19485 0 ).

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APPLICATION OF THEORY: SELECTED EXAMPLES

; injuries inflicted on Russia by Japan, Stalin recalled th at ! in 1918 “ Japan, u tilizin g and relying on th e th en h ostile relations to th e Soviet state o f E ngland, France and th e U n ited States, attacked our country, occupied th e Far E ast, and for four years torm ented and plundered our p eo p le.98 ‫ ״‬Q u ite obviously, there was no necessity com pellin g Stalin, on th e very day o f a great victory largely w on by A m erican and British forces, to charge his present allies w ith assisting Japanese intervention in 1918. From th e vantage p o in t of h in d sigh t, w e can n ow surm ise that Stalin deliberately included this allegation against th e W e s t as a h in t o f the ideological cam paign of xen op h ob ia w hich h e was soon to launch. Significant in S talin ’s proclam ation was his specific reference to th e U n ited States, previously considered an anti-Japanese force in Soviet intervention literature, as an abettor of th e Japanese attack in 1918. A second revealing in cid en t, though at the tim e unpublicized, occurred som e eight m on ths later. In April, 1946, w hen th e U n ited States Am bassador, W a lter B edell S m ith , asked Stalin w hat led him to b elieve that th e W estern powers were threatening the security o f the Soviet U n io n , Stalin replied by charging that C h u rch iirs F u lton speech was an unfriendly act and h e added: “ H e [C hurchill] tried to instigate war against Russia and persuaded the U n ited States to join him in an armed occupation of part of our territory in 1919. Lately h e has been at it again.04 ‫״‬ T h e op en in g gun in this cam paign sounded in early 1948. In discussions held in January at the In stitu te of H istory of th e A cadem y o f Sciences and at the H igher Party School, M in ts’ History of the U.S.S.R ., 1917-1925 w'as sharply attacked.‫ה‬,‫ ר‬Since the substantive criticism s levelled against M in ts’ book during these discussions were labored and contradictory at best— not follow ing the guide 9 3 • Pnivcla

(Sept. 3. 1945)» 1 • 94. W alter Bedell Sm ith, My T hree Years in M oscou‫( ׳‬Philadelphia, 1949),

52-53•

9ç. T his volume, not available to th e author, is discussed in Vop. 1st., IV , 4 (April, 1948), 1 4 4 51

INTERVENTION IN RUSSIA, 1 9 1 8 - 1 9 2 1

[3 6 1

lines for this period laid dow n in S talin ’s history o f th e party, placing to o m uch em phasis on m ilitary events, and failing to d ep ict th e civil war as a patriotic war— it seem s probable th at this attack was primarily an attem p t to underm ine M in ts’ pow erful p osition in S oviet historical circles. In ad d ition , personal vindictiveness and th e antiSem itism w hich played a part in th e postwar Soviet cuiturai purge m ay have b een factors in th e assault on M in ts. M in ts had b een since the early 1 9 3 0 ’s th e leading historian of th e early Soviet period, h ead in g up th e working collegia b oth for th e party history of th e civil war and for the “official” historv of th e Soviet U n io n . Several of th e speakers in the discussion, notably G ukovsky, attacked M in ts personally as an anti-M arxist and a follow er o f Pokrovsky. Later accusations against M in ts, w ho was kept under fire through 1952, stressed that h e was a m on op olist in his field and had b u ilt up a “ fam ily circle” around h im .90 A few m on th s later, L em in, th e author of a m onograph on British foreign policy from 1919 to 1925, was severely castigated for having accepted th e allegedly hypocritical A llied claim s concerning th e restoration o f an Eastern F ront and for having b een deceived on this p oin t by the m em oir testim on y of Lloyd G eorge and C h u rch ill.9697 As has already b een n oted , p u blications prior to m id1948 had n o t stressed th e anti-A m erican th em e so prom in en t in later postwar Soviet ideology. M oreover, the Second W o rld W a r Soviet historical literature had always either m in im ized A m erica’s role or had depicted th e U n ited States as a m oderating and conciliatory force, relu ctan tlv con sen tin g to intervene only to preserve th e unity of the anti-G erm an coalition and in th e h op e of restraining Japanese am bitions in th e Russian Far East. T h e only major excep tion to th e generally favorable por96. K ultura i Z h iz n (A pril 21, 1 9 49), 4; V op. Is t., V , 3 (1 9 4 9 ), 15253; and E. B urdzhalov, “ Stalinskii ‘Kratkii kurs istorii V K P ( b ) ’ i istoroclieskaya nauka” [Stalin's “ Short course on the history of the All-Union C o m m unist Party (B olsheviks)” and historical scholarship], B o ls h e v ik , X X V III, 18 (Sept., 1951), 9-23; and A. L. Sidorov in V op. Ist., V III, 10 (O ct., 1952), 5. 97. V op. 1st., 6 (1 9 4 8 ), 1 3 5 - 3 9 •

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APPLICATION OF THEORY: SELECTED EXAMPLES

trayal of A m erican intervention given by prewar Soviet historiography had b een a strong attack on A m erican policy in Siberia w hich M in ts m ade in 1932 in his introdu ction to th e translated m em oirs o f G eneral Graves, com m ander of th e A m erican expeditionary force to Siberia. H ow ever, M ints' denial of Graves' claim s o f U n ited States non-interference and neutrality in R ussian affairs and his allegation of partial A m erican responsibility for in tervention , were und oub ted ly designed to buttress any S oviet counterclaim s for in tervention dam ages th at m igh t b e presented in th e n egotiation s for th e resum ption of Soviet-A m erican relations th en p en d in g.989M oreover, th ese con ten tio n s o f M in ts were soon officially refuted by th e Soviet governm ent itself. D urin g th e 1933 discussions concerning A m erican recognition o f th e Soviet U n io n , th e State D ep artm en t, to invalidate Soviet counterclaim s advanced by L itvinov, presented h im w ith a collection of d ocu m en ts dealing w ith th e U n ited States' role in th e Siberian in tervention . Faced w ith these, L itvinov adopted th e view, w idely accepted in S oviet intervention historiography until 1948, th at th e U n ited States was relatively blam eless in this affair. In a letter to P resident R oosevelt o f N ovem b er 16, 1933, L itvinov stated: follow in g m y exam ination of certain d ocu m en ts o f th e years 1918 to 1921 relating to th e attitu d e of th e A m erican G overn m en t toward th e exp ed ition in to Siberia, th e operation there of foreign m ilitary forces and th e inviolability of the territory o f th e U .S .S .R ., the G overn m en t of the U .S .S .R . agrees th at it w ill waive any and all claim s of w hatsoever character arising ou t of th e activity o f the m ilitary forces of th e U n ited States in Siberia, or [out of] assistance to m ilitary forces in Siberia subsequent to January 1, 1918 . . *

*

‫׳‬

98. V . S. G rc v s , A m erika n sk a ya a van tyu ra v S ib ili, 1 9 1 8 -1 9 2 0 , pref. b y I. I. M in ts (M o s c o w , 1 9 32), vii-x ii, xxv-xxxvi. 99. U.S. D ep artm en t of State, T h e F o reig n R e la tio n s o f th e U n ite d S ta te s, D ip lo m a tic Papers: T h e S o v ie t U n io n , 1 9 3 3 -1 9 3 9 (W ash in g to n , D .C ., 1 952), 36.

INTERVENTION IN RUSSIA, 1 9 1 8 - 1 9 2 1

[3 6 3

To deny the validity of this conclusion and to fasten the full blame for intervention on the United States became the paramount and all-embracing task of Soviet intervention historiography after mid-1948. This campaign was launched in an article by Girshfeld in the leading Soviet historical journal. The obscurity of the author, the presentation in this article of a full docket of charges against the United States, and the frequent references to it in subsequent popular and “scholarly” treatments of intervention, all suggest that it was officially inspired and was intended as an historiographic edict, prescribing for Soviet historians the anti-American appraisals by which future work on intervention was to be guided.100 G irshfeld begins his article by deploring past m isinterpretations o f A m erican in tervention in Soviet historiography, for w hich h e feels “ th e illusions preserved by a certain, though sm all, part o f th e Soviet in telligen tsia w ith regard to the ‘.dem ocratic’ N e w W o rld as opposed to th e old capitalistic E u rop e” were partly responsible.101 In this co n n ectio n h e bitterly attacks the favorable evaluation of A m erica’s role in intervention m ade by Pokrovsky and V eltm a n in th e 1 9 2 0 ’s.102 G irshfeld argues th at tw o m ain characteristics o f U n ited States in tervention policy h elp ed to foster th e legend th at th e U n ited States was a m oderating force am ong th e in terven tion ist powers. In th e first place, A m erica’s substantial support to th e anti-Soviet cause was given covertly and was treacherously cam ouflaged b eh in d a screen o f hypocritical public assurances concerning th e U n ited S tates’ desire to h elp Russia and her in ten tio n n o t to interfere in R ussia’s internal affairs— such as th e F ourteen P oints and W ils o n ’s statem en t at th e tim e of th e Siberian in tervention . Secondly, A m erica seem ed to play a relatively m inor role in in tervention because only a sm all num ber o f U n ited States troops were directly involved in th e attack, w hich according to Girsh100. A . G ir s h f e ld , “ O

ro ll S S H A v o rg a n iz a ts ii a n ti-s o v e ts k o i in te rv e n ts ii v S ib iri i n a d a ln e m v o s to k e ” [ C o n c e r n in g t h e ro le o f t h e U .S .A . in t h e o r g a n iz a tio n o f a n ti- S o v ie t in t e r v e n ti o n in S ib e ria a n d t h e F a r E a s t], V o p . Ist., I V , 8 (A u g ., 1 9 4 8 )» 3*22• 101. I b id ., 3. 102. S ee a b o v e , 348-51.

jl j I I

'

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APPLICATION OF THEORY: SELECTED EXAMPLES

feld is m ost m isleading since actually A m erica served as th e ch ief supplier o f m on ey and arms to th e anti-Soviet forces and also furnished deceitfu l “ dem ocratic‫ ״‬programs designed to neutralize th e gen u in e popular appeal o f th e B olshevik revolution’s progressive id eology.103 H aving destroyed, at least to his ow n satisfaction, previous m iscon cep tion s o f the U n ited States role in intervention , G irshfeld turns to th e attack. H e charges that A m erica’s aggressive designs on Siberia dated back to th e purchase of Alaska and that A m erican “ im perialism ” counted on d om in atin g and exp loitin g post-revolutionary Russia through loans, concessions and trade. W h e n th e B olshevik revolution shattered these dream s, th e A m erican capitalists resolved to destroy th e Soviet state and imm ediately began to m ake plans for th e seizure of th e Russian Far East and th e organization of an in tervention ist crusade against Soviet R ussia.104 G irshfeld goes on to attack W ils o n ’s Fourteen P oints as a spurious “d em ocratic” program designed to delude th e European m asses and mask A m erican im perialism ’s plans for crushing th e Boishevik revolution and establishing A m erican hegem on y over the w hole world. P o in t Six dealing w ith Russia is characterized as a veiled call to intervention and as a schem e for th e dism em berm ent of R ussia.105 In analyzing the role o f th e U n ited States in th e Siberian intervention, G irshfeld becom es hopelessly m ired in a mass of contradictory statem ents and illogical argum ents. O n on e occasion h e charges that in a series of secret n egotiations b egin n in g w ith the L ansing-Ishii talks o f 1917 the U n ited States granted Japan a “free h an d ” in C hin a in exchange for Japanese recognition of A m erica’s right to exp loit Siberia and the Russian Far E ast.100 Y et only a few paragraphs later G irshfeld asserts first that Siberia was a Japanese “protectorate” and th en that it was actually d estin ed for E nglish con trol.107 H e argues that the Siberian intervention stem m ed from a carefully planned, concerted Japanese-Am erican conspir103. G irshfeld, /oc. cif., 4 7• 104. Ib id ., 8*10. 105. Ib id ., 5, 19. 106. Ib id ., 11-13. 107. Ib id ., 14-16.

INTERVENTION IN RUSSIA, 1 9 1 8 - 1 9 2 1

[3 6 5

acy, b u t at the sam e tim e h e em phasizes the U n ited S tates’ fear and suspicion of Japanese actions in Siberia and cites L enin on th e im portance o f Japanese-Am erican antagonism s in the Far East. T h rou gh ou t the article G irshfeld portrays W ilso n and H oover as th e bitterest op p on en ts of S oviet Russia and as th e ch ief villains in th e intervention picture. In concluding, G irshfeld charges that, far from playing an insignificant role in in tervention , th e U n ited States organized, supervised, financed and supplied th e anti-Soviet attack and was th e ch ief sponsor o f world im perialism ’s plans for dism em bering Russia and turning it in to a colonial countrv.108 j G irsh feld ’s article rrLakgS-aixJn tere historical distortion. W h ile accurately citin g W estern sources, lie is able, bv the careful selection and om ission of evidence, by gross oversim plification, and by drawing w holly u n foun d ed inferences from his evidence, to present a totally warped and incorrect, b u t superficially well-docum en ted, picture o f A m erica’s role in in tervention . For exam ple, G irshfeld m akes m uch o f th e discussion in Am erican governm ent circles of a proposal in Septem ber, 1918, to send A m erican troops to th e V olga front, b u t h e om its any m en tio n of th e fact that this plan was proposed by th e A llies and collapsed because of th e firm op p osition of W ilso n and G eneral M arch w ho insisted th at th e Siberian intervention n o t be extended beyond its original lim its. O n th e basis of a m ild *‘courtesy” n ote from W ilson to th e king o f R um ania, G irshfeld concludes that W ilso n sponsored th e R um anian seizure o f Bessarabia. In assessing W ils o n ’s distrust o f Japanese policy in Siberia, G irshfeld rejects the possibility th at W ilso n m ay have gen u in ely w anted to restrain Japanese expansion in that area and preserve R ussia’s territorial integrity. Instead he insists that A m erican suspicions were m otivated only by greed and jealousy and stem m ed from fears th at Japan m igh t usurp A m erica’s right to exp loit Siberia. N eed less to say, G irshfeld m akes no m en tion at all of th e pre-Brest 108. Ibid., 21-22.

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APPLICATION OF THEORY: SELECTED EXAMPLES

negotiations between Lenin and Robins concerning the possibility of American aid to the Soviet government or of Wilson's conciliatory policy at the Paris Peace Conference as expressed in the Prinkipo proposal and the Bullitt Mission. T h e cam paign to introduce anti-A m ericanism in to Soviet intervention historiography was gradually intensified through 1948 and 1949. In 1948 Lan, th e author of a m onograph on A m erica b etw een th e wars, was severely censured for “w hitew ash in g” W ilso n and failing to unmask th e d u plicity o f W ilso n 's “pacifist” p olicy.100 In 1949 Soviet historians were adm onished that in order to expose the present plans of aggressive A m erican im perialism , it was necessary to study A m erica’s past policies and especially “hypocritical sanctim onious W ilso n ism .” 110 It was sim ilarly p oin ted o u t th at o n e of th e m ost urgent tasks facing Soviet historians was th e refutation of A m erican bourgeois historiography's claim th at U n ited States inter-

vention in the Russian Far East had been motivated bv a desire to restrain Japanese expansion there.111 At about the same time Zubok, the chief editor of a collective work on inter-war history, was castigated for “idealizing” Wilson and for failing to show that Wilson was the sponsor of American plans for world domination and the chief inspirer of intervention. Zubok was further charged with erroneously minimizing America's role in the PolishWrangel phase of intervention and with falsely attributing Japan’s evacuation from the Far East to American and Soviet diplomatic pressure instead of to the might and heroism of the Bolshevik partisans and the attacking Red Armv.112 Another writer on modern historv, Gerbov, *

m

4

'

109. Vop. Ist., IV , 11 (N ov., 19 4 8 ), 134*38; and ibid., V , 2 (1 9 4 9 ), 152; see also the attack on L. Zaktregcr for depicting W ilson “as an unselfish peacemaker” in his review of T. Bailey’s W oodrow W iison and the Great B etra ya l in K u ltu r y i Zhizn (April 21, 1949), 4. 110. Vop. Ist., V , 3 (March, 1949), 9*10; and in a similar vein, ib id ., V I, 4 (April, 1950), 8*9• 1 1 1 . Ib id ., V , 4 ( A p r il, 1 9 4 9 ) , 7 *8 . 11 2 . Ib id ., V , 3 ( M a r c h 1 9 4 9 ) , 153*54» a n d V , 5 ( M a y , 1 9 4 9 ) , 123*26; in 1 9 5 4 Z u b o k , a p p a r e n tly h a v in g p r o f ite d b y th e le sso n o f h is ch a stise m e n t, a d o p te d th e a n ti- A m e r ic a n lin e in a te n -p a g e h is to r io g r a p h ic a l c r itiq u e o f t h e w o rk s o f S a m u e l F . B c in is , ib id ., X , 1 ( J a n ., 1 9 5 4 ) , 153.

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received his ch astisem en t in th e pages o f Pravda w here h e was accused o f incorrectly portraying th e U n ited States as a reluctant participant in in tervention and of failing to expose th e aggressive aim s o f A m erican in terven tion ist policy. Pravda was particularly in cen sed because Gerbov, described A m erican evacuation from Siberia as voluntary w hen everyone knew th at th e R ed Arm y had driven th e A m ericans o u t.113 J A t this p o in t th e anti-A m erican cam paign in intervention literature passed from its n egative phase— critiques, warnings, exhortations, and sessions o f “criticism and selfcriticism "— to m ore p ositive m easures. In th e fall o f 1949 a m inor and unheralded m onograph pu b lish ed in late 1948 and en titled The Struggle Against the Interventionists on the Murmansk Peninsular 1 9 1 8 -1 9 2 0 , was plucked from its well-deserved obscurity and thrust upon th e S oviet p u b lic by no less an organ than Pravda. In a lo n g review Pravdat w h ile n o tin g th at th e author, Tarasov, “could have laid bare th e piratical nature of U n ited States policy w ith even m ore power and profundity," warm ly acclaim ed th e book as an accurate and instructive revelation o f th e im perialist policies o f th e A nglo-A m erican interven tion ists in N o rth Russia. T h e Pravda review h igh ly praised Tarasov's description o f th e b lood y oppression and unasham ed lo o tin g w hich allegedly characterized th e Anglo-A m erican occu p ation and com m en d ed his d ep iction of Trotsky's alleged treachery at M urm ansk and of th e “leadin g role" Stalin played in driving th e im perialists from th e n o rth .114 D u rin g 1949 tw o major anti-A m erican works on interven tion appeared, o n e a “ scholarly" m onograph and th e other a popular brochure. T h e m onograph, w ritten by S h tein and en titled The Russian Question at the Paris Peace Confer enee, 1 9 1 9 -1 9 2 0 , reaches largely dissim ilar con clusion s and adopts an entirely different to n e from 113. P ravda (January 3, 1 9 5 0 ), 3• 1 1 4 . P ravda ( S e p te m b e r 7, 1 9 4 9 ) , 3, c o n d e n s e d in C .D .S .P ., I, 37 (O c t.,

11, 1 9 4 9 ), 4 8 .

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his 1947 articles on th e sam e to p ic.115 S h tein , an able historian and a w idely-traveled d iplom at, w ho prior to W o rld W a r II produced som e relatively m oderate and w ell-balanced work on th e V ersailles settlem en t and on S oviet Russia's foreign econ om ic policy, argues th at Am erican and European postwar plans for redividing and exp loitin g th e world w ere endangered by th e existen ce of Soviet Russia. T herefore th e B ig Four at V ersailles, led by W ilso n , decided to attack and destroy th e Soviet state.116 T h rou gh ou t th e book S h tein stresses th at th e U n ited States was the ch ief organizer and instigator of th e in tervention ist crusade m apped ou t at Paris and that W ilso n and H oover were th e bitterest and m ost repreh en sib le op p on en ts o f B olshevism . In th e ligh t of Shtein's past record and work, it is difficult to b elieve that h e could have b een sincerely convinced of th e validity and historical accuracy o f th e anti-A m erican absurdities his book contains. O n e can only con clud e that th e inexorable pressures o f party control and fears or am bitions concern; ing his ow n p osition m ust have driven h im to present j this m elange o f distortions. Shtein's work was shortly follow ed by a brief and vitriolic anti-A m erican brochure by Berezkin en titled The

U S .A.— Active Organizer of and Participant in Armed Intervention Against Soviet Russia, 1918-1920. In his foreword Berezkin candidly reveals th e current political purpose w hich inspired his study. H e declares th at his book is designed to prom ote "a better understanding o f th ose events on the international scene w hich developed after th e Second W o rld W a r w hen the U n ited States em erged as th e leader of im perialism 's world d om in ation ." 117’ 115. B. E. Shtein, ‘Rnsski v o p ro s’ na p a rizh sk o i m ir n o i k o n fe r e n ts ii, 1919-1920 gg. [T he "R ussian Q u estio n ” at th e Paris Peace Conferencc, 1919-1920] (M oscow, 1949); and three articles in V op. 1st., I l l , 3 (M arch, 1 9 4 7 ), 25 52; H I, 8 (Aug., 1 9 4 7 ), 3 2 9 ‫ ;־‬and X , 6 (June, 1 9 5 4 ), 9 9 - 1 0 5 •

116.

