2008.02.002. HISTORIOGRAPHY OF STALINISM / Ed. Simony NA. - M.: ROSSPEN, 2007. - 480 p.

Key words: historiography, Stalinism, history of the USSR, Stalin I.V., totalitarianism, authoritarian power, political system of society.

The collection opens with an article by M.I. Smirnova and I.A. Dmitrieva “Sociocultural origins of Stalinism: historiographical discourse.” In the existing extensive historiography of Stalinism, the authors identify the following topics: 1) methodological approaches to the problem of Stalinism; 2) the formation of Stalinism; 3) Stalin's personality. Of the many works devoted to the theoretical aspects of the nature of Stalin's rule, the concept of A. S. Akhiezer, exploring the origins and essence of Stalinism through sociocultural mechanisms, is analyzed in detail. The authors of the article believe that this concept has significant flaws: when changing its form, it retains the essential features of the methodology of Stalinism; does not clearly explain the reasons for the emergence of new values; “shamefully” drags materialism into the framework of idealism, which lacks the resources to explain social phenomena; leads to an a priori conclusion about the primacy of ideal factors in the development of the historical process (p. 15).

Considering the topic “The Formation of Stalinism,” the authors highlight several concepts. O.R. Latsis explains the origin of Stalinism based on the objective history and politics of the late 1920s. In the concept of G. A. Trukan, the struggle within the Bolshevik Party is given first place, as a result of which, instead of representatives of the old “Leninist guard,” poorly educated, desperate, cruel politicians came to form the support of authoritarianism. The paragraph “Stalin’s Personality” notes the polarization of assessments that reigns both in historical science and in journalism: from unbridled praise of the “leader of the peoples” during his lifetime to the stigma of a “murderer and criminal.”

The publication “The History of Studying and Understanding the Process of the Origin and Formation of Autocracy in Soviet Russia” (S.V. Devyatov) describes and analyzes the most typical works on the history of power in the USSR in the period 1920-1990s of the 20th century. The first paragraph, “Literature of the 1920s as a tool of internal party struggle during the formation of a system of autocracy,” is devoted to the works of V. Lenin, N. Bukharin, L. Trotsky, A. Rykov. The author explains this by the fact that “... the main researchers of the issues of internal party struggle were the Bolshevik leaders themselves, who took the most active and direct part in it” (p. 32). The second paragraph, “The Soviet period in the history of studying the process of establishing autocracy in Russia,” covers the 1930s - mid. 1980s. The author believes that a distinctive feature of this time is that the specific ideological or practical task of the leader or party determined both assessments in the scientific literature and directions of research. The final paragraph, “Methodological changes in Russian historical literature since the late 1980s,” notes the genre and research diversity of the works. The author emphasizes the contribution made by foreign researchers S. Cohen, E. Carr, R. Tucker, M. Wener in the creation of new approaches in historiography. Russian scientists began to actively study and develop the genre of political biography. More attention is paid to the problems of forming a system of autocracy and internal party struggle.

“Stalinism and the industrial breakthrough: the main trends in Soviet and post-Soviet historiography” (I.B. Orlov). The first stage of historiography is the 1930-1950s - the formation and consolidation of the Stalinist version of the country's industrialization. In the works of this period, archival documents and periodicals are practically not used, the historiographical base is weak, and the analysis and conclusions are superficial and dogmatic. The second stage - 1950-1980s - is characterized by an expansion of the source base and research methods used. Collections of documents on industrialization were published, for example, “History of industrialization of the USSR. 1926-1941”, the number of studies has increased (the works of V.I. Kuzmin, V.K. Bagdasarov, B.A. Abramov, etc. are considered). The third stage - 1985-1991. - time of completion of the Soviet

tradition and the final destruction of the Stalinist interpretation of industrialization. Often, the works of publicists and scientists (Yu. Karyakin, N. Shmelev, D. Volkogonov) initiated the process of scientific rethinking of the Stalinist period. The fourth stage - 1992-2005. - marked by the emergence of various concepts in the coverage of this process. Works have been published showing changes in the material and spiritual culture of the working class during the years of the first five-year plans, collections of documents have been published, and studies have been published highlighting previously unexplored aspects of industrialization.

