There is one remarkable scene in Mikhail Romm’s film “Lenin in October”. The worker Vasily brings a whole stack of fresh newspapers to Lenin, who is hiding in a safe house. However, Lenin remains dissatisfied with the fact that there is no Black Hundred newspaper among the newspapers. “You need to know your enemies!

STALIN'S MODEL

Transferring this principle to historical ground, we must also realize that in order to study the Stalinist period, we will one way or another have to familiarize ourselves with and understand the provisions in Western historical science.

It seems to me that the importance of this approach lies not so much in mastering specific facts, but in finding new impetuses for understanding the Stalinist period, or even confirming our view of the Soviet era. It would seem, how can Western historians share our views? In this case, I would like to give a specific example. The head of the department of East European history at the Humboldt University in Berlin, Jörg Baberowski, who even compared to other Western historians stands out for his extreme anti-Sovietism, writes: “The Russian communists were sophisticated students of the age of Reason and Enlightenment (hereinafter it is emphasized by me): what nature missed , must be replenished by human hands.

And everything that did not meet the requirements of reason, as the Bolsheviks understood it, had to disappear from the face of the earth. Socialism in no way refuted the main idea of ​​modernism; on the contrary, it strived for its true implementation.” So, the German historian considers the Bolsheviks to be students of the era of enlightenment, striving for the true implementation of modernity. For the Russian Svanids and Pivovarovs, recognizing the Bolsheviks as continuers of the work of Voltaire, Leibniz, and Montesquieu would be an insurmountable ideological barrier. I note that in terms of modernity, this statement is fully consistent with the provisions of the Essence of Time (the differences are only in assessments).

Further, I will not dwell in detail on the research and conclusions of individual Western historians. It seems to me that it is much more important to outline the genesis of the development of Western historiography of Stalinism using the example of the two most striking scientific movements. I will take the United States as a country, since the United States had the strongest influence in the formation of historiography about the USSR in other Western countries.

Active study of the Stalin era began after the end of World War II within the disciplines of Russian studies and Soviet and Communist studies, better known as Sovietology. Sovietology was strongly tailored to the needs of the Cold War, which determined its exceptional ideologization. Real knowledge about the history of the USSR was needed to the extent that it corresponded to the needs of the ongoing war in its propaganda and political directions. For the American political elite, it was important to understand what kind of enemy they were facing. What is its military and economic potential?

How institutions function. What is the personnel policy and how are decisions made in the highest echelons of power? What is the relationship between the people and the government? Studying Soviet history was supposed to help in understanding the Soviet present. However, the Iron Curtain policy prevented the flow of current and historical information, and there were few own sources for studying Soviet history. The main sources were: the Hoover archive, founded during the Volga famine of 1921, the Trotsky archive, various emigrant archives and the official Soviet press. The main trump card for studying Stalinism was the Smolensk party archive. He was captured by the Germans during the Great Patriotic War, and in 1945 he ended up in Bavaria, in the American zone of occupation. Actually, during the Cold War, most of the works on Stalinist topics were written on his materials. The narrow base of sources, on the one hand, greatly limited American historians, on the other hand, gave freedom for a wide variety of interpretations and conjectures.

There was also a staffing problem. There weren't that many people who studied the Soviet Union. Therefore, even historians were included in the staff of political analysts. Thus, the prominent American Russian historian Richard Pipes got along quite well in the role of head of a group of so-called analysts. Team B The group was formed on the initiative of CIA Director George W. Bush (the same future US President) in 1976. Its task was to evaluate the latest military strategic developments of the USSR. Pipes was far from the only one who willingly went to serve his country. Quite a number of American historians have used their positions as consultants and experts to the political establishment to enhance their financial status and influence in academic circles. State, etc. public organizations like the Rockefeller Foundation and the Ford Foundation provided them with adequate funding and prestigious jobs at Stanford, Yale, Harvard and Princeton. David Engerman defined the dual position of American historians as: “serving both, Mars (meaning the militant state) and Minerva (meaning science).” Service to Mars inevitably affected the direction of scientific publications. Sometimes the historian’s knowledge was used in specific actions of information warfare. So in 1984, historian Robert Conquest published for the Reagan election campaign a kind of practical guide called “What to Do When the Russians Come?” In it, a doctor of historical sciences from Stanford University outlined the consequences of a possible Soviet occupation with all of this (according to the author) ensuing consequences, such as: robbery of the population, murder, famine and mass rape. In this vein, the skepticism of the Soviet side regarding people from elite US universities seems quite natural. Recalling this time, American historian Lynn Viola wrote: “It comes as no surprise to me that... the councils routinely viewed exchange students as spies, especially if they were from Harvard...”

The dominant theory among American Sovietologists was the theory of totalitarianism. I believe that most are familiar with this theory. I will limit myself to only a brief enumeration of its central provisions. According to this concept, a totalitarian state means a system of personal power of a dictator based on a single party with mass social support. Control of power is exercised through a repressive and bureaucratic apparatus, censorship of the media and a ban on private property. In its earliest version, the theory was formulated by Hannah Arendt. On American soil, it was consistently developed by Harvard University employees Carl Joachim Friedrich and Zbigniew Brzezinski. The theory of totalitarianism helped bring Nazism and Stalinism under one roof, while conveniently leaving liberalism (i.e., the United States itself) out of the discussion. The US authorities quickly assessed the role that the totalitarian approach could play in the ideological confrontation with the USSR. By the sixties, representatives of the totalitarian trend were firmly entrenched in almost all the cadres of the political elite. The language of the US political establishment to this day carries the pronounced terminology of this theory. Karl Deutsch, Peter Kenez, Adam Ulam, Martin Malia and the already mentioned Conquest and Brzezinski became the most famous representatives of this trend. Conquest's work The Great Terror has become a classic of totalitarian theory. It cannot be said that the dominance of the totalitarian school was associated only with the support of the US authorities. Its successful advancement was facilitated by the absence of other coherent theories. The concept of totalitarianism was captivating in its ease of understanding and ease of application. Adherents of totalitarian theory often sinned with excessive universalism, trying to apply their principles right back to antiquity.

However, the theory of totalitarianism has not always met with positive responses in scientific circles. According to historian John Arch Getty, the imposition of a totalitarian concept sometimes resembled church liturgy. Historians who worked outside of this theory may have encountered stiff opposition. When the historian Manuel Sarkisyants, in the early 50s, tried to publish his articles on the British origins of Nazi ideology, which ran counter to the theory of totalitarianism, he came across warnings from his colleagues and the ubiquitous lack of interest from scientific publishers.

Historians of the totalitarian school:

Robert Conquest Adam Ulam

The dominance of the totalitarian school continued until the end of the sixties. The US defeat in Vietnam and the civil and student movements gave birth to a new cohort of historians. The new direction in American historiography was not recognized as such for a long time. Only in 1986, Sheila Fitzpatrick’s article became a kind of manifesto for a new direction, which is commonly called Revisionism. There, Fitzpatrick drew the battle line between totalitarians and revisionists. According to Fitzpatrick, the main controversy was in the methodological area. Supporters of the totalitarian model preferred to consider the Stalinist period from the position of the state and the political elite, i.e. from above, the revisionists, on the contrary, primarily looked at Soviet society and its interactions with the authorities, i.e. below. In this sense, the revisionists were strongly influenced by the French historical tradition of Marc Bloch's school of annals. Ultimately, the revisionists were never able to develop something like a single coherent theory like the representatives of totalitarianism. The only thing that united the revisionists into one movement was sociological methodology and rejection of the model of totalitarianism.