Ib id ., 16.

117. A. Berezkin, S S H A— a k tiv n y i organizator i u c h a stn ik v o e n n o i inte r v c n ts ii p ro tiv so v e ts k o i R o ssi i (1918-1920 gg.) [USA— active organizcr and participant of arm ed intervention against Soviet Russia (1918-1920)] (M oscow, 1949), 5.

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Berezkin adds that his analysis of American intervention is especially important '‘since in several instances in Soviet historical literature there exist incorrect and fundamentally mistaken definitions of United States policy toward revolutionary Russia/' He then goes on to attack the evaluation presented by Pokrovsky, Veltman and Levidov in the twenties and by Lan and Zubok in the period after the Second World War, all of whom succumbed, in Berezkin’s view, to American bourgeois propaganda conceming the “humane” role of the United States during intervention. Rebuking Lan for concluding that Wilson wanted to end intervention as quickly as possible, Berezkin asserts: “It was not Wilson, one of the chief inspirers of America’s aggressive policy toward Soviet Russia, who ended intervention. On the contrary, the heroic Soviet people led by the party of Lenin and Stalin defeated the interventionists and drove them from the borders of our motherland.” 118 Berezkin also bitterly attacks such journalistic “lackeys of American imperialism” as Louis Fischer, Walter Lippmann and Carl Ackerman for spreading lies about the new order in Russia and he accuses the State Department of issuing documents, not in an effort to throw objective light on the past, but in order to slander and malign Soviet Russia. Charging that American historiography with its “medacious claims to objectivity” is in reality the handmaiden of Wall Street, Berezkin coneludes that “the imperialists of the United States fear true scientific history based on an objective investigation of facts because it shows how the American imperialists have striven and are striving to crush the Soviet state.” 119 The body of Berezkin’s diatribe is a repetitious and caustic elaboration of the catalogue of charges presented earlier by Girshfeld. Berezkin maintains that ever since the nineteenth century America has steadfastly striven to enslave and exploit the Russian people and that beginning with the March revolution the United States was the chief inspirer and executor of active anti-Soviet intervention. Berezkin argues that throughout the intervention period, ; 1 8 . Ib id ., 6 .

11 ç. Ib id ., 7 8 ‫־‬.

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except w hen popular disapproval or R ed Arm y successes forced W ilso n to resort to such d eceitfu l m aneuvers as th e Prinkipo proposal, th e U n ited States con sisten tly follow ed an aggressive policy aim ed at crushing th e Soviet state and subjecting Russia to d ism em berm ent and colonial d om in ation . B ut th e brilliant leadership o f Stalin, w ith an occasional assist from L en in , th e disciplined unity of th e party, th e heroic deeds o f th e R ed Army, and th e staunchness o f th e Soviet peoples led by th e G reat R ussian peopie thw arted A m erican im perialism ’s designs and drove ou t th e interventionists. A fter Soviet R ussia’s m ilitary triu m ph, A m erican h ostility con tin u ed and increased and th e A m erican im perialists attem p ted to destroy Soviet Russia through non-recognition, eco n om ic b oycott and ideological subversion. T h rou gh ou t th e book Berezkin stresses the allegedly dem ocratic and peace-loving policy w hich Soviet Russia steadfastly pursued despite th e b estiality and viciousness o f th e A m erican attack. B erezkin’s argum ent is presented in a very sim ple, popularized and n um bingly iterative style and was clearly in ten d ed for w ide public con su m p tion . T h e book w on a 1950 Stalin Prize in th e popular-scientific field and was issued in a second ed ition in 1951. It was w idely com m en d ed in th e Soviet press, th e journal o f th e K om som ol organization approvingly n otin g th at th e book m ade a valuable contribution to th e cause o f peace by revealing the true face of A m erican “im perialism .” 120 In terms o f public prom inence and party em phasis, th e clim ax of th e anti-A m erican cam paign in Soviet intervention literature was reached during January, 1951. In that m on th Bolshevik, th e leading ideological journal of th e party, published an article by th e w ell-know n historian and propagandist Tarie, en titled “ C oncern in g th e H istory of A m erican Im perialism ’s A nti-Soviet P olicy.” 121 T h e first third of this article com prises a sharp attack on th e U n ited 120. K o m so m o lsk a y a Pravda (June 29, 1951), 4, cited in C .D .S .P ., I I I , 26 (Aug. 11, 1951), 32. 121. B o ls h e v ik , No. 6 (1 9 5 1 ), 57-69, trans, in C .D .S .P ., I I I , 4 (M arch 10, 1 951), 3 -9 •

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States for the crime of intervention and the by now customary calumnies against Wilson and Hoover. A few weeks later Pospelov, one of the party's most prominent ideologists, devoted much of his Lenin Day address to berating American imperialism “as the active organizer and instigator of armed intervention against the young Soviet state." 122 Clearly revealing the party's purpose in injecting anti-Americanism into Soviet intervention historiography, Pospelov declared that the study of the United States' role in intervention “becomes particularly enlightening and profoundly timely in the light of today's international situation when American imperialism . . . is preparing new military assaults upon the U.S.S.R." 123 According to Pospelov, the Bolshevik revolution saved Russia from enslavement by the American imperialists who were financing and thereby dominating the Provisional Government. The American billionaires, infuriated by this frustration of their plans to seize Russia and fearful lest the Soviet peace appeal mean the end of their enormous war profits, at once began to organize a hunger blockade and a military crusade against Soviet Russia. Adopting a vitriolic tone, Pospelov goes on to accuse the United States of assisting in the murder and torture of tens of thousands of peaceful citizens during the northern intervention and of acting as the gendarme and hangman of “world imperialism." In conclusion, Pospelov hails the glorious Soviet victories of 1919 and 1945 as clear warnings to “wörld imperialism," and defiantly proclaims that America's intervention in Korea will meet the same humiliating defeat that American intervention in Russia met. During 1949-1951 the party utilized every conceivable outlet of its vast and pervasive propaganda machine in an attempt to din the anti-American interpretation of intervention into the consciousness of Soviet citizens. The old, mistaken view had to be blotted out, the new, correct ap122. “On the Twenty *seventh Anniversary of the Death of V . I. Lenin,‫ ״‬Pravda and Izvestiya (January 22, 1 9 51), 2, trans, in C.D .S.P., III, 1 (Feb. 17, 1951)» 3 6 ‫•־‬ 123. Ibid., 3.

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praisal had to be made instinctive. No medium of written, oral or visual communication was overlooked, from “learned‫ ״‬articles to special intervention “museums,‫ ״‬and the whole campaign was pursued with terrifying persistenee and ruthlessness. In the “scholarly‫ ״‬field, monographs, encyclopedia articles, and leading articles in Soviet historical journals harped on the anti-American theme.124 Even academic symposia were not neglected. For example, in 1952 a meeting at the Belo-Russian state university heard a report on intervention entitled “The Anglo-American Imperialists— the Vilest Enemies of the Belo-Russian People,‫ ״‬and in March, 1953, papers on America’s criminal intervention in Latvia and in Lithuania were read at sessions of the second joint conference on the history of the Baltic peoples.125 At a somewhat lower level, textbooks, public lectures and popular brochures were utilized to carry the antiAmerican version of intervention to the Soviet peoples. In 1950 the draft outline of a university text on the history of the U.S.S.R., although not nearly as anti-American in tone or content as some contemporary and later Soviet accounts of intervention, did accuse the United States of playing the leading role in the interventionist attack.126 Two years later a text on the history of the Esthonian Republic described America as the chief sponsor of Entente and W hite Guard intervention against Esthonia.127 Melchin, the author of a popular brochure on intervention issued in 1951, links alleged American atrocities during the Siberian intervention with those supposedly committed in Korea and stridently charges that “with its own armed forces and those of the counter124. Shtein’s monograph has already been discussed; see also A. E. Kunina, Provai amerikanskikh p/anov zavoevam'ya mirovo gospodstva v 1917-1920 gg. [The failure of American plans for the achievement of world domination in 1917-1920] (M oscow, 19 5 1 ), not available to the author, but reviewed favorably in Vop. Ist., V II, 16 (June, 1951), 121-25. 125. Vop. Ist., V III, 12 (D ec., 1952), 174-75; and IX, 6 (June, 1953). 169. 126. Vop. Ist., V I, 7 (July, 1950), 61-108. 127. Reviewed in ibid., IX, 4 (April, 1953), 124.

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revolutionaries, American imperialism, the most reactionary, the most frenzied of imperialisms, which enslaves all small and weak peoples and supports reaction in the whole world, took on itself the shameful role of oppressor and executioner of Russian freedom.128 ‫ ״‬In a public lecture published as a pamphlet in 1951, Deborin, a Soviet diplomarie historian, stresses the unswervingly peaceful nature of early Soviet policy and repeats the familiar theme that knowledge of American culpability in intervention is vital to an accurate understanding of her present aggressive and anti-Soviet actions.129 At the most popular level, novels, plays, movies, newspaper articles, ‘'eyewitness‫ ״‬accounts, and historical and museum exhibits were all harnessed to the task of saturating the mind of the average Soviet citizen with a rabidly anti-American view of intervention. In 1950 a Stalin Prize was awarded to Nikitin’s novel, Aurora Borealis, which was subsequently adapted for the stage and which Pravda eulogized as an accurate and penetrating portrayal of the “imperialist” policies characterizing Anglo-American intervention in north Russia.130 The Pravda review praises Nikitin for correctly depicting the leading role the United States played in the northern intervention and for successfully destroying “the legend concerning Woodrow Wilson’s Christian impartiality and love of peace.” Pravda concludes that the book makes a substantial contribution to the correct understanding of American postwar policies and should stir the Soviet peoples to “anger and hatred” 128. A. I. M elchin, Amerikanskaya interventsiya na sovetskom daJnein vostoke v 1918-1920 gg. [American intervention in the Soviet Far East in 1918-1920] (M oscow, 1 9 5 1 ), 25; see also F. V . Chebaevsky, JRazg rom vtorogo p okhoda Antanty [The rout of the second attack of the Entente] (M oscow, 1 9 52), and N . Y. Kopylov, Razgrom amerikanoang/iiskoi voennoi interventsii na sovetskom severe v 1918-1920 godakh [The rout of American-English armed intervention in the Soviet north in 1918-1920] (M oscow, 1952). 129. G. A. Deborin, Sovetskaya vneshnyaya politika v pervye gody sushchestvovaniya sovetskogo gosudarstva, 1917-1920 gg. [Soviet foreign policy in the first years of the existence of the Soviet state, 1917-1920] (M oscow, 1 9 5 1 ), 6-8, 30-31. 130. Pravda (January 15, 1951), 2-3, condensed in C.D.S.P., III, 3 (March 3, 1951), 39 *4 0 •

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against the American billionaires' aggressive schemes. A “hiss-the-American-villain" play on intervention, Unforgettable 1919, won a Stalin Prize in 1951 and was later made into a movie with music by Shostakovich.131 In 1952 and 1953 several plays, undoubtedly inspired by the events in Korea, dealt with American aggression in the Russian Far East in 1918-1919.132 During these years the Soviet press acted as one of the major disseminators of the anti-American version of intervention. Articles attacking the wickedness and bestiality of the American assault on Soviet Russia appeared in a wide range of papers, from the Transbaikal W orker to the Lithuanian Party organ, Tiesat usually to mark the anniversary of the defeat of the interventionists in a particular geographic area.133 Some of these journalistic diatribes devote themselves primarily to the publication of 4‘newly discovered" archival documents “proving" that America was the chief culprit in intervention.134 Others delight in cataloguing the crimes committed by the American oppressors during intervention or in printing lurid 131. Reviewed in P ravda (May 4, 1 9 5 2 ), condensed in C .D .S .P ., IV , 18 (June 14, 1 9 52), 33•

132. Izv e stiy a (February 20, 1953), 3, condensed in C .D .S .P ., V, 8 (April 4, 1953), 35• 133. A few samples from the extensive evidence are Pravda (October 30, 193 0 ), 2, congratulating the Z a b a ik a lsk y R a b o c h y [Transbaikal Worker] for celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Transbaikal’s liberation from the interventionists with articles and documents on the crimes of the American imperialists there, condensed in C .D .S .P ., II, 44 (D ec. 16, 1 9 3 0 ), 41; an editorial in the Lithuanian paper T tesa [Truth] (July 3, 1 9 5 1 ), urging Lithuanian writers and artists to portray the black deeds of the American imperialists, condensed in C .D .S .P ., IV , 28 (Aug. 23, 19 5 2 ), 29; and an article in Pravda (April 5, 1 9 4 9 ), 3, praising P ravda Severa [Truth of the North] for observing the 29th anniversary of the liberation of Archangel by the publication of documents and materials on the exploitation and oppression carried out by the American occupation forces in north Russia, condensed in C .D .S .P ., I, 14 (May 3, 1 9 4 9 ), 28-29. 134. Selected examples of this technique are articles in P ravda (July 2, 1952 «(‫ נ‬, and Izv e stiy a (July 26, 1951), 3, on "Anglo-American imperialists, the hangmen of the Latvian people: New documents from the Latvian state archives,” condensed in C .D .S .P ., III, 30 (Sept. 8, 1 951). 35; and Izv e stiy a (January 8, 1952), 3, drawing on ”documents” printed in the journal of the Lithuanian Union of Soviet W riters, condensed in C .D .S .P ., IV , 1 (Feb. 16, 1 9 5 2 ), 28-29.

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and detailed “eyewitness77 accounts of some specific atrocity allegedly perpetrated by the American forces. For example, on several occasions the provincial paper Pravda Severa described alleged killings, looting and burning of villages which accompanied American occupation of North Russia and statistically summarized the situation as follows: hundreds of concentration camps, 52,000 people imprisoned under intolerable conditions of forced labor, cold and hunger, at least 4,000 innocent citizens shot, and millions of rubles worth of goods stolen and exported.135 After the outbreak of the Korean war, atrocity stories supposedly referring to the period of American intervention in Russia began to appear occasionally in the local Soviet press and most often in newspapers in Siberia and the Russian Far East. It should be noted that atrocities were in fact committed during the intervention— but by the Japanese and the local atamans, not by the Americans. For example, in early 1951 Pravda approvingly cited the publication of a letter from a former partisan who described in ghastly detail how the Americans chopped off prisoners7 ears and feet and put out their eyes with buming coals.136 As late as January, 1953 Komsomolskaya Pravda, the organ of the Young Communist League, prominently quoted a description from the local paper of the Maritime Provinces7 Komsomol committee of how the American billionaires had ripped open the mouth of a young Komsomol partisan and carved a bloody red star on his chest.137 Komsomolskaya Pravda cheerfully coneluded: “Such articles cultivate a hatred in our young people for the mortal enemies of mankind and teach vigilance against the intrigues of the Anglo-American imperialists.77 This violent and hysterical verbal onslaught against American intervention was supplemented by the utiliza135. Reported in Pravda (April 5, 1949), condensed in C .D .S .P ., I, 14 (May 3, 1949) , 28-29•

136. Pravda (March 13, 1951), 5, condensed in C.D.S.P., III, 11 (April 28, 1951), 46• 137. K o m so m o lsk a y a P ravda (January 16, 1 9 5 3 ), 2, condensed in C .D .S .P ., V, 3 (Feb. 28, 1 9 5 3 ), 27.

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tion of various “visual aids/' In 1949 Mudyug Island in the W hite Sea, the alleged site of a frightful concentration camp run by the interventionists, was reopened as a historical preserve and public inspection of it was encouraged.138 In 1951 Khabarovsk's park of culture and rest opened a documentary and photographic exhibit on the crimes perpetrated by the American interventionists in the Russian Far East. In the same year the naval museum in Leningrad established a visual display dealing with American intervention which included an electrified map graphically showing how Stalin had routed the interventionists and W hite Guards before Petrograd.139 During 1953 the thirty-fifth anniversary of the shooting of twenty-six Baku commissars by the interventionists was marked by a joint academic session on the event under the aegis of the Azerbaidzhan branch of the Marx-Engels-Lenin-Stalin Institute and the Republic's Academy of Sciences, by a library exhibit, and by discussions, reports and lectures on intervention and on the party, “the inspirer and organizer of all our country's victories," in schools, factories, collective farms, machine-tractor stations and oil fields.140 In the torrent of anti-American abuse which degraded Soviet intervention literature from 1949 to 1952, there was almost no crime of which the United States was not accused and almost no incident of intervention in which American aggression and American scheming were not found to be active. At one chronological extreme, the United States was charged with intervening in Russia's internal affairs and fomenting anti-Bolshevik conspiracies as far back as early 1917. At the other, American “imperialism" was indicated for actively encouraging and supporting continued Japanese intervention in the Russian 138. Izv estiy a (July 13, 1949), 3, translated in C .D .S .P ., I, 29 (Aug. 16, 1949), 70. 139. K o m so m o lsk a ya Pravda (August 3, 1951), 2, condensed in C .D .S .P ., III, 31 (Sept. 15, 1951), 32-33; and Izv e stiy a (July 21, 195!)» 3, condensed in C .D .S .P ., III, 29 (Sept. 1, 19 5 1 ), 41• 140. Reported in Pravda (September 20, 1953), 2-3, and excerpted in C .D .S .P ., V , 38 (Oct. 31, 1953), 28.

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Far East as late as 1920-1922.141 In this connection, it was alleged that, after the United States' evacuation of Siberia in 1920, the American billionaires hoped to utilize the Japanese militarists to crush Bolshevism and open Siberia to American exploitation and at the same time counted on Soviet resistance to weaken Japan and undermine her position as America's “imperialist" rival in the Far East.142 On the geographic side, America was depicted as the inspirer and organizer of intervention at Petrograd, in the Baltic, in Byelorussia, in the Ukraine, in Adzharia, in Armenia, in the Baikal region, and even in Bessarabia and Transcarpathia.143 In line with the recrudescence of Great Russian chauvinism in postwar Soviet ideology, several studies of intervention in the national minority areas bitterly attacked “bourgeois nationalists" for betraying their people and region to the imperialist plunderers and highly praised the generous and brotherly aid given by the Great Russian people to the border minorities, without which the latter's fight to “liberate" their region and defend their “freedom" and “independence" against the imperialist invaders would never have succeeded.144 W hile the anti-American theme continued to dominate 141. On 1917, see the articles by A. Gulyga in Vop. Ist., V I, 3 (March, 1 9 5 0 ), 3-25, and by G. K. Seleznev in ibid., X , 3 (March, 1954)» 5 5 7 3 ‫ ;־‬on 1920-22, see the article by S. Grigortsevich in ibid., V II, 8 (Aug., 1951), 5979• 142. Grigortsevich, 10c. cit., 60, 79. 1 4 3 . In addition to the references cited in notes 1 2 5 , 1 3 3 and 1 3 4 above, the following examples should also be noted: on Adzharia, see Pravda (August 1 , 1 9 5 1 ) , 3 , condensed in C.D.S.P., III, 3 1 (Sept. 1 5 , 1 9 5 1 ) , 3 2 - 3 3 ; on Armenia, see Izvestiya (January 1 4 , 1 9 5 1 ) » 4 , condensed in C.D.S.P., III, 2 4 (July 2 8 , 1 9 5 1 ) , 3 2 - 3 3 ; on the alleged American instigation of the Petrograd attack, see Vop. Ist., V II, 9 (Sept., 1 9 5 1 ) , 1 1 8 - 3 2 ; on Bessarabia, see Krasny Flot [Red Fleet] (June 2 2 , 1 9 5 2 ) , 2 , translated in C.D.S.P., IV , 2 7 (Aug. 1 6 , 1 9 5 2 ) , 3 0 - 3 1 ; and on Transcarpathia, see Izvestiya (March, 1 9 5 1 ) , translated in C.D.S.P., IV , 1 3 (May 1 0 , 1 9 5 2 ) , 1 8 - 1 9 • 144. For examples see the treatment of intervention in the Latvian newspaper Cina [Struggle] for November 20, 1952, and January 6, 1953, translated in C.D.S.P., V , 2 (Feb. 21, 1 9 53), 16-19; and the review of new volumes in Lenin’s collected works in Pravda and Izvestiya for October 4, 1950, and in Pravda, October 8, 1950, condensed in C.D.S.P., II, 40 (N ov. 18, 1 9 50), 26; and II, 41 (Nov. 25, 1 9 50), 25.

