Aleksey Georgievich Teplyakov,
Candidate of Historical Sciences, Senior Researcher, Institute of History of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Siberian Partisans of G.F. Rogov in Modern Historiography: Between Myth and Historical Criticism
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2021-6-16
The article is devoted to the problems of mythologization and demythologization of the activities of the anarchist partisans of the Siberian ataman G. Rogov in the Soviet and post-Soviet historiography. The Red partisans of the Civil War still remain the most mythologized participants in the Russian confrontation. If the shadow sides of the activities of the Soviet partisans of the Second World War are actively studied, then the rebels of the Civil War era usually still appear under an idealized guise of fighters against exploiters and interventionists. It is characteristic that in Soviet and Russian historiography there has been a struggle between apologists and critics of the Red partisans over 100 years. Paradoxically, the assessments of Rogov’s partisans, known for their atrocities, mass murders and robberies, were more objective in the early Soviet period. Even then, a relatively adequate historiographical canon was formed, which was attacked by some researchers in the late Soviet period. These historians reject the information about the extreme brutality of Rogov’s partisans and believe that they should be rehabilitated as honest and brave fighters for the power of the Soviets. The controversy of apologists and critics of ataman Rogov has been particularly active in the last third of the century, and fans of this partisan are numerically predominant. Despite the publication of a large number of revealing materials, historians who sympathize with anarchism are trying to whitewash Rogov. It can be considered proven that their cohesion and publication activity form a positive attitude towards Rogov in the scientific community. However, the publications of recent years, which are based on objective archival material, suggest that historians are moving to a more critical position regarding the numerous crimes of the G.F. Rogov detachment. The author of this article also introduces unknown archive documents about the crimes of the Rogov detachment at the end of 1919, especially during the capture of Kuznetsk and Shcheglovsk in Kuzbass.
Publishing: 28/12/2021
The article has been received by the editor on 03/12/2021
How to cite: Teplyakov A.G. Siberian Partisans of G.F. Rogov in Modern Historiography: Between Myth and Historical Criticism // Historical Courier, 2021, No. 6 (20), pp. 193–204. [Available online: http://istkurier.ru/data/2021/ISTKURIER-2021-6-16.pdf]
Links: Issue 6 2021
Keywords: G.F. Rogov; I.P. Novoselov; anarchists; partisans; pogroms; murders; historiography; apologetics; criticism
The research was funded by RFBR and the Novosibirsk region, project number 20-49-540006.