Considering the main directions of revisionist research, the following points can be highlighted:

1. Revisionists pointed to the high social mobility of Soviet society. There were social groups (beneficiaries) who benefited from Stalin's policies. Privileges could be expressed both in an increase in material level and in social prestige: Stakhanovites, closed distributors for the nomenklatura, MTS for collective farmers, etc. The revisionists also emphasized the mobilization role of Soviet ideology in carrying out political and economic transformations. In her monograph, Lynn Viola showed the importance of the so-called. movement of 25,000 for the providence of collectivization. Contrary to the then prevailing opinion about the cruelly imposed idea of ​​collectivization from above, Viola defended the position that the workers heading to the village fully shared the expediency of collectivization. Thus, the Stalinist state secured support among groups of the population. In the totalitarian model, the people played a rather passive role. Any initiatives from above were of a coercive and repressive nature. Supporters of totalitarianism did not consider mass support for Stalinism from below. By supplementing their research into groups supporting the Stalinist course with research on groups opposing the state, the revisionists proved the heterogeneity of Soviet society.

2. A particularly acute stumbling block was the differences over the issue of Stalin's repressions. From the point of view of totalitarianism, terror was a tool to strengthen the personal power of Stalin and the Communist Party. The source of terror was naturally Stalin personally. The monograph by historian John Arch Getty became a real provocation. In his monograph, Getty examined repression from the point of view of the struggle of the center with the ineffective bureaucratic apparatus of the periphery. Moreover, according to Getty, Stalin was not necessarily the initiator of the repressions. Getty believed that part of the regional party and state apparatus was no less interested in unleashing repression. Later in Russia, Getty’s idea of ​​a center-periphery conflict was picked up by historian Yu.N. Zhukov . Getty was also one of the first to question the millions of victims of Stalin's terror, but due to the lack of access to archives at that time, Getty went to the other extreme and greatly downplayed them. Supporters of totalitarianism saw Getty's conclusions as absolving Stalin of responsibility for the repressions. At the same time, Getty's concept provided for the presence of other government entities, in the form of regional party-bureaucratic groups. This provision put an end to the model of totalitarianism, since the presence of such groups actually meant that the USSR was not a totalitarian state.

Historians Revisionists:

Sheila Fitzpatrick John Arch

The nature of the discussion that ensued went far beyond the decency of ordinary academic debates. Supporters of totalitarianism perceived the ideas of the revisionists not only as criticism of their theory, but also as an attack on the sacred stones of the American worldview and world order. Accordingly, the rebuff to the revisionists was often given in a very harsh form. Assessing the level of discussion of those years, Lynn Viola wrote: “Despite the fact that the enemy in the American Cold War was the Soviet Union, I have always wondered why American Sovietologists, in their internal wars, are so reminiscent of the Stalinists (Trotskyism = revisionism), turning all debates into binaries and marginalizing all voices outside the mainstream.” The practice of labeling has become widespread. Revisionists were accused of communism, apologetics for Stalin, and even Holocaust denial. Richard Pipes stated: “I ignore their (revisionist) works. How can you fight people who deny the Holocaust? It's the same as if someone believes that the earth is flat." This was an outright lie. The revisionists had no special sympathy for Stalin (quite the contrary) and never denied the Holocaust.

Despite such pressure, the influence of the revisionists grew

Proponents of the revisionist approach quickly appeared in Western Europe. Perestroika played a cruel joke on the revisionists. The revisionists saw in Gorbachev's new course confirmation of their concept that the Soviet system was not static totalitarian and was quite capable of political evolution. But it was thanks to perestroika that the theory of totalitarianism became most widespread in Russia, just at the moment when its decline was evident in the West. Perhaps, almost the only work of revisionists published in the USSR was the book by Stephen Cohen (who can only be classified as a revisionist with a stretch) about Bukharin. The reason for the publication, in my opinion, stemmed from the then historical policy of M.S. Gorbachev and A.N. Yakovlev - to strike good Bukharin at bad Stalin. It was quite natural. For the ideological war waged by Russian liberals against the Soviet past, the concept of totalitarianism was much more convenient. Although the destruction of the Soviet Union provided the revisionists with long-desired access to the Soviet archives, at the same time revisionism remained outside the framework of Russian public discourse. As a result, the terminology of the totalitarian school reigned unhindered in the Russian media of the 90s. Quite a large number of Russian historians, especially those who are closely associated with the Memorial society, switched to the position of totalitarianism. Only after 2000, when the train had already left, some revisionist works were translated into Russian, but they no longer had the desired effect.

The end of the Cold War led to a noticeable softening of the debate between the totalitarian and revisionist trends. This is also due to the reorientation of American geopolitics towards the Middle and Far East. According to Lynn Viola, totalitarianism was replaced by the concept of the clash of civilizations, Pipes was replaced by Huntington. Some historians talk about post-revisionism and post-totalitarianism, but it seems to me that it is premature to talk about a complete blurring of these two concepts. After all, the followers of totalitarianism retained for themselves the instrument of shaping the consciousness of the US political elite. The fact that these gentlemen are now stubbornly teaching Farsi and talking about the totalitarian nature of the regimes of Gaddafi and Assad does not mean that tomorrow they will not begin to remember Russian again. The formula of Mars and Minerva remains valid.

Returning to the words of Romm’s Lenin, I would like to call for a detailed mastery of the developments of the revisionists. Yes, the revisionists did not have any special sympathy for the Soviet Union, and sometimes despised everything Soviet. But just as Berdyaev, hating the Bolsheviks, was able to discover an interesting side in it (essentially restoring the connection between Russian Orthodox culture and the Soviet project), so the revisionists were able to discover many interesting aspects of the Stalin era. The revisionist approach is by far the most thorough rebuff to the theory of totalitarianism, so popular among Russian liberals. If you learn to isolate the anti-Soviet judgments of revisionists, concentrating on the semantic and factual core, then you can gain knowledge, and therefore weapons, to fight the dominance of the totalitarian approach in Russia.

The scientific heritage of American and European revisionists is too large to fit into the framework of one article. Therefore, I hope that I was able not only to conduct a mini excursion into the American historiography of Stalinism, but also to show how contradictory, diverse the notorious Western view of Soviet history is, and what potential it contains.

Sources

Jörg Baberowski: Red Terror. History of Stalinism. Moscow, 2007, p.12.

David C. Engerman: Know Your Enemy: The Rise and Fall of America’s Soviet Experts. Oxford University Press 2009, p.2.

Robert Conquest, Jon Manchip White: What to Do When the Russians Come: A Survivor’s Guide, by Conquest and Jon Manchip White. New York, 1984.