The article “Socialist experiment in the village: historiographic assessments of the phenomenon of collectivization in the USSR” (author - V.L. Telitsyn) identifies several periods of historiography. 1) The end of the 1920s - the beginning of the 1950s - the time of the formation and development of the orthodox trend in historiography; the works were mainly of a propaganda nature and were kept in line with those outlined in articles and brochures written by the top officials of the party and state. 2) The second half of the 1950s - mid-1960s - research appeared based on archival and documentary materials, showing the “excesses” and cruelty of the ongoing reforms. But, the author of the article emphasizes, collectivization was still viewed as an inevitable process, just as the victims of its implementation were inevitable. Stalin's policy was already interpreted as “voluntaristic” and “subjective.” 3) The second half of the 1960s - the mid-1980s is the time of the historical “renaissance” of Stalinism. Historians shifted their attention to the socio-economic aspects of collectivization, “removing the figure of Stalin from under attack.” The main emphasis was on studying the process of collectivization itself, the class struggle, and dispossession. 4) The end of the 1980s - the present - is characterized by the emergence of new directions in historiography: 1) liberal-radical anti-Stalinism - evaluates collectivization as the practical embodiment of the dictator’s ideas; 2) moderate socialist - socialism is positively assessed, but Stalin’s policies are criticized; 3) representatives of the orthodox movement continue to assert that Stalinism is the only true path for the socio-economic and political development of the country.

Three articles by V.E. Bagdasaryan are devoted to individual problems of Stalinism. “Shot in Smolny: conspiracy or “tragic accident”? - analysis of existing versions of the murder of S.M. in historiography. Kirov. “The mysterious thirty-seventh”: the experience of historiographic modeling” - various models of the “great terror” are presented: the “self-destruction of revolutionaries” model was developed by R. Orlova, A. Akhiezer, A. Solzhenitsyn; “Stalinist usurpation of power” - R. Medvedev, J. Hosking; “pathological personality” - M. Shatrov, R. Tucker, B. Ilizarov. Along with them, other models are also considered: “personnel rotation”, “witch hunt”, etc. The article “Conspiracy in the Red Army: historiographical discourse about the “case of M.N. Tukhachevsky”” shows that in historical literature there are several versions explaining the repressions in the Red Army in the late 1930s.

M.I. Meltyukhov, in his article “The Prehistory of the Great Patriotic War in Modern Russian Historiography,” pays attention to new directions in research on the eve of the Second World War. In the study of the pre-war political crisis, the Anglo-French-Soviet negotiations and the Soviet-German non-aggression pact occupy a significant place. If there are no significant disagreements in the coverage of the progress of the negotiations, then the issue of responsibility for their termination is still debated. In the traditional version, the blame is placed on England for secret negotiations with Germany. Another concept emphasizes the mutual distrust of the negotiating parties. The Soviet-German Pact also causes mixed assessments: some scientists assess it as a success of Soviet diplomacy, others as a forced step. Scientists continue to debate whether there were alternatives to the pact. In the historiography of the foreign policy of the USSR, M. Meltyukhov notes little-studied topics: the USSR's relations with Great Britain, France and Japan have been studied fragmentarily, and Soviet-Italian and Soviet-American relations still remain in the shadows.

A.E. Larionov, in the article “The Trial of the Generalissimo: Contemporary Discussions about Stalin’s Role in the Great Patriotic War,” reconstructs the exculpatory arguments found in the literature on the charges brought against Stalin as a military leader and statesman. The author believes that

The unconditional dominance of anti-Stalinist concepts is being replaced by a reverse trend, balancing the first. He considers the most appropriate general assessment of Stalin’s actions, presented in one of the university textbooks. It emphasizes his strong-willed and military abilities, approves the transition to a policy of state patriotism and cooperation with the church, and stipulates the complexity and ambiguity of his personality.

Several articles are devoted to the problems of the historiography of ethnic politics during the period of Stalinism. A. A. Androsov, in the article “The Tragedy of Nations: Collaborationism and Ethnic Deportations in Historical Literature,” examines how the study of military cooperation, civil collaboration, and deportation of peoples arose and developed. In the 1940-1950s, the topic of deportation was not touched upon at all in historical scholarship. During the years of rehabilitation processes, separate publications about the deportation of some peoples of the Caucasus and other ethno-social groups became possible. Soviet works of the 1960-1970s were few in number and had a pronounced ideological character. The multifaceted exploration of the themes of collaboration, deportation and repatriation began in the 1980s and continues to the present day. The largest number of works is devoted to the deportation of the peoples of the North Caucasus and Crimea, fewer works are devoted to the resettlement of the Baltic peoples, Belarusians, and Ukrainians.

In the article by A.A. Danilov “I.V. Stalin in 1946-1953: new sources and attempts at comprehension” examines the post-war evolution of the political regime, the influence of interpersonal relationships of political figures on decision-making in foreign and domestic policy.

YES. Amanzholova in the material “Stalinism in National Politics: Some Issues of Historiography” analyzes works on the process of formation of the USSR and nation formation and works examining specific examples of the formation and functioning of Soviet unitarianism.

