Vitaliy Vitalievich Tikhonov,
Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences , Moscow, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Documents of the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences on the failed All-Union Meeting on the Preparation of the Multi-Volume “History of the USSR” and the Histories of National Republics (1933−1934)
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2024-5-16
The purpose of the article is to reconstruct the project of organizing a meeting on the preparation of the All-Union history of the USSR, as well as the histories of the Union and autonomous republics, based on the office documentation of the Foundation of the Institute of History of the Communist Academy, stored in the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences (f. 359). This issue has not previously come to the attention of historians and has not been studied specifically in historiography. The analysis of this plot allows not only to fill a certain factual gap, but also to revise the stages of the process of creating national histories of the peoples of the USSR. Traditionally, it is attributed to the second half of the 1930s. The revealed documents suggest that it can be attributed to the first half of the 1930s. New sources reveal the stages of making a decision on the organization of the meeting, correspondence with republican scientific and historical centers. This project is considered as a step towards the centralization of Soviet historical science, building a “historiographical vertical”, at the top of which the Institute of History of the Communist Academy was supposed to be located, whose tasks were to coordinate and monitor the implementation of projects with significant independence of local scientific institutions that prepared the histories of the Union and autonomous republics. Thus, the series of publications was considered as the embodiment of a consolidating historical narrative built on general principles. The unifying symbols were historical and revolutionary events, class solidarity and the struggle against national oppression. On January 14, 1934, a joint meeting of the Institute of History of the Communist Academy and the Institute of Nationalities of the USSR of the CEC of the USSR was held, at which it was decided to convene a union-wide meeting. However, the meeting did not take place due to a sharp turn in historical politics in 1934, the symbol of which was a competition for school history textbooks. All the forces of historians were thrown into solving new problems, and after that there were noticeable ideological shifts. At the beginning of 1936 Institute of History of the Communist Academy (by merging with a number of other institutions) it was transformed into the Institute of History of the USSR Academy of Sciences, which became the successor of projects to create a generalizing history of the USSR and individual national histories of the peoples of the USSR.
Publishing: 28/10/2024
The article has been received by the editor on 30/06/2024
How to cite: Tikhonov V.V. Documents of the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences on the failed All-Union Meeting on the Preparation of the Multi-Volume “History of the USSR” and the Histories of National Republics (1933−1934) // Historical Courier, 2024, No. 5 (37), pp. 209–216. [Available online: http://istkurier.ru/data/2024/ISTKURIER-2024-5-16.pdf]
Links: Issue 5 2024
Keywords: Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences; Institute of History of the Communist Academy; History of the Peoples of the USSR; meeting on the preparation of the All-Union history of the USSR