What did the Soviet historians produce, both in terms of historiography and historical production?

by UndercoverDoll49

This question arose in a dinner with friends the other day. What's the Soviet contribution to the field of History? What historiographical methods were developed there? Who were the biggest influences, and why didn't they became better known names, even in countries with a strong Marxist influence in History Academia like those of South America? In Physics, for example, we have Soviet household names like Landau and Cherenkov, and every physicist knows what a Tokamak is

SgtBANZAI

I must say sorry for my English in advance.

Soviet historical science is notable for its' unending suffering under Marxist ideology and thus constantly having to search of "communist inspirations" while conducting its' studies; much more often than, say, natural sciences (since atoms can't read "Das Kapital" apparently). Essentially, Soviet historiography bore both educational and propaganda purposes, teaching people of their past and trying to tie very loose end possible with the inevitable victory of Marxist ideology. Surveying many tomes already written on different subjects and gathering scraps left from the old Russian scientific breakthroughs, newly born Soviet historians tried to rethink and reexamine already established pillars of the world science in a way that would go in line with the Communist Party's way of thinking and reorganizing country's everyday life. As one of the founding fathers of Soviet historiography, Michail Pokrovsky (author of famous "History of Russia written in the shortest way possible", first official Soviet history textbook), once put it: "Non-marxist historians have no place in our academies".

Cutting to the chase, this approach obliged any Soviet historian to try and "reinvent" already known events from the "war of the classes" point of view. Many major works conducted in the USSR pursued an idea of catering to the new ideology, an idea of very frivolous explanation of different events and processes. De facto, when writing, let's say, an article or a major book, an exemplar Soviet historian would have to first give his opinion on the subject matter, inevitably agreeing upon the fact that many small but extremely important details have been missed by other researchers until now and it's his holy duty to open readers' eyes from different (and 100% unbiased) perspective. They would go on citing documents and describing events, usually trying to latch onto miniscule components of a study and blow them out of proportions trying to justify or condemn every single possible happening from the Communist perspective. They would often cite as many Marxist sayings as possible and in the end would come to conclusion that complete investigation of the humanity's past can come true only after all the people in the world have agreed on looking on their history with no fear of "capitalist shackles" tying their hands.

In practice, this method of counducting research usually led to very dubious results with historians putting the blame on ever-present capitalists and gloryfing common people. Spartacus was not a rebellious warrior slave but one of the first brave communists seeking to free his people from the yoke of Roman bourgeoisie. Roman Empire in turn would collapse because of the single reason in the form of coloni workers and farmers refusing to work for their oppressors and teaming up with peace loving northern tribes to overthrow horrible Imperial order. Chinese history would be presented as constantly rotating weel of faith with decadent idiotic bureaucrats smashing it with their stupidity and selfless rice farmers sacrificing themselves to make it take another turn and save their dying country. Military revolution of the 16-17th centuries would be once again referred to as a triumph of commonfolk who became unified and valiant enough to rid of their knightly oppressors. European colonization and especially Cortez' quest for gold would be, of course, an ever present testament of the evil will of capitalists trying to rob every corner of the Earth of its natural resources (as a side note, in conflicts between the colonizers and natives USSR would constantly side with the latter, presenting, say, Indians as free loving peaceful folk and the Europeans as gold-hungry warmongers with no humane qualities). Napoleon and Habsburgs would turn into peasant oppressing madmen, while rulers usually known for their benevolent side would suddenly become first bearers of the Communist ideology who were simply way ahead of their time. As a state born out of WWI struggle, USSR always put great deal of attention on describing The Great War as penultimate event in history of human civilization and an apex of capitalist greediness and stupidity. Of course, they usually won't go too overboard with their theories, but a reader would still be constantly reminded of the importance of folliwing in Lenin's footsteps and building better new world.

As you can guess, such strange approach to bulding new historical science did a lot of harm to the Soviet history making it quite unpopular even among other communist countries. That is to say it wasn't without its own bright spots such as renowned decipherment of the Maya script conducted by Yuri Knorozov which made huge impact upon our understanding of Mesoamerican history and culture, but overall Soviet historical influence in different fields of research was much weaker than in physics or mathematics because of bigger role of state-sponsored propaganda.

I hope that sheds some light on why exactly we very rarely hear about famous Soviet historians.