The most famous historians of Russia. Soviet historians - what are they

Historical science plays an important role in the education and upbringing of the masses of the people and is the strongest weapon of the class struggle on the ideological front. The exploiting classes have always striven and strive to use historical science for the purpose of perpetuating their class rule. In the interests of the ruling classes, bourgeois historians falsify history. It was only in Soviet socialist society that history turned into a genuine science, which, using the only scientific method of historical materialism, studies the laws governing the development of human society, primarily the history of its productive forces and production relations, the history of the working masses of the people.

Soviet historical science not only explains the past, but also provides the key to a correct understanding of contemporary political events, helps to understand the prospects for the development of society, peoples and states.

Lenin and Stalin are the creators of Soviet historical science, teachers and educators of Soviet historians. In the works of Lenin and Stalin, the foundations of historical science are set forth, classical assessments of the most important questions of world history are given, and the most important questions of modern and recent history, and especially the history of the peoples of the USSR, are developed. Lenin and Stalin are the founders of the study of the Soviet period in the history of our country.

Over the past 30-plus years of the existence of the Soviet state, Soviet historical science, under the leadership of Lenin and Stalin, has traveled a glorious path. An army of many thousands of Soviet historians has been created, whose cadres consist partly of historians who came out of the old school and took the position of Marxist historical science, and in the overwhelming majority of people who formed and grew into prominent scientists in Soviet times. The foundations of the old, noble-bourgeois historical thought, as well as the Menshevik-Socialist-Revolutionary historical constructions, which were nothing more than a rehash of the same noble-bourgeois concepts, were successfully overcome. Armed with the teachings of Lenin and Stalin, led by the Bolshevik Party and its Central Committee, Soviet historians act as an army of propagandists of Marxist historical science among the broadest strata of the working masses. They played a great role in the upbringing and education of the new generation of Soviet people, contributing to their transformation into conscious and active citizens of socialist society, patriots of the socialist motherland, and builders of communism.

Under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party and Comrade Stalin personally, Soviet historians smashed the ahistorical "school" of Pokrovsky. A huge role in the defeat of the anti-scientific "school" of Pokrovsky and in the further development of Soviet historical science was played by such documents as the work of Comrade Stalin "On Some Questions of the History of Bolshevism", published in the journal "Proletarian Revolution" for 1931, the decision of the Council of People's Commissars and the Central Committee The All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of May 16, 1934 on the issue of teaching civil history in the schools of the USSR, comments by comrades Stalin, Zhdanov, Kirov on the abstracts of textbooks on the history of the USSR and modern history. In these documents, a profound criticism of shortcomings in the field of our historical science was given and a program was outlined for its further study, development and propaganda. In the comments of Comrades Stalin, Zhdanov and Kirov on the abstracts of textbooks on the history of the USSR and on modern history, instructions were made regarding the periodization of history, a fundamental assessment was given of the most important political events in the history of the USSR and modern history, ways were indicated for compiling a program of history textbooks, and a number of other essential guidelines. which formed the basis for the further work of Soviet historians.

An exceptionally large role in the further development of historical science was played by the Short Course in the History of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, created by I. V. Stalin in 1938. "History of the CPSU (b). A Short Course, brilliantly summarizing the historical path of the Bolshevik Party, served as a model for scientific research in all areas of historical science.

The most profound analysis of the new patterns of development of socialist society is given in the writings, speeches, reports and orders of Comrade Stalin during the years of the Great Patriotic War, in which the reasons for the victories of the Soviet Army over fascism are clarified, and further paths for the development of the Soviet state and social relations of the modern era are determined.

In the resolutions of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on ideological questions, Soviet historians received a powerful new weapon for the further victorious development of historical science. The speeches of the party press - the central organ "Pravda" and the newspaper "Culture and Life" - against the subversive activities of the anti-patriotic group of theater critics aimed our party and the Soviet intelligentsia at exposing and defeating the manifestations of bourgeois cosmopolitanism in Soviet science and culture.

A handful of rootless cosmopolitans preached national nihilism hostile to our worldview. Defending the anti-scientific and reactionary idea of ​​a "single world stream" of cultural development, cosmopolitans declared such concepts as national culture, national traditions, national priority in scientific and technical discoveries to be obsolete and obsolete. They denied and scolded the national forms of socialist culture, refused to admit that the best traditions and cultural achievements of the peoples of the USSR, and above all the traditions and cultural achievements of the Russian people, formed the basis of Soviet socialist culture. Rootless cosmopolitans slandered the great Russian people, spreading false statements about their age-old backwardness, about the foreign origin of Russian culture and about the absence of national traditions among the Russian people. They denied and discredited the best achievements of Soviet culture, tried to belittle it before the corrupt culture of the bourgeois West.

Thus, rootless cosmopolitanism is closely intertwined with admiration for foreignness. The harm and danger of preaching cosmopolitan ideas lies in the fact that they are aimed at breaking through Soviet patriotism, that they undermine the cause of educating Soviet people in the spirit of patriotic pride in our socialist Motherland, in the great Soviet people. Therefore, rooting out all manifestations of cosmopolitanism from our literature, art and science is a matter of special importance and relevance.

Bourgeois cosmopolitanism presents a special danger also because it is at present an ideological weapon in the struggle of international reaction against socialism and democracy, an ideological cover for the aspirations of the American imperialists to establish world domination.

The events of recent years show what a dangerous enemy of the freedom and independence of peoples is cosmopolitanism. Hiding behind the ideas of "world economy", "world state" and "world government", proclaiming the idea of ​​abolishing supposedly outdated national sovereignty, burned out. Wall Street businessmen and politicians are operating in European and Asian countries, suppressing the national independence of the peoples, preparing a war against the Soviet Union and the people's democracies. Cosmopolitanism as an ideological weapon of American imperialism in preparing for war against the Soviet Union was exposed and exposed by A. A. Zhdanov in his report on the international situation at the Warsaw Conference of 9 Communist Parties in 1947.

It is no coincidence that in order to fight against the Soviet state and Soviet ideology, the Anglo-American imperialists invite into their service the scum of the Russian white emigrants. It is also no coincidence that these renegades expelled by their homeland now act as ardent cosmopolitans. For example, the history of our Motherland is being falsified in the USA and England by Russian white émigrés at the behest of their Anglo-American masters. In the so-called Cambridge history, in the sections devoted to the history of Russia, such an author as Struve, the worst enemy of the Soviet people and a vile renegade, labored. The multi-volume history of Russia, started in America under the editorship of Vernadsky and Karpovich, is written by the forces of Russian white émigrés who have declared themselves cosmopolitans. The political meaning of the works of these falsifiers of the history of our Motherland is clear: they seek to present the Russian people as being somewhere in the margins of history, incapable of independent development. The so-called “Eurasian” concept of the history of Russia, composed by Russian white émigrés, aims to “substantiate”, supposedly on the basis of the historical “features” of Russia’s development, the absence of its own national roots in Russian culture and the Russian state. The notorious Norman theory, long refuted by Soviet historians and archaeologists, but stubbornly disseminated in bourgeois countries, serves the same purpose.

The Bolshevik Party is conducting a full-scale offensive against various manifestations of bourgeois ideology: against bourgeois objectivism, against attempts to revive Kadets liberalism and social reformism. The fight against these manifestations of bourgeois ideology cannot be successful without exposing and destroying cosmopolitan ideas and their bearers.

Being a manifestation of bourgeois ideology, cosmopolitanism does not at all oppose its other forms, but finds in them - in bourgeois objectivism and bourgeois nationalism, Cadet liberalism and social reformism - its allies, a nutrient medium and soil for its development. The bourgeois objectivist emasculates the class content of the historical process, exalts the reactionary aspects of the historical past, bows before the old, conservative principles, and hates the new, revolutionary principles. The bourgeois cosmopolitan emasculates not only the class content, but also the national form of the historical process. To a clear Marxist-Leninist class analysis of the historical process, taking into account both socio-economic and national aspects, he contrasts the idealistic skinny schemes of cultural borrowing and filiation of ideas as the basis of the historical process.

That is why, while concentrating the fire on rootless cosmopolitanism, we must not weaken the struggle against other forms of manifestation of bourgeois ideology.

Separate manifestations of the concepts of bourgeois cosmopolitanism also take place in Soviet historical science.

At one time, cosmopolitan ideas were planted by M. N. Pokrovsky and his ahistorical "school". Substituting vulgar sociologism for historical materialism, Pokrovsky's "school" falsified and distorted historical events, blackened the great past of the peoples of our country, mocked the national traditions of the Russian people. The party crushed the patronage, but some of the ideas of this "school" are still in circulation in historical science. The manifestation of cosmopolitan ideas was also facilitated by the influence of the traditions of the old, pre-revolutionary noble and bourgeois historiography, which, as is known, cultivated cosmopolitan "theories" in every possible way. Finally, cosmopolitan concepts penetrate into our historical science from the bourgeois-imperialist environment, for cosmopolitanism is one of the ideological weapons of the bosses from Wall Street and their agents, aimed at weakening Soviet patriotism, weakening the will of the Soviet people to fight for communism.

Such are the roots of bourgeois cosmopolitanism, which manifests itself in the "works" of a handful of rootless cosmopolitans in the field of historical science that has become detached from the people and their aspirations,

The rootless cosmopolitans of our day distort the history of the heroic struggle of the Russian people against their oppressors and foreign invaders, belittle the leading role of the Russian proletariat in the history of the revolutionary struggle of both our Motherland and the whole world, obscure the socialist character and international significance of the Great October Socialist Revolution, falsify and distort the world - the historical role of the Russian people in building a socialist society and in the victory over the enemy of mankind - German fascism - in the Great Patriotic War.

A group of historians led by Acad. I. I. Mints and prof. I. M. Overclocking. For 18 years of work in the secretariat of the History of the Civil War, they published only two volumes of the History of the Civil War. No less damage was done by Acad. Mints by not fulfilling the government's task to publish a textbook on the history of the USSR of the Soviet period, which complicated and slowed down the cultivation of young historians, specialists in the history of our Motherland.

In his work "History of the USSR (1917-1925)", which was already subjected to severe criticism on the pages of the newspaper "Culture and Life", acad. Mints belittles the leading role of the Russian people and the working class in the struggle to build a socialist state. Acad. Mintz clearly does not understand the decisive importance in this struggle of Soviet patriotism, nurtured by the Lenin-Stalin party, and overestimates external factors.

A gross political mistake of the editors of the journal "Questions of History" was the publication in No. 1 for 1949 of an article by Acad. Mints "Lenin and the Development of Soviet Historical Science", in which the issues of the struggle against rootless cosmopolitanism are completely bypassed. In this article, Acad. Mimts, silent about the fact that the founders of the development of the history of Soviet society are Lenin and Stalin, advertises the existing and non-existent "works" of a small group of people (Razgona, Gorodetsky, etc.), whose works supposedly "laid the foundation for the study of the Soviet period in the history of our country."

The vicious, cosmopolitan views of Acad. Mintz and his group were exposed at academic councils and meetings of departments at the Academician of Social Sciences, at Moscow University, at the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences, and in other institutions.

