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] ], the young man strolling with ] to his left, was shot in 1940. He was edited out from a photo by Soviet censors.<ref> (The Newseum)</ref>]] ] ], the young man strolling with ] to his left, was shot in 1940. He was edited out from a photo by Soviet censors.<ref> (The Newseum)</ref>]]


'''Soviet historiography''' is a ] written by ] ]s. In ], the state-approved history was openly subjected to ] and ] (see also ]), similar to ], ], and ]. The scholars had no choice but to reflect the ] ] in their works. Many works of Western historians were forbidden or ], many areas of history were also forbidden for research as officially they never happened. In ], the historic science was frequently compromised due to being comply with the Soviet ideology. While the degree of the ideological control over the historic scholarship varied significantly in different periods of the Soviet history, much of the Soviet scholarship was affected, at least to some extent. Many works of non-Soviet historians were forbidden or ], many areas of history were also forbidden for research as officially they never happened.


==Criticism== ==Criticism==

Revision as of 17:22, 17 September 2007

File:The Commissar Vanishes.jpeg
The book The Commissar Vanishes by David King discusses falsification of historic photos in Soviet Union in depth, with numerous examples. Some of them can be seen on this cover.
File:The Commissar Vanishes 1.jpg
Before 1940
File:The Commissar Vanishes 2.jpg
After: People's Commissar for the Interior Nikolai Yezhov, the young man strolling with Stalin to his left, was shot in 1940. He was edited out from a photo by Soviet censors.

In Soviet Union, the historic science was frequently compromised due to being comply with the Soviet ideology. While the degree of the ideological control over the historic scholarship varied significantly in different periods of the Soviet history, much of the Soviet scholarship was affected, at least to some extent. Many works of non-Soviet historians were forbidden or censored, many areas of history were also forbidden for research as officially they never happened.

Criticism

Historians are dangerous and capable of turning everything upside down. They have to be watched.
Nikita Khrushchev, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 1956

The problems of Soviet historiography are the problems of our Soviet ideology.
Anna Pankratova, Soviet academician, 1956

Soviet historiography had been severely criticized by scholars outside Soviet Union, with its very scholarly status called into question, and described as ideology and pseudoscience. Critics had pointed out is many faults: since the late 1930s, Soviet historiography tended to treat 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. The state-approved history was openly subjected to politics and propaganda (see also agitprop), similar to philosophy, art, and many fields of scientific research. One of the primary factors influencing its unreliability was that the Soviet interpretation of Marxism simply predetermined research done by historians. Many works of Western historians were forbidden or censored, many areas of history were also forbidden for research as officially they never happened. As such, it remained mostly outside the international historiography of its period.

The Marxist bias has been criticized, for example, for assigning to the Roman rebellions the characteristics of the social revolution, or for errors in comparing the recent developments in Russia with those in the Western countries. Certain other areas were made unreliable for political reasons. 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 used to be 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 from most publications, and research suppressed, in order to enforce the policy of 'Polish-Soviet friendship'. Often, the Marxist bias and propaganda mixed: hence the peasant rebellions against the early Soviet rule were simply ignored - as inconvenient politically and contradicting the Marxist theories.

Translations of foreign historiography were often produced in a truncated form, accompanied with extensive corrective footnotes. E.g. in the Russian 1976 translation of Basil Liddell Hart's History of the Second World War pre-war purges of Red Army officers, secret protocol to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, many details of the Winter War, occupation of Baltic states, 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 has been dramatically changed after every major governmental shake-up. Previous leaders were always denounced as "enemies", whereas current leaders were usually a subject of a personality cult.

Usefulness for research

Despite its fault, Soviet historiography has produced a large body of significant literature. Many researchers have used works from Soviet historiography to create reliable research; however they point out that care must be taken to discard various ideological biases, and that errors in factual content are not uncommon, as many distortions and omissions have been discovered in Soviet historiography works.

Influences on popular culture

These trends have been most famously portrayed by George Orwell in his classic dystopia, Nineteen Eighty-Four (see also Ministry of Truth).

Another notable criticism was delivered by Victor Suvorov in his book "The Liberator" . He said that "Vladimir Lenin was an enemy", because all his friends were proven to be enemy of the people by the Soviet courts, which are the most democratic and just in the world. The enemies were Lev Trotsky, Nikolai Bukharin, Alexei Rykov, and Karl Radek. It was Lenin who brought these "wrecklers" to power, so that brave chekists had to kill them all with bullets or ice axes. "Stalin was also an enemy", "as has been proven to the entire world at the historical 20th Congress of the Communist Party". Of course, "Stalin himself destroyed thousands of enemies and spies from his closest surrounding, but he could not exterminate them all", so that his "closest friend Lavrenty Beria and his notorious gang have been executed only after Stalin". Sadly enough, Khrushev who get rid of Beria turned out to be a traitor, just like his successor Leonid Brezhnev who was guilty of terrible corruption.

References

  1. The Commissar vanishes (The Newseum)
  2. ^ Ferro, Marc (2003). The Use and Abuse of History: Or How the Past Is Taught to Children. London; New York: Routledge. ISBN 9780415285926. See Chapters 8 Aspects and variations of Soviet history and 10 History in profile: Poland.
  3. ^ Roger D. Markwick, Donald J. Raleigh, Rewriting History in Soviet Russia: The Politics of Revisionist Historiography, Palgrave Macmillan, 2001, ISBN 0333792092
  4. ^ Gwidon Zalejko, Soviet historiography as "normal science", in Historiography Between Modernism and Postmodernism, Jerzy Topolski (ed.), Rodopi, 1994, ISBN 9051837216, Google Print, p.179-191.
  5. ^ Taisia Osipova, Peasant rebellions: Origin, Scope, Design and Consequences, in Vladimir N. Brovkin (ed.), The Bolsheviks in Russian Society: The Revolution and the Civil Wars, Yale University Press, 1997, ISBN 0300067062. Google Print, p.154-176
  6. Bidlack, Richard (1990). Review of Voprosy istorii i istoriografii Velikoi otechestvennoi voiny by I. A. Rosenko, G. L. Sovolev. Slavic Review 49 (4), 653-654.
  7. Lewis, B. E. (1977). Soviet Taboo. Review of Vtoraya Mirovaya Voina, History of the Second World War by B. Liddel Gart (Russian translation). Soviet Studies 29 (4), 603-606.
  8. ^ The Liberators (Освободитель), 1981, Hamish Hamilton Ltd, ISBN 0-241-10675-3; cited from Russian edition of 1999, ISBN 5-237-03557-4, pages 13-16
  9. Hannes Heer, Klaus Naumann, War Of Extermination: The German Military In World War II, Berghahn Books, 2004, ISBN 1571812326, Google Print, p.304

See also

Further reading

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