Lynne Viola: The Cold War within Cold War, in: Kritika. Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, Vol.12, Num. 3, 2011, pp. 689-690.

Robert Conquest: The Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the Thirties. New York, 1968.

John Arch Getty: Comments: Codes and Confessions, in Slavic Review, vol. 67, num. 3, 2008, pp. 711-715.

Manuel Sarkisyants: Inconvenient origins, APN dated September 29, 2009. http://www.apn.ru/publications/article10491.htm

Sheila Fitzpatrick: New perspectives on Stalinism, in Russian Review, vol. 45, num. 4, 1986, pp. 357-373.

Ibid., p. 367.

Sheila Fitzpatrick: Education and Social Mobility in the Soviet Union 1921-1932. Cambridge University Press, 1979.

Lynne Viola: The best sons of the fatherland. Workers in the vanguard of Soviet collectivization. New York, 1987.

Lynne Viola: Peasant rebels under Stalin. Collectivization and the culture of peasant resistance. New York, Oxford 1996.

John Arch Getty: Origins of the Great Purges: The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered, 1933-1938. New York, 1985.

Yuri Nikolaevich Zhukov: Another Stalin. Political reforms in the USSR in 1933-1937. Moscow, 2003.

Quoted in: Sheila Fitzpatrick: Revisionism in Retrospect: A Personal View, in Slavic Review, vol. 67, num. 3, 2008, p. 691.

Stephen Cohen: Bukharin. Political biography 1888-1938. Moscow, 1988.

Lynne Viola: The Cold War within Cold War, in: Kritika. Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, Vol.12, Num. 3, 2011, p. 689.

There is one remarkable scene in Mikhail Romm’s film “Lenin in October”. The worker Vasily brings Lenin, who is hiding in a safe house, a whole stack of fresh newspapers. However, Lenin remains dissatisfied with the fact that there is no Black Hundred newspaper among the newspapers. "You need to know your enemies! Bring it tomorrow" - Lenin demands. It doesn’t matter whether this conversation is a creative invention of the screenwriter or some kind of apocrypha from Lenin’s life. The important thing is that in order to understand the current situation, information from the camp of the ideological enemy does not play a secondary role.

Transferring this principle to historical ground, we must also realize that in order to study the Stalinist period, we will one way or another have to familiarize ourselves with and understand the provisions in Western historical science. It seems to me that the importance of this approach lies not so much in mastering specific facts, but in searching for new ones. aftershocks to understand the Stalinist period or even confirm our view of the Soviet era. It would seem, how can Western historians share our views? In this case, I would like to give a specific example. The head of the department of East European history at the Humboldt University in Berlin, Jörg Baberowski, who even among other Western historians stands out for his extreme anti-Sovietism, writes: « Russian communists were sophisticated students of the Age of Reason and Enlightenment (hereinafter it is emphasized by me) : what nature has missed must be replenished by human hands. And everything that did not meet the requirements of reason, as the Bolsheviks understood it, had to disappear from the face of the earth. Socialism in no way refuted the main idea of ​​modernism; on the contrary, it strived for its true implementation.” . So, the German historian considers the Bolsheviks to be students of the Enlightenment era, striving for genuine implementation of modernity. For Russians Svanidz And Pivovarovs recognition of the Bolsheviks as continuers of the work of Voltaire, Leibniz, and Montesquieu would have been an insurmountable ideological barrier. I note that in terms of modernity, this statement is fully consistent with the provisions of the Essence of Time (the differences are only in assessments).

Further, I will not dwell in detail on the research and conclusions of individual Western historians. It seems to me that it is much more important to outline the genesis of the development of Western historiography of Stalinism using the example of the two most striking scientific movements. I will take the USA as a country, since it was the United States that had the strongest influence in the formation of historiography about the USSR in Western countries.

Active study of the Stalinist era began after the end of the Second World War within the disciplines Russian studies And Soviet and Communist studies, better known as Sovietology ( Sovietology). Sovietology was strongly tailored to the needs of the Cold War, which determined its exceptional ideologization. Real knowledge about the history of the USSR was needed to the extent that it corresponded to the needs of the ongoing war in its propaganda and political directions. It was important for the American political elite to understand what kind of enemy they were facing. What is its military and economic potential? How institutions function. What is the personnel policy and how are decisions made in the highest echelons of power? What is the relationship between the people and the government? The study of Soviet history was supposed to help in understanding the Soviet present. However, politics iron curtain prevented the flow of current and historical information, and there were few own sources for studying Soviet history. The main sources were: the Hoover archive, founded during the Volga famine of 1921, the Trotsky archive, various emigrant archives and the official Soviet press. The main trump card for the study of Stalinism was the Smolensk party archive. He was captured by the Germans during the Great Patriotic War, and in 1945 he ended up in Bavaria, in the American zone of occupation. Actually, during the Cold War, most of the works on Stalinist topics were written on his materials. The narrow base of sources, on the one hand, greatly limited American historians, on the other hand, gave freedom for a wide variety of interpretations and conjectures.

There was also a staffing problem. There weren't that many people who studied the Soviet Union. Therefore, even historians were included in the staff of political analysts. Thus, the prominent American Russian historian Richard Pipes got along quite well in the role of head of a group of so-called analysts. Team B The group was formed on the initiative of CIA Director George W. Bush (the same future US President) in 1976. Its tasks included assessing the latest military strategic developments of the USSR. Pipes was far from the only one who willingly went to serve his country. Many American historians have used their positions as consultants and experts to the political establishment to increase their material status and influence in academic circles. State, etc. public organizations like the Rockefeller Foundation and the Ford Foundation provided them with adequate funding and prestigious jobs at Stanford, Yale, Harvard and Princeton. David Engerman defined this dual position of American historians as "service to both, Mars(implying a militant state) and Minerva(meaning science)". Service Mars inevitably affected the direction of scientific publications. Sometimes the historian’s knowledge was used in specific actions of information warfare. So, in 1984, historian Robert Conquest published a practical guide for the Reagan election campaign called “What to do when the Russians come?» In it, a doctor of historical sciences from Stanford University outlined the consequences of a possible Soviet occupation with all of this (according to the author) ensuing consequences, such as: robbery of the population, murder, famine and mass rape. In this vein, the skepticism of the Soviet side regarding people from elite US universities seems quite natural. Remembering this time, American historian Lynn Viola wrote: “ It comes as no surprise to me that...the councils routinely viewed exchange students as spies, especially if they were from Harvard..."

