Eduard Nikolaevich Burdzhalov (Russian: Эдуард Николаевич Бурджалов) (1906 – 13 December 1985)"News of the Profession: Eduard Nikolaevich Burdzhalov (1906-1985)", Donald J. Raleigh, Slavic Review, Vol. 45, No. 3 (Autumn, 1986), pp. 599-604. was a Soviet historian.

Biography Early years

Eduard Burdzhanov was born in Astrakhan, located on the Volga River in Russia, in 1906. His parents, middle-class ethnic Armenians, relocated to Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, when Eduard Nikolaevich was 6.Donald J. Raleigh, "Translator's Introduction," 'Russia's Second Revolution: The February 1917 Uprising in Petrograd.' Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1987; p. ix. This stay proved to be short-lived, however, as the family was force to flee from Turkish violence in 1918, returning then to Astrakhan.

Burdzhalov's education was interrupted by the Russian Civil War, however, and at the age of 13 he went to work as a clerk in a military transit camp supporting the Red Army. He joined the youth section of the Communist Party, the Komsomol, in 1919.

After the Soviet regime defeated their opponents and took control of Azerbaijain in 1920, Burdzhalov and his family returned to Baku, where Eduard Nikolaevich became active in the local Komsomol organization. He resumed his education, joining the Communist Party in 1925, at the age of 19.Raleigh, "Translator's Introduction," p. x. In 1926 he was accepted into a workers' faculty (rabfak) in Moscow, part of Moscow State University (MGU). A top-tier student, Burdzhalov was made a lecturer wheile still at student, teaching in the history department the MGU rabfak and at the Kolkhoz Institute.

Burdzhalov graduated from the Moscow Institute of History, Philosophy, and Literature in 1932.

Career

In 1933, the Communist Party assigned Burdzhalov to teach at the Tula Agricultural School, operated under the aegis of the Tula city committee of the party. Burdzhalov sought the opportunity to conduct serious historical research and saw this assignment as a diversion from his goal, but nevertheless stood out as an outstanding scholar and teacher and was soon to be promoted through the academic ranks. He married a worker at the Tula Armament factory during this interval, with the couple seeing the birth of their only child, a son, in 1936.

Returned to Moscow that same year, Burdzhalov was assigned to the research staff in the publication of the History of the Civil War in the USSR, a major project officially edited by Joseph Stalin, Viacheslav Molotov, and Maxim Gorky, although actually written by a committee including such leading historians as Isaac Mints and Arkady Sidorov. Burdzhalov also researched and wrote his graduate dissertation, titled The Proletarian Revolution in Azerbaijan, a work later published in book form as The Twenty-Six Baku Commissars.

In the aftermath of the Great Terror of 1937–38, the path of advancement was cleared for young, freshly-trained Communists to rapidly advance in the state and party bureaucracy and academia. Budzhalov was appoined head of the Department of History of the Higher Party School under the Central Committee of the CPSU — one of the chief training universities for top party functionaries. His skill as a lecturer was adapted during the years of World War II, when Burdzhalov was assigned to the Red Army as a political lecturer, receiving numerous decorations and promotion to the rank of colonel by war's end.

During the post-war years, Burdzhalov was appointed assistant editor of Kultura i zhizh (Culture and Life), a magazine published by the Central Committee.>Raleigh, "Translator's Introduction," pp. x–xi. He also returned to work as a history lecturer at the Higher Party School and at the Academy of Social Sciences, also in Moscow.Raleigh, "Translator's Introduction," p. xi. A number of these lectures were published in book form between 1946 and 1953.Raleigh, "Translator's Introduction," pp. xi, 341n.

"Burdzhalov Affair"

In 1957 he was dismissed as deputy editor of the journal Questions of History after he published an article about the Bolshevik's confusion following the February Revolution in 1917.Jeffrey Brooks, "Review: Rossii kak problema Vsemirnoi istorii: Izbrannye trudy," American Historical Review, vol. 107, no. 3, pp. 972–973. However in 1959 he was appointed professor.

Death and legacy

Publications

Dvasdsat'-shest' bakinskikh kommissarov. Istoriia SSSR: Vtoraia chetvert' XIX veka. Moscow: 1946. Istoriia SSSR: Otmena krepostnogo prava i revioutsionno-demokraticheskoe dvizhenie v Rossii 50– Vtoraia russkaia revoliutsiia: Vosstanie v Petrograde. Moscow: 1967. Vtoraia russkaia revoliutsiia: Moskvaa. Front. Periferiia. Moscow: 1971. Russia's Second Revolution: The February 1917 Uprising in Petrograd. Donald J. Raleigh, ed. and trans. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1987.

References