Prof. Razgon, both in his previous work on the history of the civil war in the North Caucasus, and in his latest work published in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (volume "USSR"), smuggles cosmopolitan views and ideas. It obscures the world-historical significance of the Great October Socialist Revolution and does not show the organizing role of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the building of socialism. Just like acad. Mints, prof. Dispersal provides only an external, one-sided, factual history, without revealing the patterns of the Soviet period, belittling the leading role of the Russian people and the Russian working class in the victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution, in the civil war and in the building of a socialist society. In his work on the history of the civil war in the Caucasus, prof. Dispersal, distorting the facts, gives a completely wrong picture of relations between the Russian people and the peoples of the North (Northern Caucasus, "proves" the revolutionary nature of the Chechens and Ingush and the counter-revolutionary nature of Ossetians. Prof. Dispersal and the Patriotic War, in the history of which he belittles the role of Soviet patriotism one of the decisive sources of the victory of the Soviet people over fascism.

Cosmopolitanism in historical science also manifested itself in the form of servility to foreigners, in the denial of the independence of the development of socio-historical thought in Russia. A striking example of such a cosmopolitan concept is the book of prof. N. L. Rubinshtein “Russian historiography”, written entirely from the cosmopolitan position of the “single stream” of the development of world historical science, in which Russian historiography is presented only as a repetition and variety of historical schools and trends that arose in the West and then transferred to Russia. The history of Russian historical science is depicted by N. L. Rubinshtein as a filiation of ideas cut off from the Russian historical process, from classes and the class struggle in Russia. Having belittled Russian historical science, N. L. Rubinshtein raised foreign bourgeois science and its representatives who labored in Russia to a pedestal; mainly) Germans. The latter act for him as carriers of the most advanced historical theories, initiators of the collection and scientific processing of Russian historical sources, teachers of Russian historians, mediators in the transfer of scientific and historical theories to Russia.

The editorial board of the journal Voprosy istorii made a gross mistake by not organizing criticism of N. L. Rubinstein's cosmopolitan anti-Marxist book Russian Historiography on the pages of the journal. More than that: by providing the pages of his journal prof. Rubinshtein for an article on Russian historiography, the journal actually disorientated historians. The editorial board did not draw all the necessary conclusions from the discussion of his book at a meeting of historians at the Ministry of Higher Education, limiting itself to publishing a report on this meeting.

In 1948, another work by I. L. Rubinshtein appeared - “History of the USSR until the 19th century”, published in a special volume of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (volume “USSR”). NL Rubinshtein still continues to preach his cosmopolitan views in this work and in essence, albeit in a more veiled form, repeats almost all the vicious attitudes and ideas of his first work.

From a cosmopolitan perspective, Prof. Rubinstein and the history of Russian culture. He fully proceeds from the anti-Marxist, anti-scientific, idealistic theory of borrowing as the basis for the creation and development of Russian national culture. It removes, in essence, the question of the internal conditions, the national and class roots of the development of Russian culture. The cultural upsurge of the Russian people during the period of the Kievan state connects only with the development by the Russian people of the cultural heritage of the ancient world and the medieval culture of Byzantium, the cultural achievements of the Russian people in the XII century. explains the expansion of Russia's international relations and the penetration into Russia of the achievements of world culture. Foreign "influencer" explains prof. Rubinstein and the development of Russian culture in the 18th century. This is how rootless cosmopolitanism cracks down on the culture of the great Russian people.

Serious mistakes along the lines of overestimating the role of foreign influences, belittling the international significance (of Russian culture and science) are also contained in the chapters on the history of Russian culture of a textbook on the history of the USSR for universities (ed. II). The authors of these chapters often slip "and the vicious positions of various kinds of "influences", "borrowings" and "interactions" as the basis for the creation and growth of Russian culture. Especially many errors are contained in the chapter on the history of culture of the 18th century (the author is Prof. Gauthier). Evaluating Russian figures, the author everywhere puts forward their borrowing of certain Western European theories and ideas and almost does not show their originality and integrity.About Radishchev, for example, the following is written: “The literary form of the Journey was taken by Radishchev from the English writer Stern, the author of Sentimental Journey through France and Italy” ... Radishchev is a student of the French rationalists and an enemy of mysticism, although in some of his philosophical ideas materialistic the ideas of Holbach and Helvetius are unexpectedly mixed with ideological ideas borrowed from Leibniz, whom Radishchev studied in Leipzig. His ideas about family, marriage and upbringing go back to Rousseau and Mably... General ideas about freedom, liberty, equality of all people were formed by Radishchev, in his own words, under the influence of another French educator, Reynal.” This is how the initiator of the liberation struggle against tsarism and autocracy in Russia is characterized - a man who is proud of the Russian people, whose activities were highly appreciated by V. I. Lenin.

Cosmopolitan ideas are contained in O. L. Weinstein's book "The Historiography of the Middle Ages" (ed. 1940). He, like N. L. Rubinshtein, in explaining the development of historical science stands on the basis of the theory of borrowings and depicts the Russian schools of medievalists as only offspring and varieties of Western European schools. From the point of view of O. L. Vainshtein, Slavophilism, for example, “as a trend of social thought grew up on a romantic philosophical basis” (p. 295), and was by no means generated by the originality of Russian socio-political relations. O. L. Weinstein's image of T. I. Granovsky was completely distorted. He “portrayed him as a man whose historical views consist of scraps of ideas from various European schools and trends. “Brought up in the school of German romanticism,” writes O. L. Weinstein about Granovsky, “he found “a counterbalance to his conservatism” in the works of the French liberal historians Thierry and Guizot” (p. 298), and then O. L. Weinstein adds: “... in his lectures, he (T. N. Granovsky. - Ed.) is under the influence of Guizot, Schlosser, and only to a very small extent - Ranke” (p. 299). According to O. L. Weinstein, T. N. Granovsky’s sensitivity to any movement in Western European historiography was so great that he was one of the first to take into account the transition to the positive that was taking place in the West and began to restructure his lectures in the spirit of the latter. And other representatives of Russian medieval studies - Kudryavtsev, Yeshevsky and others - O. L. Weinstein portrays as people who were completely dependent on Western European science. Describing Russian historical science in the 50-60s of the last century, O. L. Vainshtein writes: as "rulers of thoughts" give way to Comte, Buckle, Spencer" (p. 303). Denying independent development to Russian medieval studies, O. L. Weinstein “forgets” to talk about the influence that such representatives of Russian bourgeois medieval studies as Vinogradov, Luchitsky and others had on Western science.

Some Soviet historians, in their works on the history of the United States, England, and modern international relations, have made mistakes of a reformist nature, cosmopolitan perversions, idealization of Preformism, and displays of servility to the bourgeois West. Thus, for example, V. Lan, in his book The USA from the First to the Second World War, acts as an apologist for bourgeois America. It obscures class contradictions and class struggle in the USA; portrays objectively the internal politics of the American government in the 1930s without revealing its true class character; extols and praises the bourgeois statesmen of the USA. Blindly trusting American apologetic literature, he not only fails to expose Wilson's imperialist policy, but also tries to convince the Soviet reader of Wilson's "pacifism", of the talents and virtues of Hoover and other servants of Wall Street. W. Lahn is trying to rehabilitate the US imperialist ruling circles in such a case as the well-known participation of these circles in the implementation of the Munich policy of "appeasement" and encouragement of fascist aggression on the eve of World War II.

An example of a cosmopolitan and liberal-reformist, rather than a Marxist exposition of the history of the colonial policy of American imperialism is the book by L. I. Zubok "US Imperialist Policy in the Caribbean Countries". In the image of L. I. Zubok, the so-called “good neighbor” policy means the US refusal to intervene in the internal affairs of Latin American countries. Meanwhile, in reality, this policy only meant a transfer of the center of gravity from open forms to disguised forms of intervention. Instead of directing his research to expose the methods of this camouflaged intervention carried out in the 1930s, L. I. Zubok prefers to confine himself to a superficial and uncritical presentation of official documents, resolutions of Pan-American conferences and hypocritical statements of the US government. The reader would be vain to look in this book for a demonstration of the enormous influence that the Great October Socialist Revolution and the victories of socialism in the USSR had on the struggle of the peoples of Latin America for their independence.

The same kind of cosmopolitan perversions were allowed in their works by G. A. Deborin and prof. I. S. ZVAVIC. In the book "International Relations and Foreign Policy of the USSR" (Issue IV, 1947), G. A. Deborin, ignoring the difference in defining the goals of the war already during the war in the camp of the anti-Hitler coalition, portrays the US government as a "fighter" for the just goals of the war and as a "friend" of the colonial peoples. In this work, G. A. Deborin uncritically refers to the hypocritical declarations of the US and British governments about the goals of the war and acts as a lawyer for the American and British saboteurs of the opening of a second front. In his lectures given at the Institute of International Relations, prof. Zvavich obscured the aggressive nature of English. imperialism and did not expose the treacherous role and imperialist policy of the right-wing Laborites, its anti-Soviet orientation.

All these vicious works were not criticized and exposed on the pages of the journal Questions of History. Not only that: the journal published a number of articles and reviews by these authors, written in the spirit of bourgeois cosmopolitanism. So, in an article by Prof. Zubok "From the history of American-Mexican relations in 1920-1939." agents of US imperialism, the Mexican presidents Obregón and Cayes, are portrayed as fighters against imperialism for popular interests: the article, like the book, distorts the imperialist role of the US "good neighbor" policy. Equally flawed is the article by Prof. Zvavich "Historiography of British foreign policy in its latest representatives", in which the author managed not to notice the anti-Russian tendencies of English bourgeois historians.

As can be seen from the above facts, cosmopolitan ideas and concepts have penetrated into our historical literature. The belittling of the role of the Russian people and Russian culture in world history, the servility to the bourgeois culture of the West, to the reactionary bourgeois historiography, did not meet with a due rebuff and was not exposed. Both the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR and our journal, which should be the leading body of Soviet historical science, are to blame for this.

Soviet historians must make every effort to correct as soon as possible the mistakes and shortcomings they have made, they must completely eradicate any influence of bourgeois ideology whatsoever.

The Bolshevik Party, led by J. V. Stalin, the faithful successor to the great cause of V. I. Lenin, confidently leads the Soviet people from victory to victory, resolutely sweeping away enemies from its path and boldly overcoming all the difficulties of building communism.

Under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party, inspired by the genius of Comrade Stalin, the Soviet people turned our country into a powerful socialist power. The construction of a socialist society and the strengthening of the Soviet state and its armed forces have been brilliantly accomplished. Soviet society and the state reached an unprecedented flourishing. Having defeated a strong and insidious enemy during the Great Patriotic War, the Soviet people in the post-war period, under the leadership of Comrade Stalin, are successfully moving along the path to communism.

Every year, every month and every day the power of the Soviet Union is growing, the international authority of the socialist state, the authority of the Soviet people, the Bolshevik Party, our leader and teacher, Comrade Stalin, is growing.