In the material by B.I. Povarnitsyn “Historiography of Stalin’s ethnopolitics: from political conjuncture to scientific knowledge” analyzes domestic and Anglo-American “Soviet research”. Povarnitsyn emphasizes that initially Soviet research was strongly influenced by political

tic factors, therefore, Stalin’s role in ethnopolitics was presented as dominant, then in the 1960-1980s, the apologetics of Stalin was replaced by the apologetics of the CPSU. At the same time, the topics and specialization of research have significantly expanded. The main place in them was occupied by such topics as the theory of nations under socialism, the state and legal status of republics and autonomies, the history of the formation of Soviet federalism, etc. Subsequently, in Russian historiography, interest arose in the history of autonomies and non-ethnic administrative units, in the history of individual ethnic groups: Russian Germans, Jews, etc.

In Anglo-American historiography of the 1920-1930s, assessments of Soviet nationality policy ranged from apologetic (A. Strong, L. Barnes) to restrained (K. Lamont, S. B. Webb). The 1940s-1990s are a time of simultaneous dominance of politicized Sovietology and the development of regional studies and regional studies. A significant place in the works of foreign scientists was given to the history of individual peoples of the USSR. At the present stage, works have appeared in Russian and foreign science that consider ethnopolitics in connection with the foreign and domestic policies of the state (S. Cheshko, R. Sunyi).

A fundamentally new scientific environment - Internet resources - is the subject of the article by S.I. Kornienko “Sources for studying the problems of the history of Stalin and Stalinism on the Internet.” The websites of large domestic and foreign scientific and information centers, various databases of photo and video materials, and websites dedicated to Stalinism are considered.

The collection ends with an article by N.A. Simony “Was there a real alternative to the Stalinist dictatorship?”, dedicated to discussions during perestroika about alternative aspects of the country’s history.

There is one remarkable scene in Mikhail Romm’s film “Lenin in October”. The worker Vasily brings a whole stack of fresh newspapers to Lenin, who is hiding in a safe house. However, Lenin remains dissatisfied with the fact that there is no Black Hundred newspaper among the newspapers. “You need to know your enemies!

STALIN'S MODEL

Transferring this principle to historical ground, we must also realize that in order to study the Stalinist period, we will one way or another have to familiarize ourselves with and understand the provisions in Western historical science.

It seems to me that the importance of this approach lies not so much in mastering specific facts, but in finding new impetuses for understanding the Stalinist period, or even confirming our view of the Soviet era. It would seem, how can Western historians share our views? In this case, I would like to give a specific example. The head of the department of East European history at the Humboldt University in Berlin, Jörg Baberowski, who even compared to other Western historians stands out for his extreme anti-Sovietism, writes: “The Russian communists were sophisticated students of the age of Reason and Enlightenment (hereinafter it is emphasized by me): what nature missed , must be replenished by human hands.

And everything that did not meet the requirements of reason, as the Bolsheviks understood it, had to disappear from the face of the earth. Socialism in no way refuted the main idea of ​​modernism; on the contrary, it strived for its true implementation.” So, the German historian considers the Bolsheviks to be students of the era of enlightenment, striving for the true implementation of modernity. For the Russian Svanids and Pivovarovs, recognizing the Bolsheviks as continuers of the work of Voltaire, Leibniz, and Montesquieu would be an insurmountable ideological barrier. I note that in terms of modernity, this statement is fully consistent with the provisions of the Essence of Time (the differences are only in assessments).

Further, I will not dwell in detail on the research and conclusions of individual Western historians. It seems to me that it is much more important to outline the genesis of the development of Western historiography of Stalinism using the example of the two most striking scientific movements. I will take the United States as a country, since the United States had the strongest influence in the formation of historiography about the USSR in other Western countries.

Active study of the Stalin era began after the end of World War II within the disciplines of Russian studies and Soviet and Communist studies, better known as Sovietology. Sovietology was strongly tailored to the needs of the Cold War, which determined its exceptional ideologization. Real knowledge about the history of the USSR was needed to the extent that it corresponded to the needs of the ongoing war in its propaganda and political directions. For the American political elite, it was important to understand what kind of enemy they were facing. What is its military and economic potential?

How institutions function. What is the personnel policy and how are decisions made in the highest echelons of power? What is the relationship between the people and the government? Studying Soviet history was supposed to help in understanding the Soviet present. However, the Iron Curtain policy prevented the flow of current and historical information, and there were few own sources for studying Soviet history. The main sources were: the Hoover archive, founded during the Volga famine of 1921, the Trotsky archive, various emigrant archives and the official Soviet press. The main trump card for studying Stalinism was the Smolensk party archive. He was captured by the Germans during the Great Patriotic War, and in 1945 he ended up in Bavaria, in the American zone of occupation. Actually, during the Cold War, most of the works on Stalinist topics were written on his materials. The narrow base of sources, on the one hand, greatly limited American historians, on the other hand, gave freedom for a wide variety of interpretations and conjectures.

