Soviet historiography is the methodology of history studies by historians in the Soviet Union (USSR). In the USSR, the study of history was marked by restrictions imposed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). Soviet historiography is itself studied in modern historiography.
Theoretical approaches George M. Enteen identifies two approaches to the study of Soviet historiography. A totalitarian approach associated with the Western analysis of the Soviet Union as a totalitarian society, controlled by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, this school "thought that signs of dissent merely represented a misreading of commands from above."363 For Enteen the other school of writing on Soviet historiography is the social-history school which draws attention to "important initiative from historians at odds with the dominant powers in the field."363 Enteen is unable to decide between these different approaches based on current literature.
In Markwick's view there are a number of important post war historiographical movements, which have antecedents in the 1920s and 1930s. Surprisingly these include culturally and psychologically focused history. In the late 1920s Stalinists began limiting individualist approaches to history, culminating in the publication of Stalin and other's "Short Course" History of the Soviet Communist Party (1938). This crystallised the piatichlenka or five official periods of history in terms of vulgar dialectical materialism: primitive-communism, slavery, feudalism, capitalism and socialism.284 Following publication of the "Short course", on 14 November 1938 the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union issued a special statement that the course and its chapter "About dialectic and historical materialism" were declared as "encyclopedia of philosophical knowledge in a field of Marxism-Leninism", in which were given "official and verified by the Central Committee interpretation of basic issues of history of the All-Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and Marxism-Leninism and without allowing any other arbitrary interpretations".
While the triumph of Stalinist history was being imposed, different modes of history began to emerge. These included BA Romanov's People and Morals in Ancient Rus''' (1947), a study of mentalités at the height of the Zhdanovshchina. However, it was not until the 20th Congress of the CPSU that different schools of history emerged from the Stalinist freeze. Firstly, a "new direction" within Leninist materialism emerged, as an effectively loyal opposition to Stalinist dialectical materialism, secondly a social psychology of history emerged through a reading of Leninist psychology, thirdly a "culturological" tendency emerged.284–285
Characteristics of Soviet historiography Soviet-era historiography was deeply influenced by Marxism. Marxism maintains that the moving forces of history are determined by material production and the rise of different socioeconomic formations. Applying this perspective to socioeconomic formations such as slavery and feudalism is a major methodological principle of Marxist historiography. Based on this principle, historiography predicts that there will be an abolition of capitalism by a socialist revolution made by the working class. Soviet historians believed that Marxist–Leninist theory permitted the application of categories of dialectical and historical materialism in the study of historical events.
Marx and Engels' ideas of the importance of class struggle in history, the destiny of the working class, and the role of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the revolutionary party are of major importance in Marxist methodology.
Marxist–Leninist historiography has several aspects. It explains the social basis of historical knowledge, determines the social functions of historical knowledge and the means by which these functions are carried out, and emphasizes the need to study concepts in connection with the social and political life of the period in which these concepts were developed.
It studies the theoretical and methodological features in every school of historical thought. Marxist–Leninist historiography analyzes the source-study basis of a historical work, the nature of the use of sources, and specific research methods. It analyzes problems of historical research as the most important sign of the progress and historical knowledge and as the expression of the socioeconomic and political needs of a historical period.
Soviet historiography has been severely criticized by scholars, chiefly—but not only—outside the Soviet Union and Russia. Its status as "scholarly" at all has been questioned, and it has often been dismissed as ideology and pseudoscience. Robert Conquest concluded that "All in all, unprecedented terror must seem necessary to ideologically motivated attempts to transform society massively and speedily, against its natural possibilities. The accompanying falsifications took place, and on a barely credible scale, in every sphere. Real facts, real statistics, disappeared into the realm of fantasy. History, including the history of the Communist Party, or rather especially the history of the Communist Party, was rewritten. Unpersons disappeared from the official record. A new past, as well as new present, was imposed on the captive minds of the Soviet population, as was, of course, admitted when truth emerged in the late 1980s."
That criticism stems from the fact that in the Soviet Union, science was far from independent. Since the late 1930s, Soviet historiography treated the party line and reality as one and the same. As such, if it was a science, it was a science in service of a specific political and ideological agenda, commonly employing historical revisionism. In the 1930s, historical archives were closed and original research was severely restricted. Historians were required to pepper their works with references—appropriate or not—to Stalin and other "Marxist–Leninist classics", and to pass judgment—as prescribed by the Party—on pre-revolution historic Russian figures. Nikita Khrushchev commented that "Historians are dangerous and capable of turning everything upside down. They have to be watched."
