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Creating the Soviet Historical Profession, 1917-1934

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Robert F. Byrnes
Robert F. Byrnes*
Affiliation:
Princeton University
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Extract

Despite the richness of primary sources covering the 1917-1921 period of Soviet history, the swirl of events and disagreements over policy among the Bolsheviks make the period confusing for the scholar. In this confusion and understandable disorder, the goals and policies of the Soviet leaders were remarkably consistent: They sought to acquire and retain full control. Lenin and his colleagues were fully aware of the importance of history and of those who wrote and taught it. In their new world, history was to provide the scientific explanation of the past and provide guidance for the future, but acquiring power and beginning construction of the new society occupied higher priorities for them than did the, historical profession.

Type
1989 Moscow Historians Conference
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 50 , Issue 2 , Summer 1991 , pp. 297 - 308
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1991

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References

A travel grant from IREX enabled me to conduct research on this article in the Soviet Union; this work is part of a study of the Kliuchevskii school. I benefited also from research fellowships in the History of Ideas Unit of the Australian National University and in the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.

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2. Alekseeva, Oktiabr'skaia revoliutsiia, 18.

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10. Fitzpatrick, “ ‘Soft Line’ in Culture,” 270-271.

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