Of exceptional importance is the rich historical experience of the Bolshevik Party, the experience of the revolutionary struggle of our people to overthrow the power of the landowners and capitalists, and especially the great historical experience of building the world's first Soviet socialist state, developing its economy, industry and technology, agriculture, culture, creating and educating broad cadres. the Soviet intelligentsia, the construction of the armed forces and their military operations to protect the Soviet state. This historical experience is important not only; for the Soviet people, but also for the working people of other countries, both those who have already liberated themselves from the rule of the exploiters, and those countries where, under the banner of the communist parties, a struggle is being waged against the exploiters, against imperialism. Our experience is of world-historical significance for the peoples of the people's democracies, as well as for all progressive mankind, which, uniting more and more, is waging a struggle against imperialist predators and warmongers. The influence of our country, of our revolutionary transformations, on the working-class movement in the capitalist countries is enormous.

The task of Soviet historians is to comprehend and illuminate in their studies, articles and books the world-historical revolutionary path of the Soviet people, the revolutionary path of the leader of the Soviet people - the Bolshevik Party.

Life more and more confirms the correctness of the great teaching of Lenin and Stalin on the paths of development of the revolutionary movement in the capitalist states, on the inevitable and progressive disintegration of the imperialist system, on the ever greater growth and strengthening of the revolutionary forces, the forces of progress, on the growth of the world communist movement. The Leninist-Stalinist doctrine serves as a powerful ideological weapon, a guiding star for all progressive mankind in its struggle against the imperialist warmongers, against the imperialist exploiters - those barbarians of the 20th century who seek to destroy all the advanced achievements of human civilization.

The task of Soviet historians is also to shed light on the great historical process of transition from capitalism to communism.

Along with the development of the history of the peoples of the USSR, special attention should be paid to the development of the history of Soviet society and the state, as well as the history of the countries of people's democracy, national-colonial movements, and international relations. It is necessary to continue the work on researching the history of such imperialist states as the USA and England, which lead the world reaction.

Soviet historians must launch an even greater ideological and theoretical struggle against the Anglo-American falsifiers of the history of our Motherland and world history.

Soviet historians, developing the history of other peoples, countries and states from a Marxist standpoint, will thereby help the progressive historians of these countries to wage a successful struggle against the falsifiers of history, who for selfish purposes use historical science to praise and strengthen the power of the exploiters, to rob weak peoples by the forces of imperialist states. .

The task of Soviet historical science is to wage the most resolute struggle in the international arena against the right-wing Social-Democratic falsifiers of the history of states and peoples.

Soviet historical science cannot move forward without a broad creative discussion of topical questions of history, without Bolshevik criticism and self-criticism of errors and shortcomings in the scientific works of Soviet historians and in their practical activities. Without criticism and self-criticism, the normal and effective activity of the journal Voprosy istorii, which should be the combat leading ideological and theoretical body of the army of Soviet historians, is impossible.

As the newspaper "Culture and Life" (dated April 21, 1949) rightly pointed out in the article "For a high ideological and scientific level", the absence of creative discussions, criticism and self-criticism on the pages of the journal could not but have a negative impact on scientific work in the field of history. In this article, the party press has set the most important tasks for the entire front of historians, including their journal Voprosy istorii.

Undoubtedly, the criticism is justified in the fact that the journal Voprosy istorii has lately ceased to be a fighting organ of Marxist-Leninist historical science, that it did not set topical tasks for Soviet historians, refused to creatively discuss the most important questions of historical science, and did not conduct a consistent and decisive struggle against manifestations of bourgeois ideology in Soviet historical science. The journal showed a liberal attitude towards the bearers of certain ideological perversions, was not a militant Bolshevik organ, exposing the falsifiers of history from issue to issue, was not an organ that would help progressive historians of foreign countries, and especially Marxist historians of the countries of people's democracy, successfully develop historical science based on the teachings of Lenin-Stalin. In connection with this, as rightly stated in the article, the journal ceased to be the governing body of Soviet historical science, and had very little influence on the direction and ideological level of scientific work in the field of history. He often printed random materials. Each issue that came out was a motley collection of random and narrow topics that did not have serious scientific significance. The journal did not raise theoretical issues of historical science, refused to develop issues of the development of social thought, almost did not cover the problems of the history of Soviet society and the state. In covering some issues of the history of Soviet society and the state, he did not go beyond the period of the civil war, giving these articles at a very low ideological and scientific level. Printing mainly materials on the history of ancient, middle and new ages; including the history of the USSR, the journal did not single out the most important questions of pre-revolutionary history, questions on the development of which the success of the development of all other areas of historical science depends. The journal underestimated the importance of editorial articles, in which it was obliged from issue to issue not only to orient Soviet historians on all the most important issues, but also to set specific tasks in all areas of historical science, as well as to sum up the successes achieved, criticize shortcomings, and thereby clear the way further and more successful development of historical science.

The pages of the magazine did not cover such important issues in the history of Soviet society and the state as industrialization, the collectivization of agriculture, the struggle of the Soviet people for the implementation of the Stalinist five-year plans, the development of cultural and national: construction in the USSR, the history of the foreign policy of the Soviet state, the military history of Soviet society and the state , critical issues; heroic history of the Bolshevik Party and others.

The journal did not boldly pose questions about the education of new authors, and in recent years I have not carried on serious organizational work with the huge army of Soviet historians. The journal actually indulged the monopoly position in the field of historical science of a small group of historians headed by Acad. Mints, who considered the development of the history of the Soviet state his inalienable privilege.

There was no serious struggle with those historians who tried to revive the concepts of the old, noble bourgeois historiography and praised the representatives of noble-bourgeois science, seeking to make Soviet science related to noble-bourgeois science.

All these and other shortcomings oblige Soviet historians and their governing body - the journal Voprosy istorii - based on the instructions of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in the field of historical science, not only to correct these shortcomings, but also to widely develop research and propaganda work, to strengthen the offensive the struggle for the complete eradication of the influences and vestiges of bourgeois ideology, which sometimes still manifest themselves in certain works of our historians. Among the army of Soviet historians there should not be people who would not carry out propaganda work in the broadest sense of the word, along with scientific research or teaching. We are talking not only about lecturing on topical problems of history, but also about speaking in newspapers and magazines on the most important issues of historical science.

Soviet historians must be passionate, militant Bolshevik propagandists, they must pose the pressing problems of history and boldly develop them. The Soviet historical front cannot be like a backwater or a rear bivouac. Soviet historians have every reason to solve the urgent tasks that the Party, the government and Comrade Stalin personally set before us.

Soviet historians must be in the forefront of fighters against the bourgeois ideology of Anglo-American imperialism, in exposing Anglo-American imperialism, its reactionary essence, in exposing social reformism, which falsifies and adapts history in the interests of its masters, the imperialists.

With the active participation of the entire army of Soviet historians, the journal Voprosy istorii should become a militant organ guiding the development of Soviet historical thought, summarizing its achievements, and organizing Soviet historians, educated and led by the Lenin-Stalin party, in the struggle to build a communist society.

"Questions of history" l949 №2

Many of the honored doctors of science, carrying nonsense and engaged in outright profanity today, acquired their status and their degrees back in Soviet times. As a result, the question sometimes arises of the level of qualification of historians of the Soviet era as a whole. And here, as usual, there are often polar assessments.

Sometimes they say that Soviet historians were highly qualified specialists and "there are no such specialists today and soon they will not be at all" (c). Sometimes, on the contrary, they are accused of every conceivable sin. I personally know a case when a reviewer told a graduate student that all references to Soviet historians should be removed from the dissertation because they were "unworthy of citation" (the dissertation was devoted to international relations at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries). Phrases that Soviet historians were collectively engaged in the profanation of science are heard all the time. By the way, the presence of such statements in the book of a modern author (and made in a harsh form) is one of the sure signs that you are dealing with a low-quality pseudo-historical craft.

What were they, these historians of the Soviet era? The answer is one - different.

Despite the fact that in the USSR less attention was paid to the humanities than to the natural sciences, in general there were all the conditions for professionally, at a high level, to engage in historical research. Of course, there were ideological restrictions and difficulties with going abroad. However, in general they had a much less negative impact on the work of historians than today's beggarly salaries, which literally force qualified specialists to leave science altogether or seriously limit their opportunities. In addition, ideological restrictions to varying degrees influenced the work of historians who dealt with various periods of history. Sometimes it all came down to the need to add a couple of quotations from the classics to the preface and stick to the language adopted in that era ("bourgeois historians", etc.). Therefore, the Soviet Union had both outstanding world-class historians and strong scientific schools.

On the other hand, there were objective conditions for the profanation of science. In places, entire periods of history were given over to agitprop. It was possible to sit out one's pants for decades, defending dissertations entitled "Activity of Party organizations of higher educational institutions of Leningrad in 1950-1960", etc. Hence, in fact, all the current "cadres" of older age, who with pleasure were engaged in the reproduction of incompetence over the past 25 years, when the material conditions for the development of real historical science in Russia, one might say, were absent (and still are absent).

Therefore, the phrase "Soviet historian" is in itself neither a sign of quality nor a shameful stigma. Especially the second one. But when they talk about a "modern Russian historian" - yes, you get a little tense.