The dominant theory among American Sovietologists was the theory of totalitarianism. I believe that most are familiar with this theory. I will limit myself to only a brief enumeration of its central provisions. According to this concept, a totalitarian state means a system of personal power of a dictator based on a single party with mass social support. Control of power is exercised through a repressive and bureaucratic apparatus, censorship of the media and a ban on private property. In its earliest version, the theory was formulated by Hannah Arendt. On American soil, it was consistently developed by Harvard University employees Carl Joachim Friedrich and Zbigniew Brzezinski. The theory of totalitarianism helped to reduce under the same roof Nazism and Stalinism, while conveniently leaving liberalism (i.e. the USA itself) out of the discussion brackets. The US authorities quickly assessed the role that the totalitarian approach could play in the ideological confrontation with the USSR. By the sixties, representatives of the totalitarian trend were firmly dug in in almost all personnel forges political elite. The language of the US political establishment to this day carries the pronounced terminology of this theory. Karl Deutsch, Peter Kenez, Adam Ulam, Martin Malia and the already mentioned Conquest and Brzezinski became the most famous representatives of this trend. Conquest's work "Great Terror" became a classic of totalitarian theory. It cannot be said that the dominance of the totalitarian school was associated only with the support of the US authorities. Its successful promotion was also facilitated by the absence of other slim theories. The concept of totalitarianism was captivating because it was easy to understand and easy to apply. Adherents of totalitarian theory often sinned with excessive universalism, trying to apply their principles right back to antiquity. However, the theory of totalitarianism has not always met with positive responses in scientific circles. According to historian John Arch Getty, the imposition of a totalitarian concept sometimes resembled church liturgy . Historians who worked outside of this theory may have encountered stiff opposition. When historian Manuel Sarkisyants tried to publish his articles on the British origins of Nazi ideology in the early 50s , running counter to the theory of totalitarianism, he encountered the warnings of his colleagues and the omnipresent lack of interest among scientific publishers.

Historians of the totalitarian school:

Robert Conquest	Adam Ulam	Zbigniew Brzezinski

The dominance of the totalitarian school continued until the end of the sixties. The defeat of the United States in Vietnam, civil and student movements gave rise to a new cohort of historians. The new direction in American historiography was not recognized as such for a long time. Only in 1986, Sheila Fitzpatrick’s article became a kind of manifesto for a new direction, which is commonly called Revisionism. There Fitzpatrick drew front line between totalitarians and revisionists. According to Fitzpatrick, the main controversy was in the methodological area. Supporters of the totalitarian model preferred to consider the Stalinist period from the position of the state and the political elite, i.e. from above, revisionists , on the contrary, they mainly looked at Soviet society and its interactions with the authorities, i.e. from below. In this sense, the French historical tradition had a strong influence on the revisionists annal schools Block brand. Ultimately, the revisionists were never able to develop anything like a unified slim theories as representatives of totalitarianism. The only thing that united the revisionists into one movement was sociological methodology and rejection of the totalitarian model.

Considering the main directions of revisionist research, the following points can be highlighted:
1. The revisionists pointed to high social mobility Soviet society. There were social groups ( beneficiaries), benefiting from Stalin's policies. Privileges could be expressed both in an increase in material level and in social prestige: Stakhanovites, closed distributors for the nomenklatura, MTS for collective farmers, etc. The revisionists also emphasized the mobilization role of Soviet ideology in carrying out political and economic transformations. In her monograph, Lynn Viola showed the importance of the so-called . movements 25 000 for collectivization. Contrary to the then prevailing opinion about the cruelly imposed idea of ​​collectivization from above, Viola defended the position that the workers heading to the village fully shared the expediency of collectivization. Thus, the Stalinist state secured support among groups of the population. In the totalitarian model, the people played a rather passive role. Any initiatives from above were of a coercive and repressive nature. Supporters of totalitarianism did not consider mass support for Stalinism from below. By supplementing their research on groups supporting Stalin's course with research on groups opposed to the state, the revisionists proved the heterogeneity of Soviet society.

2. Differences on the issue of Stalinist repressions became especially acute. From the point of view of totalitarianism, terror was a tool to strengthen the personal power of Stalin and the Communist Party. The source of terror was, naturally, Stalin personally. The monograph by historian John Arch Getty became a real provocation. In his monograph, Getty examined repression from the point of view of the struggle of the center with the ineffective bureaucratic apparatus of the periphery. Moreover, according to Getty, Stalin was not necessarily the initiator of the repressions. Getty believed that part of the regional party and state apparatus was no less interested in unleashing repression. Later, Getty’s idea of ​​a center-periphery conflict was picked up in Russia by historian Yu.N. Zhukov . Getty was also one of the first to question the millions of victims of Stalin's terror, but due to the lack of access to archives at that time, Getty went to the other extreme and greatly downplayed them. Supporters of totalitarianism saw Getty's conclusions as removing Stalin's responsibility for the repressions. At the same time, Getty's concept provided for the presence of other government entities in the form of regional party-bureaucratic groups. This provision put an end to the model of totalitarianism, since the presence of such groups actually meant that the USSR was not a totalitarian state.

Historians Revisionists:

The nature of the discussion that ensued went far beyond the decency of ordinary academic debates. Supporters of totalitarianism perceived the ideas of the revisionists not only as criticism of their theory, but also as an attempt on sacred stones American worldview and world order. Accordingly, the rebuff to the revisionists was often given in a very harsh form. Assessing the level of discussion of those years, Lynn Viola wrote: “Even though the enemy in the American Cold War was the Soviet Union, I was always surprised why are American Sovietologists, in their internal wars, so reminiscent of the Stalinists(Trotskyism = revisionism), turning all debates into binaries and marginalizing all voices outside the mainstream.". The practice of labeling has become widespread. Revisionists were accused of communism, apologetics for Stalin, and even Holocaust denial. Richard Pipes stated: "I ignore them(revisionist) work. How can you fight people who deny the Holocaust? It's the same as if someone believes the earth is flat.". This was an outright lie. The revisionists had no special sympathy for Stalin (quite the contrary) and never denied the Holocaust. Despite such pressure, the influence of the revisionists grew. Proponents of the revisionist approach quickly appeared in Western Europe.

Perestroika played a cruel joke on the revisionists. The revisionists saw in Gorbachev's new course confirmation of their concept that the Soviet system was not static totalitarian and was quite capable of political evolution. But it was precisely thanks to perestroika that the theory of totalitarianism became most widespread in Russia, just at the moment when its decline was becoming apparent in the West. Perhaps, almost the only work of revisionists published in the USSR was the book by Stephen Cohen (who can only be classified as a to the revisionists) about Bukharin. The reason for the publication, in my opinion, stemmed from the then historical policy of M.S. Gorbachev and A.N. Yakovleva - hit good Bukharin against bad Stalin. It was quite natural. For the ideological war waged by Russian liberals against the Soviet past, the concept of totalitarianism was much more convenient. The destruction of the Soviet Union, although it provided the revisionists with long-awaited access to the Soviet archives, but at the same time left revisionism outside the framework of Russian public discourse. As a result, the terminology of the totalitarian school reigned unhindered in the Russian media of the 90s. Quite a large number of Russian historians, especially those closely associated with Society "Memorial" switched to the position of totalitarianism. Only after 2000, then, when the train has already left, some revisionist works were translated into Russian, but they no longer had the desired effect.