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Soviet intervention historiography after Stalin's death, the strident tones and lurid prose of the 1949-1952 period have been largely curtailed or mitigated. The article on intervention which appeared in 1953 in the second edition of the Large Soviet Encyclopedia, but which undoubtedly was originally prepared for publication somewhat earlier, accuses the United States of being the chief organizer of intervention, but it devotes comparatively little attention to this charge and it does not adopt the rabid and extravagant anti-American tone so common in the preceding years.145 Although a recent review of a 1952 study of American intervention, The Failure of the Anti-Soviet Intervention of the U S .A., 1918-1920, censures the book for failing to show the full geographic extent of American participation in intervention, the review also criticizes the authors, Gulyga and Geronimus, for portraying intervention as if it were carried out by only one country, the United States; when, according to the review, the attack on Soviet Russia was actually launched by an alliance and concert of imperialist powers with England, France and Japan playing just as nefarious a role as America.146 The review accuses Geronimus and Gulyga of erroneously minimizing the extent of the antagonisms and contradictions among the intervening powers, and especially between Japan and America, and charges that the authors oversimplified and distorted Japanese-American relations in 1918-1920 when they mistakenly described the existence of a United States-Japanese agreement on intervention and spheres of influence prior to July, 1918.147 In sharp contrast to books on intervention between 1949 and 1952, the most recent monograph on intervention, not yet 145. B o lsh . Sov. Ents. (2 e d .), X V III, 175*210; see also the comparatively mild anti-Americanism in the account of the ceremonies marking the 35th anniversary of the shooting of the twenty-six Baku commissars, Pravda (September 20, 1 9 53), 2-3, excerpted in C .D .S .P ., V, 38 (O ct. 31, 19 5 3 ), 28. 146. A. Gulyga and A. Geronimus, Krakh an tis o v e ts k o i in te r v c n ts ii S S H A , 1918-1920 gg. [The failure of the anti-Soviet intervention of the U.S.A., 1918-1920] (M oscow, 1 9 5 2 ), reviewed in Vop. Ist., IX , 6 (June, 1953), 144-46, not available to the author. 147. /bid., 145*46.

INTERVENTION IN RUSSIA, 1 9 1 8 - 1 9 2 1

[379

available in this country, bears no hint of anti-Americanism in its title.148 In addition to a reduction in the number and intensity of the anti-American attacks appearing in “scholarly” intervention literature, the period since March, 1953, has also seen the anti-American interpretation of intervention virtually disappear from the media of mass communication in the Soviet Union.149 The article on party history commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the party, which appeared in Pray da and Izvestiya on July 28, 1953, disposed of intervention in a few sentences and contained no anti-American references.150 Although the indictment against Beriya charged him with having attempted to betray Soviet Russia to the interventionists in 1919, bourgeois nationalists and British agents, not American spies and diversionaries, were depicted as his contacts.151 In a complete reversal of his Lenin Day address' of 1951, Pospelov’s speech on the same occasion in 1954 contains no trace of anti-Americanism in regard to the1 intervention period and instead stresses that the end of intervention presented Soviet Russia with a significant opportunity for a long period of peaceful coexistence with capitalism, an opportunity of which Lenin astutely took advantage.152 W hile there is still not enough evidence to permit any firm conclusions, these straws in the wind do 148. F.

G.

Zuyev, M e z h d u n a io d n y i

im p e r ia liz m — o rg a n iza to r napad e n iy a p a n sk o i P o lsh i na so v e ts k u y u R o s s iy u , 1919-1920 [International

imperialism— organizer of the attack of the Polish landlords on Soviet Russia, 1919-1920] (M oscow, 1954). 149. As reflected in the C .D .S .P ., Soviet newspapers and journals have carried very little on intervention since the death of Stalin. A play on intervention written by N . Pogodin and entitled H o s tile W i n d s appeared in late 1953, but a review indicated that British “imperialists" and "spies” are given a role equal to that of the Americans and that its tone is less lurid and hysterical than earlier intervention plays, Izv e stiy a (January 13, 1 9 5 4 ), 3, condensed in C .D .S .P ., V I, 2 (Feb. 24, 1954)» 31. 150. T his article, "the very short course” in party history, is translated in C .D .S .P ., V , 26 (Aug. 8, 1953)» 3 7• 151. N ew York T im e s (December 17, 1953), 12; the whole indictment is remarkably free of anti-Americanism. 152. P ravda and Izv e s tiy a (January 22, 1 9 5 4 ), 2, translated in C .D .S .P ., V I, 3 (March 3, 1954), 3*6; the 1951 address is cited in note 122 above.

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APPLICATION OF THEORY: SELECTED EXAMPLES

seem to indicate that the ubiquitous and virulent antiAmericanism, which between 1949 and 1952 so distorted the story of intervention in Soviet historical literature and in every Soviet propaganda medium, is gradually abating. At the same time, the general issue of Allied and Ameri‫׳‬ çan intervention has continued to be a serviceable propaganda weapon. Thus, during his visit to Great Britain in 1956 Khrushchev, in emphasizing that it was futile to threaten the Soviet Union with aggression, recalled that: “After the October revolution in our country there was a landing by the British, by the Americans, by the French at Odessa and by the Japanese at Vladivostok, but then the Russian people made an effort and cleared them all out.” 153 That IGirushchev selected this historical parallel in making his point, demonstrates the persistence and versatility of this theme. 153. Speech at the British Industries Fair in Birmingham, April 23, 1956, as reported in Tim e (May 7, 1 9 56), 38.

APPENDIX R E V IE W O F R E W R IT IN G R U S S IA N H IS T O R Y *

by L. V . Danilova and V . P. Danilov

A large number of works on Soviet historiography have appeared abroad in the past few years; the majority of the authors belong to the openly reactionary camp of bourgeois historians.1 Of course, historical science in the countries of the capitalist world‫ ־‬is not represented solely by those who have linked their activity with the policy of anticommunism and the 4'cold war.‫ ״‬W ith every passing year the voice of progressive historians is heard more and more dis* Istoriya SSSR [History of the USSR], N o. 6 (November-December, 195 9 ), PP• 188-200. Reprinted with permission from The Current Digest of the Soviet Press, X II, N o. 7 (March 16, i9 6 0 ) , 11-18, 34, published at Columbia University by the Joint Com m ittee on Slavic Studies appointed by the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council; copyright i9 6 0 by the Joint C om m ittee on Slavic Studies. [Page references conform with this second edition.] 1. Cf. Rewriting Russian History, New York, 1957, 413 pp. (this publication is further described in the text) ; A. G. Mazour, Modern Russian Historiography, New York, Toronto and London, 1958; “Aperçu sur 1’cvolution de la conception de l ’histoire en Union Sovietique,” in N otes et etudes documentaires, 1957, No. 2341, pp. 1-10, and N o. 2342, pp. 1-20.

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tinctly, and the number of bourgeois scholars who attempt to deal objectively with our country's history is growing. The heightened interest in Soviet historical science on the part of scholars of varying orientations shows that Soviet historiography has emerged into the international arena, and that even where people “took no notice" of it a few years ago they are of necessity beginning to reckon with it. This is precisely why the forces that direct the pens of the bourgeois ideologists regard a struggle against Soviet historiography as one of the tasks in the struggle against Marxist social science in general. The book under review also serves this purpose. It was published in 1957 by an American organization called the Research Program on the U.S.S.R., financed by the East European Fund, which pays a large part of the costs of subversive work in the countries of the socialist camp. It is a voluminous compilation of articles with a title the authors thought would attract the reader's attention: “Re‫־‬ writing" (i.e., revising—Authors) “Russian History." The collection was published simultaneously in New York and London. In 1958 leading American historical journals carried laudatory reviews of it. The author of one of these reviews— M. Karpovich— informed readers that in the literature of both America and Europe this was “the first book comprehensively treating" the development of Soviet historiography.2 In another journal, R. Fisher declared that the book's authors “show the rewriting and the rewriting of the rewriting of Russian history." Every article in the collection, it appears, “displays high quality and scholarly analysis," although the reviewer suddenly admits that “taken as a whole, their focus is not clear." It is important to note that Fisher does not find in the book any “new or unexpected conclusions"— that is, he recognizes that its authors simply rehash the trite motifs of the bourgeois press.3 Just who are the authors of this book? From the pref2. The American Historical Review, January, 1958, pp. 419-420. 3. The American Slavonic and East European Review, April, 1958, pp. 2 34-2 3 5•

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[3 8 3

ace the reader learns with astonishment that the work is the fruit of nothing more or less than a “joint RussianAmerican effort‫( ״‬p. x ). It appears that the W hite emigres and turncoats L. Yaresh, K. Shteppa, V. Varlamov and I. Sevcenko, who are now working in the U.S.A. as “specialists‫ ״‬in Russian history, collaborated in its writing with the Americans C. Black, Professor of History at Princeton University, and }. Thompson, a State Department official. The first words in the book— the words about a “Russian-American effort‫ —״‬are also its first lie. Actually, this is the “joint effort‫ ״‬of “cold war‫ ״‬ideologists. The collection is the first work devoted entirely to the development of historiography in the U.S.S.R. The size of the book (413 pages) enabled the authors to speak out fully and to set forth their views, opinions and conclusions thoroughly. Setting themselves the task of “illustrating the main trends of Soviet historiography in the field of Russian history‫( ״‬p. ix), the authors of the book speak of the development of scholarship in the U.S.S.R. and “analyze‫״‬ both the methodology of Soviet historical studies and the treatment in them of a number of specific problems. *

*

*

The first part of the book is entitled “The Evolution of Theory,‫ ״‬but the reader will seek in vain here for an analysis of the fundamental propositions or the achievements of Marxist sociology. In the introductory article the book's editor, C. Black, striving to create a semblance of objectivity, kowtows before Marx as one of the founders of, “ 19th-century sociology, who explained the industrial development of society.‫ * ״‬Where historical materialism is concerned, Black pronounces it simply “nonexistent.‫ ״‬Proof? In place of * [Here and in a number of other instances, the citations from the book diverge considerably from the English text. T h e sentence from which this quotation derives, for example, reads in the book, 4‘to say this is not to belittle the position of Marx as one of the pioneering sociologists of the nineteenth century, for his insights concerning the impact of industrialization on modern society have served to stimulate several generations of thinkers.” T h e citations are presented in this translation as they appear in the Russian.— Trans.]

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proof there is an allusion to unnamed “researchers in Marx method‫ ״‬who are allegedly able to corroborate this “documentarily‫( ״‬p. 10). “Marxism,‫ ״‬says Black, “ *** does not ensure scientific cognition of the laws of history but offers simply a general approach, a point of view, a spirit, and nothing more‫( ״‬p. 11). It is known that a rich literature on historical materialism exists, but the American professor is obviously reluctant to engage in polemics with it. He is particularly displeased with the thesis, the keystone of Marxism, of the objective necessity and consistent regularity of the historical process— the teaching on socioeconomic formations and their displacement in the course of mankind's development. Historical materialism allegedly fails to explain “deviations" in the history of individual countries and foists a single standard pattern of development on all of them. In the given instance, Black is using a threadbare tactic of many of Marxism's “critics": If a correct idea is to be refuted, it must first be distorted. Black declares, without recourse to proof, that the theorv of scientific socialism has not vindicated itself. As if there had been no Great October Revolution, as if the dictatorship of the proletariat had not been established in Russia, socialism had not been victorious and the construction of communism was not under way, as if the people's democracies were not following the road indicated by Marx and Lenin. As if it were something else, and not the all-conquering power of Marxist-Leninist theory, that explained the hope of the Blacks to “refute" this theory, not stopping short of distorting it. C. Black's article is called “History and Politics in the Soviet Union" and represents a general outline of the development of historical science under the Soviet regime. It enumerates scientific institutions, historical journals, several multivolume works and other publications. However, the reader will fail to find even a mention of the trends of scientific thought, of the struggle among currents at various stages, of the change in research problems, the increase in source materials, etc. Black is interested in

APPENDIX

[3 8 5

just one question— the relationship between historiography and the policy of the Communist Party (p. 3). Well, this is an important question. Soviet historians carry on their work under the leadership of the Communist Party. The Party sets the basic tasks for them, the Party ensures the proper training and placement of scientific cadres, the Party helps them to overcome shortcomings and mistakes in their work. No one has concealed this or is concealing it. Here Black is forcing a door that is already open. The main thing, however, is that Black speaks of this connection as though he himself, his co-authors of this book and his fellow writers had no connections at all with quite definite classes and political parties. In reality, the; primary question is with what classes and parties and withwhat policy one or another trend in science is linked:, with the advanced classes and their parties and with a policy of social progress, peace and democracy (as in the case of Marxist-Leninist science), or with reactionary classes that, fearing to look reality in the face, seek to put history in reverse and with the imperialist policy of class and national oppression (as in the case of the “science‫״‬ that Prof. Black represents). In his efforts to find an “opposition‫ ״‬to the Party's policy among historians, “conflicts between science and the Party" (p. 3), Black has distorted beyond recognition ' the true character of the relations between Soviet scholars and the Communist Party. The possibility of opposition to the reactionary policy of the upper ruling strata is one of the most compelling problems for the development of science in capitalist countries. There opposition means an opportunity to work for objectively true results in research. For science in socialist society, such a problem does not arise, since the Communist Party, as the party of the advanced class, the party of progress, is itself interested in the cognition of objecfive truth. It is for this very reason that socialist society creates for scholars unlimited opportunities for creative work. Black divides the development of historical science in

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the U.S.S.R. into three periods. The first period (19171928) he characterizes as a time of a kind of “parallel coexistence‫ ״‬of two schools— the old, or bourgeois, school and the Marxist school— and as a time of “relative‫ ״‬freedom in science “reflecting the spirit of the New Economic Policy‫( ״‬pp. 12-13). Black “did not notice‫ ״‬the acute ideological struggle in historical science in those years— the struggle against various reactionary, bourgeois-noble trends, as *well as against the Trotskyite-Menshevist, Social Revolutionary and right-wing opportunist conceptions. The surmounting of these conceptions was one of the primary conditions for the successful development of Soviet historiography. Nor does Black tell the reader anything of the fact that the 1920s were the period when the cadres of the first Soviet generation of historians were formed, among whom were such important scholars as K. V. Bazilevich, N. M. Druzhinin, 1. 1. Mints, M. V. Nechkina, A. M. Pankratova, A. V. Shestakov and others. Black moves back the inception of the new stage in the development of Soviet historical science from the mid1930s, when M. N. Pokrovsky's mistakes were overcome, to 1929, when, he alleges, “the Communists began to take decisive steps to liquidate their bourgeois colleagues‫״‬ (p. 7). Black has not a single word to say about the Shakhtinsky case or about the trial of the “Industrial Party,‫ ״‬which bared the active wrecking activity of reactionary strata in the old intelligentsia, with which a small group of bourgeois historians also sided. At the same time he ignores the main thing, namely, that it was not repressive measures against active members of underground anti-Soviet organizations and against the ideologists of a capitalist restoration that caused the disappearance of bourgeois schools and “little schools‫[ ״‬shkol i shkolok] from historical science; they fell apart because they suffered an ideological downfall. The progress in socialist construction served as the best proof of the untenability of bourgeois conceptions of social development and sut> stantiated in practice the truth of Marxist-Leninist teaching. All honest representatives of the old historical school

APPENDIX

[3 8 7

in the U.S.S.R., including such outstanding scholars as B. D. Grekov, S. V. Bakhrushin, S. V. Yushkov, V. I. Picheta and Yu. V. Gotye, began deliberately and voluntarily to go over to the positions of Marxism. Black, claiming that the end of bourgeois schools in Russian historiography was the end of historical science, maintains that even the struggle against M. N. Pokrovsky's historical conception was waged in the name of subordinating science to Party policy, though he is aware that M. N. Pokrovsky was himself a sincere Bolshevik and devoted all his activity to linking historical science as he understood it with the class struggle of the proletariat. True, Pokrovsky had a too one-sided and oversimplified understanding of Marxism and of the connection between politics and science, and for this reason his conception of history was in its chief features a vulgarization. However, M. N. Pokrovsky also performed services for historical science in our country. To him belongs a distinguished role in the struggle against bourgeois-noble reactionary historiography and against revisionist— specifically, Trotskyite — conceptions of Russia's historical past. Soviet historians say that the struggle against Pokrovsky's mistakes was a struggle between scientific ideas and vulgarizing ideas. Black, on the other hand, passes all of Pokrovsky's theories off as the only Marxist ones, and the criticism of them as a break with Marxism (pp. 9-10). Black cannot but concede the obvious successes of Soviet historiography, the importance of its accomplishments, especially after the mistakes of the M. N. Pokrovsky school were surmounted. As we know, Soviet historical science owes its accomplishments above all to the MarxistLeninist doctrine, unswervingly carried into effect by the Communist Party. Black, however, invents another explanation. After the break with “true Marxism," it appears, the Party's policy “gave historical scholarship, and in particular non-Marxist historians, an opportunity to regain a position of influence in research and publication" (P• 24 ) • Black declares (pp. 24-27) that all Soviet historians who

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have published specific historical research works on any problems of Russian history except the problems of the history of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the revolutionary movement have been non-Marxists. These historians, Black asserts, are able, with the help of “guile‫( * ״‬that’s just what he says!— see p. 30),** to get around “Party control‫ ״‬and come up with valuable research. In this instance, too, Black is using his own bourgeois yardstick to measure Soviet science. For the point is that the real successes that bourgeois historians sometimes achieve contradict bourgeois policy and ideology and are scored in spite of that policy and ideology. The American professor sees “guile‫ ״‬in the fact that highly qualified cadres are working in our country mainly in the field of ancient and medieval history. The true explanation, which is that the high level of research on the history of ancient Rus is the result of two centuries of experience, is not to Black’s liking. Besides— and Black makes no mention whatever of this— we alreadv have qualified contingents of specialists in the history of bourgeois and socialist Russia, and they are growing rapidly. He also detects “guile” in the “revival of the publication‫״‬ of historical source materials (although this revival is actually the very consequence of our party’s policy), and even in the fact that historians sometimes call their works “essays!” Black is not averse to praising general works by Soviet historians, such as the “Essays on the History of the U.S.S.R.” (from the most ancient times to the end of the 18th century), noting that the “quality of individual chapters and sections” in them “is frequently high.” The shortcomings of the “Essays,” in his estimation, lie “in the general interpretation” (i.e., in the Marxist-Leninist conception), in the “patriotic tone” and in the “neglect of such important problems as foreign influences in Russia” (p. 29).** * [The Russian word used here is “Khitrost"— “guile," “cunning." Black's word is “astuteness."— I rans.] ** [The paragraphs to which these comments are directed do not appear in the revised version of this chapter.— Ed.]