Before talking about Soviet historians, it is necessary to say a few words about two authors who are colloquially called "historical novelists." They are providers of “easy reading”, and often, not without talent, tell fascinating stories from the past, with dialogues and props, when their characters either “think, scratching their heads,” or “cough meaningfully,” or whisper something to their beloved woman, so that no one does not hear, except for herself. These authors have nothing to do with historians, but readers read them with enthusiasm. M. Kasvinov’s novel “23 Steps Down” about Nicholas II was written in this style: when the tsar receives Stolypin on a serious state matter in his office, the fireplace is on, the interlocutors are sitting in comfortable armchairs, and the tsarina is in the corner darning the tsar’s socks. N. Yakovlev's novel "August 1, 1914" is somewhat more real. In it we even find something about Freemasonry: the author met the Minister of the Provisional Government N.V. Nekrasov (there is an example of the hero's direct speech); the author gives us to understand that there is also a document, and maybe more than one, with which he has read. But instead of curiosity, the reader begins to vaguely feel a slow surge of boredom: at the moment when N. Yakovlev made his hero speak on the pages of the novel, it turned out that it was not Nekrasov at all, but only Yakovlev himself. In the writings of these feuilleton novelists, it is difficult to distinguish fantasy from truth, and the reader is sometimes not entirely sure: did the tsarina really darn the tsar's socks, and Nekrasov did not tell Yakovlev about some of his notes, memoirs and documents, either buried somewhere, or walled up by him. The reader is offered a piece of the past, and he is not averse to learning more about it, even if it is slightly distorted and embellished. It is worse when quotation marks are placed and a quotation begins, which does not end anywhere, since the author forgot to close the quotation marks. “Nekrasov told me a lot of interesting things then,” Yakovlev writes, but does not say when he wrote it down: then? Or in twenty years? Or is he writing from memory? And is it possible to put quotes in this case? Was what began with quotation marks taken from buried material, or something else? The names of close friends of Nekrasov and his brothers in the Masonic lodge are full of mistakes that Nekrasov could not make: instead of Kolyubakin - Kolyubyakin, instead of GrigorovichBarsky - GrigorovichBorsky. Occasionally, Yakovlev explains: "The word is not clear in the document." In what document? And why is this document not described? The conversation between Yakovlev and Shulgin is of no interest: Shulgin was never a Freemason, and Yakovlev was a historian. But not for this, but for other sins, Soviet criticism treated him cruelly. When Soviet historians rightly complain about the paucity of material on Freemasonry,146 and some of them hope that much more can come out, I cannot share their optimism: too much was destroyed during the Red Terror and the Civil War by people who had even a remote connection with the pre-revolutionary Freemasonry in Russia, not to mention the brothers of the secret society themselves. And what was not destroyed then was gradually destroyed in the 1930s, so that after 1938 hardly anything could survive in the attics and cellars. Artist Udaltsova in the early 1930s. in Moscow she herself burned her paintings, and Babel - part of her manuscripts, like Olesha. What more can be said after that? S.I. Bernstein, a contemporary and friend of Tynyanov and Tomashevsky, destroyed his collection of records, slandered by poets in the early 1920s. Bernstein was the first in Russia, then engaged in "orthoepy". Soviet historians do not have the Masonic materials they need, not because they are classified, but because they do not exist. Freemasons did not keep Masonic diaries or write Masonic memoirs. They kept an oath of silence. In the Western world, the protocols of the “sessions” have partially survived (it is possible that the protocols began to be kept only in exile). What is the state of Soviet Freemasonology now? I'll start from afar: two books published by B. Grave in 1926 and 1927, I still find very valuable and significant. These are “On the History of the Class Struggle” and “The Bourgeoisie on the Eve of the February Revolution”. They do not tell us much about Freemasonry, but they give some characteristics (for example, Gvozdeva). These books give an excellent outline of events and some brief but important comments: “Minister Polivanov had connections with the bourgeois opposition”, or a story about the visit of Albert Thomas and Viviani to St. Petersburg in 1916, and how P.P. Ryabushinsky, publisher of the Moscow newspaper "Utro Rossii" and a member of the State Council, informed the French about where the tsarist government was leading Russia (with Rasputins, Yanushkeviches, and other criminals and fools). This happened when everyone gathered in the estate of A.I. Konovalov near Moscow, at secret meetings. Between 1920s. and the work of Academician I. Mintz almost thirty years have passed. Mintz wrote about Freemasonry, which either existed or not, and if it did, it did not play any role. Nevertheless, he quotes the memoirs of I.V. Hessen, where the former leader of the Cadets, a non-Mason, wrote that “Freemasonry has degenerated into a society of mutual assistance, mutual support, in the manner of“ hand washes hand. Fair words. But Mints understands them in such a way that Freemasonry in general was an insignificant phenomenon and skeptically quotes a letter from E. Kuskova, published by Aronson, that the movement "was huge", taking seriously her assertion that "Russian Freemasonry had nothing in common with foreign Freemasonry" ( typical Masonic camouflage and white lies) and that "Russian Freemasonry has abolished the whole ritual". We now know from the minutes of the Masonic sessions that this is all false. Mintz is also firmly convinced that there never was any "Supreme Council of the Peoples of Russia", and that neither Kerensky nor Nekrasov stood at the head of Russian Freemasonry. Mintz's position is not only to downplay Freemasonry in Russia, but also to ridicule those who think that "something was there." A preconceived position never lends dignity to a historian. Works by A.E. Ioffe is valuable not because he reports on Freemasonry, but because of the background that he gives for it in his book Russo-French Relations (Moscow, 1958). Albert Thomas was going to be appointed "overseer" or "Special Representative" of the Allied Powers over the Russian government in September 1917. Like Mints, he believes that Russian Freemasonry did not play a big role in Russian politics and, citing an article by B. Elkin, calls him Yolkin . In the works of A.V. Ignatiev (1962, 1966 and 1970s) one can find interesting details about the plans of the English Ambassador Buchanan, at the beginning of 1917, to influence the Petrograd Soviet through the English Labor parliamentarians, "our Left", in order to continue the war against "German despotism". He already at that time foresaw that the Bolsheviks would take power. Ignatiev speaks of those who have changed their minds about the continuation of the war, and are slowly and secretly moving to the supporters of "at least some", but if possible, not a separate peace (Nolde, Nabokov, Dobrovolsky, Maklakov). He gives details about Alekseev's negotiations with Tom about the summer offensive and G. Trubetskoy's unwillingness to let Tom into Russia in the summer of 1917: being a Freemason, Trubetskoy perfectly understood the reasons for this persistence of Tom. The Soviet historian is aware of the importance of the meetings of Gen. Knox, the British military attache, with Savinkov and Filonenko in October 1917 - both were in some way allies of Kornilov - and tells, conscious of the hopelessness of the position of the Provisional Government, about the last breakfast on October 23 at Buchanan, where guests were Tereshchenko, Konovalov and Tretyakov. In the same row of serious scientists is E.D. Chermensky. The title of his book, The Fourth Duma and the Overthrow of Tsarism in Russia, does not cover its rich content. True, most of it is devoted to the last convocation and the progressive bloc, but already on page 29 we find a quotation from the verbatim report of the 3rd session of the State. Duma, which shows the mood of Guchkov in 1910: on February 22, he said that his friends "no longer see obstacles that would justify a slowdown in the implementation of civil liberties." Particularly interesting are the descriptions of secret meetings at Konovalov's and Ryabushinsky's, where not all the guests were Freemasons, and where the names of "sympathetic" bureaucratic friends often come across (he does not use the word "rearguard"). The picture of these meetings shows that Moscow was "to the left" of St. Petersburg. He described a conspiratorial meeting at Konovalov's on March 3, 1914, where the participants represented the spectrum from the left Octobrists to the Social Democrats (the owner of the house at that time was Comrade Chairman of the State Duma), and then the second one - on March 4 at Ryabushinsky, where, between by the way, one Bolshevik was present, SkvortsovStepanov (a well-known Soviet critic, about whom there is no information in the KLE). Kadet Astrov reports (TsGAOR, fund 5913) that in August 1914 "all (progressives) stopped fighting and rushed to help the authorities in organizing victory." Apparently, all the conspiracy ceased until August 1915, when the catastrophe began at the front. And then, on August 16, they again gathered at Konovalov's (between others - Maklakov, Ryabushinsky, Kokoshkin) for new conversations. On November 22, both Trudoviks and Mensheviks were in Konovalov's house (Kerensky and Kuskova were among the first). There was one of the first discussions of the "appeal to the allies". Chermensky recalls that the generals were always right there, close, and that Denikin, in his Essays on Russian Troubles, many years later, wrote that “the progressive bloc found sympathy with the gene. Alekseev. At this time, Meller Zakomelsky was the permanent chairman at the meetings of the "progressive bloc" with representatives of Zemgor. Chermensky walks alongside Freemasonry, but today's younger historians, working in Leningrad on the epoch 1905-1918, come even closer to him. Thus, one of them raises the question of "generals" and "military dictatorship" in the summer of 1916, "after the tsar is overthrown." "Protopopov never trusted Ruzsky," he says, and moves on to Guchkov's letter, which was circulating throughout Russian territory, to Prince. P.D. Dolgorukov, who foresaw the victory of Germany back in May 1916. The knowledge of this author can be appreciated by those who carefully delve into the course of his thinking, the thoroughness of his work and the ability to present material of great interest. Among this generation of Soviet historians there are other talented people, significant phenomena on the horizon of Soviet historical science. Many of them have serious knowledge and have found a system for them, some have also been awarded the literary talent of the narrator. They distinguish "important" from "not important" or "less important". They have the flair for the epoch, which our great historians had in the past. They know how important the (unfulfilled) conspiracies were - they give a picture of the Masonic and non-Masonic convergence of people whose parties had no reason to converge with each other, but the members of these parties were able to compromise. This rapprochement and - for some of them - the conciliar vision of the Apocalypse, coming at them with an inevitability from which there is no escape, now evoke in us, as in the tragedy of Sophocles, a sense of horror and fate. We understand today what the tsarist regime was, against which the Grand Dukes and the Menshevik-Marxists went against, for a short time they came into contact, and were crushed together. In one of the recent books we find discussions about Westernism and Slavophilism on a level at which they were never discussed in the sealed retort of the 19th century. The author finds a "chain of traces" (an expression by M.K. Lemke). It leads from the headquarters of the tsar through his generals to the monarchists who want to "preserve the monarchy and remove the monarch", to the centrists of the Duma, and from them to the future military of the Petrograd Soviet. Conversations A.I. Konovalova with Albert Thomas, or an assessment of the gene. Krymov, or a party at Rodzianko's house - these pages are difficult to read without the excitement that we experience when we read tragedians, and which we are not accustomed to experiencing when reading the books of learned historians. Here there is that “creative infection” that Leo Tolstoy wrote about in his famous letter to Strakhov, and which far from all people of art possess. Soviet historians, specialists in the early 20th century, occasionally touch upon Russian Freemasonry in their works. This gives me the right, while working on my book, to think not only about how it will be received and appreciated by young European and American (as well as Russian-American and American-Russian) historians, but also about how it will be read by Soviet historians, who in recent years are increasingly directing their attention towards Russian Freemasons of the 20th century. Read it or hear about it.

How can one “negatively” or “positively” relate to a thunderstorm, an earthquake, a plague? This is a given of our existence, this is how the world works. A Christian performs the sacrament of the Eucharist, that is, as if ritually cannibalistically eats the body and drinks the blood of Jesus Christ and rehearses the sacrifice of God and partakes of holiness-heaven, but "the whole truth" is also in the fact that after that the most righteous believer shits and pisses on the swallowed-digested in the stomach, fertilizing the lowland-earthliness, such is life. How can one “love” or “hate” the historical figures of the past, no matter how much blood they shed, be it even Genghis Khan with Henry VIII and Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great and Lenin with Stalin and Mao Zedong to boot, etc.? They should also be taken for granted, this is how the world works, sometimes they look “like God's thunderstorm”, like “God's Scourge”, like “World Spirit on horseback”, etc. How can one “glorify” or “criticize” Moses, who, on the one hand, received the commandments of God from the Lord God, including the commandment “Thou shalt not kill!” for the sake of being, and brought them to people, but for the sake of being, he smashed to smithereens the stone tablets on which these commandments were carved, when he saw his God-chosen Jewish people, who had just been led out of a long Egyptian captivity, but in his forty-day absence bowed to the Golden Calf and rejoiced in freebies -dances, and ordered the remaining faithful to a handful of Levites to cut down all their fellow tribesmen in a row, if only to bring the fallen to their senses and bridle the people and save the souls of the survivors (Exodus 32). Isn't it obvious that man is for God, and not God for man, and one must fulfill one's supreme duty of self-sacrifice to God, no matter what horrors this may entail. Tired of the superficiality even of those who claim to be wisdom - theologians, philosophers, philologists and other humanitarians. Okay, there is little demand from political publicists, they write mainly for the toilet, but a professional should rise above emotions. After all, “morality” is relative, depends on the stage of historical development and, accordingly, on the degree of subjectivity, the day before yesterday it was “moral” to ritually eat another person, often a relative, to sacrifice a beloved child, etc., yesterday it was “moral” to burn a dissident at the stake or exile him to the Gulag, today after our Great Victory over fascism and the Nuremberg trials and the adoption in 1948 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, more tolerant norms and ideas were established, from the positions of which it is foolish to judge our ancestors. But they are judging, awakening frozen storms, picking open healing wounds, calling for Lenin to be thrown out of the Mausoleum. I throw up my hands when I hear this from doctoral professors. From the current position of respect for the rights and dignity of man and people, what is moral for today's sick Russia is that which heals it, including the restoration of its historical and territorial integrity, is it really unclear.