There was also a staffing problem. There weren't that many people who studied the Soviet Union. Therefore, even historians were included in the staff of political analysts. Thus, the prominent American Russian historian Richard Pipes got along quite well in the role of head of a group of so-called analysts. Team B The group was formed on the initiative of CIA Director George W. Bush (the same future US President) in 1976. Its task was to evaluate the latest military strategic developments of the USSR. Pipes was far from the only one who willingly went to serve his country. Quite a number of American historians have used their positions as consultants and experts to the political establishment to enhance their financial status and influence in academic circles. State, etc. public organizations like the Rockefeller Foundation and the Ford Foundation provided them with adequate funding and prestigious jobs at Stanford, Yale, Harvard and Princeton. David Engerman defined the dual position of American historians as: “serving both, Mars (meaning the militant state) and Minerva (meaning science).” Service to Mars inevitably affected the direction of scientific publications. Sometimes the historian’s knowledge was used in specific actions of information warfare. So in 1984, historian Robert Conquest published for the Reagan election campaign a kind of practical guide called “What to Do When the Russians Come?” In it, a doctor of historical sciences from Stanford University outlined the consequences of a possible Soviet occupation with all of this (according to the author) ensuing consequences, such as: robbery of the population, murder, famine and mass rape. In this vein, the skepticism of the Soviet side regarding people from elite US universities seems quite natural. Recalling this time, American historian Lynn Viola wrote: “It comes as no surprise to me that... the councils routinely viewed exchange students as spies, especially if they were from Harvard...”

The dominant theory among American Sovietologists was the theory of totalitarianism. I believe that most are familiar with this theory. I will limit myself to only a brief enumeration of its central provisions. According to this concept, a totalitarian state means a system of personal power of a dictator based on a single party with mass social support. Control of power is exercised through a repressive and bureaucratic apparatus, censorship of the media and a ban on private property. In its earliest version, the theory was formulated by Hannah Arendt. On American soil, it was consistently developed by Harvard University employees Carl Joachim Friedrich and Zbigniew Brzezinski. The theory of totalitarianism helped bring Nazism and Stalinism under one roof, while conveniently leaving liberalism (i.e., the United States itself) out of the discussion. The US authorities quickly assessed the role that the totalitarian approach could play in the ideological confrontation with the USSR. By the sixties, representatives of the totalitarian trend were firmly entrenched in almost all the cadres of the political elite. The language of the US political establishment to this day carries the pronounced terminology of this theory. Karl Deutsch, Peter Kenez, Adam Ulam, Martin Malia and the already mentioned Conquest and Brzezinski became the most famous representatives of this trend. Conquest's work The Great Terror has become a classic of totalitarian theory. It cannot be said that the dominance of the totalitarian school was associated only with the support of the US authorities. Its successful advancement was facilitated by the absence of other coherent theories. The concept of totalitarianism was captivating in its ease of understanding and ease of application. Adherents of totalitarian theory often sinned with excessive universalism, trying to apply their principles right back to antiquity.

However, the theory of totalitarianism has not always met with positive responses in scientific circles. According to historian John Arch Getty, the imposition of a totalitarian concept sometimes resembled church liturgy. Historians who worked outside of this theory may have encountered stiff opposition. When the historian Manuel Sarkisyants, in the early 50s, tried to publish his articles on the British origins of Nazi ideology, which ran counter to the theory of totalitarianism, he came across warnings from his colleagues and the ubiquitous lack of interest from scientific publishers.

Historians of the totalitarian school:

Robert Conquest Adam Ulam

The dominance of the totalitarian school continued until the end of the sixties. The US defeat in Vietnam and the civil and student movements gave rise to a new cohort of historians. The new direction in American historiography was not recognized as such for a long time. Only in 1986, Sheila Fitzpatrick’s article became a kind of manifesto for a new direction, which is commonly called Revisionism. There, Fitzpatrick drew the battle line between totalitarians and revisionists. According to Fitzpatrick, the main controversy was in the methodological area. Supporters of the totalitarian model preferred to consider the Stalinist period from the position of the state and the political elite, i.e. from above, the revisionists, on the contrary, primarily looked at Soviet society and its interactions with the authorities, i.e. below. In this sense, the revisionists were strongly influenced by the French historical tradition of Marc Bloch's school of annals. Ultimately, the revisionists were never able to develop something like a single coherent theory like the representatives of totalitarianism. The only thing that united the revisionists into one movement was sociological methodology and rejection of the model of totalitarianism.