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[3 8 9

Even the 20th Party Congress, which opened up to historians unprecedented prospects for research work, is presented as a new step in the Party's “suppression” of science. But let us turn to the facts. In the time that has passed since the 20th Congress there has been a substantial increase in the output of literature on the history of the U.S.SJR. The number of books published in 1957 was almost two and a half times as great as in 1956, and the number of copies more than doubled. In the two years and nine months that elapsed between the Congress and the end of 1958, there were published 2369 books and pamphlets on the history of the U.S.S.R., almost half of them (1122) devoted to the history of Soviet society. More documents and materials on the history of Soviet society alone were published in this time than in all the preceding decades of the development of Soviet historical science. Five new historical journals were launched in 1957-1958. The facts, as we see, cogently refute the fabrications of the American professor, who is “free‫ ״‬from politics. The work of Black, the editor of the whole book, obviously served as a model for the other participants in the collective that he headed. The next article in the collection, written by Leo Yaresh, is devoted to the problem of the division of Russian history into periods. The very task of the Marxist periodization of the historical process is declared by Yaresh to be unsound, since its purpose is allegedly to fit the history of each country, including Russia, into a kind of general pattern, to break it down into “the periods of mankind’s development which Marxists regard is applicable to all human society” (p. 34). Yaresh, in order to foist his tendentious point of view on the reader, offers a distorted interpretation of the Marxist teaching on the modes of production, omitting such crucial points as the interdependence of the economic base and the political and ideological superstructure and the tremendous importance of ideology and politics in the life of society, and also neglecting the fact that ac-

î9 ° ]

APPENDIX

cording to Marxist theory, the historical development of individual peoples may have intrinsic peculiarities and may even, under the influence of definite conditions, bypass one or another antagonistic formation. W hat Yaresh is “criticizing” is by no means the true Marxist doctrine of society but a falsification of it. Yaresh declares a Leninist periodization of the history of Russia to be in general nonexistent (p. 4 2 ). On the other hand, he finds Plekhanov’s views, as set forth in his unfinished work “History of Russian Social Thought,” very interesting; in this work Yaresh is drawn not to what is living but to what is dead, i.e., to the departures from Marxist teaching on formations, to the exaggerated stress on the peculiar features of Russian history that supposedly approximate Russia to the Oriental despotisms, which are a special type of social development— that is, to the erroneous propositions that related Plekhanov’s conception to the bourgeois theory of the development and replacement of “various types of civilization.” Yaresh begins his analysis of Soviet historiography on the problem of periodization with the works of M. N. Pokrovsky, adding nothing to the critical comments (on the absence of a clear-cut concept of socio-economic formations, on making the chief criterion the evolution of trade, etc.) made by Soviet historians. Yaresh terms truly Marxist the periodization underlying the general course of Russian history written by Rozhkov. Rozhkov’s “Marxism” is seen in the recognition of the universality of historical development and the primary role of economic factors and in the mention of the class struggle and revolutions. Yaresh does not disclose what lies behind Rozhkov's concepts of “class struggle,” “feudal revolution,” “revolution of the nobility,” etc., considering a purely outward similarity to Marxist terminology to be sufficient. In the discussion at the end of the 1920s and the early 1930s, Yaresh’s attention is drawn above all to the points of view that deviate from the Marxist teaching on formations, in particular the proposition that the Asiatic mode of production was a special socio-economic forma-

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[3 9 1

tion. N ot daring to declare outright that this proposition is Marxist, Yaresh writes that it stems “from the meaning‫״‬ and “not from the letter‫ ״‬of Marxism (p. 51). In this instance we again encounter an attempt to pass off a deviation from Marxism as true Marxism. Yaresh also levels sharp (although superficial) attacks at the treatment of the question of the nature of slavery in Kievan Rus, a review of which was begun during the discussion. He regards the mere existence of labor service rent as proof of the existence of a slave-owning system. At the same time Yaresh confuses feudal land rent with capitalist land rent, equating the monetary quit rent of serfs and the rent payment of farmers. Yaresh recognizes the discussion of periodization at the end of the 1940s and the early 1950s as exceedingly interesting, but then he writes that the participants in it were placed in an “unadvantageous position,‫ ״‬based on the “necessity of relying primarily on economic factors*** and could not take equal * account of other factors‫( ״‬p. 77; our emphasis— Authors). In other words, Leo Yaresh this time, too, is dissatisfied because the periodization was worked out on the basis of the objective laws of social development established by Marxism. The collection gives considerable space to the treatment in Soviet literature of the role of the individual and the so-called “lesser evil‫ ״‬formula. Here also the authors were guided not by scholarship but by politics. It is not for nothing that from among the fundamental problems of the methodology of Soviet historiography they chose only those upon whose distortion bourgeois propaganda has spent particularly great efforts in recent years. Yaresh, who wrote the chapter “The Role of the Individual in History,‫ ״‬declares this to be one of the fundamental problems in the methodology of Soviet historiography, allegedly connected with the need for reconciling the deterministic theory of Marxism with the arbitrary actions of the Party and the practice of Soviet society (p. 77). He cites quotations from the works of Marx and Engels chosen in such a fashion as to create in the reader * [In the English text the word is “adequate.”— Trans.]

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]

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the impression that they almost totally disavowed the role of the individual in history. Yaresh needed to falsify in this way in order to distort the theory of Marx and Engels on the proletarian revolution, and above all their ideas on the role of revolutionary consciousness and revolutionary organization in the class struggle of the proletariat. The Marxist thesis that historical development flows in accordance with inevitable laws is interpreted by Yaresh as if Marx and Engels believed in the spontaneous victory of the proletarian revolution, as if they had not raised the question of combining revolutionary theory and the revolutionary practice of the proletariat, as if they were not the founders of the first political organization of the working class. He writes further: “It turned out that the revolution had to be organized, and this itself violated Marxist doctrine‫( ״‬p. 82). At this point mention is made of G. V. Plekhanov’s works “On the Question of the Development of the Monistic Conception of History‫״‬ and “The Role of the Individual in History,‫ ״‬which allegedly lay the basis for a revision of Marxist views on the role of the individual in history. Yaresh declares Plekhanov’s thesis that the role of the individual in certain conditions— if his activity coincides with the general trend of socio-economic development and does not conflict with objective laws— can be “colossal‫ ״‬and can influence the fate of society (pp. 83-85) to be a revision of the views of Marx and Engels. The next step along this path, according to Yaresh, was taken by J. V. Stalin. Yaresh adduces Stalin’s words in his talk with Emil Ludwig (1931). W e cite this passage from the talk in full, so that the reader may see for himself how far the authors of the work under review go in their distortion and misrepresentation: “Marxism does not in the least deny the role of outstanding individuals, or that people make history. In Marx’ 4Poverty of Philosophy’ and other works you will find it stated that it is precisely people who make history. But of course, people make history not as some fancy prompts them, not according to what comes into their heads. Each new gener-

APPENDIX

[393

ation encounters specific conditions that already exist, ready-made, at the moment the generation comes into being. And great men are worth anything only insofar as they are able to understand these conditions correctly and understand how to change them.4 ‫ ״‬Calling Stalin’s statement on the determining role of objective conditions a truism, Yaresh writes: “Stalin says that the task of a great man is to change the social order. As we know, according to Marx and Engels the social order cannot be changed contrary to the general laws of social development. In his interview with Ludwig, Stalin does not even mention these laws, which form the most essential part of Marxism. The reader is free to guess that the social order can be changed if there is available sufficient physical force (?) to change it, even if the change brought about is contrary to (??) the general laws of social development‫( ״‬pp. 8889). As we see, J. V. Stalin’s actual words have nothing in common with Yaresh’s “interpretation” of them. Yaresh does all he can to magnify the mistakes connected with the diffusion of the cult of J. V. Stalin in the final years of his life, with a view to proving that the Marxist views on the role of the individual and the masses in history are untenable, glossing over the central fact that the cult of J. V. Stalin, his violations of socialist legality and other mistakes, did not alter the foundations of the Soviet system, that the Soviet people built socialism and, having overcome the consequences of the cult of the individual, are successfully building communism. In the face of these generally known facts, Yaresh maintains that (by and large) “the role of the masses in the great transformation which took place in the Soviet Union was a passive one‫( ״‬p. 89). How can this be said of a people who thrice in the course of two decades rose in révolutions, overthrew the autocracy and capitalism, established the Soviet regime and defended it in a bloody war against the combined forces of internal counterrevolution and the armed intervention of 14 states that numbered among them the greatest countries of the capitalist world— 4. J. V . Stalin, Works [in Russian], V ol. X III, p. 106.

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Britain, France, the U.S.A., Germany and Japan? The facts of popular initiative in the U.S.S.R. are innumerable: the development and work of the Soviets, production conferences, the shock worker movement, socialist competition, the movement of rationalizers, people's construction projects, etc., etc. But what does Yaresh care about the facts? K. Shteppa's article “The 'Lesser Evil' Formula" similarly fails to go beyond the framework of bourgeois propaganda purposes. The author tries to picture matters as though the Communist Party were demanding of historians that they justify Tsarism's policy of oppressing non-Russian peoples. However, running up against the necessity of reconciling this task with the “Marxist thesis that Russia was a prison of peoples" and with the facts of the oppressed peoples' struggle for national liberation, Soviet historians, as depicted by K. Shteppa, became entangled in an insoluble contradiction until they found a way out of the situation by employing the “lesser evil" formula (pp. 109-110). Shteppa ignores the fact that in solving this complex question, Soviet historiography starts by considering two opposing tendencies in the interrelations of the peoples of multi-national states under capitalism. The development of capitalism arouses an ambition for the gradual unification of vast territories into a single connected whole. In fostering the development of production forces and the liquidation of national ipsularity, this process is progressive. Under these circumstances, however, the interdependence of the peoples and economic unification have been brought about not through cooperation but through the oppression and exploitation of the less developed peoples by the more developed ones. Therefore, along with the tendency to unification there was a mounting tendency toward the dissolution of the coercive forms of that unification.5 W hile noting the beneficial influence of the Russian economy and culture 5. V . I. Lenin, W orks [in Russian], V ol. X X , pp. 11-12; The C.P.S.U. in Resolutions and Decisions of Congresses, Conferences and Central Committee Plenary Sessions, Part I, pp. 709-710.

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on the development of previously backward outlying areas and the progressive nature of the association of the toiling masses of the various peoples of Russia, Soviet historians expose the autocratic system of national oppression and exploitation. Marxist historiography starts from this position in its approach to an assessment of national movements, drawing a strict distinction between progressive movements directed against national enslavement and reactionary movements in defense of feudal-patriarchal orders receding into the past. K. Shteppa, ignoring these principles in Soviet historiography, charges Soviet historians with a contradiction, with “walking a tightrope‫ ״‬between pointing out the positive results of close contact between the outlying peopies and the Russian people and acknowledging the negative effect of national and colonial oppression, between the assessment of some national movements as emancipatory and progressive and of others as reactionary (pp. 114-120). He does not inform his readers that in analyzing such large and complex national movements as the uprising of Caucasian mountaineers under the leadership of Shamil and the action of Kenesary Kasymov in Kazakhstan, Soviet historians differentiate between the demands of the masses and the slogans advanced by the feudal-clerical leadership. As far as the notorious “lesser evil formula‫ ״‬is concerned, K. Shteppa also suffers a complete failure. Though he takes great pains to magnify the importance of this theory in Soviet historiography, Shteppa concedes in conelusion that it met with the disapproval of Soviet scholars and was not propagated in the historical literature. $

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Having given an account of the development of the “theory‫ ״‬of Soviet historiography, the authors move on to illustrate their “conclusions‫ ״‬with individual examples. The reader will be mistaken if he thinks the authors have singled out the subjects on which Soviet historians have focused their main attention. In the second part as well,

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the selection of specific historical themes is not accidental, nor is it new. These are once again the pet subjects of bourgeois propaganda: the primordial "backwardness‫ ״‬of Rus and the "incapacity‫ ״‬of the Eastern Slavs to develop statehood; foreign influence as the solitary source for introducing Russia and the Russian people to the blessings of civilization; the horrors of oriental despotism in Russia, etc. In the article "The First Russian State,‫ ״‬A. Vucinich promises to give a "critical analysis of the basic methodological tools employed by Soviet historians in their efforts to identify historically and geographically the first Russian (or Eastern Slav) state‫( ״‬p. 124). However, the presence of scholarly analysis is not to be detected in the article. It starts with a presentation, concise in the extreme and highly approximate, of the general views of Soviet historians with respect to the causes and the time of the advent of the state among the Slavs. Disregarding the special historical and archaeological literature and the materials of the recent discussions on the periodization of the history of the U.S.S.R. and the evolution of feudal land property, the author undertakes to discourse on the prevailing conception in Soviet historiography virtually on the basis of a single work— Academician B. D. Grekov's book Kievan Rus. Even such a generalizing work as the Essays on the History of the U.S.S.R. goes unnoticed, though it contains basically new points in its treatment of the problem of the rise of the ancient Russian state.6 Maintaining silence with regard to the literature that appeared at the end of the 1940s and in the 1950s, Vucinich tries to create the impression that elaboration of the problem ceased after B. D. Grekov’s work appeared. Relating the appearance of Grekov’s book to the demand for "disposing of the myth of the Slavs’ backwardncss” (p. 126), Vucinich assails in particular its antiNorman tendency. Simply to indicate the departure "from 6. T he volume of the Essays on the History of the U.S.S.R. con‫־‬ taining the section on the ancient Russian state came out in 1953, three years before the book under review went to press.

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the tradition” that existed in Russian prerevolutionary historiography and that is being used in bourgeois propaganda seems to Vucinich to be quite sufficient to “refute” the conclusion that the ancient Russian state arose as a consequence of the internal process of development in Eastern Slav society. This conclusion, the only scientific one, he tries to counter with the unsubstantiated argument that the state emerged among the Slavs “as a result of ethnic stratification; that is, of a super-imposition of politically organized foreign groups upon the Slav masses” (p. 1 2 4 ).

He tries to prove that B. D. Grekov's main theses rest on a priori postulates instead of historic facts (p. 138 and elsewhere), and that his concrete observations were borrowed from pre-revolutionary authors and reworked “in a Marxist key” (p. 128). Vucinich passes over in silence the circumstance that along with facts well-known in historical literature, B. D. Grekov enlisted an enormous amount of archaeological material proving the existence among the Eastern Slavs in the sixth to the ninth centuries of a fairly well developed agriculture constituting the basis of their economic life; a large chapter devoted to the social relations of the Slavs was based on original research in the “Russkaya pravda” [an 11th-century law code], the chronicles, the reports of foreigners and other sources. In B. D. Grekov's contention that on the one hand private property, classes and state authority originated among the Eastern Slavs in the sixth to the ninth centuries, and that on the other hand the obshchina [village community], with its inherent economic and public-law functions, was preserved among them as the foundation of economic and social life (pp. 139-140), Vucinich perceives a contradiction that reveals a mechanistic approach to the study of a society's history; he fails to understand that the formation of private property, classes and the state is a very lengthy process that traverses a number of stages and has its own peculiarities in different countries. Vucinich shares the viewpoint of researchers who conceive the unification of the Volhynians in the sixth cen-

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tury to have been an enormous military alliance of tribes that had not matured to the state stage, and from that standpoint he criticizes B. D. Grekov, in whose opinion the alliance of Volhynians allegedly represented a state formation. According to B. D. Grekov, however, it was merely a transitional step in the making of the state.7 As we see, here, too, the principal condition for “refuting” the ideas of the author “being criticized” was the preliminary distortion of those ideas. If it is to the Varangians that the authors of the collection credit the establishment of a state system in Rus, the creation of ancient Russian culture they ascribe exclusively to Byzantine influence. Ihor Sevèenko's article “Byzantine Cultural Influences” (pp. 141-190) considers for the most part religious features, assiduously sought out in the monuments of ecclesiastical and secular literature and in architecture and painting and declared to be Byzantine in origin, although they were by and large typical of the medieval world outlook. In those cases where there really are specific Byzantine elements in ancient Russian culture (elements that Soviet historiography has never denied, by the way), the entire substance of the monuments that I. Sevòenko considers is reduced to these eiements. One need only take the analysis of that remarkable monument of ancient Russian culture the “Povest vremennykh let” [“Tale of Bygone Years”]. I. Sevèenko is interested only in those few parts of it that really are based on Byzantine sources (as has also been remarked upon in Soviet writings).8 The basic text of this historic monument, which treats of thoroughly Russian affairs in the center of the country and in its outlying areas, is left out altogether. All the other monuments of the culture of ancient Rus are “analyzed” in similar fashion. In its origin and in its development thereafter, Rus is portrayed merely as “an outlying region of the civilized world.” 7. See B. D. Grekov, Kievan Rus, Moscow, 1949, pp. 436*439. 8 . See, for example, D. S. Likhachev, Russian Chronicles and Their Importance lor Cultural History, M oscow and Leningrad, 1947, pp. 166-169, 419-421.

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As far as Soviet historical literature is concerned, the author’s attention is drawn primarily to several works of the 1920s that exaggerated the importance of Byzantine influence on early Russian culture. He completely “denies,” however, that contemporary Soviet Byzantine scholarship is scientific, for the sole reason that it seeks to establish the originality and national character of Russian culture. W hile admitting that there has been a revival in the work of contemporary Soviet Byzantine specialists, he does not venture to dispute their conclusions on their merits but confines himself to allegations that they are nothing more than successors and inferior imitators of the Slavophiles (p. 190). Written in the same spirit are L. Yaresh’s articles “The Formation of the Great Russian State” and “Ivan the Terrible and the Oprichnina.” In the conception of L. Yaresh, as of the overwhelming majority of bourgeois historians, feudalism is equated with the political system of feudal fragmentation. L. Yaresh traces the inception of feudalism in Rus from the final disintegration of the “Rurik dynasty” under the blows of the Tatars and Mongols in the middle of the 13th century (pp. 191-192). The complete disappearance of the vestiges of feudalism he dates to the end of the 16th century, the period, marked by the extermination of the feudal aristocracy, when the centralization of the Moscow state was consummated (pp. 193-194). Yaresh sees the principal distinguishing feature of feudalism in the predominance of conditional feudal landownership. From what has been said, it is clear how far removed he is from a scientific interpretation of feudalism as a special socio-economic formation that in its development went through a number of stages, including a period of feudal fragmentation characterized by distincrive features not only in its political but above all in its socio-economic system. W hile regarding the time of Ivan the Terrible as the culmination of the development of the centralization process, L. Yaresh nonetheless writes that the events of the middle of the 16th century (he has in mind the administrative, judicial and military reforms)

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“were only an episode/' while the personality of Tsar Ivan was a “chance expression of certain physiological [Yaresh has “psychological"— Trans.] traits" (p. 217). This assessment is a striking reflection of a subjectivistic approach to the study of history, of insufficient understanding of the objective necessity and consistency of the establishment of centralized states at a definite stage of feudalism. Yaresh deplores the fact that the role of unifier of Rus did not fall to the lot of Tver, which had close ties with its western neighbor, Lithuania, or of Novgorod the Great, which maintained relations with Lithuania, the Hanseatic League and the Scandinavian countries and had a “republican type of government." In his words, “a victorious Novgorod would have helped assure greater intimacy between Russia and the European world." The primacy of Novgorod “might have stimulated the preservation of democratic elements in the development of Russian society" (pp. 192-193). The victory of Moscow, however, gained with the help of the Tatar khans, led to “an increase in the power of the grand prince and a reduction in the influence of other organs of administration" (p^ 193). In the first place, there is no reason for regretting the allegedly forfeited ties with the West, since the “European world" in the 14th to the 16th centuries, if one excepts the Italian republics, was no more democratic than the Moscow state. In the second place, the works of A. V. Artsikhovsky, B. A. Rybakov, V. N. Bernadsky, S. A. Tarakanova-Belkina and other Soviet historians and archaeologists have long since proved that Novgorod the Great, for all the differenee in the form of its political system, did not differ in its economy and social structure from the other Russian lands. The so-called democracv there existed onlv for the very biggest landed magnates, and power was to all intents and purposes concentrated in their hands. The importance of the Novgorod veche [popular assembly] gradually diminished. In this respect Novgorod experienced a trend characteristic of other Russian lands, where the veche svstern had also existed, though in a less highly developed 7

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form than in Novgorod. The process of enserfment, which made it hard for the peasants to leave the landowners, spread in the second half of the 15th century to Novgorod's peasants as it did to the Russian peasants as a whole. But L. Yaresh has not taken the trouble to examine contemporary literature on this subject. In the third and last place, if one really speaks of the reasons for Moscow's victory, it was due to a whole series of socio-economic, political and other factors, and was won not with the help of the Tatar conquerors but in the struggle against them. The question of the center of the Russian state was settled not in the khan's headquarters but on the field of Kulikovo. Moscow acted as the organizer of the forces of the Russian state and the initiator of the struggle against the Tatar-Mongol yoke. L. Yaresh's methodological premises are accurately revealed in his high regard for the researches of bourgeois historians; unlike Soviet historians, “who are to a large degree concerned with general conditions and general conelusions," they “focus their attention on individual events and phenomena" (p. 195). In the avoidance of broad problems and of synthesis that characterizes the bourgeois historians of the period of imperialism Yaresh sees the chief merit of scientific research! The last sections of the article lay bare the purpose for which it was written. Yaresh needed to validate the spurious thesis that the old political factor— the centralization of the state— is the “basis for the building of the new socialist [Yaresh's word is “Soviet"— Trans.] -society." This is why, he says, Soviet historians began to “acclaim" the Russian centralized state, departing from Pokrovsky's conception and allegedly making common cause with prerevolutionary historiography (pp. 202-203). Soviet historians, who consider economic causes (the creation of prerequisites for the development of a national market) to be the basis of state centralization and who never fail to stress the role of class struggle as a factor compelling the feudal masters to forgo their privileges in favor of a strong centralized state, are accused by Yaresh

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of glossing over these propositions, the only true and Marxist ones, and of bringing to the forefront a purely political factor— the needs of self-defense. To Soviet historians, who showed for the first time that progress in establishing a strong centralized state able to uphold national independence was achieved by dint of intensified exploitation of the masses and a worsening of their material condition and legal status, is imputed the smoothing over of social contradictions. W hile claiming that in Soviet historiography on this question “everything was reduced to interpretation, and there was hardly any research‫( ״‬p. 211), the bourgeois falsifier is nonetheless forced to admit that interesting materials previously unknown were brought into scientific currency and to concede the profound analysis of source materials characteristic of the works of K. V. Bazilevich, L. V. Cherepnin, A. V. Artsikhovsky, B. A. Rybakov, A. L. Mongait and other Soviet historians (pp. 196-197, 212). In all instances, however, L. Yaresh assesses favorably only the aspect of the study of sources, the research technique, while the authors' methodological premises come in for “criticism‫ ״‬precisely because they are Marxist. In the article “Ivan the Terrible and the Oprichnina,‫״‬ L. Yaresh, after painting the oprichnina* in the darkest colors and making it out to be the cause of all the Russian people's afflictions from the end of the 1560s to the 1580s, maintains that it was the consequence of pathological traits in the character of Ivan the Terrible (pp. 217, 231). Soviet historians have always paid a great deal of attention to the study of the reforms of the middle of the 16th century. For all the difference in points of view on particular questions, there has for a long time now been in evidence a common over-all assessment of the reforms as one of the decisive stages in the formation and consolidation of the Russian centralized state and the autocracy * [The oprichnina was a division of the country under Tsar Ivan IV one class of whose landowners, the oprichniki, were (quoting Yaresh) "assigned special tasks of surveillance over the rest of the population and 'tracking down traitors'” (p. 2 1 8 ).— Trans.]

