Daniil Olegovich Nikulin,
Candidate of Historical Sciences, 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.
Struggling Against Myth-Creating in The Study of the First World War as an Answer to a Social Request
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2022-1-2
In the present day the problem of using historical knowledge for the needs of society is more urgent than ever: the collapse of the Soviet propaganda and historical paradigm led the Russian society to the search for a new identity, naturally turning to the past. Firstly, both cultural works and historical research turned to the themes of the Civil War, remaining familiar from the Soviet era, but in the recent years, in connection with the past centenary of the First World War, interest in that has naturally increased as well. The presence of a certain lack of information and clichéd formulations in Soviet historiography on the subject has set the task of combating what is perceived as Soviet “myths”: allegations of the imperialistic, predatory nature of the war, not disclosing some of the military successes of hostilities and the patriotic impulse at the beginning of the war etc. The article deals with to the shortcomings and contradictions of this struggle, expressed in the replacement of old historiographic myths with new ones, which are caused by the need of the state and society for a new identity; also, differences of the perceptions of the authors on the tasks they face, including obviously different opinions on which myth should be fought exactly, and the status of authors and their publications. From our own point of view, the most dangerous element of the interaction of a professional historian with the needs of society is the deformation of historical knowledge under the influence of the social demand of the current moment; being thus anchored in historical science, short-term social demand gets to directly influence historical memory.
Publishing: 28/02/2022
The article has been received by the editor on 30.11.2021
How to cite: Nikulin D.O. Struggling Against Myth-Creating in The Study of the First World War as an Answer to a Social Request // Historical Courier, 2022, No. 1 (21), pp. 22–29. [Available online: http://istkurier.ru/data/2022/ISTKURIER-2022-1-02.pdf]
Links: Issue 1 2022
Keywords: World War I, myth-making, propaganda, distortion of historical knowledge, social need