Historiography in the Soviet Union

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 the subject of modern studies. 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".