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and in the enserfment of the peasant masses. As for the oprichnina, it is regarded as an extension and completion of the processes initiated by the reforms. This point of view runs through special works and general courses, ineluding the Essays on the History of the U.S.S.R. (Period of feudalism from the end of the 15th to the beginning of the îy th century), with which Yaresh is familiar. However, he simply ignores Soviet historiography on this question. The socio-economic background in Russia in the middle and second half of the 16th century, the correlation among the classes and among alignments within the classes, the connection between the reforms of the 1550s and the oprichnina on the one hand and the sharpening of class struggle and contradictions within the ruling class of feudal lords on the other, have received circumstantial elucidation in the research works of B. D. Grekov, M. N. Tikhomirov, B. A. Romanov, A. A. Zimin and S. O. Shmidt. Yaresh, however, takes no notice of the problems treated in these works. In the valuable research of S. V . Bakhrushin, P. A. Sadikov and I. I. Smirnov, which he does mention, it is primarily their errors that loom large in his analysis, specifically the overrating of Ivan the Terrible's activity— which has been pointed out, incidentally, by Soviet critics. Yaresh finds a “Marxist‫ ״‬appreciation of the oprichnina in Rozhkov and Pokrovsky, inasmuch as both of them acknowledged that it had several positive results; but Rozhkov, who traversed the path from Bolshevik to Menshevik and then to a non-Party position, had a favorable attitude only to the oprichnina's achievements and censured it for its methods (p. 222), whereas “to Pokrovsky, a Bolshevik and hence an advocate of 4Jacobin methods' of class struggle, the use of terror against the representatives of the 4dying class' was highly expedient and therefore fully justified" (p. 223). The intention of the article— to present the Bolsheviks as proponents of terrorist methods— shows up quite plainly in this contrasting of Rozhkov and Pokrovsky.

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C. Black's article “The Reforms of Peter the Great" basically considers Soviet historiography of the last twenty years. The successes of Soviet historiography in studying the age of Peter are so obvious that Black cannot but admit the great scholarly value of a whole series of research works. It must be said, however, that he at once tries to discredit them,9 contrasting to them works that deviate from the mainstream of Soviet historiography. Thus the author pauses to consider in particular detail B. I. Syromyatnikov’s book The “Regulated” State of Peter the Great and Its Ideology (Part I, Moscow and Leningrad, 1943). Syromyatnikov regarded the beginning of the 18th century as a transitional epoch between decaying feudalism and ascending capitalism and the absolutism of Peter's state as the result of a balance between the classes of the feudal lords and the bourgeoisie. Syromyatnikov affirmed that Peter's social policy was aimed at defending the peasantry. This point of view is incompatible with the Marxist teaching on the class nature of the state. It is refuted by all the facts, which show that despite the fairly substantial growth of bourgeois elements in the economy and social order, the feudal-serf-holding structure at the beginning of the 18th century remained unshaken and even continued to grow stronger. Syromyatnikov's book has incurred serious criticism in our literature, based on profoundly scientific considerations. This criticism Black explains by “a change in the political course" that entailed the “prohibition" of freedom of thought in scientific research after “permitting a certain freedom of interpretation" in 1941-1948 (pp. 244-245). It is well known that the intensive treatment of the economy and social relations of the age of Peter began only very recently, with the publication of source materials and of works by S. G. Strumilin, B. B. Kafengauz, Ye. I. Zaozerskaya, N. I. Pavlenko, etc., and Black himself sets forth their conclu9. For example, while noting the excellent qualities of the volume of the Essays on the History of the U.S.S.R. devoted to the age of Peter, its extensive use of new archive materials, the superbly selected illustrations, etc., Black peremptorily declares that the volume concentrates on factual data and offers nothing new in interpretation (p. 2 5 8 ).

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sions supporting the justice of the criticism of Syromyatnikov's views. Many years of discussion of the nature of manufacturing in Peter's time has also confirmed the erroneousness of Syromyatnikov's conception. Black links the discontinuation of N. A. Voskrenesky's publication of Peter Fs legislative acts to the notorious “change in the political course," even though he is unable to say just wherein the connection manifests itself. Black disorients the reader by lavishing immoderate praise on this unfinished publication, while merely mentioning in an off-hand manner so extremely valuable a publication of source materials on the age of Peter as the multivolume series “Letters and Papers of Peter I." A great deal of space in Black's article is devoted to asserrions regarding foreign influence on Russia as the primary source of its advancement. Admitting that the main trends of Peter Fs reforms had taken shape in the preceding historical period, Black is quick to write, contradicting this admission, that “underlying these reforms was the assumption that Russia must learn from Europe" (p. 233). Marxist historians, while not denying the importance of foreign influence for the history of this or that country, including Russia, have never regarded it as the basis of historical development. And to consider foreign influence the “basis" of Peter's reforms is to strike out the achievements even of the old Russian bourgeois historical school, which Black so extols. The article “The Campaign of 1812," written by the same Yaresh, is dedicated to proving the thesis that “Soviet historiography has undergone important changes in its methods and basic aims since 1917" (p. 260). The article opens with an exposition of the author's own views on the essence of the problem. The main cause of the war of 1812, according to Yaresh, was the violation by Russia of the continental blockade of Britain (p. 261), for which Napoleon decided to punish her. There is not a word about the plans for establishing the world hegemony of the French bourgeoisie. The military developments are set forth on the same plane. Yaresh,

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trying to create in the reader the impression that the Napoleonic army marched triumphantly through to the heart of Russia and easily took Moscow, does not once mention the heroic resistance of the Russian soldiers at Smolensk or on the field of Borodino, the partisan movement or the frustration of Napoleon’s plan to separate the First and Second Russian Armies. Why, then, did the “grand” army suddenly take to its heels, abandoning its arms and munitions and suffering enormous casualties? Not, it turns out, because the Russian people offered Napoleon unprecedented resistance, creating for his army unbearable conditions that ruled out the slightest hope of salvation. According to Yaresh, the French quit Moscow all but voluntarily, because of the remoteness of their supply bases and, most important, the grimness of the “Russian winter” (p. 265). Yaresh’s first and principal premise in elucidating Soviet historiography on the problem is the allegation that Marxist doctrine calls for repudiating the “patriotic aspect” in the assessment of wars, which “for international revolutionaries were merely clashes between hostile exploiting groups and as such were to be condemned” (p. 264). Yaresh is not in the least disconcerted by the fact that Marxism has never confused just wars of liberation and unjust predatory wars, or real patriotism and jingoism. As everyone knows, long before 1934, when the shift of Soviet historians to “patriotic attitudes” is alleged to have occurred, V. I. Lenin wrote a wonderful article “On the National Pride of the Great Russians” (1914), which precisely specifies just what engenders a feeling of national pride in “class-conscious Great Russian proletarians” and just what in the past and present of Tsarist Russia provokes indignation and hatred in them. Real patriotism does not conflict with internationalism, which has always been and remains an inalienable feature of the world outlook and policy of Communists. Once again M. N. Pokrovsky’s conception figures as “truly Marxist.” Since he denied the predatory character

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of the Napoleonic match on Russia and considered the principal cause of the war to have been the violation of the continental blockade by Russian trade capital, the conclusion is drawn that Pokrovsky “sought the‫ ״‬causes of war in economic relationships" and accordingly was a Marxist (p. 264). As models of a Marxist assessment of the Patriotic War of 1812, Yaresh cites the pronouncements of Pokrovsky that “the French army did not fall victim to a popular uprising but rather to its own lack of organization" and of Piontkovsky that “there was no patriotic movement" in 1812 (pp. 264, 267-268). L. Yaresh directs all the fire of his “criticism” against the assessment of the Russian people's struggle to drive Napoleon from Russia as a war of national liberation, a patriotic, people's war. He writes that the “assertion of the existence of a broad national struggle, that is, of resistance by all groups of a class society against an enemy national state***is a revision of a tenet of Marxism" (p. 276). Quoting excerpts from Vol. II of the higher school textbook History of the U.S.S.R., on the popular character of the war, Yaresh concludes: “Any reactionary historian of the Russian monarchy***could also, of course, have subscribed to such a statement" (p. 285). Everyone knows that Marxism has never denied national-liberation movements or their great progressive role. Another thing is known: “Resistance by all groups of a class society" to attempts to establish foreign domination has never been judged by Marxism to be a manifestation of “class peace" in a nation defending its right to independence. Class struggle by no means ceases in such a society. The question of the relationship of class and national struggle, particularly in the period of the Patriotic War, has always occupied an important place in Soviet historiography. After the vulgarizing mistakes of M. N. Pokrovsky's historical conception were overcome, this question received a correct solution. Let us take as a case in point Prof. S. B. Okun's course of lectures History of the U .S S .R ., 17ç6-182$r with

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which Yaresh is acquainted. S. B. Okun assesses Russia's war with the Napoleonic army in 1812 as a people's war, a national war, and he sees the source of Russia's victory in the “powerful national upsurge of the masses, who rose in their country’s defense." By no means does Prof. Okun, or do other Soviet specialists, pass over in silence the important question of Napoleon's failure to avail himself of the opportunity not only of preventing a popular peasants' war against the French army but of directing it against the serfholding regime in Russia. The lectures, published in 1947, when Soviet historians allegedly gave up recognizing class struggle, point out that at first “the entry of the French troops was interpreted by the peasants as a chance for emancipation from serfdom." However, the legend that Napoleon was bringing emancipation from serfdom, ‫־‬ which circulated for a time among the peasants, “was very quickly dissipated." S. B. Okun shows that the French command took the landlords on occupied territory under its protection and dealt cruelly with the peasants who took their stand against serfdom. “Many facts argue that for the peasantry the struggle against the foreign incursion was in no way linked to their devotion to their landlords," S. B. Okun writes. “On the contrary, in some places we see an attempt by the peasants to wage two wars simultaneously— against the landlords for their personal freedom, and against the French for the freedom of their country." The lectures show the antipatriotism and cowardice of the nobility, which “not only failed to support the people’s war but took great pains to try to retard its development." 10 W e have taken one example, but it shows convincingly that the attitudes of Soviet historians in assessing the Patriotic War of 1812 differ radically from the attitudes of the noble historiographers who argued that at the moment of war the peasants came out in defense of their landlords, uniting with them “in a common impulse to 10. S. B. Okun, History of the U.S.S.R., 1796-1825: A Course of Lectures, Leningrad, 1947, pp. 267, 272-276.

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defend the integrity of the state/' as well as from the attitudes of bourgeois historians (including Yaresh as well), who completely deny the patriotism and national upsurge among the peasantry, reducing the causes of the popular war to the defense of personal property— “sheep and chickens"— from the despoilers. Yaresh has deliberately distorted the viewpoint of Soviet historians so as to prove their “apostasy" from Marxism. This article allots a great deal of space to the researches of Ye. V. Tarie, who is conceded to be “a prominent and talented Soviet historian" (p. 268). Yaresh attempts to present the complicated route traveled by this very great researcher, who began his creative work as a bourgeois scholar and ended it as a great Soviet scholar, as a constant “following of the established pattern" (p. 277). He denies Ye. V. Tarie the right to develop views in the course of researching new facts, or in the course of his own reflections. Yaresh reduces his whole “analysis" of Tarle's research to a spurious attempt to reconstruct the “real," “liberal" Tarie by “purging" his work of Marxism and patriotism (p. 275). On these “grounds" he disregards the analysis of the causes of the Napoleonic invasion and the conclusions that the battle of Borodino was in the final analysis a victory for the Russians and that the Patriotic War was a popular, national war (see pp. 269‫ ־‬75 (• The following characteristic fact is noteworthy. Although the article gives a detailed (albeit distorted) enumeration and recapitulation of Soviet popular articles and pamphlets, it makes no mention whatever of P. A. Zhilin's book Kutuzov's Counteroffensive in 1812 (Moscow, 1950) or L. G. Beskrovny's The Patriotic W ar of 1812 and Kutuzov's Counteroffensive (Moscow, 1951), of such generalizing works as, for example, Voi. Ill of the History of Moscow (Moscow, 1954) and the collection of articles General Kutuzov (Moscow, 1955), or of the extremely rich documentary publications of recent years. V. Varlamov's article “Bakunin and the Russian Jaco-

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bins and Blanquists” undertakes another of the usual at‫־‬ tempts to falsify the ideological roots of Bolshevism, and above all its ideological heritage from the Russian revolutionary movement of the second half of the 19th century. Typical is the simple listing at the beginning of the article of the “striking personalities’‫ ׳‬whose Blanquist conspiratorial ideas, Varlamov assures us, “undoubtedly exerted an influence on the Bolsheviks” * (p. 290) : M. Bakunin, S. Nechayev, N. Chaikovsky [Varlamov lists Pyotr Zaichnevsky, not Chaikovsky— Trans.] and P. Tkachev. Even in this list, one cannot put Bakunin, Nechayev and, say, Tkachev on the same plane, and if one is going to speak about the Russian “Jacobins,” those who were really their most outstanding representatives, the leading figures of the Russian revolutionary movement— A. Zhelyabov, A. Mikhailov, P. Alexeyev, S. Khalturin, N. Morozov and I. Myshkin— failed to end up on Varia‫־‬ mov’s list (let us recall their formulation of political tasks, above all the tasks of the struggle for a democratic republic, as paramount in their activity; their creation of a large, highly clandestine organization of revolutionaries; finally, the examples of unstinting self-sacrifice and revolutionary heroism).11 As far as the most vivid ideological precursors of Marxism in Russia are concerned, Varlamov’s article in general does not mention Belinsky, Herzen or Chernyshevsky, though it is known that even before the revolution Marxist historiography named them first of all when it wishes to identify the thinkers whose ideologi‫־‬ cal legacy was taken over by the Russian revolutionary Marxists. Varlamov characterizes Bakunin as a revolutionary an‫־‬ archist who in the “Left Hegelian period in his life” was close to Marxism and was allegedly a predecessor of Boi* [Varlamov’s sentence reads, "In the revolutionary movement of the 1860s and 1870s there were several very striking personalities whose ideas were obviously related to those of the Bolsheviks, although they were not always acceptable to them .”— Trans.] 11. Cf. V . I. Lenin, W orks [in Russian], V ol. II, pp. 12-13; V oi. IV , p. 163; V ol. V , pp. 416 417, 4*2-445; V oi. V i l i , p. 54.

APPENDIX

[4 1 1

shevism. He affirms that “Bakunin stood at the threshold of the revolutionary movement which led to 1917” (p. 291). And here is the “proof‫ ״‬: it is known that Axelrod, Deich and Zasulich, who were followers of Bakunin at the outset of their activity, were, together with G. V . Plekhanov, members of the Narodnik organization Black Repartition and later on of the Marxist Emancipation of Labor group. It is also known that for a time Lenin and his adherents found themselves in the same party with them. And since this is so, Varlamov considers the Bolsheviks' ideological tie with Bakunin “proved.‫ ״‬It doesn't occur to him that Axelrod, Deich and Zasulich broke with Bakuninism in proportion as they became Marxists; that this alone made it possible for them to remain, if only briefly, in the same party with the Leninists (before the Russian Democratic Labor Party split up into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks); and, finally, that the Boisheviks' break with “Marxists" of the Axelrod type is irrefutable evidence of the fallacy of all of Varlamov's proof. The Leninist Bolsheviks were not the heirs but the most consistent ideological adversaries of anarchism, and their tradition was not anarchism but a fundamental struggle against it. “Bolshevism," wrote V. I. Lenin, “when it came into being in 1903 took up the tradition of merciless struggle against revolution of a petty-bourgeois, semi-anarchist (or capable of flirting with anarchism) character, which was the tradition the revolutionary Social Democrats had always had and which took especially firm root in our country in 1900-1903, when the foundations were laid for a mass party of the revolutionary proletariat in Russia." 12 To buttress his slanderous figments, V. Varlamov distorts the development of Soviet historiography. He alleges that in the “Leninist period" Bakunin was conceded to be an outstanding revolutionary, “a classic of revolution" (p. 292). It is first of all Yu. Steklov, who considered Bakunin a predecessor of Bolshevism, who is declared to 12. V . I. Lenin, W orks [in Russian], V ol. X X X I, p. 16.

412]

APPENDIX

be a representative of Marxist-Leninist historiography.13 In point of fact, however, the assessment of Bakunin in Yu. Steklov’s works has never enjoyed acceptance on the part of Marxist historians. Varlamov presents a detailed exposition of the work of Gorev and other authors who looked for the ideas of Bakunin, Tkachev and Nechayev in Lenin’s teaching. Gambarov’s work In the Controversies Over Nechayev (Moscow and Leningrad, 1926), which made an attempt to justify Nechayevism, is also passed off as Marxist. The views of these authors were a direct extension of the Menshevist conception and were, quite naturally, exposed to criticism in Soviet historical writings. However, Variamov pictures the further development of scientific discussion not as the victory of a correct over an incorrect point of view but as a refusal, at the “dictation” of the Party, to recognize Bakunin, Tkachev and Nechayev as the predecessors of Bolshevism (pp. 311-316). Varlamov devotes not even five pages to Soviet historiography of the past quarter of a century, glossing over the vast research done by historians, philosophers and economists on the legacy of the real predecessors of Marxism in Russia. The concluding article in the collection, “Allied and American Intervention in Russia, 1918-1921,” was written by J. Thompson, a U.S. State Department official. The link between reactionary science and a no less reactionary policy, however they may have tried to cloak it, is refleeted in this article in even clearer, grosser form. The article attempts to rehabilitate one of the bloodiest and most infamous acts of imperialist America, to justify the armed intervention against revolutionary Russia aimed at restoring the bourgeois-landlord regime toppled by the people, at despoiling our country and converting it into a colony. In his efforts to pit some Soviet historians against others, Thompson, like the other authors of the collection, 13. Yu. Steklov, Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin: His Life and Activity, Vols. I-IV, Moscow, 1926-1927; Yu. Steklov, “W hat Separates Us from and W hat Draws Us Close to Bakunin?" Vestnik Komakademii [Journal of the Communist Academy], Vol. X V III, 1929.

APPENDIX

[4 1 3

is bent on “refuting” the very thing that all Soviet historians have in common— the Marxist-Leninist methodology of historical research.14 *

*

*

Let us sum up. The book, which the authors intended should show the bankruptcy of the Marxist-Leninist conception of social development, contains not one objection that is to the point, not one scientific argument. Soviet historians would be duly respectful in their attitude to a bourgeois scholar who entered into honest polemics with Soviet historiography. But it is impossible to engage in scientific polemics with the authors of the collection under review. W e have seen how unscrupulous they are in their “criticism” of Marxism and Soviet historiography. No less characteristic is another fact: the absence of constructive conclusions, which shows the complete bankruptcy of these “critics.” They have made such a racket over the link between Soviet historiography and the policy of the Communist Party only so that they might discredit Marxist historical science (for it can no longer be ignored), and so that they might camouflage their own link with the “cold war” pólicy so abhorrent to the peoples, their own break with science, their own repudiation of the requirements of elementary objectivity and honesty. Having essayed the task of proving a crisis in historiography in the U.S.S.R., they have simply demonstrated once again the crisis in bourgeois historical science. The authors of the collection hide from their reader the fact that the establishment of the Marxist-Leninist methodology in Soviet historiography has led to a fundamental change in the subject matter of historical research and to a change in the main lines of the researchers’ work as compared with bourgeois historical science. At all stages in 14. For a critical analysis of J. Thompson's article, see G. G. Alakhverdov, “Falsification by Bourgeois Historians of the History of the American Intervention Against Soviet Russia in 1917-1920,” Voprosy istorii, 1958, No. 11, and I. I. Mints, “New Sally by a Falsifier of the History of the American Intervention in Russia,” Istoria SSSR, 1959» N o. 2.