The end of the Cold War led to a noticeable softening of the debate between the totalitarian and revisionist trends. This is also due to the reorientation of American geopolitics towards the Middle and Far East. According to Lynn Viola, totalitarianism has been replaced by the concept clash of civilizations, Pipes was replaced by Huntington. Some historians talk about post-revisionism and post-totalitarianism, but it seems to me that it is premature to talk about a complete blurring of these two concepts. After all, the followers of totalitarianism retained for themselves the instrument of shaping the consciousness of the US political elite. What these gentlemen Nowadays they stubbornly teach Farsi and talk about the totalitarian nature of the regimes of Gaddafi and Assad, which does not mean that tomorrow they will not begin to remember Russian again. Formula of Mars and Minerva it remains valid.

Returning to the words of Romm’s Lenin, I would like to call for a detailed mastery of the revisionists’ developments. Yes, the revisionists did not have much sympathy for the Soviet Union, and sometimes despised everything Soviet. But, just as Berdyaev, hating Bolshevism, was able to discover an interesting side in it (essentially restoring the connection between Russian Orthodox culture and the Soviet project), so did revisionists were able to discover many interesting aspects of the Stalin era. The revisionist approach is by far the most thorough rebuff to the theory of totalitarianism, so popular among Russian liberals. If you learn to isolate the anti-Soviet judgments of revisionists, concentrating on the semantic and factual core, then you can gain knowledge, and therefore weapons, to fight the dominance of the totalitarian approach in Russia.

Scientific heritage American and European revisionists are too numerous to fit into the confines of one article. Therefore, I hope that I was able not only to conduct a mini-excursion into the American historiography of Stalinism, but also to show how notorious Western view

Lynne Viola: The best sons of the fatherland. Workers in the vanguard of Soviet collectivization. New York, 1987.

Lynne Viola: Peasant rebels under Stalin. Collectivization and the culture of peasant resistance. New York, Oxford 1996.

John Arch Getty: Origins of the Great Purges: The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered, 1933-1938. New York, 1985.

Quoted in: Sheila Fitzpatrick: Revisionism in Retrospect: A Personal View, in Slavic Review, vol. 67, num. 3, 2008, p. 691.

Lynne Viola: The Cold War within Cold War, in: Kritika. Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, Vol.12, Num. 3, 2011, p. 689.

B A little about revisionism

P. 13: Numerous documents completely refute various assumptions about the spontaneity of terror, about the loss of control by the center over the course of mass repressions, about the special role of regional leaders and some mythical groups of the bureaucracy in initiating terror, etc. These theories were started by the so-called “revisionists” in the West back in the 1980s, when Soviet archives were completely closed, and the highly ideological postulates of “official” Western historiography caused rejection among young, shocking “rebels” from the university environment . Under the influence of newly discovered facts, these Western historians adjusted their positions to some extent [One of the most important works in this direction, in which a compromise attempt is made to combine a priori constructions about the spontaneity of terror and archival evidence that clearly contradicts them, is the article: Getty J. “Excesses are not permitted": Mass Terror and Stalinist Governance in the Late 1930s // The Russian Review. Vol. 61 (January 2002). R. 113-138]. However, old misconceptions and inventions are reproduced in a caricatured and exaggerated form in modern Russia, however, without mentioning their predecessors - the “revisionists” [Zhukov Yu.N. Another Stalin. Political reforms in the USSR in 1933-1937. M., 2003]. Fantastic pictures of terror as a result of the confrontation between Stalin the reformer, who sought to give the country democracy, and self-interested orthodox party bureaucrats who oppressed the leader in every possible way, are based on numerous mistakes, excessive handling of sources, as well as ignoring real facts that do not fit into the invented scheme.

Additional reading:

About one lecture at the IRI RAS (more interesting links in the comments)

Original taken from afanarizm in About one lecture at the IRI RAS

Last Thursday, the famous historian Oleg Khlevnyuk spoke in Iran with a report on the modern historiography of Stalinism. I came to listen - it turned out to be extremely interesting. I’ll briefly outline what it was about:

The term “Stalinism” has been accepted and established in historical science;

Historians have learned to work with archives, the admiration for archives has passed, it has become clear what is in them and what is not, now the situation in this regard is much more definite. however, the study of some subjects is hampered by the inaccessibility of archives (for example, criminality - the closed storage of the NKVD-MVD);

The concept of totalitarianism cannot explain the nature of Soviet society. Soviet history is not monolithic; it has stages with their own characteristics. a fundamental difference was established between the Stalinist and Hitlerite regimes;

Stalinism is a flexible system capable of adapting to current conditions. this largely explains the ease of dismantling Stalinism after Stalin’s death;

It has been clearly established that Stalin was the center of the political system; all fundamental and most other decisions came from him. His leading role in organizing repressions, as well as in determining the economic course - which was based not on economic, but on political and ideological considerations - was also established. the first five-year plan was purely political, there was no reason to carry it out, especially with such high targets and such barbaric methods, as the result was a complete failure. the second is the most successful of the five-year plans of the 30s, because it was based on economic considerations;

In connection with the previous point, the concepts of Western revisionist authors of the 1970s and 80s are completely destroyed: about the “accidentality” or “spontaneity” of terror, the leadership role of local leaders, the NKVD being out of control, etc. however, these theories are taken up by modern Stalinists, who, however, do not indicate the sources of their inspiration. modern attempts to justify Stalin are untenable, largely because Stalinist authors are not historians, do not work with archives, and act for ideological reasons. Khlevnyuk expressed dissatisfaction with the fact that the shelves are filled with pro-Stalinist literature of the lowest standard, and suggested that the publishing houses that publish it were created specifically and receive special funding - however, this craze will pass and be forgotten, although historians need to be more active;

Nowadays, the leading role in the study of the Soviet period belongs to the history of everyday life. this is a positive phenomenon, but it should not be absolutized so as not to come to the wrong conclusions (for example, it would be a mistake to draw conclusions about the life of the entire country based on the diaries of citizens - because the society of the Stalin years was highly segregated and within each stratum there were their own views and ideas) ;

The study of the Stalinist period is very intensive and fruitful, but uneven in chronology and topics - the 30s are better studied, as well as the topics that traditionally enjoyed attention: politics, agriculture. There are fewer works on the post-war period, mainly concentrating on politics, economics and agriculture are less studied;

Separately, it is necessary to study the mechanisms of functioning of the regime, decision-making, especially at the grassroots level (although we should not forget about the peculiarities of decision-making - in personal conversations, by telephone, etc., i.e. not recorded anywhere - a feature of the period), as well as the economics of the war and post-war periods (also at the grassroots level - individual enterprises, regions, etc.), Soviet national policy (primarily the problem of combining traditions and Soviet innovations)

Negative aspects in the modern study of Stalinism: a small share of criticism, the predominance of complementarity in reviews, a wave of meaningless research, especially in the provinces, the absence of a purely review publication that would consider publications on the topic. In addition, some trends that appeared at the turn of the 1980s and 90s died out.

Historians are isolated in their community, although they must fight for authority in society. Numerous discussions on the Internet are very useful - the level is frankly primitive, but still stimulates additional study of topics and plots, in this sense they have taken the initiative from historians.