It is sickening to listen to the Svanidzevsky-Kisilevsky "Historical Process" on the Rossiya TV channel at these moments (Dmitry Kiselev is completely pathetic, unconvincing, not suitable for serious polemics, he works out the order with effort). Terry counter-revolution, hysterics about the "tyrant Stalin" - although the discussion of the Maslenitsa prayer service of the punk band Pussy Riot is closer to the urgent. This prayer service is a civil protest against the infernal nature of Putin and the nicolaitism of the ROC hierarchy, I support it. So we must fight against today's evil, that is, against Putin's massacre of young Russian women. And in general, against Putin and Gundyaev, whose lies go off scale. If you consider yourself moral - do not live by lies, speak out against the current liars! And it’s better to take the lies, sins, malice of the past as a given, because any person and any society has not only “pluses”, but also “minuses”, and it is now more proper for a historian, as a citizen, to condemn the current scoundrels, and as a professional, he is called only to speak the whole truth about the past, in no case blaspheming or praising it.

Now on the "Russian historical TV channel" "365 days TV" curses against Lenin as the "worst enemy of the Russian people" and fierce denunciations of "Soviet historians" who de-blackened the crowned martyrs "killed by the Bolsheviks" and distorted Russian history in every possible way . I ask - name, asshole, specifically the names of Soviet professional historians who "distorted and blackened" the history of our country? In the 1970s I worked in the Department of Historical Sciences of the Institute of Scientific Information on Social Sciences of the USSR Academy of Sciences and I know well Soviet historians of the older and my generations, they are different, they are tens and hundreds of highly qualified professionals, their works will forever remain in the golden fund of national historical science and culture. And I maintain relations with dozens and hundreds of domestic philosophers and philologists who matured in the Soviet years, who are also great professionals, it is vile to discredit them as "soviet". However, vile Putin's time is characterized by vile falsifiers, just ate shit in the "Historical Trial".

Otdushina - two TV spots that I watched in the last hours. One is about the Roman emperor Adrian (76-138) on the Viasat History TV channel, the other is about Ivan the Terrible (1530-1584) on the Culture TV channel. Yes, Adrian practiced decimations, that is, the execution of every tenth soldier of the Roman legion who went wrong, and the Romans generally did not shun all sorts of genocides and "crimes against humanity" (speaking in today's language). So what? This is how a person has been arranged since the time of Adam and Eve, you can’t change it, but you can only restrain the lethality-killfulness inherent in a person and counterbalance his self-terror, let’s not delve into philosophy, I have already written a lot of texts on this topic. And the film shows where the "viceroy of God on earth" defecated, what he wiped himself with - and this is also part of the historian's concern to tell "the whole truth." And Ivan the Terrible, from the point of view of current norms and ideas, seems to have committed all sorts of “crimes”, but it’s stupid and ridiculous to kick him to the current “moralists”, then kick and blaspheme also Moses, if you dare, and a professional historian should perceive the deeds of the formidable king as one of the "historical thunderstorms" along with the "thunderstorms" of Peter the Great, Lenin and Stalin, without emotions of blasphemy or praise. And then one of the luminaries of Soviet historical science, Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt, wisely and dispassionately told the viewers “the whole truth” about the Russian ruler of the distant 16th century, it was a pleasure to listen.

But he turned 90 on Orthodox Easter on April 15, 2012. But what a good mental shape he is! I kind of envy him. His father is the legendary polar explorer, Hero of the Soviet Union, editor-in-chief of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, Academician Otto Yulievich Schmidt. The son of one of the personifications of the Soviet era, he graduated from the Faculty of History of Moscow State University in 1944, since 1949 he has been teaching at the Moscow Institute of History and Archives (now the Russian State University for the Humanities). Patriarch of national historical science. Adviser of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Academician RAO. Honorary Chairman of the Archeographic Commission of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Editor-in-Chief of the Moscow Encyclopedia. Honored Professor of the Russian State University for the Humanities, Head of the Moscow Studies Department of the Historical and Archival Institute. He also knew other prominent Soviet historians at close range, so Sigurd Yulievich is not some rare exception.

Both of his lectures within the framework of the wonderful Academia program can be viewed and listened to with some comments on the luxurious site of the Novgorod philologist, historian of ideas, literary critic and literary critic Nikolai Podosokorsky ( philologist ) - "To the 90th anniversary of Sigurd Schmidt" (April 17, 2012) and "An era named Schmidt" (April 14, 2012). I listened to a lecture by Sigurd Ottovich and was afraid that he was about to be brought into moralizing and condemning the bloodshed and genocides and atrocities of Ivan the Terrible, but the venerable historian avoided such stupidity, setting out “the whole truth” about the oprichnina and torture impeccably, pointing out the manifestations of sadism as on a medical fact (I would add, with reference to research by psychologists, that every second of us will prove to be a sadist if he receives uncontrolled power).

Sigurd Schmidt: Whether power is moral or immoral is a matter of life and death for us. Photo: Kolybalov Arkady

It is noteworthy that Sigurd Ottovich's interview, which he gave to Dmitry Shevarov and in which he spoke about his life and the Stalin years and the state of national historical science (I basically agree with his judgments) - “An era named Schmidt: Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt will mark his 90th birthday in the same house where he was born on Holy Saturday 1922” (Rossiyskaya Gazeta, Moscow, April 11, 2012, No. 79 /5752/, p. 11):

“The year of Russian history, in addition to well-known significant dates, is decorated with the anniversary of our outstanding contemporary, historian Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt.

His first printed scientific work was published in April 1941. Schmidt has been teaching at the Institute of History and Archives for 63 years! Here, every autumn, student life for first-year students begins with a lecture by the most beloved and oldest professor. "He is the best connoisseur of sources on the history of Russia in the 16th century today," said Dmitry Sergeevich Likhachev.

Most of all, the old word enlightener fits Sigurd Ottovich. The student circle of source studies created by Schmidt in 1949 entered the legends as a scientific school that brought up several generations of scientists.

April 15 - for Easter! - Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt will celebrate his 90th birthday in the very house where he was born on Holy Saturday 1922 to the sound of Arbat temples.

I really love this nondescript house, pushed into Krivoarbatsky Lane, like an old closet. I like to climb the stairs, touching the dark wood of the railing. I'm apprehensive about the elevator. Once I got stuck in it with Sigurd Ottovich. At that time I was so worried about the professor, who was late for the lecture, that I considered it my duty to bang on the elevator doors and shout.

Well, what are you fighting about, - Schmidt said affectionately and pressed the button.

Who's stuck? the dispatcher replied.

Professor Schmidt. You know, my lecture starts in half an hour.

Wait. Maybe the mechanics haven't gone home yet.

Silence. Sigurd Ottovich asks me: "What date is it today?"

Twenty sixth.

Nothing bad can happen on the twenty-sixth.

On the twenty-sixth I defended my doctorate. And in general, I had a lot of good things that day.

What if today was the thirteenth?

Nothing too bad either. True, on the thirteenth, in February, the Chelyuskin sank.

Well, you see...

So on the thirteenth of April, the Chelyuskinites were saved!

Then the mechanics came and saved us. And Sigurd Ottovich was in time for the lecture. Outside the auditorium, the ancient Nikolskaya Street floated through blue puddles towards the Kremlin. After the lecture, we went to the bakery, bought some bread and walked through the yards to the Arbat. I remembered that once the boys at that time played Chelyuskinites.

All your friends probably envied you in your childhood, - I say to Sigurd Ottovich.

I didn't feel it. Father had world fame, but we lived in trembling for him. It seemed that if the newspapers do not write about dad for three or four days, then something happened. After all, two of my father's deputies for the expedition were arrested as enemies of the people ...

At the age of fifteen, he began to keep a diary, but soon abandoned it. The heroes of the diary - friends of the father, familiar mothers, neighbors, parents of classmates - disappeared one by one.

Otto Yulievich took his son with him to Kremlin receptions several times. "Stalin passed us at arm's length..." Many years later, Sigurd Schmidt would become one of the greatest experts on the origins of despotism - the era of Ivan the Terrible.

"Arbatism dissolved in blood..."

When did you decide to become a historian?

Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: In the eighth grade, I had a desire to become... a professor. Not because I was so dreamy and arrogant, but simply because I grew up in a professorial environment and could not imagine anything else. I chose a profession close to my mother's and far from what my father did, so that no one could say that I use his merits.

And school history lessons - they didn’t beat off love for this subject?

Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: We had good teachers. After all, I studied in the former gymnasiums: in the former women's Khvostovskaya and in the former Flerovskaya near the Nikitsky Gate - then the already famous 10th (later 110th) school named after F. Nansen. I made my first essentially scientific report on December 26, 1939, when I was a first-year student at Moscow State University.

The craving for history, obviously, was brought up by the very area where you were born - Arbat. What was he then? I'm not talking about historical buildings - it is clear that there is almost no left - but about the atmosphere ...

Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: What I miss the most in today's Arbat is children's voices. I remember a time when ten or three children lived in our six-story building, or even more. Now there are five children left in the whole house. It is extremely painful to see streets and yards without children. After all, the Arbat has never been a beautiful street, but it was distinguished by its special comfort. Hammocks hung in the yards in summer. Among the sheds, lilac and bird cherry bushes, we played hide and seek - there was where to hide. This persisted for a long time - until the 1960s, and when I began to travel abroad, I did not see anything like it in other capitals of the world. Even in Paris.

What place on earth do you think is the most beautiful?

Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: From the height of my age, I see that no foreign impressions can overshadow what our homeland gives us. In 1961, I first came to Vologda, and from there to Ferapontovo, to see the frescoes of Dionysius. There was no museum then. The temple was closed. I went and found a watchman. She says: I will unlock it for you, but I have to go to the village council, so I will lock you up for an hour and a half. And those were some of the happiest moments of my life. It was the beginning of September, and warm, light rain was drizzling outside the walls of the temple. And then suddenly the sun splashed through the windows on the right, the frescoes flared up with sparkling colors ...

Thanks to your efforts, book sales have recently returned to Old Arbat, and I have just dug up a book there that I have been looking for for a long time. What else would you like to return to the Arbat?

Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: My dream is to restore the temple of St. Nicholas the Appeared with a marvelous bell tower, which was a symbol of the Arbat and depicted in many works of art. Arbat was even called St. Nicholas Street. This will immediately restore the appearance of the Arbat and will dictate a decent style of behavior.

Unforgettable 1812

Many who lived through 1812 recalled that they felt the movement of history not speculatively, but simply physically. And, probably, it is no coincidence that it was at this time that Karamzin wrote the History of the Russian State.

Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: Nikolai Mikhailovich wrote most of his "History ..." before the war. He possessed great historical intuition and rare insight. It is amazing how he, who did not undergo special scientific training and did not know the historical sources discovered later, expressed accurate assumptions. Here at Klyuchevsky it was already much less common. One must imagine the conditions in which Karamzin wrote his "History ...". What did Russia know about itself, if the first Minister of Public Education, Count Pyotr Vasilievich Zavadovsky, declared several years before 1812 that the entire history of Russia before Peter could fit on one page.