Considering the main directions of revisionist research, the following points can be highlighted:

1. Revisionists pointed to the high social mobility of Soviet society. There were social groups (beneficiaries) who benefited from Stalin's policies. Privileges could be expressed both in an increase in material level and in social prestige: Stakhanovites, closed distributors for the nomenklatura, MTS for collective farmers, etc. The revisionists also emphasized the mobilization role of Soviet ideology in carrying out political and economic transformations. In her monograph, Lynn Viola showed the importance of the so-called. movement of 25,000 for the providence of collectivization. Contrary to the then prevailing opinion about the cruelly imposed idea of ​​collectivization from above, Viola defended the position that the workers heading to the village fully shared the expediency of collectivization. Thus, the Stalinist state secured support among groups of the population. In the totalitarian model, the people played a rather passive role. Any initiatives from above were of a coercive and repressive nature. Supporters of totalitarianism did not consider mass support for Stalinism from below. By supplementing their research into groups supporting the Stalinist course with research on groups opposing the state, the revisionists proved the heterogeneity of Soviet society.

2. A particularly acute stumbling block was the differences over the issue of Stalin's repressions. From the point of view of totalitarianism, terror was a tool to strengthen the personal power of Stalin and the Communist Party. The source of terror was naturally Stalin personally. The monograph by historian John Arch Getty became a real provocation. In his monograph, Getty examined repression from the point of view of the struggle of the center with the ineffective bureaucratic apparatus of the periphery. Moreover, according to Getty, Stalin was not necessarily the initiator of the repressions. Getty believed that part of the regional party and state apparatus was no less interested in unleashing repression. Later in Russia, Getty’s idea of ​​a center-periphery conflict was picked up by historian Yu.N. Zhukov . Getty was also one of the first to question the millions of victims of Stalin's terror, but due to the lack of access to archives at that time, Getty went to the other extreme and greatly downplayed them. Supporters of totalitarianism saw Getty's conclusions as absolving Stalin of responsibility for the repressions. At the same time, Getty's concept provided for the presence of other government entities, in the form of regional party-bureaucratic groups. This provision put an end to the model of totalitarianism, since the presence of such groups actually meant that the USSR was not a totalitarian state.

Historians Revisionists:

Sheila Fitzpatrick John Arch

The nature of the discussion that ensued went far beyond the decency of ordinary academic debates. Supporters of totalitarianism perceived the ideas of the revisionists not only as criticism of their theory, but also as an attack on the sacred stones of the American worldview and world order. Accordingly, the rebuff to the revisionists was often given in a very harsh form. Assessing the level of discussion of those years, Lynn Viola wrote: “Despite the fact that the enemy in the American Cold War was the Soviet Union, I have always wondered why American Sovietologists, in their internal wars, are so reminiscent of the Stalinists (Trotskyism = revisionism), turning all debates into binaries and marginalizing all voices outside the mainstream.” The practice of labeling has become widespread. Revisionists were accused of communism, apologetics for Stalin, and even Holocaust denial. Richard Pipes stated: “I ignore their (revisionist) works. How can you fight people who deny the Holocaust? It's the same as if someone believes that the earth is flat." This was an outright lie. The revisionists had no special sympathy for Stalin (quite the contrary) and never denied the Holocaust.

Despite such pressure, the influence of the revisionists grew

Proponents of the revisionist approach quickly appeared in Western Europe. Perestroika played a cruel joke on the revisionists. The revisionists saw in Gorbachev's new course confirmation of their concept that the Soviet system was not static totalitarian and was quite capable of political evolution. But it was thanks to perestroika that the theory of totalitarianism became most widespread in Russia, just at the moment when its decline was evident in the West. Perhaps, almost the only work of revisionists published in the USSR was the book by Stephen Cohen (who can only be classified as a revisionist with a stretch) about Bukharin. The reason for the publication, in my opinion, stemmed from the then historical policy of M.S. Gorbachev and A.N. Yakovlev - to strike good Bukharin at bad Stalin. It was quite natural. For the ideological war waged by Russian liberals against the Soviet past, the concept of totalitarianism was much more convenient. Although the destruction of the Soviet Union provided the revisionists with long-desired access to the Soviet archives, at the same time revisionism remained outside the framework of Russian public discourse. As a result, the terminology of the totalitarian school reigned unhindered in the Russian media of the 90s. Quite a large number of Russian historians, especially those who are closely associated with the Memorial society, switched to the position of totalitarianism. Only after 2000, when the train had already left, some revisionist works were translated into Russian, but they no longer had the desired effect.