There was something else, but I forgot my notebook and was typing it into my mobile phone, and there is limited space there, plus some notes were lost - but in general it’s like that. After the report there were questions:

One question about the publication “At Stalin’s Reception”, how authentic is it, are there any falsifications, because the original is not even sewn. According to Khlevnyuk, everything is in order, the publication can be verified, and besides, if there were falsifications, then everything would have been sewn together, and all the necessary stamps would have been there. Moreover, if references to visits to Stalin in someone’s memoirs do not “fight” with the book, then this evidence can be safely discarded (as, for example, with the memoirs of Afanasyev’s Ministry of Marine Fleet). Although, of course, Stalin received visitors not only in the Kremlin office, but also in an apartment in the Kremlin, in the building of the Secretariat of the Central Committee, as well as at dachas (primarily Kuntsevskaya) - these visits are not reflected;

Another question is about the so-called. "Russian patriotism" of Stalin. This trend should not be overestimated; it was purely situational and did not have the character of a targeted policy. moreover, numerous facts of oppression of Russians in national republics and autonomies, crimes on ethnic grounds;

The question of personal attitude towards Stalin is negative as a person and a leader (not always adequate to the conditions, there are many erroneous decisions), “a villain cannot be great.” In addition, Khlevnyuk is convinced that Stalinism was not without alternative and inevitable - it was established during the internal party struggle, in which Stalin used, among other things, methods of blackmail (for example, Rudzutak and Kalinin), as well as the Civil War of the late 1920s. X. to understand the alternatives, it is necessary to study not the ideologist Bukharin, but the practice of Rykov, what decisions he made in a difficult economic situation;

Finally, the inevitable question regarding repressions is about the number of victims during the Stalinist period: about 18 million - camps and colonies (and prisons), 6 million special settlers (including repressed peoples), about 30 million - “pointers” (without imprisonment). in terms of the number of executed people, the period 1937-38 is unprecedented in the history of the country, ranking on a par with the PRC, Cambodia and the arts of the Nazis outside Germany. How the execution of more than 600 thousand people (and mostly workers and peasants of the most productive ages were shot) could have helped the country’s economy is a mystery. A kind of discussion broke out about the number of criminally convicted people; the consensus was that it was impossible to clearly identify who was a criminally convicted person and who was a political one; political ones were convicted under criminal charges and vice versa. for Khlevnyuk, political ones are those who suffered under the law on spikelets and other similar acts, because their adoption was dictated by political considerations. E.Yu. Zubkova added that until 1947, convicts were not differentiated according to criminal or political cases. I.A. Khristoforov pointed out that when determining the reason for the conviction, one must look at the results of rehabilitation - if they were rehabilitated under a political article (Article 58 in its entirety), then the essence of the arrest does not matter.

The topic of repression, of course, aroused the greatest interest, and it was decided to hold a special report in the near future. If there is any interest, I will also inform you about it. That's all for now.

Dear editor-in-chief! Recently I had the opportunity to encounter plagiarism. The conclusions that I made six months after the start of the case, it seems to me, will be of interest to the readers of your magazine. Judge for yourself.

In a twenty-page article by M.I. Smirnova and I.A. Dmitrieva “Sociocultural origins of Stalinism: historiographic discourse”, published in the collection “Historiography of Stalinism” (M., ROSSPEN. 2007. RGNF project No. 06-01-16202. Head of the author’s team, Doctor of Historical Sciences V.E. Bagdasaryan. Editor: academician, member of the board of the Russian Humanitarian Scientific Foundation N.A. Simoniya), I found more than a page of unquoted quotations from my work, for which there were no footnotes.

The collection, which pretended to be academic, made a strange impression: it did not contain brief information about the place of work and position of Messrs. Smirnova and Dmitrieva, there were no subject and name indexes. Mr. Bagdasaryan, the head of the team of authors, modestly published only three of his articles, and not seven, the article of Mr. A.A. Danilov can hardly be called historiographical, but there was a place for her, but, alas, not for the volume’s apparatus. This blank was dedicated to the memory of the historian. RGNF paid for it.

I had only one thing left: to request information about the ladies’ place of work or study from the chairman of the RGNF council, Yu.L. Vorotnikov, which was done by registered mail in July 2008. The postal service confirmed on its website that the letter had arrived to the addressee, but the official did not respond.

Mr. Vorotnikov could forward my letter to his acquaintances who are directly related to the publication of the volume: Messrs. Simony and Baghdasaryan. Judging by the fact that they did not answer me, Mr. Vorotnikov was not going to analyze the situation with the omission of plagiarism by his organization and develop measures to prevent such incidents in the future. Plagiarism is sometimes difficult to detect immediately, but when measures are not taken after a reasoned report about it, then the position of officials that is beneficial to the plagiarists is revealed.

The following registered letter was sent in October 2008 to the Chairman of the Higher Attestation Commission of the Russian Federation, Academician M.P. Kirpichnikov with a request not to count the plagiarized article as a published work on the topic of the dissertation if any of the plagiarists submits it. I did not receive any response from Mr. Kirpichnikov.

Considering that Mr. Simonia also works as an adviser to the RAS, in October I sent a registered letter to the President of the RAS Yu.S. Osipov, drawing his attention to the benefits to plagiarists of the behavior of persons known to him and asking him to remind them of the deadlines established by law for organizations to respond to letters from citizens. I did not receive any response from Mr. Osipov. Now we will have to remind the President of the Russian Academy of Sciences: organizations and officials are obliged to give an answer to the citizen on the merits of the case within a month.

The science management system must have an effective mechanism for getting rid of plagiarists without going to court. There are all the prerequisites for this: scientific advice, experts, scientific press, administrative power. The opportunity to run through the courts should be given to insane plagiarists who do not agree with the decisions of scientific councils and administrative punishments, and not to creatively minded authors. But today this project is not feasible: there is no subjective factor - the desire of officials to fight plagiarism. Therefore, plagiarists are not afraid of contempt on the part of colleagues and students, possible demotion, or the need to return taxpayer money spent on publication to the state.

The situation is typical. Here's another example. Researcher N.S. Andreeva’s plagiarist “borrowed” a whole stack of pages, and then, using the money of the Russian Humanitarian Foundation, made a report. “Plagiarism as the norm?” Ms. Andreeva is perplexed (Questions of History. 2008. No. 10).

I think we can sum it up. Three high-ranking officials - three silent “no” to this system of science management: “no” to social justice, respect for copyright, solidarity with the author against plagiarists. I would state: for this system, plagiarism is the norm!

Fateev A.V. Candidate of Historical Sciences.

Appendix: Files 01-09, comparison of texts by the author and plagiarists.