A very modern take on history.

Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: To the credit of the society of that time, it must be said: people were eager to know their history. After the Patriotic War, everyone was already looking forward to Karamzin's "History ...".

Did everyone know that he wrote it?

Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: Of course, the educated society has heard a lot about it. Karamzin was the most famous but silent writer of that time. The expectations were huge. The publication in February 1818 of the first eight volumes was the event of the year, as they would probably say now. The entire circulation was sold out in twenty-five days.

Looking at the volumes of "History ..." Karamzin, it seems to us that he was a long-liver.

Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: And Nikolai Mikhailovich lived only sixty years!

And did Karamzin not have time to write about the war of 1812?

Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: He was offered to write the history of the Patriotic War in hot pursuit, but he understood...

What is the distance in time?

Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: And this too, but the main thing: Karamzin understood that there would be someone to write about the war of 1812, and he needed to finish his work. He was just approaching Ivan the Terrible at that time, and his attitude towards the Terrible is the most important thing for understanding Karamzin's worldview.

He can be called a liberal conservative or a conservative liberal. He arrived in France at the time of the French Revolution, full of expectations, but saw the coming terror. Nikolai Mikhailovich was a staunch supporter of the monarchy, but believed that the power of the head of state should be limited by law.

Captured by utopia

Many Decembrists sought to limit the monarchy by law ...

Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: Yes, and here again we must remember 1812. He made a revolution in the minds of the top of society. The officers, having been abroad, saw how quite decently and relatively freely the life of the lower classes was arranged there. The senior Decembrists were formed precisely then. We have now adopted cheap denunciations against the Decembrists ...

They are sometimes called "Bolsheviks of the nineteenth century."

Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: This is absolutely wrong. The Bolsheviks are rather the successors of the Narodnaya Volya and the descendants of the utopians of previous times. And if anything brings the pre-revolutionary Bolsheviks closer to the Decembrists, it is the fact that many of them come from wealthy families. They could well make a career under the king. These were people deeply captivated by utopianism. And they dreamed not of their well-being, but of a world revolution.

But if the Bolsheviks only dreamed! If it were not believed that the end justifies the means.

Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: And not everyone thought so. There was no primitive unanimity among the old Bolsheviks. I reflected on this in one of my recent books, which is called "Considerations and Memoirs of a Historian Son" - in it is a biography of my father Otto Yulievich Schmidt and my sketches about him and his era. In my childhood and youth, I involuntarily witnessed the conversations of Bolsheviks with pre-revolutionary experience. So, for example, about Zinoviev, who, to put it mildly, behaved dissolutely and disgustingly in Petrograd - I did not hear a single kind word from them from them. And the Countrywoman! I saw her several times. It was uncomfortable to be around her. There was a sense of evil emanating from her. These are fanatics. Or mentally ill people.

Isn't Lenin a fanatic?

Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: It's still different. Lenin is a much more complex figure.

It's hard for me to see when historians imitate party views. Party views are changing. I remember what those who write today about the "spoiled" Bolsheviks wrote before 1991. I even remember what some wrote before 1953.

But people tend to change, to grow to what they did not understand before.

Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: It is very difficult to confuse opportunism with the fruits of painful inner work.

What events did you experience that changed your view of history?

Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: XX Congress. He allowed me to open up as a scientist and be free. I was 31 when Stalin died. Being the son of a very famous person, from the age of fourteen I lived in fear for my father, with whom at any moment the same thing could happen as with my maternal uncle, what happened with my father's sister's husband, and with many of our acquaintances. In our class, almost all the guys had someone arrested, exiled or shot. I was very friendly with my classmates, and then classmates. When we were young, we were very open and frank. When there were three or two of them, the conversations went on social topics. And my happiness is that there were no scammers among my comrades.

No, it was no accident that I took up the era of Ivan the Terrible. These were undoubtedly allusions to modernity. After all, I wrote about those people who became victims of Grozny. I wanted to figure out how this could happen.

Oblivion Invasion

Vyazemsky wrote: "Karamzin is our Kutuzov of the twelfth year: he saved Russia from the invasion of oblivion ..." Do you have a feeling that we are experiencing today just such an invasion?

Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: The big trouble is that the number of educative subjects is consistently decreasing at school. The reason is clear to me: people have become very practical, it seems to them that neither literature nor history has any practical application. Like, what's the difference: Ivan the Terrible killed his son or the son killed Ivan the Terrible, it was in time immemorial. In addition, the Internet is playing a cruel joke on us. Thanks to him, the layer of modernity has grown and swelled so exorbitantly that the memory of the past is forced out somewhere in the backyard of consciousness.

It turns out that our life develops only horizontally, and the vertical - the movement in depth and the impulse towards the sky - completely disappears.

Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: Yes, people are locked in the race for the essentials, and simply do not have time to tell their grandchildren about their ancestors, and about themselves. But only the history of the family can push the narrow boundaries of our life.

And what event in our history do we still underestimate?

Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: If we talk about the 20th century, then this is the Great Patriotic War.

Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: Yes, it must be admitted: we underestimate and misunderstand the feat of the people of the forty-first year. It was an impulse that you can hardly imagine. I have never seen anything like it and never will. Moreover, this massive feat of self-sacrifice took place after a terrible, unjustified period of terror. Remember Bulat Okudzhava - "our boys raised their heads ..."? People at the beginning of the war just raised their heads. I remember that in our intellectual school, almost all the guys had relatives who were "enemies of the people," but how eager they were to get to the front!

And if we fast forward a hundred years, what events that we experienced in recent years will be included in future textbooks?

Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: What do you think?

If this is some kind of "short course", then we will fit in one line: "These people lived in the era of the heyday and destruction of the Soviet Union." Only this, it seems to me, we will be interesting to posterity. But it's not so little...

Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: Pushkin wrote that "the emerging enlightenment" of Europe "was saved by a torn and dying Russia." The events of the 20th century became a continuation of this essentially sacrificial path of Russia. We tested the utopia on ourselves, having suffered huge sacrifices. And this, of course, entered the global history.

A moral story in an immoral world

That inspired Russian historiography, at the origins of which was Karamzin, - does it continue? Or does this tradition no longer exist?

Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: Here we must remember what this tradition consists of. From at least the thirteenth century, our history began to diverge from Europe.

This was due to the division of Christianity into Western and Eastern.

Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: Essentially, yes. And here it is important that Karamzin, realizing that the task of historical science is to shape public consciousness, tried to emphasize the Europeanism of Russian history.

Was he not a supporter of what would later be called Eurasianism?

Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: Of course not. We found ourselves the heirs of the longest-preserved imperial system of Byzantium, which existed until the middle of the fifteenth century. In Rome it all stopped earlier. Of course, the German sovereigns called themselves emperors, but this is just talk. The empire of Charles the First or the German Austrian Habsburg Monarchy were relatively small states. In our country, the size of the country itself is imperial, in addition, the eastern system of government has been mixed in. The sacredness of the first person, which came from Byzantium, greatly helped to keep such spaces under a single leadership, but we have become terribly dependent on the character and abilities of one person. Ivan the Terrible, unable and unwilling to restrain his passions, ruined everything he had built. The most gifted and far-sighted Peter the Great, in a completely despotic and immoral way, planted European reforms. Stalin, whose arrival was so sudden that everyone was waiting for democracy ...

But perhaps that is precisely why the question of whether power is moral or immoral is for us a matter of life and death. Russian literature became great precisely because in it the greatest attention was paid to moral and ethical issues, and not to entertainment. So the "History of the Russian State" is, first of all, a moral history. Karamzin gave moral assessments to historical figures and that is why he was so important to his contemporaries.

But now, as a reader of historical literature, I see that Karamzin's line has given way to a nonjudgmental presentation of the course of events. Historians write about their country in much the same way as they would write about any other. Textbooks are compiled in the same spirit - "nothing personal." We are told that the moral approach is ideological, not modern. Doesn't it bother you?

Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: Worrisome. In my opinion, the moral approach underlies the birth of history as such. For many years now I have been directing the competition of historical scientific papers for high school students, which is organized by Memorial, and I see that the guys think more boldly, more freely than adults.

It turns out that it is teenagers today who are writing moral history.

Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: Yes, they are trying to do it. But what is sad: few of the authors of these talented works enter the history departments. Parents advise them to choose something more profitable. They know that the work of scientists, especially in the humanitarian sphere, is not appreciated in our country.

I see what a disrespectful, essentially humiliating position the scientists, especially the humanities, are in. How much their salary is less than the earnings of guest workers or security guards. And, nevertheless, I see good people who are ready to give their strength to just such work. For them, the feeling of working according to a vocation is a high internal duty. Everyday meetings with such young people make me very happy. After all, I have already lost all my close peers, and those who are much younger than me have become really close to me. I am grateful to them for causing them not only respect, but also sincere interest.

"When a person is expected..."

So, you are an optimist after all: will interest in history in Russia not go out?

Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: I am an optimist because knowing one's history is a human need. A person cannot but be interested in his roots. He needs a connection with his relatives, with his ancestors, a sense of connection with his native area, he needs to determine his place in a series of events and phenomena ...

For twenty years now I have been living in two worlds - with those who left, but remain in me, and with those who surround me. This is absolutely palpable. After the death of my nurse, with whom I lived for sixty-seven years, I began to dream. In them - the dead and the living together. As long as the nanny was alive, as long as my parents were alive, I had them on their own. And now all together.

Everybody is alive...

Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: Yes, everyone is alive. And I feel like they would reproach me if I do something differently than it would be right with them.

And this is not a painful feeling at all?

Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: Rather harmonic.

I noticed that in almost all recent interviews you have been asked about recipes for longevity.

Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: Well, these questions are a tribute to my years... Probably, this is due to several circumstances. And inherited from parents. And the fact that I'm hardworking. Not that I know how to work - I love to work. And when I am not working at a desk or reading special literature, but doing something else, I still think about my work. All my life I have been doing what interests me. I retain to this day the need and ability to learn from others. Curiosity has not diminished, elements of the former enthusiasm remain. Apparently, it is essential that he did not envy anyone, did not see the tragedy in career failures. After all, not everything was smooth - for example, I was not chosen to the "big" Academy.

What comforted and saved you?

Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: I am a social person by nature, I have always been busy teaching. The most interesting for me was communication in a student scientific circle, where I received a lot from young talented people. And I felt the demand there, and this is very important: when a person is expected. For fifty years, until the middle of the year 2000, we got together, and it was happiness.

The ability to work, of course, is lost. Previously, he could easily deal with many topics. Now I have to focus. Lost pace of work. But thank you for what I can do. I even make plans.

Do you have weekends?

Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt: Never. And I don't have a hobby. I have bad hands. I am somewhat unharmoniously developed. I can type on a typewriter and that’s it.”

Anonymous:
He could not be objective in relation to Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich the Terrible for obvious reasons.

Gregory:
Nice uncle. Such people are like the suns, around which the rotation of other bright people-planets is formed. Happy birthday, Sigurd Otovich Schmidt! Live and work longer! I read the interview with great pleasure. Thanks to the author!

