There's a lot of info about what motivated Hitler, but Stalin is more of a mystery. Did he really believe in communism? Was he just power-mad?

Did any governments take a particularly hard stance against it?

My friend and I got into a conversation recently about validity of historiography and history in general. In it, he asserted that any judgements, any assertions, any interpretations of the past could not be called historical.

As his understanding went, a key principle of our studies and writings of history is to strive to be as absolutely objective as possible. Yet no work of history could certainly be called that, having been viewed, analysed and evaluated through the bias of our human experience. When I counter argued that all historians knew that and thus strove to either minimize their bias or ,failing that, to make it apparent and clear, he argued thus that since no work could meet that principle of history, no work, no interpretation of the past could be called historical in the true sense.

Rather, any interpretations, in his own words, would thus have to fall back on either psychology, if it was about people, or sociology, if it was about groups, organisations of societies at large. While I wanted to disagree, I realised that I didn't have the deep knowledge of the concepts of historiography to refute him.

So then, Askhistorians, what is historiography in the first place. How would we interpret the past in such a way that we cannot say it is any other discipline of the humanities but us?

The specific context is the Georgia state constitution of 1777, and it says:

ART. IX. All male white inhabitants, of the age of twenty-one years, and possessed in his own right of ten pounds value, and liable to pay tax in this State, or being of any mechanic trade, and shall have been resident six months in this State, shall have a right to vote at all elections for representatives, or any other officers, herein agreed to be chosen by the people at large; and every person having a right to vote at any election shall vote by ballot personally.

I am most curious about the short term measurments, like our seconds, minutes and hours.