The end of the Cold War led to a noticeable softening of the debate between the totalitarian and revisionist trends. This is also due to the reorientation of American geopolitics towards the Middle and Far East. According to Lynn Viola, totalitarianism was replaced by the concept of the clash of civilizations, Pipes was replaced by Huntington. Some historians talk about post-revisionism and post-totalitarianism, but it seems to me that it is premature to talk about a complete blurring of these two concepts. After all, the followers of totalitarianism retained for themselves the instrument of shaping the consciousness of the US political elite. The fact that these gentlemen are now stubbornly teaching Farsi and talking about the totalitarian nature of the regimes of Gaddafi and Assad does not mean that tomorrow they will not begin to remember Russian again. The formula of Mars and Minerva remains valid.

Returning to the words of Romm’s Lenin, I would like to call for a detailed mastery of the developments of the revisionists. Yes, the revisionists did not have any special sympathy for the Soviet Union, and sometimes despised everything Soviet. But just as Berdyaev, hating the Bolsheviks, was able to discover an interesting side in it (essentially restoring the connection between Russian Orthodox culture and the Soviet project), so the revisionists were able to discover many interesting aspects of the Stalin era. The revisionist approach is by far the most thorough rebuff to the theory of totalitarianism, so popular among Russian liberals. If you learn to isolate the anti-Soviet judgments of revisionists, concentrating on the semantic and factual core, then you can gain knowledge, and therefore weapons, to fight the dominance of the totalitarian approach in Russia.

The scientific heritage of American and European revisionists is too large to fit into the framework of one article. Therefore, I hope that I was able not only to conduct a mini excursion into the American historiography of Stalinism, but also to show how contradictory, diverse the notorious Western view of Soviet history is, and what potential it contains.

Sources

Jörg Baberowski: Red Terror. History of Stalinism. Moscow, 2007, p.12.

David C. Engerman: Know Your Enemy: The Rise and Fall of America’s Soviet Experts. Oxford University Press 2009, p.2.

Robert Conquest, Jon Manchip White: What to Do When the Russians Come: A Survivor’s Guide, by Conquest and Jon Manchip White. New York, 1984.

Lynne Viola: The Cold War within Cold War, in: Kritika. Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, Vol.12, Num. 3, 2011, pp. 689-690.

Robert Conquest: The Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the Thirties. New York, 1968.

John Arch Getty: Comments: Codes and Confessions, in Slavic Review, vol. 67, num. 3, 2008, pp. 711-715.

Manuel Sarkisyants: Inconvenient origins, APN dated September 29, 2009. http://www.apn.ru/publications/article10491.htm

Sheila Fitzpatrick: New perspectives on Stalinism, in Russian Review, vol. 45, num. 4, 1986, pp. 357-373.

Ibid., p. 367.

Sheila Fitzpatrick: Education and Social Mobility in the Soviet Union 1921-1932. Cambridge University Press, 1979.

Lynne Viola: The best sons of the fatherland. Workers in the vanguard of Soviet collectivization. New York, 1987.

Lynne Viola: Peasant rebels under Stalin. Collectivization and the culture of peasant resistance. New York, Oxford 1996.

John Arch Getty: Origins of the Great Purges: The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered, 1933-1938. New York, 1985.

Yuri Nikolaevich Zhukov: Another Stalin. Political reforms in the USSR in 1933-1937. Moscow, 2003.

Quoted in: Sheila Fitzpatrick: Revisionism in Retrospect: A Personal View, in Slavic Review, vol. 67, num. 3, 2008, p. 691.

Stephen Cohen: Bukharin. Political biography 1888-1938. Moscow, 1988.

Lynne Viola: The Cold War within Cold War, in: Kritika. Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, Vol.12, Num. 3, 2011, p. 689.

Dear editor-in-chief! Recently I had the opportunity to encounter plagiarism. The conclusions that I made six months after the start of the case, it seems to me, will be of interest to the readers of your magazine. Judge for yourself.

In a twenty-page article by M.I. Smirnova and I.A. Dmitrieva “Sociocultural origins of Stalinism: historiographic discourse”, published in the collection “Historiography of Stalinism” (M., ROSSPEN. 2007. RGNF project No. 06-01-16202. Head of the author’s team, Doctor of Historical Sciences V.E. Bagdasaryan. Editor: academician, member of the board of the Russian Humanitarian Scientific Foundation N.A. Simoniya), I found more than a page of unquoted quotations from my work, for which there were no footnotes.