OUTSTANDING HISTORIANS OF THE XX - BEGINNING OF THE XXI CENTURIES

1. Artsikhovsky Artemy Vladimirovich(1902-1978 ), one of the main study archeology dr. Russia in the USSR. Prof., Founder and Head department of archeology ist. Faculty of Moscow State University (since 1939), creator and editor-in-chief of Zh. "Soviet archeology" (since 1957). Author of works on the antiquities of the Vyatichi XI-XIV centuries, on the miniatures of the Middle Ages. lives, as well as works and training courses on archeology and the history of Old Russian. culture. Creator of the Novgorod archaeological expedition (since 1932), during which b. open birch bark letters and developed a methodology for studying cultural. old Russian layer. cities, developed chronological reconstruction of the life of city estates and quarters. In 1951 b. found the first birch bark. literacy is one of the most remarkable. archaeological discoveries of the 20th century. The study of these charters and the publication of their texts b. main life's work A.

2. Bakhrushin Sergey Vladimirovich (1882-1950 ) - an outstanding Russian. historian, corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Known from the family. Moscow merchants and philanthropists. Student V.O. Klyuchevsky. B. arrest. on the Platonov Case (1929-1931). In 1933 he was returned from exile to Moscow; prof. Moscow State University. notice. lecturer (he taught A.A. Zimin, V.B. Kobrin). From 1937 he worked at the Institute of History (hereinafter - II) of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Works on the history of Dr. Russia, Rus. state-va of the XV-XVII centuries, the colonization of Siberia (the history of its indigenous population during the period of colonization, Russia's relations with the countries of the East through Siberia), source studies, historiography, ist. geography.

3. Veselovsky, Stepan Borisovich (1877-1952 ). Genus. in the ancient nobles. family. vyd. historian. Academician. Foundation creator. works, document. editions of reference books on the era of feudalism. Rev. in Moscow. un-those. Studying the era of Kievan Rus and social-economy. relations of the XIV-XVI centuries., V. was the first to introduce into the ist. science data genealogy, place names- science of geographical names, continued development anthroponymy- the science of personal names. During the period of Stalin's praise of Ivan the Terrible as a progressive figure, "who truly understood the interests and needs of his people," V. made a scientific. and civil feat, drawing a reliable picture of life in the 16th century on the basis of scrupulous research. and come to diametrically opposed conclusions. For this he was deprived of the opportunity to publish his work. Studying history through the fate of people, V. prepared a lot of biographical and genealogical materials that have their own. meaning. In the 40-50s, when the impersonal, so-called. "scientific" language, V. tried to write emotionally and excitingly, leaving vivid portraits of medieval figures

4.Volobuev Pavel Vasilievich(1923-1997) - a large owl. historian, academician OK. history department of Moscow State University. From 1955 he worked at the Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences (in 1969-1974 - Director of the Institute). At the end of the 60s. V. known as the leader of the "new direction" in the East. science. From Ser. In the 1970s, he was subjected to administrative repressions - he was removed from the post of director of the USSR Institute of Research. President of the World War I History Association (since 1993). Headed Scientific. Council of the Russian Academy of Sciences "History of revolutions in Russia". Main works according to the study economic, political and social prerequisites for the history and historiography of the October Revolution.

Op.: Monopoly capitalism in Russia and its features, M., 1956; Economic policy of the Provisional Government, M., 1962; The proletariat and the bourgeoisie of Russia in 1917, M., 1964, etc.

5. Grekov Boris Dmitrievich (1882-1953 ) - vyd. historian, academician Receive rec. in Warsaw and Moscow. high fur boots Student V.O. Klyuchevsky. In 1929 issue. the first general work on the history of dr. Russia - "The Tale of Bygone Years about Vladimir's campaign against Korsun". From 1937 in tech. 15 years voz. Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Founder of the so-called. "national" school of historians, which replaced the "school of Pokrovsky". In 1939 the first edition of his major classic was published. work "Kievan Rus", in which he substantiated his theory that the Slavs moved directly from the communal system to the feudal system, bypassing the slaveholding. 1946 - foundation. work "Peasants in Russia from ancient times to the 17th century." Publications of documents are associated with his name: Pravda Russkaya, Chronicle of Livonia, Serf Manufactory in Russia, and others. 350 works.

6.Viktor Petrovich Danilov (1925-2004 ) - vyd. historian, doctor of historical sciences, prof. WWII teacher. OK. history department of Moscow State University. Head agrarian department. the history of owls. Society in the Institute of History of the USSR of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1987-1992), hands. groups on the history of agriculture. transformations in Russia of the XX century IRI RAS (1992-2004). All life is an example of devotion to one theme - the history of the Russian peasantry. Main directions of scientific research. communications work. with the study social-ec. stories villages of the 20s, its demography, the role of the peasant community and cooperation in the pre-revolutionary. and post-revolution. Russia, carrying out the collectivization of the peasants. farms. After 1991, in the center of his interests - the history of the peasant revolution in Russia 1902-1922, polit. moods and movements in the post-revolution. village, the tragedy of owls. villages, connected. with collectivization and dispossession (1927-1939). For a series of monographs and doc. publications on the history of Russia. owl villages. period in 2004 was awarded the Gold Medal. S. M. Solovyov (for his great contribution to the study of history). Recently, a lot of attention. devoted to the publication of documents from previously inaccessible archives. The author of St. 250 works.

Op.: Creation of material and technical prerequisites for the collectivization of agriculture in the USSR. M., 1957; Soviet pre-kolkhoz village: population, land use, economy. M., 1977 (translated in 1988 in English); Community and collectivization in Russia. Tokyo, 1977 (in Japanese); Documents testify. From the history of the village on the eve and during the collectivization of 1927-1932. M., 1989 (ed. and comp.); Soviet village through the eyes of the Cheka-OGPU-NKVD. 1918-1939. Doc. and mother. in 4 volumes (M., 1998 - 2003) (ed. and comp.); The tragedy of the Soviet village. Collectivization and dispossession. Doc. and mother. in 5 vols. 1927-1939 (M., 1999-2004) (ed. and comp.), etc.

7. Druzhinin Nikolai Mikhailovich (1886-1986)- vyd. owls. historian, academician OK. istfilfak Mosk. university Prof. Moscow State University. First monograph. "Landowners' Journal". 1858-1860 ”(20s) - the conclusion that this edition is important. ist-ohm on the history of crepe. economy of the last years of its existence. In the 1920-1930s. occupied the history of the Decembrist movement (monograph "Decembrist Nikita Muravyov" - 1933). Articles about P. I. Pestel, S. P. Trubetskoy, Z. G. Chernyshev, I. D. Yakushkin, the program of the Northern Society. Slave. in the Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. The author is a problem-methodologist. articles "On the periodization of the history of capitalist relations in Russia", "The conflict between the productive forces and feudal relations on the eve of the reform of 1861". " State peasants and reformP. D. Kiseleva”(2 volumes - 1946-1958) - the first fundamental study on this category of the rural population of Russia). He revealed the connection between Kiselyov's reform and the peasant reform of 1861 (he considered Kiselyov's reform a "dress rehearsal" for the liberation of the peasants). The first volume of the study is devoted to the economic and political prerequisites for the reform, the second - to the implementation of the foundations of the reform and the characteristics of its consequences. In 1958 he began the study of the post-reform village. Outcome - monograph. " Russian village at a turning point. 1861-1880» (1978). Carefully analyzed. group and region. post-reform development differences. villages, base tendencies emerging as a result of the reform of the peasants. household He led the Commission on the history of agriculture and the peasantry, publishing in many volumes. doc. series "Peasant Movement in Russia".

8.Zimin Alexander Alexandrovich (1920-1980 ) - vyd. owls. historian, doctor of historical sciences, prof. Student S.V. Bakhrushin. Z. belong to numerous. foundation. research on polit. the history of Russia in the XV-XVI centuries, according to the history of Russian. societies. thoughts, according to ancient Russian. literature Encyclopedic knowledge in the field of ist. ist-s on the fox of feudalism. historian b. a "panorama of the history of Russia" was created, covering the period from 1425 to 1598 and represented by. in 6 books: "The Knight at the Crossroads", "Russia at the Turn of the 15th-16th Centuries", "Russia on the Threshold of the New Age", "The Reforms of Ivan the Terrible", "The Oprichnina of Ivan the Terrible", "On the Eve of Terrible Upheavals". Z. - Editor and compiler of many collections of documents. The author of St. 400 works.

9. Kovalchenko Ivan Dmitrievich (1923-1995)- vyd. scientist, academician WWII teacher. OK. history department of Moscow State University. Head cafe source studies and-ii of the USSR at Moscow State University; ch. ed. magazine "History of the USSR"; chairman Commission for the Application of Mathematical Methods and Computers in the East. research at the Department of History of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Foundation author. works on social-economy. history of Russia in the 19th century, methodology ist. knowledge ("Methods of historical research" - 1987; 2003), founder of the fatherlands. schools of quantitative (mathematical) history. For the monograph "Russian serf peasantry in the first half of the 19th century." (1967) (in it he used a computer to process a huge array of sources collected by him) b. awarded them. acad. B.D. Grekov.

10. Mavrodin Vladimir Vasilievich (1908-1987 ) is a large owl. historian, doctor of historical sciences, prof. LGU. Scientific tr. on the history of Kievan Rus, the formation of the RCH. Research ist. ist-s, relating. to the Battle of the Ice, the Battle of Kulikovo, the struggle for the Neva banks, carried out by Ivan the Terrible and Peter I, the suppression of the resurrection. E. Pugacheva, etc.

11. Milov Leonid Vasilyevich (1929–2007). vyd. ross. historian. Academician. Head cafe Moscow State University. Pupil I.D. Kovalchenko. Foundation author. works in the field of social-ec. history of Russia from ancient times to the beginning. XX century, source study of fatherland history, quantitative history, founder of a major scientific. schools at the history department of Moscow State University. In recent decades, he headed the fatherlands. school of agricultural historians. In his writings, an original concept of Russian was created. history, explaining the key features of the Russian. ist. process by the influence of the natural-geographical factor. In the field of scientific interests also included: ancient Russian law, the origin of crepe. law in Russia, etc. Main tr. – “The Great Russian Ploughman and the Peculiarities of the Russian Historical Process”, in which he analyzed in detail the working conditions of a farmer in the Russian climate. With help statistical analysis of price dynamics in different regions of Russia, he showed that a single market has developed in Russia only by the end of the 19th century.

12. Nechkina Militsa Vasilievna(1901-1985) - a large owl. historian, academician Main scientific interests: history of ross. roar. movement and history ist. sciences: "A.S. Griboedov and the Decembrists" (1947), 2-volume "Decembrist Movement" (1955), "Vasily Osipovich Klyuchevsky. History of life and work" (1974), "Meeting of two generations" (1980), etc. Supervised the creation of the first generalizing work on the father. historiography "Essays on the history of the historical science of the USSR" (vols. 2-5) and a facsimile edition of the monuments of the Free Russian. printing houses "Bell", "Polar Star", "Voices from Russia", etc. Under her editorship. a series of documents came out. publ. - multi-volume "Rebellion of the Decembrists", etc.