Comparison of the above passages

	Text by A.V. Fateeva	Text by M.I. Smirnova and I.A. Dmitrieva
I	Page 6. AND I. Gurevich is inclined to explain the reorientation of historians to civilizationology by the “crisis of the idea of ​​linear progress of world history,” which was discredited by the “cataclysms of the 20th century” and “teleology”: “past history was considered not in its unique intrinsic value, but in relation to the outcome of historical evolution” 17 .	Page 9. AND I. Gurevich is inclined to explain the reorientation of historians to civilizationology by the “crisis of the idea of ​​linear progress of world history,” which was discredited by the “cataclysms of the 20th century” and “teleology”: “past history was considered not in its unique intrinsic value, but in relation to the outcome of historical evolution” 4 .
II	Page 29. To prove Stalin’s “totalitarian” intentions, the author falsifies his statements. The statement “to interfere in everything” in the work “On the Tasks of Business Executives” 87 had a specific content: master production, technology, study, be specialists, but not a requirement to establish “totalitarianism.”	Page 14-15. To prove Stalin’s “totalitarian” intentions, the author falsifies his statements. The statement “to interfere in everything” in the work “On the Tasks of Business Executives” 2 had a specific content: master production, technology, study, be specialists, but not a requirement to establish “totalitarianism.” The theory of the struggle between true and false values, old and new as a source of development was also present in Stalinism, and we can assume that Akhiezer’s concept, while changing form, retains the essential features of the methodology of Stalinism. The vague explanation of the reasons for the emergence of new values ​​is alarming. The author talks about the material factors that determine the process, but does not deepen knowledge, remaining within the framework of his paradigm. Such a “shameful” pushing of materialism within the framework of idealism, which lacked the resources to explain social phenomena, was more than once criticized by the classics of Marxism among their opponents. Akhiezer’s ignorance of the material interests of the majority of the people again and again leads him to the a priori conclusion about the primacy of ideal factors in the development of the historical process.
III	Page 33. The capitalist states did not allow the new system to develop to such an extent that it could clearly demonstrate its advantages. Analyzing the catastrophic change in policy in the late 20s or 30s, Western historians carefully avoid the fact of systematic pressure from the Western world on the USSR. A pure “experiment,” as they like to put it, did not work out. To overcome the country's backwardness and ensure “homogeneity and internal unity of the rear and front in case of war” 112 in the conditions of systematic foreign policy pressure, Stalin and his group were ready to take any measures - “or we will be crushed” 113. In this sense, Stalinism is a phenomenon not only of Russian history, but also the result of the development of the entire world system in the first half of the 20th century.	Page 28. The hostile capitalist environment, which saw Soviet Russia as a threat to its existence, did not allow the new system to develop to such an extent that it could clearly demonstrate its advantages. Analyzing the catastrophic change in policy in the late 20s or 30s, Western historians carefully avoid the fact of systematic pressure from the Western world on the USSR. A pure “experiment,” as they like to put it, did not work out. To overcome the country's backwardness and ensure “homogeneity and internal unity of the rear and the front in case of war” 2 in the conditions of systematic foreign policy pressure, many were ready to take any measures - “or we will be crushed” 3 . In this sense, Stalinism is a phenomenon not only of Russian history, but also the result of the development of the entire world system in the first half of the 20th century.
IV	Page 32.	Page 8. The history of the USSR is presented as an “experiment” undertaken by lonely but omnipotent creators of history with abnormal value orientations.
V	Page 39. 16 Gurevich A.Ya. Historical synthesis and the Annales School. M. 1993. S. 282, 283; as well as Semenov Yu.I. Philosophy of history from origins to the present day: main problems and concepts. M., 1999. P. 224. 17 Gurevich A.Ya. Decree. Op. P. 282.	Page 9. 4 Gurevich A.Ya. Historical synthesis and the Annales School. M. 1993. P. 282.

2008.02.002. HISTORIOGRAPHY OF STALINISM / Ed. Simony NA. - M.: ROSSPEN, 2007. - 480 p.

Key words: historiography, Stalinism, history of the USSR, Stalin I.V., totalitarianism, authoritarian power, political system of society.

The collection opens with an article by M.I. Smirnova and I.A. Dmitrieva “Sociocultural origins of Stalinism: historiographical discourse.” In the existing extensive historiography of Stalinism, the authors identify the following topics: 1) methodological approaches to the problem of Stalinism; 2) the formation of Stalinism; 3) Stalin's personality. Of the many works devoted to the theoretical aspects of the nature of Stalin's rule, the concept of A. S. Akhiezer, exploring the origins and essence of Stalinism through sociocultural mechanisms, is analyzed in detail. The authors of the article believe that this concept has significant flaws: when changing its form, it retains the essential features of the methodology of Stalinism; does not clearly explain the reasons for the emergence of new values; “shamefully” drags materialism into the framework of idealism, which lacks the resources to explain social phenomena; leads to an a priori conclusion about the primacy of ideal factors in the development of the historical process (p. 15).

Considering the topic “The Formation of Stalinism,” the authors highlight several concepts. O.R. Latsis explains the origin of Stalinism based on the objective history and politics of the late 1920s. In the concept of G. A. Trukan, the struggle within the Bolshevik Party is given first place, as a result of which, instead of representatives of the old “Leninist guard,” poorly educated, desperate, cruel politicians came to form the support of authoritarianism. The paragraph “Stalin’s Personality” notes the polarization of assessments that reigns both in historical science and in journalism: from unbridled praise of the “leader of the peoples” during his lifetime to the stigma of a “murderer and criminal.”

The publication “The History of Studying and Understanding the Process of the Origin and Formation of Autocracy in Soviet Russia” (S.V. Devyatov) describes and analyzes the most typical works on the history of power in the USSR in the period 1920-1990s of the 20th century. The first paragraph, “Literature of the 1920s as a tool of internal party struggle during the formation of a system of autocracy,” is devoted to the works of V. Lenin, N. Bukharin, L. Trotsky, A. Rykov. The author explains this by the fact that “... the main researchers of the issues of internal party struggle were the Bolshevik leaders themselves, who took the most active and direct part in it” (p. 32). The second paragraph, “The Soviet period in the history of studying the process of establishing autocracy in Russia,” covers the 1930s - mid. 1980s. The author believes that a distinctive feature of this time is that the specific ideological or practical task of the leader or party determined both assessments in the scientific literature and directions of research. The final paragraph, “Methodological changes in Russian historical literature since the late 1980s,” notes the genre and research diversity of the works. The author emphasizes the contribution made by foreign researchers S. Cohen, E. Carr, R. Tucker, M. Wener in the creation of new approaches in historiography. Russian scientists began to actively study and develop the genre of political biography. More attention is paid to the problems of forming a system of autocracy and internal party struggle.

“Stalinism and the industrial breakthrough: the main trends in Soviet and post-Soviet historiography” (I.B. Orlov). The first stage of historiography is the 1930-1950s - the formation and consolidation of the Stalinist version of the country's industrialization. In the works of this period, archival documents and periodicals are practically not used, the historiographical base is weak, and the analysis and conclusions are superficial and dogmatic. The second stage - 1950-1980s - is characterized by an expansion of the source base and research methods used. Collections of documents on industrialization were published, for example, “History of industrialization of the USSR. 1926-1941,” the number of studies has increased (the works of V.I. Kuzmin, V.K. Bagdasarov, B.A. Abramov, etc. are considered). The third stage - 1985-1991. - time of completion of the Soviet

tradition and the final destruction of the Stalinist interpretation of industrialization. Often, the works of publicists and scientists (Yu. Karyakin, N. Shmelev, D. Volkogonov) initiated the process of scientific rethinking of the Stalinist period. The fourth stage - 1992-2005. - marked by the emergence of various concepts in the coverage of this process. Works have been published showing changes in the material and spiritual culture of the working class during the years of the first five-year plans, collections of documents have been published, and studies have been published highlighting previously unexplored aspects of industrialization.