The collection, which pretended to be academic, made a strange impression: it did not contain brief information about the place of work and position of Messrs. Smirnova and Dmitrieva, there were no subject and name indexes. Mr. Bagdasaryan, the head of the team of authors, modestly published only three of his articles, and not seven, the article of Mr. A.A. Danilov can hardly be called historiographical, but there was a place for her, but, alas, not for the volume’s apparatus. This blank was dedicated to the memory of the historian. RGNF paid for it.

I had only one thing left: to request information about the ladies’ place of work or study from the chairman of the RGNF council, Yu.L. Vorotnikov, which was done by registered mail in July 2008. The postal service confirmed on its website that the letter had arrived to the addressee, but the official did not respond.

Mr. Vorotnikov could forward my letter to his acquaintances who are directly related to the publication of the volume: Messrs. Simony and Baghdasaryan. Judging by the fact that they did not answer me, Mr. Vorotnikov was not going to analyze the situation with the omission of plagiarism by his organization and develop measures to prevent such incidents in the future. Plagiarism is sometimes difficult to detect immediately, but when measures are not taken after a reasoned report about it, then the position of officials that is beneficial to the plagiarists is revealed.

The following registered letter was sent in October 2008 to the Chairman of the Higher Attestation Commission of the Russian Federation, Academician M.P. Kirpichnikov with a request not to count the plagiarized article as a published work on the topic of the dissertation if any of the plagiarists submits it. I did not receive any response from Mr. Kirpichnikov.

Considering that Mr. Simonia also works as an adviser to the RAS, in October I sent a registered letter to the President of the RAS Yu.S. Osipov, drawing his attention to the benefits to plagiarists of the behavior of persons known to him and asking him to remind them of the deadlines established by law for organizations to respond to letters from citizens. I did not receive any response from Mr. Osipov. Now we will have to remind the President of the Russian Academy of Sciences: organizations and officials are obliged to give an answer to the citizen on the merits of the case within a month.

The science management system must have an effective mechanism for getting rid of plagiarists without going to court. There are all the prerequisites for this: scientific advice, experts, scientific press, administrative power. The opportunity to run through the courts should be given to insane plagiarists who do not agree with the decisions of scientific councils and administrative punishments, and not to creatively minded authors. But today this project is not feasible: there is no subjective factor - the desire of officials to fight plagiarism. Therefore, plagiarists are not afraid of contempt on the part of colleagues and students, possible demotion, or the need to return taxpayer money spent on publication to the state.

The situation is typical. Here's another example. Researcher N.S. Andreeva’s plagiarist “borrowed” a whole stack of pages, and then, using the money of the Russian Humanitarian Foundation, made a report. “Plagiarism as the norm?” Ms. Andreeva is perplexed (Questions of History. 2008. No. 10).

I think we can sum it up. Three high-ranking officials - three silent “no” to this system of science management: “no” to social justice, respect for copyright, solidarity with the author against plagiarists. I would state: for this system, plagiarism is the norm!

Fateev A.V. Candidate of Historical Sciences.

Appendix: Files 01-09, comparison of texts by the author and plagiarists.