414]

APPENDIX

the development of Soviet historical science as a whole, the people— the real makers of history— have been and remain the cardinal object of its study. In no bourgeois state is such attention to the role of the masses in history, to their lives and struggle, conceivable as the Communist Party has ensured in our country. Nowhere has so much been done to study the history of the working people, and in particular to study the history of socio-economic development and the revolutionary movement, as in the Soviet Union. Surely it is indicative that the authors of a book on Soviet historiography should have completely ignored the treatment of the problems of the socio-economic history of Russia or such problems in the history of the Russian revolutionary movement as, for example, the significance of Radishchev, the Decembrists and the Revolutionary Democrats, the revolution of 1905 and the Great October Socialist Revolution. Yet it is precisely on these problems that the attention of Soviet historiography has been and is now focused. Soviet historians do not consider their work to be without shortcomings. They themselves have written and continue to write a good deal on this score. It is this selfcriticism that the bourgeois falsifiers are trying to make the most of by twisting its purport. Incidentally, it must be said that if they really are so interested in the problem of the rewriting, the revision, of Russian history in response to the needs of the moment, they have their very best material literally at hand. W e have only to allude to the way history is being revised by Hans Kohn, “pre-eminent specialist on Russia in the United States,‫ ״‬who now writes about our country exactly the opposite of what he was writing some 20 to 30 years ago. In 1923, Kohn affirmed in his book The Essence and Fate of Revolution: “I have tried to show that the seizing of power by the Bolsheviks was not accidental in nature, that they had to seize it in on behalf of the people, that what happened here was flesh of the flesh and blood of the blood of the people, the Russian

APPENDIX

[4 1 5

people.‫ ״‬In 1957 this same Kohn voices an entirely different view on the very same question. He calls for “discarding all suppositions to the effect that the Bolshevik coup was a logical and essential outgrowth of contemporary Russian history. On the contrary, to a very great degree it was its negation, its revision, a return to the past.15‫ ״‬Or let us recall the transformations that occurred in the case of A Picture History of Russia, the first edition of which in 1945 differs from the second in 1956 as the sky from the earth. In the first edition the authors wrote: “The nationality policy of the Soviet government is the complete opposite of the nationality policy of the Tsarist empire,‫ ״‬while in the second edition we read in place of this the following: “The nationality policy of the Soviet government is a crafty variation of the nationality policy of the Tsarist government.16‫ ״‬Thus is history written and rewritten. As the first epigraph to their book the American authors selected the wonderful words of Voltaire: “Truthful history is written only in a free country.‫ * ״‬Another epigraph is the dialogue reproduced from Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,‫״‬ in which the cunning courtier Polonius sycophantically agrees with Hamlet, in a single breath, that a cloud reseiribles a camel, a weasel and a whale. Obviously the reader is supposed to rest assured that the U.S.A. is just such a “free country,‫ ״‬that the authors of the collection are “truthful historians,‫ ״‬and that their attitude to politics bears no resemblance whatever to Polonius’ playing the yes man to Hamlet. But we have seen that in their book they simply translate the propaganda slogans of the “cold war” into scholarly terms. The collection under review shows once again that at15. Cf. K. N . Brutents, 4‘An Apology for Colonialism, or Hans Kohn's 4Theory' of Nationalism ,” Voprosy filosofii, 1958, N o. 2; Yn. F. Karyakin and Ye. G. Plimak, 4‘History from the Position of a Lie,” Kommunist, 1959, N o. 1. 16. Cf. G. Z. Ioffe, ‘4A Visual Aid on Falsification,” Istoria SSSR, 1958, N o. 5• * [As it appears in the book, this quotation reads, 44T o write history well, one must live in a free country.”— Trans.]

416]

APPENDIX

tempts to place science in the service of reactionary policy inevitably lead to the perversion of truth. There is no doubt, however, that a truthful history of Russia will be written in America too. The desire of the overwhelming majority of Americans to know the truth about the Soviet Union and to live in peace and friendship with it is a guarantee of this. And only those historians who fight for peaceful coexistence can count on the gratitude of their people. As for books like the one reviewed, their place is on the scrap heap of “cold war‫ ״‬weapons.

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

C. E. Black is professor of history at Princeton University, and received his professional training at Harvard University. He is author of The Establishment of Constitutional Government in Bulgaria (1943), co-author, with E. C. Helmreich, of Twentieth Century Europe: A History (1950), and editor of Challenge in Eastern Europe (1954), and of The Transformation of Russian Society: Aspects of Social Change Since 1861 (i9 6 0 ). Ihor Ëevâenko is associate professor of history at Columbia University. He was trained in classical studies at Charles University in Prague and at the Université Catholique de Louvain, receiving the degree of Doctor of Philosophy from both institutions. He also studied Byzantine history with Henri Grégoire at the Fondation Byzantine in Brussels, and has been a visiting scholar at the Dumbarton Oaks Research Librarvj of Harvard University in Washington, D.C., and at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J. Konstantin F. Shteppa was formerly professor of ancient and medieval history at the University of Kiev, and Chairman of the Committee for Byzantine Studies of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. He has published extensively in the field of classical history and, under the pseudonym of W . Godin, collaborated with F. Beck in writing Russian Purge and the Extraction of Confession (1951). He died in New York in 1958,

418]

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

leaving a comprehensive study of Russian Historians and the Soviet State which was published in 1962. John M . Thompson has served as a Foreign Service Officer and is associate professor of history at Indiana University. He received his professional training at Columbia University, and is preparing for publication a study of The Russian Problem at the Paris Peace Con‫־‬ ference in 1919. Volodymyr Varlamov, a native of the Ukraine, was educated at the University of St. Petersburg before the First World War. He has devoted many years to the study of the revolutionary movement in the Russian Empire before 1917. He now lives and works in the United States. Alexander Vucinich is professor of sociology at San Jose State College. He received his Ph.D. at Columbia University, and is the author of Soviet Economic Insti‫־‬ tutions: The Social Structure of Production Units (1952), and The Soviet Academy of Sciences (1956). Leo Yaresh was born in St. Petersburg and received his education at the University of Kiev. His training and experience have been in the fields of law and of Russian and East European history. Now a resident of the United States, he was the recipient of a Senior Fellowship from the Research Program on the U.S.S.R. during 1952-1954.

INDEX A b d yk alyk ov, M ., 113 n . A ck erm an , C ., 369 A c to n , H . B ., 10 n. A d a m o f B rem en , 181 A doratsky, V la d im ir V ik torov ich , 6 A drian ova-P eretts, V arvara Pavlo v n a , 159, 1 6 0 n ., 168, 1 69 n ., 173 n ., 18 8 n. A g a p etu s, 1 4 4 A ksakov, K o n sta n tin

Sergee-

v ich , 1 9 0 , 191 n. A kselrod, P . B ., 291 A lefiren ko, P . K ., 6 4 , 191 n . A lek h seev , Sergei A leksandrov ich , 3 3 0 n. A lek san drov, G ., 3 5 4 n. A leksandrov, M ik h a il Stepan ov ich (see O lm in sk y , M .) A lexan d er I, 2 6 3 , 281 A lex an d er II, 2 9 1 , 311 n ., 3 1 7 A lexan d er N ev sk y , 104 A lex iu s I C o m n e n u s, 142 A lsh its, D . N ., 2 2 8 , 2 2 8 n. A ly p o v , 2 0 2 n. A m filo k h ii, A rk h im an d rit (Pavel Iv a n o v ich Sergyevsky ) , 151

A n d reev, A leksandr Ignatyev ic h , 1 0 1 , 2 4 8 , 2 5 2 , 2 5 2 n ., 254, 255, 258 A n d reev, P ., 2 7 8 A n d rei B ogolyu b sk y, 1 4 4 A n p ilo g o v , 2 5 5 n.

G .,

251,

251 n.,'

A n to n iu s I V , 1 4 7 n . A risto tle, 146 A rtsikhovsky, A rtem ii V la d im irovich , 188 n ., 2 1 4 n . A vtork h an ov, A . A . (A lek san d r U r a lo v ), 2 0 n. A w a k u m , A rchp riest, 105 B ab u rin , D m itr i, 2 5 1 , 251 n. B agirov, M ir-D zh afar A bbasov ich , 1 1 6 , 1 1 8 , 1 1 9 , 119 n. B agration , P etr Ivan ovich , 261; 2 6 3 , 2 7 6 , 2 7 7 , 2 7 8 , 2 7 8 n ., 2 8 0 , 282 B ailey, T h o m a s A ., 3 6 6 n. B ak an ov, P ., 6 7 n ., 7 6 B ak h ru sh in , Sergei V lad im irov ic h , 6, 4 6 n ., 56 n ., 6 2 , 6 4 , 1 2 5 , 125 n ., 2 0 3 , 203 n., 21 5 n ., 2 2 6 , 2 2 6 n ., 2 2 7 , 231 B a k u n in , M ik h a il A leksandrov ic h , 2 8 9 n ., 2 9 0 , 2 9 1 , 2 9 2 , 2 9 3 , 293 n ., 2 9 4 , 2 9 4 n ., 295, 2 9 5 n ., 296, 2 9 7 n ., 2 9 9 n ., 3 0 2 , 309, 310, 312, 315,

297, 308, 316,

3 ! 7> 3 1 8 B an k , A . V ., 162 n . B arclay de T o lly , M ik h a il, 1 0 5 , 2 6 1 , 2 6 3 , 26 9 ,, 2 7 8 , 2 8 0 , 2 8 3 , 2 8 5 , 2 8 6 , 2 8 7 , 288 Barer, I., 2 7 6 , 2 7 6 n. B arghoom , Frederick C .,

355

n.

B arnes, H arry E lm er, 135 n.

INDEX

420] B a sil I, 1 4 4 B a tem a n , H erm a n E ., 2 7 n . B a tu , 1 4 4 n. B atu rin , K o n sta n tin (N ik o la i N ik o la e v ic h Z a m y a tin ), 3 0 4 , 3 0 4 n ., 3 0 7 , 3 1 4 , 3 1 5 , 31 5 n . B a zilev ich , K o n sta n tin V asilyev ic h , 4 5 n ., 4 6 n ., 6 2 , 6 4 , 6 5 , 65 n ., 6 6 , 6 6 n ., 6 9 , 7 0 , 2 0 3 , 2 03 n. 2 0 6 , 2 0 6 n ., 2 1 0 , 2 1 1 , 2 11 n ., 2 5 3 , 253 n . B e e th o v e n , L u d w ig van , 8 4 B ek h m a k h a n o v , E ., 1 1 6 B e m is, S a m u el F lagg, 3 6 6 n. B e n e sh ev ic h , V la d im ir N ik o la ev ic h , 155 n. B ereday, G eo rg e Z. F ., 15 n. B erezk in, A lek san dr V asilyev ic h , 3 6 8 , 3 6 9 , 3 6 9 n ., 3 7 0 B erger, A . K ., 15 6 n. B eriya, L avrentii P a v lo v ich , 120, 379 B erlin, Isaiah, 10 n . B em a d in er, B ., 9 5 n. B ern stein , E duard, 3 0 4 n. B eskrovnii, L. T ., 2 7 8 n. B ezb a k h , S., 2 1 5 n. B lack stock , P au l W ., 2 3 8 n. B la n q u i, A u g u ste, 303 B ob er, M . M ., 10 n ., 2 3 7 n. B ogoslovsk y, M ik h ail M ik h ailov ich , 6, 2 3 6 , 2 3 6 n ., 2 4 1 , 241 n ., 2 5 2 , 252 n ., 258 B o ris-M ich a el, 144 B orisov, A ., 6 7 , 6 8 , 6 8 n. B orisov, S. V ., 2 7 8 , 27 8 n . B ragin, M ik h a il, 2 7 8 , 2 7 8 n. B raichevsky, M ., 68 n. B run ov, N ik o la i Ivan ovich , 1 7 7 , 177 n ., 178 n ., 1 8 2 , 187 B ubnov, A ndrei S ergeevich, 342 n. B u ck le, H en ry T h o m a s, 151

B u d en n y , S. M ., 3 5 0 B u d o tn its, I. U ., 2 2 9 , 2 2 9 n. B ukharin, N . I., 3 4 9 , 3 5 4 B u llitt, W illia m C ., 3 2 9 , 3 6 6 B u rd zh alov, E . N ., 361 n . B u rtsev, V la d im ir L v ovich , 2 9 0 B ych k ov, Ivan A fan asyevich , 248 B y ch k o v , L ev N ik o la v ic h , 2 7 6 , 2 7 6 n ., 2 7 9 , 2 7 9 n.

C aesar, A u gu stu s, 7 9 , 190, 1 9 0 n. C aesar, Julius, 79 C anard, M arius, 161 n. C a n ta cu zen u s, 14 7 , 1 4 7 n. C arlyle, T h o m a s, 8 0 , 8 1 , 9 5 n. Carr, E . H ., 3 2 0 C arson, G eorge B ., 2 4 n. C a th erin e 251 n. C h a ev , N . 2 2 8 n.

II, S.,

104,

181 n .,

Chaikovsky, Nikolai vich, 3 1 0 , 3 1 0 n. C h a m b erlin , 3 2 0 n.

2 3 6 n ., 228,

Vasilye-

W illia m

H .,

C h arlem agn e, 1 2 5 , 126 C h eb aevsk i, F . V ., 373 n. C h erem iso v , 262 C h erep n in , L. V ., 7 1 , 71 n ., 7 4 , 7 4 n ., 2 1 2 , 21 2 n ., 2 1 3 , 213 n ., 2 5 6 n.

Chernykh, Pavel Yakovlyevich, 175 n. C hervyak ov, D . E ., 2 8 0 C h ich erin , G eo rg e, 331 n ., 333»

333 n ., 3 3 6 , 3 3 6 n.

334,

3 3 4 n .,

Churchill, W inston, 3 2 3 , 3 4 1 , 350, 355 » 356, 356 n., 360, 361

INDEX C le m e n c e a u ,

[4 2 1 G eorges,

336,

339 » 350 C le m e n t o f S m o len sk , 1 4 6 C o n sta n tin e , 1 4 4 n ., 145 C o u n ts, G e o rg e, 2 2 5 n . C rassus, 2 8 7 C ro m w ell, O liver, 79 C yril o f T u ro v , 1 8 2 , 18 2 n . C yril, S a in t, 175 C yievSkyj, D ., 143 n.

D a llin , A lexan d er, 29 n. D a n ie l o f G a licia , 104 D a n ilev sk y , G rigorii P etro v ich , 190 D a n ilo v , M . V ., 7 5 , 75 n. D a n iy a lo v , A ., 111 n. D e b o r in , G . A ., 3 7 3 , 373 n. D e ic h , L. G ., 2 9 1 , 2 9 9 , 2 9 9 n ., 300 D e n ik in , A . I., 3 2 3 , 3 2 4 D er zh a v in , N ik o la i S evastyanov ic h , 1 2 5 , 125 n. D m itr i D o n sk o i, 2 0 4 , 21 5 n. D m itr ie v , S. S ., 1 2 6 n ., 2 8 4 n. D m itr iev , Y urii N ik o la e v ic h , 184 D o d z h e n o k , V ., 6 8 n. D o liv o -D o b r o v o lsk y , B. L, 3 3 0 n. D o sto ev sk y , F ed o r M ik h ailov ich , 2 9 2 , 3 1 0 , 3 1 0 n. D r u z h in in , N ik o la i M ik h ailov ic h , 4 6 n ., 6 2 , 6 5 , 6 7 , 6 7 n ., 6 9 , 7 0 , 7 0 n. D ru zh in in a , E ., 2 5 6 n. D u b ro v sk y , Sergei M itro fa n o v ich , 4 9 , 50 n ., 51, 52, 54, 62, 69 D u C a n g e , C h arles du F resn e,

155 D u k h o n in , N . N ., 3 4 4 , 3 4 9

D y a k o n o v , M ik h a il A leksandrov id i, 1 5 4 n.

E fim o v , A . V ., 3 1 5 , 3 1 6 n . E frem o v , P ., 2 0 3 , 203 n . E isen stein , S ., 2 2 5 E n g els, F ried rich , 11, 12, 38, 3 9 , 4 0 , 4 0 n ., 4 2 , 4 4 , 50, 51, 58, 7 7 , 7 9 , 7 9 n ., 8 0 , 81 n ., 8 2 , 8 3 , 85., 8 6 , 8 8 , 9 0 , 9 4 , 9 7, 100, 102, 128, 134, 136, 1 3 6 n ., 1 3 7 , 1 3 7 n ., 1 4 0 , 139 n ., 1 5 6 n ., 1 8 0 , 1 8 1 , 2 3 7 , 2 3 7 n ., 2 3 8 n ., 2 5 9 , 2 8 2 , 2 8 2 n ., 2 8 6 , 3 1 8 , 3^ 6 E p ifa n o v , P . P ., 2 5 2 E p ste in , F ritz, 8 n. E u g en io s o f P alerm o, 148 E w ers, J. P . G ., 128

F a in so d , M erle, 2 0 n ., 29 n. F ed o ro v , G . B ., 162 n ., 2 1 4 n. F e d o to v , G eo rg ii P etro v ich , 182 n ., 2 1 6 , 2 1 6 n. F eig in a , S. A ., 2 5 2 , 2 5 4 , 2 5 5 F eu erb a ch , L u d w ig A ndreas, 7 8 , 8 0 , 9 4 , 151 F ield , M ark G ., 16 n . F ilip p o v , A lek san dr N ik itic h , 2 3 6 , 2 3 6 n. F in eb erg, J., 2 2 8 F isch er, L o u is, 3 2 0 n ., 3 6 9 F lorinsk y, M ic h a e l T ., 2 5 6 , 2 5 6 n. F lorovsky, A n to in e , 9 n . F o c h , F erd in an d , 323 F o rtu n a to v , P . K ., 2 8 0 , 2 8 0 n . Frederick th e G reat, 2 7 4 F riedrich , C arl J., 4 n ., 23 n. F ro lo v , Ivan, 53 F ru n ze, M ik h a il V a sily e v ich ,

350

INDEX

422] G a k , G . M ., 9 5 , 9 5 n ., 9 6 , 9 7 , 9 8 , 99

G a lk in , V ., 2 1 5 G am b arov, A .,

298,

2 9 9 n .,

300 G arin , F . A ., 2 8 0 , 2 8 0 n . G a rd th a u sen , V ic to r E m il, 174, 174 n. G a zg a n o v , E ., 53 n . G e im a n , V a silii G eorgyevich , 2$2

G eo rg e th e M o n k , 143 n ., 156, 170 G erb o v , 3 6 6 , 3 6 7 G ero n im u s, A ., 3 7 7 , 3 7 7 n . G ersh o v ich , 1 0 0 G e n g h is K h a n , 125 G irsh feld , A ., 3 3 4 , 3 6 3 , 363 n ., 3 6 4 , 3 6 4 n ., 3 6 5 , 369 G iter m a n n , V a le n tin , 2 7 n . G o d e s, M ik h a il S o lo m o n o v ic h , • 52 n. G o e th e , J. W . v o n , 9 4 G o ld en v eize r, A lexan d er 3 1 1 , 311 n. G o litsy n , B . A ., 104

A .,

G o lu b in sk y , E v g en ii Evsignee* v ich , 158 G o rd o n , G . O ., 8 n. G o rev , B oris Isaak ovich, 2 9 3 , 294,

3 0 0 n .,

302,

303,

3 03 n ., 3 0 4 , 3 0 7 , 3 0 8 , 3 0 9 , 3 1 2 n ., 3 1 4 G ork i, M a x im , 343 G o ry a n o v , B . T ., 1 3 6 n ., 15 0 n . G o sta -L o u ille t, G . da, 151 n . G o ty e , Yurii V la d im iro v ic h , 6, 7, 2 3 6 , 2 3 6 n ., 2 5 1 , 2 5 m .

G ranovsk y, T im o fe i N ik o la ev id i, 1 5 0 , 1 5 0 n . G ran strem , E . E ., 1 7 6 , 1 7 6 n . G raves, W . S ., 3 4 1 , 3 6 2 , 3 6 2 n . G régoire, H en ri, 1 4 9 n ., 151 n ., 1 5 4 , 1 5 8 n ., 1 8 6 , 1 8 6 n . G regory o f N a z ia n z u s, 182 G rek ov, B oris D m itr ie v ic h , 4 2 n ., 54, 55, 56 n ., 57, 58, 5 8 n .. 59, 59 n ., 6 0 , 123 n .. 1 2 5 , 1 2 5 n .. 1 2 6 , 1 2 6 n .. 1 2 7 , 1 2 7 n .. 1 2 8 , 12 8 n .. 1 3 0 , 1 3 0 n .. 1 3 1 , 131 n .. 132, 135, 137, 140,

132 n ., 1 3 3 , 135 n .. 1 3 6 , 137 n .. 1 3 9 , 1 6 2 , 16 2 n ..

13 9 n .. 165 n .. 174, 17 4 n ., 1 7 7 , 1 7 7 n ., 1 8 0 n ., 181 n ., 2 1 4 , 2 1 4 n . G rigorovich , N ik o la i Ivan ovich , 1 5 0 , 15 0 n. G rigortsevich , S ., 3 7 7 n. G rigoryev, A p o llo n Aleksandro* v ich , 1 9 0 G ru lio w , L eo , 29 n. G rzeb ien iow sk a, X en ia Z ., 253 n. G u d o sh n ik o v , L ., 6 7 , 6 7 n. G u d zy , N ik o la i K allin ik ovich , 1 4 4 , 1 7 9 , 17 9 n ., 1 8 0 , 181 G u k ovsk y, A lek sei Isaevich , 3 2 6 n .,

337,

3 3 7 n .,

339,

341, 3 4 6 , 3 4 8 , 3 4 9 n ., 361 G u ly g a , A . V ., 3 6 8 n .,

Igor

E m m a n u ilo v ic h ,

1 8 5 , 185 n. G racch u s, T ib eriu s, 91

338, 349,

377,

3 7 8 n.