The state-approved history was openly subjected to politics and propaganda, similar to philosophy, art, and many fields of scientific research. The Party could not be proven wrong, it was infallible and reality was to conform to this line. Any non-conformist history had to be erased, and questioning of the official history was illegal.
Many works of Western historians were forbidden or censored, and many areas of history were also forbidden for research because, officially, they had never happened. For this reason, Soviet historiography remained mostly outside the international historiography of the period. Translations of foreign historiography were produced (if at all) in a truncated form, accompanied by extensive censorship and "corrective" footnotes. For example, in the Russian 1976 translation of Basil Liddell Hart's History of the Second World War pre-war purges of Red Army officers, the secret protocol to the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, many details of the Winter War, the occupation of the Baltic states, the Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, Allied assistance to the Soviet Union during the war, many other Western Allies' efforts, the Soviet leadership's mistakes and failures, criticism of the Soviet Union and other content were censored out.
The official version of Soviet history was dramatically changed after every major governmental shake-up. Previous leaders were denounced as "enemies", whereas current leaders usually became the subject of a personality cult. Textbooks were rewritten periodically, with figures—such as Leon Trotsky or Joseph Stalin—disappearing from their pages or being turned from great figures to great villains.
Certain regions and periods of history were made unreliable for political reasons. Entire historical events could be erased if they did not fit the party line. For example, until 1989 the Soviet leadership and historians, unlike their Western colleagues, had denied the existence of a secret protocol to the Soviet-German Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 1939, and as a result the Soviet approach to the study of the Soviet-German relations before 1941 and the origins of World War II were remarkably flawed. In another example, the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939 as well as the Polish-Soviet War of 1919–1920 were censored out or minimized in most publications, and research was suppressed, in order to enforce the policy of 'Polish-Soviet friendship'. Similarly, the enforced collectivisation, the wholesale deportations or massacres of small nationalities in the Caucasus or the disappearance of the Crimean Tatars were not recognized as facts worthy of mention. Soviet historians also engaged in producing false claims and falsification of history; for example Soviet historiography falsely claimed that the Katyn massacre was carried out by Germans rather than by Soviets. Yet another example is related to the case of Soviet reprisals against former Soviet POWs returning from Germany; some of them were treated as traitors and imprisoned in Gulags for many years, yet that policy was denied or minimized by Soviet historians for decades and modern Western scholars have noted that "In the past, Soviet historians engaged for the most part in a disinformation campaign about the extent of the prisoner-of-war problem."
Marxist influence
The Soviet interpretation of Marxism predetermined much of the research done by historians. Research by scholars in the USSR was limited to a large extent due to this predetermination. Some Soviet historians could not offer non-Marxist theoretical explanations for their interpretation of sources. This was true even when alternate theories had a greater explanatory power in relation to a historian's reading of source material.
The Marxist theory of historical materialism identified means of production as chief determinants of the historical process. They led to the creation of social classes, and class struggle was the motor of history. The sociocultural evolution of societies was considered to progress inevitably from slavery, through feudalism and capitalism to socialism and finally communism. In addition, Leninism argued that a vanguard party was required to lead the working class in the revolution that would overthrow capitalism and replace it with socialism.
Soviet historiography interpreted this theory to mean that the creation of the Soviet Union was the most important turning event in human history, since the USSR was considered to be the first socialist society. Furthermore, the Communist Party—considered to be the vanguard of the working class – was given the role of permanent leading force in society, rather than a temporary revolutionary organization. As such, it became the protagonist of history, which could not be wrong. Hence the unlimited powers of the Communist Party leaders were claimed to be as infallible and inevitable as the history itself. It also followed that a worldwide victory of communist countries is inevitable. All research had to be based on those assumptions and could not diverge in its findings. In 1956, Soviet academician Anna Pankratova said that "the problems of Soviet historiography are the problems of our Communist ideology."
Soviet historians have also been criticized for a Marxist bias in the interpretation of other historical events, unrelated to the Soviet Union. Thus, for example, they assigned to the rebellions in the Roman Empire the characteristics of the social revolution.