13. Pokrovsky Mikhail Nikolaevich (1868 - 1932 ) - owls. historian, academician, organizer Marxist. ist. science in the country. OK. ist.-philologist. Faculty of Moscow. university Student V.O. Klyuchevsky. From 1918 - deputy. People's Commissar of Education of the RSFSR. He led the Communist Academy, the Institute of Red Professors, the Society of Marxist Historians, the Red Archive magazine, and others. The creator of the so-called. Pokrovsky School. At the heart of ist. representations - "the concept of trading capital". Author of textbooks. allowance "Russian history in the most concise essay" (1920) - a presentation of history from v. sp. class struggle (including "found" the struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie in ancient Novgorod). He pursued a rough, straightforward policy towards the old professorship. At the end of the 30s. The “school of the MNP” was repressed.

14.Boris Alexandrovich Romanov(1889-1957) - em. historian. OK. St. Petersburg. un-t. Student A.E. Presnyakov. Prof. LGU. He was arrested in the Platonov Case. Scientific interests: Kievan Rus, economic and diplomatic history of Russia in the Far East at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries. Proceedings: "Russia in Manchuria", "Essays on the diplomatic history of the Russian-Japanese war", "People and customs of Ancient Russia", edition of "Russian Truth" with comments. The book "People and mores of ancient Russia" is a kind of collective portrait of people and pictures of the mores of pre-Mongolian Russia based on a rigorous analysis of the sources of XI - early. 13th century In 1949 the book was subjected to unfounded criticism. R. b. fired from LSU.

15. Rybakov Boris Alexandrovich(1908-2001) - em. ross. archaeologist and historian, academician. Prof. Moscow State University. Creator of a major scientific school Main tr. on archeology, history, culture of the Slavs, etc. Russia. Many works R. contained the foundation. conclusions about the life, way of life and the level of socio-economic and cultural development of the population of Eastern Europe. For example, in the book The Craft of Ancient Russia (1948), he managed to trace the genesis and stages of development of handicrafts. production among the Eastern Slavs from the 6th to the 15th centuries, and so to reveal dozens of crafts. industries. In the monograph. "Dr. Russia. Legends. Epics. Chronicle" (1963) drew parallels between epic stories and Russian. annals. Research in detail. Old Russian Chronicle, subjected to a thorough analysis of the original news of the historian of the XVIII century V. N. Tatishchevai came to the conclusion that they are based on trustworthy ancient Russian sources. Thoroughly studied "The Tale of Igor's Campaign" and "The Tale of Daniil the Sharpener". Hypothesis, acc. which the Kyiv boyar Pyotr Borislavich was the author of "The Tale of P. Igor". In book. "Kievan Rus and Russian principalities in the XII-XIII centuries" (1982) attributed the beginning of the history of the Slavs to the XV century BC. e. Carried out large-scale excavations in Moscow, Veliky Novgorod, Zvenigorod, Chernigov, Pereyaslavl Russian, Belgorod Kiev, Tmutarakan, Putivl, Alexandrov and many others. others

Op.:"Antiquities of Chernigov" (1949); "The first centuries of Russian history" (1964); "Russian applied art of the X-XIII centuries" (1971); "The Tale of Igor's Campaign and His Contemporaries" (1971); "Russian chroniclers and the author of "The Tale of Igor's Campaign"" (1972); "Russian maps of Muscovy in the XV-beginning of the XVI centuries" (1974); "Herodot's Scythia. Historical and geographical analysis” (1979); "Paganism of the ancient Slavs" (1981); “Strigolniki. Russian humanists of the 14th century” (1993); ed. B. A. R. came out a very large scientific. works: the first six volumes of the "History of the USSR from ancient times", multi-volume - "Code of archaeological sources", "Archaeology of the USSR", "Complete collection of Russian chronicles", etc.

16. Samsonov Alexander Mikhailovich (1908-1992) - a major owl. historian, academician, specialist in science of World War II. OK. ist. Faculty of Leningrad State University. WWII participant. Since 1948 scientific. collaborator Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. In 1961–70 he was director of the publishing house of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (now the Nauka publishing house). Under his editorship. a series of documents came out. collections "The Second World War in Documents and Memoirs". Ch. editor of the Historical Notes. Main slave. on the history of the Second World War 1941-1945.

Op.: Great battle near Moscow. 1941‒1942, Moscow, 1958; Battle of Stalingrad, 2nd ed., M., 1968; From the Volga to the Baltic. 1942‒1945, 2nd ed., M., 1973.

17. Skrynnikov Ruslan Grigorievich– d.h.s., prof. St. Petersburg. university Student B.A. Romanova. One of myself. known specialists in history Russia in the 16th and 17th centuries "The Beginning of the Oprichnina" (1966), "The Oprichny Terror" (1969) - revised the concept of political. development of Russia in the 16th century, proving that the oprichnina was never an integral policy with uniform principles. At the first stage, the oprichnina dealt a blow to the princely nobility, but it maintained this focus for only a year. In 1567-1572. Grozny subjected Novgorod to terror. the nobility, the tops of the bureaucratic bureaucracy, the townspeople, that is, those layers that are composed. the backbone of the monarchy. S. research. foreign policy. and social. politics, economics Gr., development of Siberia. Monograph. "The Kingdom of Terror" (1992), "The Tragedy of Novgorod" (1994), "The Collapse of the Kingdom" (1995) and "The Great Sovereign Ivan Vasilievich the Terrible" (1997, in 2 volumes) are the pinnacle of the scientist's research. He established the exact chronology and circumstances of the conquest of Siberia ("Ermak's Siberian Expedition"), defended against attempts to declare a falsification of an outstanding monument watered. journalism, the correspondence between Grozny and Kurbsky (“The Paradoxes of Edward Keenan”), clarified many of the circumstances of the enslavement of the peasantry in c. XVI - early. XVII centuries., Described difficult. the nature of the relationship between the church and the state in Russia (“Prelates and authorities”). Interest in the era of the Time of Troubles - “Tsar Boris and Dmitry the Pretender” (1997). More than 50 monographs and books, hundreds of articles, many others belong to his pen. of them translated. in the USA, Poland, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Japan and China.

18. Tarle Evgeny Viktorovich(1874-1955) - em. historian, academician Genus. in the cupboard family. Arrest. on the "Case of Platonov". In the beginning. 30s restored in the position of prof. Naib. popular owl. historian after the publication of the "trilogy" - "Napoleon" (1936), "Napoleon's Invasion of Russia" (1937), "Talleyrand" (1939). He was not interested in schemes, but in people and events. Prof. Moscow State University and Institute of Intern. relations Nak. and during the Second World War he wrote works on vyd. generals and naval commanders: M. I. Kutuzov, F. F. Ushakov, P. S. Nakhimov and others. In 1941-43 publ. two-volume tr. "Crimean War" (revealed the diplomatic history of the war, its course and results, the state of the Russian army).

19. Tikhomirov Mikhail Nikolaevich (1893-1965) - graduate. historian, prof. Moscow State University, academician. OK. ist.-fil. Faculty of Moscow. un-t. Slave. at the Institute of History, Institute of Slavic Studies of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, chairman of the Archaeographic Commission. Main tr. on the history of Russia and the peoples of the USSR, as well as the history of Byzantium, Serbia, general Slavic problems, source studies, archeography, historiography. The generalizing work "Russia in the 16th century" (1962) is the foundation. contribution to ist. geography. The monographs and articles of T. reflect the themes of social economics, political. and cultural history of ancient Russian. cities, people's movements in Russia 11-17 centuries, the history of the state. feudal institutions. Russia, zemstvo councils of the 16th-17th centuries, office work. One of the leaders. specialists in the region paleography and species. At work, dedicated Russian truth, decided in a new way is important. problems associated with the creation of the monument. T. belongs to the merit of the revival of the publication of the series "Complete Collection of Russian Chronicles"; he published the “Cathedral Code of 1649”, “The Righteous Measure”, etc. B. by the leader of the owls. archeographers to find and describe unknown manuscripts; under his arms. the creation of a consolidated catalog of unique manuscripts stored in the USSR began. Manuscripts, collected. personally T., b. transferred to the Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

Op.: Russian culture of the X-XVIII centuries, M., 1968; Historical connections of Russia with the Slavic countries and Byzantium, M., 1969; The Russian state of the XV-XVII centuries, M., 1973; Ancient Russia, M., 1975; Research on Russian Truth. M.-L., 1941; Ancient Russian cities. M., 1946, 1956; Medieval Moscow in the XIV-XV centuries, M., 1957; Source study of the history of the USSR from ancient times to the end of the 18th century, M., 1962; Medieval Russia on international routes (XIV-XV centuries), M., 1966, etc.

20. Froyanov Igor Yakovlevich(1936) - ed. ross. historian, prof. Leningrad State University (St. Petersburg State University). Genus. in the family of a Kuban Cossack - the commander of the Red Army, who was repressed in 1937. Student V.V. Mavrodina. Leading special-t in i-ii rus. middle ages. Created a school of historians Dr. Russia. His concept of Kievan Rus survived in the Soviet years accusations of "anti-Marxism", "bourgeoisness", "forgetfulness of the formational and class approaches". It was formulated by F. in a number of scientific. monograph. - "Kievan Rus. Essays on socio-economic history” (1974), “Kievan Rus. Essays on socio-political history” (1980), “Kievan Rus. Essays on Russian historiography" (1990), "Ancient Russia" (1995), "Slavery and tributary among the Eastern Slavs" (1996), etc.

21. Cherepnin Lev Vladimirovich (1905-1977 ) - vyd. owls. historian, academician OK. Moscow un-t. Student S.V. Bakhrushina, D.M. Petrushevsky and others. The largest specialist in AI in Russian. middle ages. B. was repressed in the Platonov Case. From Ser. 30s slave. at Moscow State University, Moscow. state Historical and Archival Institute, Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Foundation. work on the I-II of the Russian centralized state state - "Russian feudal archives of the XIV-XV centuries" in 2 volumes (1948-1951). His slave. by prob. source studies ("Novgorod birch bark letters as a historical source" - 1969), social economics. and society.-watered. and-ii of Russia ("Formation of the Russian centralized state in the XIV-XVII centuries." - 1978, "Zemsky Sobors"), VIDam ("Russian paleography"), publ. ist. ist-s ("Spiritual and contractual letters of the great and appanage princes of the XIV - XVI centuries") made it possible to create their own. school and contribute means. contribution to the fatherland ist. science.

22.Yushkov Serafim Vladimirovich (1888-1952 ) - owls. historian of state and law, academician. OK. legal and historical philologist. f-you Petersburg. un-ta (1912). Prof. Moscow State University and Leningrad State University. Main works on the i-ii of state and law: "Feudal Relations and Kievan Rus" (1924), "The Socio-Political System and Law of the Kyiv State" (M., 1928), "Essays on the History of Feudalism in Kievan Rus" (1939 ), textbook "History of State and Law of the USSR" (1950). Special he contributed to the study. Russian Truth. Participant of all discussions on the history of Kievan Rus in the 20-50s. Academician B.D. Grekov. Created a theory. the basis of the science of the history of state and law, even its very name belongs to the scientist. Introduced into the father. historical and legal science the concept of a class-representative monarchy.