G u rvich , D ., 1 9 0 n . G u sein o v , G ., 1 1 0 , n o n . , 112 G u tn o v a , E ., 9 5 n.

G rabar, A nd ré, 143 G rabar,

134 n .. 1 3 6 n ..

H aertel, E m m y , 1 5 6 n . H e g e l, G . W . F ., 9 4 H en rici, C . F . G ., 1 8 8

INDEX

]4 ‫? ג‬

H era cliu s, 1 2 9 , 1 3 8 H e r z e n , A lek san dr

Iv a n o v ich ,

150, 151, 318 H ila rio n , 1 4 6 H itle r, A d o lf, 262, 279, 2 7 9 n. H o e tz s c h , O t to , 7 n . H o n ig m a n n , E ., 142 n ., 18 4 n . H o o v er, H erb ert, 3 6 5 , 3 6 8 , 371 H o se litz , B ert E ., 2 3 8 Iekk, G u sta v , 3 1 2 Ik o n n ik o v , V la d im ir S tep an ov ic h , 1 5 1 , 151 n . Ilich ev , L. F ., 9 3 n . Ilovaisky, D m itr ii Iv a n o v ich , 150 Io ffe, A d o lf A b ra m o v ich , 3 3 3 , 3 3 3 n .,

334,

3 3 4 n ., 3 3 5 , 3 3 5 n ., 3 3 6 , 3 3 6 n . Isaac, S a in t, 143 n . Ish ii, K ikujiro, 3 6 4 Istrin, V a silii M ik h a ilo v ic h , 1 5 6 , 1 6 6 , 1 6 7 , 1 6 7 n ., 1 7 0 , 1 7 0 n ., 1 7 1 , 171 n ., 1 8 2 , 1 82 n . Ivan I, 1 4 4 n ., 1 4 6 , 2 0 8 , 2 0 9 Ivan III, 1 9 3 , 2 0 4 , 2 0 5 , 2 0 6 n ., 215, 232 Ivan I V , 2 3 , 3 0 , 1 0 4 , 1 4 4 , 1 4 5 , 1 4 8 , 1 9 0 , 1 9 0 n .,.x 9 f^ 9 6 - 1 1 ., 2 1 7 , 2 1 8 , 2 1 9 , 2 2 0 , 2 2 0 n ., 2 2 1 , 221 n ., 2 2 2 , 2 2 3 , 2 2 4 , 2 2 5 , 2 2 6 , 2 2 6 n ., 2 2 7 , 2 2 7 n ., 2 2 8 , 2 2 8 n ., 2 3 0 , 2 3 1 , 2 3 2 , 242 Iv a n o v , Ivan, 2 9 9 Ivask, Y u . P ., 2 1 6 n . Jab lonow sk y, H o rst, 27 Jak obson , R om an, 1 75 n ., 1 8 8 n.

171 n .,

John of Ephesus, 1 2 8 John the Baptist, 1 4 6 Jonas, Hans, 8 n. Jones, S. W ., 179 Josep h u s F la v iu s, 143 Ju stinian , 1 4 4 n.

Kafengaus, Boris Borisovich, 2 3 4 n., 2 4 0 n., 2 4 8 , 2 5 1 , 251 n., 2 5 2 Kagan, Georges, 2 4 Kakurin, N . E ., 343 Kaledin, A. M., 3 2 1 , 3 3 3 , 3 4 4 , 349

K a m en ev , L . B ., 293 K am m ari, M . D ., 9 8 ,

9 8 n .,

99

K an t, Im m a n u el, 9 4 K a p o sh in a , S ., 2 7 9 K aram zin, N ik o la i M ik h a ilo v ic h , 2 2 0 Karger, M ik h a il K o n sta n tin o v ich , 1 2 6 n ., 131 n ., 178 n . K arpovich, M ic h a e l, 5 n ., 3 1 1 , 311 n. K asym ov, K enesary, 1 0 9 , 1 1 2 , 113, 116 K ats, B ., 2 7 9 n ., 2 8 1 , 281 n . K avelin , K o n sta n tin D m itriev ich , 2 2 0 K a zem za d eh , F iru z, 3 2 0 n. K azh d an , A . P ., 1 6 0 n. K h m eln itsk y , B o h d a n , 105 K hrapkov, S ., 2 7 9 n. K h ru sh ch ev, N ik ita S ., 28, 3 1 , 32, 33, 259, 380 K irov, S. M ., 16, 3 5 0 K lyu ch evsky, V a silii O sip o v ic h , 4 , 1 2 8 , 1 2 9 , 1 3 0 n ., 1 5 8 , 2 2 0 , 2 3 6 , 2 3 6 n ., 2 5 6 K ly u ch n ik o v , Y urii V en y a m in o v ic h , 3 3 0 n . K o ch a n o w sk i, Jan, 1 9 0 , 19 0 n.

INDEX

424]

K olch ak , A . V ., 3 2 3 , 3 2 4 , 3 2 9 n ., 3 4 8 K olesn itsk y, N ., 6 8 n. K o n sta n tin o v , F . V ., 9 2 , 9 2 n ., 9 5 n ., 9 9 , 9 9 n ., 1 0 3 , 103 n. K o p ylo v , N . Y ., 373 K orobk ov, N ik o la i M ik h ailov ich , 2 7 8 , 2 7 8 n ., 2 8 2 , 2 8 2 n. K ornilov, L. G ., 3 3 2 , 3 4 3 , 3 4 9 K orolyuk, V . D ., 2 2 9 , 2 2 9 n . K orsch, Karl, 10 n . K osm insky, E v g e n ii A lek seev ich , 161 K o stom arov,

N ik o la i

Ivano*

v ich , 2 2 0 K ovalevsky, M ak sim M aksim o* v ic h , 1 3 4 K o zh u k h o v , S ., 2 8 8 , 2 8 8 n. K o zlov a , A ., 2 7 9 n. K o zm in , B oris P a v lo v ich , 3 0 0 , 3 0 0 n ., 3 0 1 , 301 n ., 3 0 8 , 3 1 4 K rasinsky, G ., 2 2 8 , 2 2 8 n . K roeber, A . L ., 135 n . K rotov, A ., 255 n . K rum bacher, Karl, 149 K u g elm a n n , L u d w ig, 8 0 n . K ulisher, Iosif M ik h a ilo v ich , 46, 46 n. K u n in a, A . E ., 37 2 n . K u tu zo v , M . I., 9 4 , 1 0 4 , 2 6 1 , 262, 263, 265, 266, 269, 2 7 2 , 2 7 4 , 2 7 6 , 2 7 8 , 2 7 8 n .,‘ 2 8 0 n ., 2 8 1 , 281 n ., 2 8 2 , 2 82 n ., 2 8 3 , 283 n ., 2 8 4 , 2 8 6 , 2 8 7 , 2 8 8 , 2 8 8 n. K u zm in , D m itr i, 2 9 2 n. K u zn etso v , G ., 3 5 4 K yrylyuk, J. P ., 171

L an , V e n y a m in Ilyich , 3 56 n ., 366, 369 L an sin g, R ob ert, 3 6 4 L aqueur, W a lte r Z ., 29 n . Lazarev, V ik to r N ik itic h , 1 6 2 , 162 n ., 1 8 5 , 185 n ., 187 L eb ed ev , D . M ., 2 5 2 , 2 5 2 n. L eb ed ev , N . S ., 154 L eb ed ev, V la d im ir Ivan ovich , 6 4 , 129 n ., 2 4 4 m , 2 4 5 m , 246, 252, 252 n. L em in , Io sif M ik h a ilo v ich , 3 5 6 n ., 3 5 7 , 3 5 7 n ., 361 L en in , V la d im ir Ilyich , 12, 14, 4 0 , 4 1 , 4 2 , 4 2 n ., 4 4 , 50, 51, 55, 6 5 , 7 1 , 8 6 , 8 6 n ., 8 9 , 96, 9 9 , 100, 101, 103, 109, 2 3 8 , 2 3 8 n ., 2 4 3 , 2 4 6 , 2 4 7 , 2 7 1 , 271 n ., 2 9 6 , 3 0 4 , 3 0 4 n ., 3 0 7 , 3 0 7 n ., 3 0 8 , 3 1 0 , 3 1 1 , 311 n ., 3 1 2 n ., 3 1 4 , 3 1 7 , 3 1 8 , 3 2 1 , 3 2 6 , 3 2 7 , 3 2 7 n ., 3 2 8 , 3 3 3 , 3 3 5 , 3 4 1 , 341 n ., 3 4 3 , 344,

349,

3 52, 3 5 7 , 3 6 4 , 3 6 5 , 3 6 9 , 3 7 0 , 371 n ., 3 7 5 , 3 7 7 n ., 3 7 9 L eo V I , 144 L etten b au er, W ., 1 7 4 n. L ev ch en k o , M itr o fa n V asilyev ich , 1 3 6 n ., 151 n ., 155 n ., i 5 7 n . , 1 5 8 , 1 5 8 n ., 161, 161 n ., 1 6 4 , 18 6 , 18 6 n . L evid ov, M ik h a il Y u lev ich , 3 3 2 , 3 3 3 , 3 3 3 n ., 3 4 2 , 3 6 9 L evitsky, I., 2 7 8 n. L ic h th e im , G eo rg e, 29 n. L ik h ach ev, D . S ., 6, 7, 162, 1 6 2 n., 1 6 9 , 1 6 9 n., 1 7 0 n., 171,

171 n.,

172,

1 7 2 n.,

1 7 3 , 1 7 3 n ., 1 7 5 , 1 7 5 n ., 1 7 8 ,

L ab ed z, L eo p o ld , 29 n . L am ansky, V la d im ir Ivan ovich , 1 5 0 , 150 n ., 152

1 8 1 , 181 n ., 183, 183 n ., 2 1 4 n.

182, 185,

182 n ., 189 n .,

INDEX

[ 4*5

L ü ge, F rederick, 15 n . L ip p m a n n , W a lte r , 3 6 9 L ip sh its, E . E ., 151 n . L isovsky,

P etr

159, 161 n ., 180, 1 8 1 , 2 0 0 , 2 3 7 , 2 3 7 n ., 2 3 8 , 2 3 8 n ., 2 4 2 , 2 4 7 , 2 5 6 , 2 5 9 , 28 2 n .,

A lek seevich ,

3 5 4 n.

L itv in o v , M a x im M ., 362 L loyd G eo rg e, D a v id , 3 2 3 , 3 2 4 , 3 5 0 , 3 5 7 , 361 L o m o n o so v , M ik h a il V asilyev ich , 1 9 0 , 190 n. L o ren to w icz, Jan, 190 n.

2 9 1 , 2 9 6 , 3 0 4 n ., 3 1 6 , 3 1 8 , 376 M a slo v , Sergei Iv an ovich , 171 n. M a s’u d i, al-, 1 2 9 , 1 3 8 M au riciu s, 128 M avrod in , V la d im ir V asilyev ich , 126, 1 2 6 n ., 127, 12 7 n ., 1 5 6 n ., 2 0 4 , 2 0 4 n .,

L o w ie, R o b ert H ., 135 L oyola, Ign atiu s, 3 1 0 L ozovik , G ., 1 54 n. L u d w ig, E m il, 87, 88, 2 4 3 , 246 L u p p o l, Ivan K ap itan ovich , 8 n. L utsky, V . B ., 3 5 4 L yubavsky, M a tv ei K u zm ich ,

M e h n e r t, K laus, 24 n. M e k h tie v , G . G ., 1 1 6 , 117 n. M e lc h in , A . I., 3 2 9 n ., 3 7 2 ,

6, 7, 1 95, 195 n ., 1 9 6 , 197 L yu b om irov, P ., 24 2 n.

373 n. M e lg u n o v ,

M aisky,

Ivan

M ik h a ilo v ich ,

331, 334, 3 3 4 n ., 3 3 6 n ., 3 3 7 , 3 3 7 n. M ajak, 129 M a k sim o v , L ., 73 n.

336,

M a lalas, 1 7 0 M a ly sh ev , A lek san dr P etro v ich ,

45 n., 53 n. M a n u el

I C o m n e n u s,

144 n .,

1 4 7 , 149 M arch , P ey to n C ., 365 M a rch en k o , V . P ., 20 n. M arr, N ik o la i Y a k o v lev ich , 167 M arx, Karl, 9 , 9 n ., 10, 10 n ., 11, 11 n ., 12, 13, 24 n ., 3 9 , 39 n ., 4 0 , 4 2 , 4 4 , 50, 51, 52 n ., 53 n ., 77, 78, 8 0 , 8 0 n ., 8 1 , 81 n ., 8 2 , 8 3 , 8 5 , 86, 87, 88, 9 0 , 9 4 , 9 7 , 100, 1 0 2 , 1 0 4 , 1 2 3 , 126, 156 n .,

205, 209, 210, 257 M a x im th e G reek , 1 4 4 , 145 n. M a x im o v ic , E . F ., 2 4 n. M azou r, A n a to le G ., 5 n ., 27 n . M e d lin , W illia m K ., 15 n.

Sergei

P etro v ich ,

3 1 0 , 3 1 0 n ., 311 M en a n d er P ro tecto r, 128 M e rz o n , I., 9 0 , 9 0 n. M e sh a lin , I. V ., 2 5 1 , 251 n. M e tte r n ic h , K lem en s von, 2 7 9 n. M ic h a e l III, 142 M ik h ailovsk y, N ik o la i sta n tin o v ic h , 301 M ik lo sich , F ran z, 147 n.

K on-

M ik o y a n ,-A n a sta s, 28 M iller, E u g en e, 323 M iller, L, 6 8 , 6 8 n. M iller, M y k h a ilo O leksandrov ich , 27 M ilyu k ov, P avel

N ik o la e v ic h ,

4 , $, 2 3 6 , 2 3 6 n ., 2 5 6 M in ts, Isaak Izrailevich , 52 n ., 255,

256,

3 2 6 n ., 345,

2 5 6 n .,

341,

346,

2 5 7 n .,

343 n .,

347,

348,

344‫י‬ 356,

INDEX

426] 3 5 7 , 3 5 9 n •, 3 6 0 , 3 6 1 , 3 6 2 ,

362 n. M iro sh n ich en k o , P ., 6 6 , 6 6 n . M ish u lin , A lexsan d r V asilyev ic h , 1 3 6 M itsk ev ich , Sergei Ivan ovich , 302, 303, 30 3 n ., 304, 3 0 4 n ., 3 0 5 , 3 0 6 , 3 0 7 , 3 0 8 , 309» 313» 3 1 4 , 3 1 5 M o k h o v , S ., 2 6 9 , 2 6 9 n . M o n g a it, A ., 2 1 4 M o rg a n , L ew is H en ry,

133,

1 3 4 , 1 3 5 ,1 3 5 n ., 1 3 6 ,1 3 6 n ., 1 3 7 , 1 3 7 n ., 1 4 0 M o sh in , V la d im ir, 153 n . M o sin a , Z oya V a sily e v n a , 21 n ., 63 n ., 2 5 5 n . M u ller, H erb ert J., 10 n . M ü ller, Joseph , 1 4 7 M ü n n ic h , B . v o n , 105 M u k lev ic h , R . A ., 3 3 0 M y m rin , G ., 3 53 N a p o le o n I, 7 9 , 8 4 , 9 4 , 2 6 0 , 262, 263, 264, 265, 266, 2 6 7 , 2 6 9 , 2 7 0 , 2 7 0 n ., 2 7 1 , 2 7 2 , 2 7 2 n ., 2 7 3 , 2 7 5 n ., 276, 279, 2 7 9 n ., 280, 2 8 0 n ., 2 8 4 , 2 8 5 , 2 8 6 , 2 8 7 , 288 N a so n o v , A rsenii N ik o la e v ic h , 2 0 3 , 2 03 n. N e c h a e v , Sergei, 2 9 0 , 2 9 2 , 2 9 4 , 2 9 8 , 2 9 9 , 3 0 0 , 3 0 1 , 301 n ., 3 0 2 , 3 0 9 , 3 1 0 , 3 1 0 n ., 3 1 6 , 317 N e c h k in a , M ilitsa V a sily ev n a , 8 n ., 7 $ , 1 1 0 n ., 1 1 1 , 111 n ., 1 1 2 , 1 1 4 , 1 1 4 n ., 1 1 8 , 1 1 9 , 2 8 0 n ., 3 1 6 N ek ra so v , A lek sei Ivan ovich , 1 5 6 n. N e m z e r , L ou is, 16 n.

N e sto r , 1 5 6 , 172 N ev z o r o v , Y u . M . (see Steklo v , Y u . M .) N e w to n , Isaac, 2 5 4 N ice p h o ru s, 142 n . N ic h o la s I, 291 N ik itin , N ., 373 N ik o lsk y , N ., 171 n. N ik o n , 1 0 5 , 145 N il Sorsky, 105 O b norsk y, 17 4 n .

Sergei

P etro v ich ,

O h lo b y ln , A lexan d er P ., 2 0 n . O k lad n ik ov, A lek sei P a v lo v ich , 117 n. O k u n , S em en B e n tsio n o v ic h , 285, 286, 298 n. O le g , 151 n ., 1 8 6 , 1 8 6 n . O lg a , 1 4 6 O lm in sk y , M . (M ik h a il S tep a n o v ich A le k sa n d r o v ), 6 , 1 9 8 , 19 8 n ., 3 0 5 O rd in -N a sh c h o k in , A . L ., 1 0 4 O rd zh o n ik id ze, G rigorii Kon■ sta n tin o v ic h , 3 5 0 O rlov, A lek san dr S ergeevich , 15 6 , 167, 168 n ., 174, 17 4 n ., 178 O rlov, V la d im ir N ik o la e v ic h , 2 7 8 n. O strogorsky, G eorg, 155, 155 n . O strovsky, A . N ., 145 n. P alm er, 256

R.

R .,

255,

2 5 5 n .,

P ankratova, A n n a M ik h a ilo v n a , 8 n ., 22 n ., 2 8 , 4 4 , 4 4 n ., 4 5 , 4 5 n ., 7 5 » 113 n ., 2 4 6 , 2 4 6 n ., 2 4 7 , 3 1 6 , 3 1 6 n ., 3 5 4 n. P arfen ov, V ., 3 5 4 n.

