Soviet «Founding Myth»: change of milestones in the 1930’s
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.22240/sent36.01.083Keywords:
Stalin, historical grand narrative, Founding Myth, Soviet patriotism, history, legitimation, propaganda, nationalismAbstract
The author debates with the concept of the Soviet ideological turn (mid-30's) as a simple means of pre-war mobilization (David Brandenberger). The paper argues that in the 1930’s the Bolsheviks refused to «national nihilism» and mouved to the national Great Russian position. First – within the «Soviet patriotism», then – according to the Russian historical grand-narrative. This transition was caused by the need to involve in the process of modernization as wide population as possible, especially those who were not too inspired heroism «new era». The choice of historical figures and events of the past was dictated by the need to strengthen one-man rule of Stalin. Historians and artists, formed in the 1930's, took the leading role in science and in the creative unions in 1960-70's, which allowed the Soviet establishment to prevent the radical rejection of Stalin's legacy, to curtail the timid attempts to rethink the historical grand-narrative and to form among the so-called "Russian party".References
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XVI Congress of the CPSU (b). Stenogr. report. [In Russian]. (1931). Moscow, & Leningrad: GIZ.
Brandenberger, D. (2002). National Bolshevism: Stalinist Mass Gulture and the Formation of Modern Russian National Identity. 1931-1956. Cambridge, MA, & London, Eng.: Hаrvard UP.
Brandenberger, D. (2010). Stalin's populism and the accidental creation of Russian national identity. Nationalities Papers, 38(5), 723-739. https://doi.org/10.1080/00905992.2010.498464
Brandenberger, D. (2015, 5 жовтня). "Simplistic, Preudosocialist Racism": Debates over the Direction of Soviet Ideology within Stalin's Creative Intelligentsia (1936-1939). [In Ukrainian]. Historians. Retrieved from http://www.historians.in.ua/index.php/en/doslidzhennya/1648-devid-brandenberger-sproshchenyi-psevdosotsialistychnyi-rasyzm-debaty-pro-napriam-radianskoi-ideolohii-u-seredovyshchi-stalinskoi-tvorchoi-%20intelihentsii-1936-1939-roky
Bukharin, N. (1936, January 21). Our leader, our teacher, our father. [In Russian]. Izvestia, 18. Retrieved from http://dmitrystogov.livejournal.com/29041.html
Central Committee of the CPSU (b). (1938, November 19). On the organization of party propaganda in connection with the release of the "Short Course of the History of the CPSU (b). [In Russian]. Stalinetz, 53. Retrieved from http://elibrary.sgu.ru/Gazet/Univer/1938_11_19.pdf
Clark, K. (2011). Moscow, the Fourth Rome: Stalinism, Cosmopolitanism, and the Evolution of Soviet Culture, 1931-1941. Cambridge: Harvard UP. https://doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674062894
Dimitrov, G. (1997). Diary: March 1933 - February 1949. Selected passages. [In Bulgarian]. Sofia: “St. Kliment Ohridski” UP.
Dymerskaya, L. (1985). Remarks on history, or history, created by remarks. [In Russian]. Strana i Mir, 12, 43-50.
Faction of the Council of the Society of Marxist Historians. (1931). On the tasks of Marxist historical science in the reconstructive period. Theses of the faction of the Council of the Society of Marxist Historians. [In Russian]. Istorik-marxist, 21, 8-17. Retrieved from http://libmonster.ru/m/articles/view/ТЕЗИСЫ-ФРАКЦИИ-СОВЕТА-ОБЩЕСТВА-ИСТОРИКОВ-МАРКСИСТОВ-О-ЗАДАЧАХ-МАРКСИСТСКОЙ-ИСТОРИЧЕСКОЙ-НАУКИ-В-РЕКОНСТРУКТИВНЫЙ-ПЕРИОД
Hrushevsky, M. (1904). Common scheme of “Russian” history and the task of rational structure of the Eastern Slavs history. [In Ukrainian]. In V. I. Lamansky (Ed.), Articles on Slavic Studies (Issue I, pp. 298-304). St. Petersburg: Imp. Academy of Sciences Press.
Kotkin, S. (2015). Stalin: Volume I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928. London: Penguin Books.
Larin, Yu. (1924). Intelligentsia and Soviets. The economy, the bourgeoisie, the revolution, the state apparatus. [In Russian]. Moscow: Gosizdat.
Litvin, A. L. (Ed.). (2009). Diary of the historian S. A. Piontkovsky (1927-1934). [In Russian]. Kazan: Kazan State University.
Lunacharsky, A.V. (1918). On the teaching of history in the communist school: A lecture delivered at the September pedagogical courses in Petrograd in 1918. [In Russian]. Petrograd.
Maksimenkov, L.V. (1997). Confusion instead of music. Stalin's Cultural Revolution, 1936-1938. [In Russian]. Moscow: Yuridičeskaya kniga.
Milyukov, P. N. (2004). The greatness and fall of Pokrovsky (Episode from the history of science in the USSR). [In Russian]. Almanac "East", 12(24). Retrieved from http://www.situation.ru/app/j_art_785.htm
Nemchynov, I. G. (2010). Narrative Identity. Sources of the Russian Great Historical Narrative. Kyiv: NP Dragomanov UP.
Pankratova, A. M. (1942). Historical science in the USSR for 25 years (1917-1942). [In Russian]. Historical Journal, 10, 31-48.
Platt, K. М. F. (2006). Rehabilitation and Afterimage: Aleksei Tolstoi's Many Returns to Peter the Great. In K. M. F. Platt, & D. Brandenberger (Eds.), Epic Revisionism: Russian History and Literature as Stalinist Propaganda (pp. 47-68). Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Stalin, I. V. (1951). To Comrade Demian Bedny (excerpts from the letter). In J. V. Stalin, Works (V. 13, pp. 23-27). [In Russian]. Moscow: GIPL.
Starovsky, V. N. (Ed.). (1940). Cultural construction in the USSR. (Statistical compendium). [In Russian]. Moscow, & Leningrad: Gosplanizdat.
Timasheff, N. (1946). The Great Retreat: The Growth and Decline of Communism in Russia. New York: Dutton.
Valitsky, A. (1999). Marxism and the leap at the kingdom of freedom. History of communist utopia. [In Ukrainian]. Kyiv: Vsesvit.
XVI Congress of the CPSU (b). Stenogr. report. [In Russian]. (1931). Moscow, & Leningrad: GIZ.
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2017-06-16
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Nemchynov, I. (2017). Soviet «Founding Myth»: change of milestones in the 1930’s. Sententiae, 36(1), 83–92. https://doi.org/10.22240/sent36.01.083
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