The article “Socialist experiment in the village: historiographic assessments of the phenomenon of collectivization in the USSR” (author - V.L. Telitsyn) identifies several periods of historiography. 1) The end of the 1920s - the beginning of the 1950s - the time of the formation and development of the orthodox trend in historiography; the works were mainly of a propaganda nature and were kept in line with those outlined in articles and brochures written by the top officials of the party and state. 2) The second half of the 1950s - mid-1960s - studies based on archival and documentary materials appeared, showing the “excesses” and cruelty of the ongoing reforms. But, the author of the article emphasizes, collectivization was still viewed as an inevitable process, just as the victims of its implementation were inevitable. Stalin's policy was already interpreted as “voluntaristic” and “subjective.” 3) The second half of the 1960s - the mid-1980s is the time of the historical “renaissance” of Stalinism. Historians shifted their attention to the socio-economic aspects of collectivization, “removing the figure of Stalin from under attack.” The main emphasis was on studying the process of collectivization itself, the class struggle, and dispossession. 4) The end of the 1980s - the present - is characterized by the emergence of new directions in historiography: 1) liberal-radical anti-Stalinism - evaluates collectivization as the practical embodiment of the dictator’s ideas; 2) moderate socialist - socialism is positively assessed, but Stalin’s policies are criticized; 3) representatives of the orthodox movement continue to assert that Stalinism is the only true path for the socio-economic and political development of the country.

Three articles by V.E. Bagdasaryan are devoted to individual problems of Stalinism. “Shot in Smolny: conspiracy or “tragic accident”? - analysis of existing versions of the murder of S.M. in historiography. Kirov. “The mysterious thirty-seventh”: the experience of historiographic modeling” - various models of the “great terror” are presented: the “self-destruction of revolutionaries” model was developed by R. Orlova, A. Akhiezer, A. Solzhenitsyn; “Stalinist usurpation of power” - R. Medvedev, J. Hosking; “pathological personality” - M. Shatrov, R. Tucker, B. Ilizarov. Along with them, other models are also considered: “personnel rotation”, “witch hunt”, etc. The article “Conspiracy in the Red Army: historiographical discourse about the “case of M.N. Tukhachevsky”” shows that in historical literature there are several versions explaining the repressions in the Red Army in the late 1930s.

M.I. Meltyukhov, in his article “The Prehistory of the Great Patriotic War in Modern Russian Historiography,” pays attention to new directions in research on the eve of the Second World War. In the study of the pre-war political crisis, the Anglo-French-Soviet negotiations and the Soviet-German non-aggression pact occupy a significant place. If there are no significant disagreements in the coverage of the progress of the negotiations, then the issue of responsibility for their termination is still debated. In the traditional version, the blame is placed on England for secret negotiations with Germany. Another concept emphasizes the mutual distrust of the negotiating parties. The Soviet-German Pact also causes mixed assessments: some scientists assess it as a success of Soviet diplomacy, others as a forced step. Scientists continue to debate whether there were alternatives to the pact. In the historiography of the foreign policy of the USSR, M. Meltyukhov notes little-studied topics: the USSR’s relations with Great Britain, France and Japan have been studied fragmentarily, and Soviet-Italian and Soviet-American relations still remain in the shadows.

A.E. Larionov, in the article “The Trial of the Generalissimo: Contemporary Discussions about Stalin’s Role in the Great Patriotic War,” reconstructs the exculpatory arguments found in the literature on the charges brought against Stalin as a military leader and statesman. The author believes that

The unconditional dominance of anti-Stalinist concepts is being replaced by a reverse trend, balancing the first. He considers the most appropriate general assessment of Stalin’s actions, presented in one of the university textbooks. It emphasizes his strong-willed and military abilities, approves the transition to a policy of state patriotism and cooperation with the church, and stipulates the complexity and ambiguity of his personality.

Several articles are devoted to the problems of the historiography of ethnic politics during the period of Stalinism. A. A. Androsov, in the article “The Tragedy of Nations: Collaborationism and Ethnic Deportations in Historical Literature,” examines how the study of military cooperation, civil collaboration, and deportation of peoples arose and developed. In the 1940-1950s, the topic of deportation was not touched upon at all in historical scholarship. During the years of rehabilitation processes, separate publications about the deportation of some peoples of the Caucasus and other ethno-social groups became possible. Soviet works of the 1960-1970s were few in number and had a pronounced ideological character. The multifaceted exploration of the themes of collaboration, deportation and repatriation began in the 1980s and continues to the present day. The largest number of works is devoted to the deportation of the peoples of the North Caucasus and Crimea, fewer works are devoted to the resettlement of the Baltic peoples, Belarusians, and Ukrainians.

In the article by A.A. Danilov “I.V. Stalin in 1946-1953: new sources and attempts at comprehension” examines the post-war evolution of the political regime, the influence of interpersonal relationships of political figures on decision-making in foreign and domestic policy.

YES. Amanzholova in the material “Stalinism in National Politics: Some Issues of Historiography” analyzes works on the process of formation of the USSR and nation formation and works examining specific examples of the formation and functioning of Soviet unitarianism.

In the material by B.I. Povarnitsyn “Historiography of Stalin’s ethnopolitics: from political conjuncture to scientific knowledge” analyzes domestic and Anglo-American “Soviet research”. Povarnitsyn emphasizes that initially Soviet research was strongly influenced by political

tic factors, therefore, Stalin’s role in ethnopolitics was presented as dominant, then in the 1960-1980s, the apologetics of Stalin was replaced by the apologetics of the CPSU. At the same time, the topics and specialization of research have significantly expanded. The main place in them was occupied by such topics as the theory of nations under socialism, the state and legal status of republics and autonomies, the history of the formation of Soviet federalism, etc. Subsequently, in Russian historiography, interest arose in the history of autonomies and non-ethnic administrative units, in the history of individual ethnic groups: Russian Germans, Jews, etc.

In Anglo-American historiography of the 1920-1930s, assessments of Soviet nationality policy ranged from apologetic (A. Strong, L. Barnes) to restrained (K. Lamont, S. B. Webb). The 1940s-1990s are a time of simultaneous dominance of politicized Sovietology and the development of regional studies and regional studies. A significant place in the works of foreign scientists was given to the history of individual peoples of the USSR. At the present stage, works have appeared in Russian and foreign science that consider ethnopolitics in connection with the foreign and domestic policies of the state (S. Cheshko, R. Sunyi).

A fundamentally new scientific environment - Internet resources - is the subject of the article by S.I. Kornienko “Sources for studying the problems of the history of Stalin and Stalinism on the Internet.” The websites of large domestic and foreign scientific and information centers, various databases of photo and video materials, and websites dedicated to Stalinism are considered.

The collection ends with an article by N.A. Simony “Was there a real alternative to the Stalinist dictatorship?”, dedicated to discussions during perestroika about alternative aspects of the country’s history.