INDTSX

[427

P a rk h o m en k o , V la d im ir A ., 1 2 4 , 125 n . P a sh u to , V . T ., 7 1 , 71 n ., 7 5 , 75 n. P avlov-S ilvan sk y, N ik o la i Pavlo v ic h ,

194,

1 9 4 n .,

236,

2 3 6 n. P en n ar, Joh n , 15 n . P erelm a n , I. L ., 2 1 4 n . Perovskaya, Sofiya, 3 1 1 , 311 n. P eter I, 2 3 , 4 8 , 1 0 4 , 1 4 5 , 2 3 3 , 2 3 4 , 2 3 4 n ., 2 3 5 , 2 3 5 n ., 2 3 6 , 2 3 6 n ., 2 3 7 , 2 3 8 , 2 3 9 , 2 4 0 , 2 4 1 , 241 n ., 2 4 2 , 2 4 3 , 2 4 4 , 2 4 4 n ., 2 4 5 , 2 4 6 , 2 4 7 , 2 4 8 , 2 4 8 n ., 2 4 9 , 2 5 0 , 251 n ., 2 5 2 , 2 5 3 , 253 n ., 2 5 4 , 2 5 5 , 256, 257, 2 5 7 n ., 258, 2 5 8 n ., 2 5 9 , 2 5 9 n . P fitzn er, Josef, 8 n. P h ilo th e u s o f P sk ov, 1 4 7 P h o tiu s, 1 4 4 P ic h e ta , V la d im ir Ivan ovich , 1 5 7 n ., 2 7 7 , 2 7 7 n . P ic h o n , Jean, 3 3 0 n . P io n tk o v sk y , Sergei A ndreyev ich , 6, 9 n ., 2 6 7 , 2 6 7 n ., 330 n. P iro g o v , M ., 353 n . P la to , 1 4 6 P la to n o v , Sergei F ed o ro v ic h , 6, 7, 9 n ., 2 2 0 , 2 2 1 , 221 n ., 2 4 2 , 2 4 2 n. P lek h a n o v , G eo rg ii V alen tin o* v ic h , 4 0 , 4 1 , 41 n ., 8 1 , 8 2 , 8 2 n ., 8 5 , 8 8 , 8 9 , 9 0 , 9 2 , 937 9 3 n., 9 4 , 9 5 , 9 7 , 98, 103, 104, 299, 318 P od yap olsk aya, E . P ., 1 9 0 n. P o g o d in , N ik o la i F ed o ro v ich , 3 7 9 n. P okrovsky, M ik h a il N ikolae* v ich , 4 , 5, 6, 7, 9 , 9 n ., 12,

13,

14,

14 n .,

16,

21,

24,

4 3 , 447 4 4 n ., 457 4 5 n ., 4 6 ,

4 6 n ., 4 9 , 51, 53, 55, 6 1 , 7 5 , 1 0 4 , 1 0 9 , 1 5 6 , 15611., 1 5 8 , 15811., 1 6 7 , 1 9 8 , 1 9 8 n ., 1 9 9 , 2 0 0 , 2 0 2 , 2 0 3 , 203 n ., 2 2 2 , 2 2 3 , 223 n ., 2 2 4 , 2 2 5 , 2 3 0 , 2 3 8 , 2 3 9 , 2 3 9 n ., 2 4 0 , 24011., 2 4 1 , 2 4 2 , 2 4 3 , 2 4 5 , 2 4 6 , 2 5 6 , 2 6 4 , 2 6 4 n ., 2 6 5 , 2 6 5 n ., 2 6 6 , 2 6 7 , 2 6 8 , 2 7 1 ,

273, 275, 2 7 6 , 2 7 7 , 2 7 7 n ., 3 0 2 , 3 0 3 , 303 n ., 3 0 7 n ., 3 0 8 , 3 1 1 , 3 1 2 n ., 3 1 4 , 3 1 7 , 3 3 1 , 3 3 2 , 3 3 2 n ., 3 3 3 , 3 3 4 , 3 3 4 n .,

335,

3 3 5 n .,

354,

361, 363, 369 Pokrovsky, Serafim Aleksandro* v ic h , 50, 1 2 6 , 1 2 6 n . P o lo n sk y , V y a c h e sla v P avlov ic h , 2 9 3 , 2 9 4 , 2 9 6 , 2 9 6 n ., 2 9 7 , 309

P o lo sin , Ivan Iv a n o v ich , 2 7 9 P op p er, Karl, 10 n. P o ro d o zh n y i, N ., 2 8 0 n . P orsh n ev, B oris F eo d o ro v ich , 2 0 6 , 2 0 6 n ., 2 0 7 P o so sh k o v , Ivan T ., 251, 251 n . P o sp elo v , P . N ., 3 7 1 , 3 7 9 P o te m k in , V la d im ir P etro v ich , 3 5 6 n.

P red tech en sk y, A n a to lii V a sile v ic h , 63 n ., 7 0 , 7 0 n ., 2 7 9 n . P resnyakov, A lek san d r Evgene* v ich , 4 , 5 n ., 6 , 1 9 4 , 1 9 5 , 195 n ., 1 9 6 , 1 9 7 P rigozh in , A bram G rigoryevich , 4 2 n ., 53, 53 n ., 54, 54 n . P riselkov, M ik h a il D m itr e v ic h , 152, 152 n ., 153, 171, 171 n ., 1 8 1 , 182 n . P rocop iu s, 128

INDEX

428] P ro k o p o v ich , F eo fil, 105 P ro u d h o n , P . J., 2 3 8 P u g a ch ev , E m iliy a n , 271 P yan k ov, A ., 6 9 , 6 9 n. P y p in , A lexsandr N ik o la ev ic h , 190 R ad ek , K ., 2 6 9 n . R a u ch , G eo rg v o n , 24 n. R a zin , E ., 2 8 7 n. R eik h b erg, G eo rgii E v g en ev ich , 3 4 1 , 341 n ., 342 R esh etar, John S ., Jr., 3 2 0 n . R ev e, K. van h e t, 2 6 7 n. R ick ert, H ein rich , 9 4 R o b erts, S p en cer E ., 253 n. R o b in s, R ., 3 6 6 R o ette r, J. H ., 2 3 4 n. R o m a n o v , Boris A leksandrov ich , 2 2 8 , 2 28 n. R o o sev e lt, F ranklin D ., 362 R o sseik in , F ., 16 0 n . R o sto p c h in , F ed or V a sily ev ich , 267 R o zh k o v , N ik o la i A leksandrov ich , 4 , 4 3 , 43 n ., 4 7 , 4 7 n ., 4&, 4 8 n ., 4 9 , 1 9 7 , 19 7 n ., 2 2 2 , 2 2 2 n ., 2 2 3 , 2 2 4 , 23O, 2 4 0 , 2 4 0 n ., 241 R u b in sh te in , N ik o la i L eonidov ich , 5, 6 4 , 1 2 $ , 125 n. R u m y a n tsev , P. A ., 104 R u n ic h , D m itr i, 2 6 8 R yaza n o v , D a v id , 6 R yb ak ov, B . A ., 13 1 , 161, 161 n ., 162 R yn d zyu n sk y, N ., 283 n. S ab an in , A ., 3 3 0 , 3 4 0 Sadikov, P. A ., 22 6 , 2 2 6 n. S ch iller, J. C . F . v o n , 9 4 S ch lesin ger, R u d o lp h , 27 n. S elezn ev , G . K ., 3 7 7 n.

S elezn ev , K ., 2 7 6 , 2 7 6 n . S em kovsky, S. Y u .8 0 ‫ ׳‬n. Serebryakov, M ik h a il V asilyevich , 1 0 0 , 101 Sergeevich, V a silii Ivan ovich , 4 v S evcën k o, I., 14 4 n. S h ak h m atov, A lek sei A leksandrovich , 13 0 , 1 3 1 , 13 2 , 166, 166 n ., 170 n ., 17 1 , 1 7 2 ,

183 S h am il, 10 9 , 1 1 0 , 1 1 1 , 111 n .,

112 S h c h e g o lev ,

P avel

E liseev ich ,

290 S h estak ov, A ndrei V a sily ev ich , 6 1 , 61 n ., 2 4 5 , 2 4 6 n ., 2 4 7 , 3 5 0 , 3 5 0 n. S h lik h ter, A . G ., 3 3 0 n. S h lyap n ik ov, A . G ., 3 3 0 n. S h m u rlo, E v g en ii F ran tsevich , 23$ n. S h o sta k o v ich , D . D ., 3 7 4 S htakelb erg, G ., 27 n. S h tein , Boris E fim o v ich , 3 3 0 n ., 3 5 9 n ., 3 6 8 , 3 6 8 n. S h tep p a , K. F ., 8 n ., 3 0 n. Sidorov, A . L ., 27 n ., 33 n ., 4 8 , 4 8 n ., 361 n. S im eo n th e P roud, 14 7 , 147 n . “ S ineira” ( p seu d on ym ) , 3 0 3 , 304, 307, 314 Skazkin, Sergei D a n ilo v ic h , 63 Skerpan, A lfred A ., 5 n . S lo n im , M ark, 3 1 1 , 311 n . Sm irnov, Ivan Iv a n o v ich , 6 9 , 6 9 n ., 7 0 , 197» 197 n ., 2 0 9 , 20 9 n ., 2 1 4 , 2 2 7 , 2 2 7 n ., 2 2 8 n ., 2 2 9 n. S m irnov, P avel P etro v ich , 6 4 , 2 0 8 , 2 0 9 , 20 9 n . S m ith , W a lte r B ed ell, 3 6 0 n.

360,

INDEX

[429

Snegirev, V . L ., 2 1 5 n . S o k o lo v , B oris F ed o ro v ich , 2 8 1 , 281 n ., 2 8 2 S ok o lo v a , K . K ., 2 7 9 , 2 7 9 n. S o lo v y ev , Sergei M ik h a ilo v ich , 2 2 0 , 2 3 5 , 2 3 5 n ., 2 3 6 S o m o v , V . I., 2 5 1 , 251 n. Speransky, M ik h a il, 2 4 9 S p irid on ova, E . V ., 2 5 9 , 2 5 9 n. Sreznevsky, Izm a il Iv a n o v ich , 144 n. S ta lin , Io sif V ., 24, 2 6 , 2 7 , 35»

37, 38,

55,

5 6 , 58,

87, 96, 102, 119, 201, 211, 246, 287,

12, 16, 17, 28, 2 9 , 3 0 , 4 4 , 51, 5 2 ,

59 n ., 6 5 , 8 5 , 8 8 , 8 8 n ., 8 9 , 9 0 , 9 3 , 9 7, 98, 9 9, 100, 101, 1 0 4 , 1 0 6 , 10 8 , 1 1 6 , 1 3 6 n ., 1 8 9 , 18 9 n ., 201 n ., 2 0 2 n ., 2 0 3 , 2 2 8 , 2 3 2 , 2 4 2 , 243 n ., 247, 257, 259, 286, 2 8 7 n ., 2 8 8 , 2 9 4 , 3 1 3 ,

314,

318, 340,

342, 3 4 4 ,

345,

3 4 7 , 348,

350, 351,

352, 3 5 3 , 3 5 4 , 356, 3 5 7 , 3 5 9 , 3 6 0 , 3 6 1 , 3 6 2 n ., 3 6 7 , 369,

370, 3 7 3 ,

376,

378,

3 7 9 n.

S tek lo v , Y u . M . (Y u rii M ik h a ilo v ic h N e v z o r o v ), 2 9 0 , 293, 295,

293 n ., 2 9 5 n .,

294, 296,

2 9 4 n ., 2 9 6 n .,

2 9 7 , 2 9 9 , 2 9 9 n ., 3 0 2 , 3 0 9 , 3 1 1 , 3 1 1 n. S ten d er-P etersen , A d ., 173 S tep a n o v , N . I., 1 1 8 , 11 8 n. S tern b a ch , L eo , 1 4 9 n. S tew art, G eo rg e, 3 2 0 n. S tö ck l, G u n th e r , 8 n . Strakhovsky, L eo n id I., 3 2 0 n. S tru m ilin , S tan islav G u stavov ich , 2 5 1 , 251 n.

S trzygow sk i, Josef, 1 8 6 n . S u b b otovsk y, I., 3 3 0 n. S u k h o m lin o v , M ik h a il Ivano* v ic h , 183 n . S u k h o tìn , L ev M ik h a ilo v ich , 2 3 1 , 231 n. S u m n er, B . H ., 2 4 n . Suvorov, A leksandr V ., 1 0 4 , 269 S vavich , I. S ., 2 7 9 n . Svyatoslav, 125 S yrom yatn ik ov, B oris Ivanov ic h , 244, 2 4 4 n ., 245, 245 n ., 2 5 0 , 2 5 6 , 2 5 7 S yroechkovsky, V la d im ir E vg en y ev ich , 129 n . T a c itu s, 303 n . T a la n d ier, A lfred , 2 9 2 n . T arasov, V . V ., 3 6 7 T arie, E v g en ii V ik to r o v ic h , 6, 7, 8 n ., 9 n ., 2 6 8 , 2 6 9 , 2 7 0 , 2 7 0 n ., 2 7 1 , 2 7 2 , 2 7 2 n ., 2 7 3 , 2 7 4 , 2 7 5 , 275 n ., 2 7 6 , 2 7 7 , 2 7 8 , 2 7 9 n ., 2 8 0 , 2 8 2 , 2 8 4 , 2 8 4 n ., 2 8 8 , 2 8 8 n ., 370 T avak alyan , N ., 1 1 4 , 1 1 4 n. T ern ovsk y, F ., 1 5 2 , 152 n . T h e o p h a n e s th e G reek, 185, 186 T ik h a n o v a , M . A ., 1 2 6 n ., 131 n . T ik h o m iro v , B ., 2 1 5 , 2 1 5 n. T ik h o m iro v , M ik h a il N ik o la ev ich , 5 n ., 6 4 , 12 6 , 12 9 , 187, 1 8 8 ,2 1 4 T k a ch ev , P etr, 2 9 0 , 3 0 4 , 3 0 5 , 306, 308, 3 0 8 n ., 310, 3 1 0 n ., 3 1 m . , 3 1 5 , 3 1 6 , 317 T ok arev, Sergei A lek san d rovich , 1 3 6 n.

INDEX

430]

T o lsto y ,

A lex ey

N ik o la ev ic h ,

252 T o m p k in s, Stuart R ., 2 4 n. T o m sin sk y , S., 2 4 4 n . T retya k o v , P etr N ik o la ev ic h , 1 3 0 , 131 n ., 13 8 , 140 T rotsk y, L eo n , 3 2 1 , 3 4 4 , 3 4 5 , 3 4 9 ‫ ׳‬3 5 1 ‫ ׳‬3 5 4 ‫ ׳‬367

T se itlin , A leksandr v ich , 1 5 6 n. T setk o v , 201 n . T sv ib a k , M ., 9 n .

G rigorye-

V eselo v sk y , A lek sei N ik o la evich , 1 5 1 , 1 5 5 , 16 3 , 163 n ., 179 V eselo v sk y , S tep an B orisovich , 19 6 , 19 6 n ., 19 7 , 225, 2 2 6 n ., 231 V ilensk y-Sib iryakov, V ., 3 3 0 V in o g ra d o v , V ik to r V lad im irov ich , 175 n ., 1 7 6 n ., 1 8 5 ,

185 n. V ip p e r, R o b ert Y u revich , 2 2 0 , 2 2 0 n ., 2 2 1 , 2 2 8 , 22 8 n. V la d im ir, S ain t, 1 2 5 , 1 4 3 , 1 4 6 , 15 7 , 17 2 , 173 U d a ltso v , I. I., 6 4 V la d im ir M o n o m a k h , 1 0 4 , 147 U d a ltso v a , Z. V ., 1 6 0 n. V o lg in , V y a ch esla v P etrovich , U sp en sk y , F ed or Ivan ovich , 6, 8 n. 1 27, 1 4 9 1 4 9 ‫ ׳‬n ., 152, 155, V o r o n in , N ik o la i N ik o la ev ic h , 1 5 6 n. 12 6 n ., 131 n ., 178 n. U stryalov, N ik o la i G erasim oV o ro sh ilo v , K. E ., 3 5 0 v ich , 2 3 5 , 2 3 5 n . V osk resen sky, N . A ., 2 4 4 n ., 2 4 8 , 2 4 8 n ., 2 4 9 , 249 n ., V a illa n t, A nd ré, 175 n ., 182 n. 2 5 0 , 2 5 0 n ., 2 5 8 V a in sh te in , O sip L vovich , V o sto k o v , P ., 8 n ., 2 6 9 , 269 n. 1 50 n. V u c in ic h , A lexan d er, 17 n ., V a lk , S. N ., 3 3 0 n. 21 n. V a rla m o v , V o lo d y m y r, 289, V y a tk in , M ik h ail P orfirevich, 289 n. 11 5 , 115 n ., 11 6 , 11 6 n. V a siliev , A leksandr A leksandrov ich , 1 47 n ., 151 n ., 1 8 6 n. W a r th , R o b ert D ., 3 2 0 n. V a sily I, 1 47 n. W e b e r , M ax, 9 4 V a sily II, 193 W e in g a r t, M iloS, 1 5 6 n . V a sily III, 193, 2 0 4 , 21 4 n., W h it e , John A lb ert, 3 2 0 n. 217 W h it e , L eslie A ., 135 n. V asilyevsk y, V a silii G regoryeW illia m II o f Sicily, 148 n. vich , 1 50, 150 n ., 152, 155, W ils o n , W o o d r o w , 3 2 1 , 3 2 2 , 155 ‫ ת‬. V e ltm a n , 334334

M ik h ail ‫ ׳‬n .,

P avlovich ,

3 3 5 n .,

336,

3 3 7 3 3 7 ‫ ׳‬n ., 3 6 3 , 3 6 9

V er eten n ik o v , V a silii vich , 2 3 6 , 2 3 6 n. V ern ad sk y, G eorge, 1 3 0 n ., 145 n.

Ivano130,

350, 354‫ ׳‬3 5 7 ‫׳‬ 3 6 3 , 3 6 4 , 3 6 5 , 3 6 6 , 3 6 6 n .,

323,

334‫׳‬

3 6 8 , 3 6 9 , 3 7 0 , 3 7 1 ‫ ׳‬373 W ittg e n s te in , L u d w ig, 262 W o lf e , Bertram D ., 23 n. W r a n g e l, P. N ., 3 2 4 , 3 3 0 n ., 366

INDEX Y a g ich , Ig n a tii V ik e n ty e v ic h , 1 50 n. Y a k o b so n , Sergius, 2 7 n. Y a k o v lev , B ., 6 8 , 6 8 n. Y a k o v lev , N ik o la i F e o fa n o v ic h , 215 n. Y akovtsevsky, V . N ., 7 5 , 75 n. Y aku b insky, L ev P etro v ich , 175 n ., 1 7 6 n ., 185 n. Y aku b ovskaya, S. I., 6 8 , 6 8 n . Y ak u b ovsk y, A lek san dr Y urev ich , 2 1 4 , 2 1 4 n. Y a k u n in , A ., 1 1 5 ,1 1 5 n. Y aroslav, 143 Y aroslavsky, E m ely a n , 316, 3 1 6 n. Y aroslavtsev, A ., 283 n . Y u d e n ic h , N . N ., 3 2 3 , 3 2 4 Y u d in , P a v el F ed o ro v ich , 9 3 , 9 3 n ., 9 4 , 9 5 , 9 9

Y u sh k o v , Serafim V la d im iro v ic h , 58, 59, 59 n ., 6 0 , 6 0 n ., 6 2 , 6 4 , 6 5 , 6 6 , 6 6 n ., 6 9 , 1 2 6 , 1 2 6 n ., 173 n ., 2 1 0 , 2 1 0 n ., 2 4 5 n.

[431 Z aidel, G ., 9 n . Z aitsev, K . I., 100 Zaktreger, L ., 3 6 6 n . Z am yatin , N ik o la i N ik o la evich (see B atu rin , N . ) Zaozerskaya, E len a Ivan ovn a, 7 1 , 71 n ., 2 5 1 , 251 n ., 2 5 8 , 2 5 8 n. Z asu lich , V era , 2 9 1 , 2 9 9 n . Zavadsky-K rasnopolsky, A . K ., 1 5 2 , 152 n ., 1 5 6 n . Z elensky, M ., 53 n . y Z h d an ov,

A nd rei

A leksandro-

v ich , 17, 1 9 6 , 3 5 9 Z h eb elev ,

Sergei

A leksandro-

v ic h , 1 5 7 , 157 n. Z h elyab ov,

A n d rei

Ivan ovich ,

3 1 1 , 3 1 1 n. Z h ilin , P . A ., 2 7 8 n ., 2 8 2 n. Z h u k ov, E . M ., 33 n. Z im in , A . A ., 6 6 , 6 7 , 2 2 6 Z in oviev, M . A ., 15 n . Z olotarev, A ., 1 3 6 n. Z u b ok, L. I., 3 6 6 , 3 6 6 n ., 3 6 9 Z uyev, F . G ., 3 7 9 n .

Z aich nevsky, P ., 2 9 0 , 3 0 5 , 3 0 6 , 3 0 8 , 3 0 8 n ., 3 1 5 , 3 1 7

Z vyagintsev,

E v g en ii

v ich , 2 7 6 , 2 7 6 n.

A leksee-

VINTAGE

v -7 0 8 v -1 5 9 V -7 2 5

V -7 0 4 V -147 V -5 0

BIOGRAPHY

A ksakov, Sergey B eh rm an , S. N . Carr, E . H . D eu tsch er, Isaac G id e , A nd ré K elly, A m y

V -3 4

K lyuchevsky, V . L o w e n th a l, M . ( e d .)

V -9 2 V -7 7

M a ttin g ly , G arrett M izen er, A rthur

V -1 0 7 V *702 V -1 3 3

N e w m a n , E rn est S im m o n s, E rn est J. S im m o n s, E rn est J. S te in , G ertru d e

V -1 0 0

S u llivan , J. W . N .

V -8 2

T o y e , F rancis W ile n s k i, R . H .

V -7 2 8

V -7 0 1

V -1 2 2

AND

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Y ears of C hildhood D uveen M ic h a e l B akunin S ta lin : A Political Biography I f I t D ie E leanor of A quitaine and the F our K ings P eter the G reat A utobiography of M ichel de M ontaigne C a th e r in e o f A ra g o n T h e F a r Side o f P ara d ise : A Biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald W a g n e r as M an and A r t i s t L eo T o ls to y , V o lu m e I L eo T o ls to y , V o lu m e II T h e A u to b io g ra p h y o f A lic e B. T o k la s B e e th o v e n : His Spiritual De* velopm ent V e rd i: H is L ife and W o r k s M o d e rn F re n c h P a in te rs , V o lu m e I (1 8 6 3 * 1 9 0 3 )

V 123

W ile n s k i, R . H .

M o d e rn

F re n c h

P a in te rs ,

V o lu m e II (1 9 0 4 * 1 9 3 8 ) V -1 0 6

W in s to n , R ich ard

C h a rle m a g n e : From the H am • mer to the Cross

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