Comparison of the above passages

	Text by A.V. Fateeva	Text by M.I. Smirnova and I.A. Dmitrieva
I	Page 6. AND I. Gurevich is inclined to explain the reorientation of historians to civilizationology by the “crisis of the idea of ​​linear progress of world history,” which was discredited by the “cataclysms of the 20th century” and “teleology”: “past history was considered not in its unique intrinsic value, but in relation to the outcome of historical evolution” 17 .	Page 9. AND I. Gurevich is inclined to explain the reorientation of historians to civilizationology by the “crisis of the idea of ​​linear progress of world history,” which was discredited by the “cataclysms of the 20th century” and “teleology”: “past history was considered not in its unique intrinsic value, but in relation to the outcome of historical evolution” 4 .
II	Page 29. To prove Stalin’s “totalitarian” intentions, the author falsifies his statements. The statement “to interfere in everything” in the work “On the Tasks of Business Executives” 87 had a specific content: master production, technology, study, be specialists, but not a requirement to establish “totalitarianism.”	Page 14-15. To prove Stalin’s “totalitarian” intentions, the author falsifies his statements. The statement “to interfere in everything” in the work “On the Tasks of Business Executives” 2 had a specific content: master production, technology, study, be specialists, but not a requirement to establish “totalitarianism.” The theory of the struggle between true and false values, old and new as a source of development was also present in Stalinism, and we can assume that Akhiezer’s concept, while changing form, retains the essential features of the methodology of Stalinism. The vague explanation of the reasons for the emergence of new values ​​is alarming. The author talks about the material factors that determine the process, but does not deepen knowledge, remaining within the framework of his paradigm. Such a “shameful” pushing of materialism within the framework of idealism, which lacked the resources to explain social phenomena, was more than once criticized by the classics of Marxism among their opponents. Akhiezer’s ignorance of the material interests of the majority of the people again and again leads him to the a priori conclusion about the primacy of ideal factors in the development of the historical process.
III	Page 33. The capitalist states did not allow the new system to develop to such an extent that it could clearly demonstrate its advantages. Analyzing the catastrophic change in policy in the late 20s or 30s, Western historians carefully avoid the fact of systematic pressure from the Western world on the USSR. A pure “experiment,” as they like to put it, did not work out. To overcome the country's backwardness and ensure “homogeneity and internal unity of the rear and front in case of war” 112 in the conditions of systematic foreign policy pressure, Stalin and his group were ready to take any measures - “or we will be crushed” 113. In this sense, Stalinism is a phenomenon not only of Russian history, but also the result of the development of the entire world system in the first half of the 20th century.	Page 28. The hostile capitalist environment, which saw Soviet Russia as a threat to its existence, did not allow the new system to develop to such an extent that it could clearly demonstrate its advantages. Analyzing the catastrophic change in policy in the late 20s or 30s, Western historians carefully avoid the fact of systematic pressure from the Western world on the USSR. A pure “experiment,” as they like to put it, did not work out. To overcome the country's backwardness and ensure “homogeneity and internal unity of the rear and the front in case of war” 2 in the conditions of systematic foreign policy pressure, many were ready to take any measures - “or we will be crushed” 3 . In this sense, Stalinism is a phenomenon not only of Russian history, but also the result of the development of the entire world system in the first half of the 20th century.
IV	Page 32.	Page 8. The history of the USSR is presented as an “experiment” undertaken by lonely but omnipotent creators of history with abnormal value orientations.
V	Page 39. 16 Gurevich A.Ya. Historical synthesis and the Annales School. M. 1993. S. 282, 283; as well as Semenov Yu.I. Philosophy of history from origins to the present day: main problems and concepts. M., 1999. P. 224. 17 Gurevich A.Ya. Decree. Op. P. 282.	Page 9. 4 Gurevich A.Ya. Historical synthesis and the Annales School. M. 1993. P. 282.

In this section we will consider the main works devoted to the study of the problems of the historiography of Stalinism. During the time when the phenomenon of Stalinism became the subject of widespread scientific research, a large number of works were published giving general ideas about it. Although, it is worth noting that the peak of studying the problem of Stalinism occurred in the 1990s and early years. 2000, currently a large number of different events are devoted to the discussion and study of this issue, such as speeches and reports at scientific conferences, stories in television intellectual and entertainment television programs, discussions at various levels. All this indicates continued interest in this issue on the part of the general public.

For this reason, it is worth paying no less attention to the study of the historiography of Stalinism in earlier periods. As a result, the review of historiography on this issue will be structured chronologically. In this section, the works under study will be divided into 3 large groups. At the beginning, documents written in 1950-60 will be presented, which are connected primarily with the results of the 20th Party Congress, at which the cult of Stalin was “debunked” and a course of de-Stalinization was launched, in which the question of “Stalinism” is raised for the first time as a problem of social and scientific significance. These sources help illuminate the development of Soviet historical science, in which it will be indirectly possible to trace the influence of the problem of “Stalinism” and the attitude towards it on the part of representatives of the scientific community.

The second group includes studies from 1987-1990, this is associated with the beginning of the policy of perestroika and glasnost. It includes works of a journalistic and scientific nature from the 1987–1990s, the period when the topic of Stalinism was rediscovered and the foundations were laid for further scientific study of this issue. An analysis of these works can help identify the theoretical and methodological foundations that form the historiographic field of the current stage of research into the problem of Stalinism in the scientific field.

And finally, the third stage directly affects the studies that were released in 1991-2000, which is associated primarily with the opening of access to archives to documents that are sources of evidence about the activities of the party, which is called “from the inside,” as well as pluralism of opinion and concepts in historical science. In the course of studying the works of this group, an assessment will be made of its significance and place in the general process of historiographic research into the phenomenon of Stalinism. This group will include materials from conferences devoted to the problem of Stalinism and the history of Russia in the twentieth century. Being sources that reflect the position of historians studying this topic, they are very important for analyzing the dynamics of development of research on the topic and help to draw some intermediate results in the development of the direction.

Thus, let us begin the review of the first stage of 1930-1960. The first to introduce the term “Stalinism” itself was L.D. Trotsky in his speech “Stalinism and Bolshevism” in the bulletin of the Bolshevik-Leninist opposition dated August 28, 1937. It is worth mentioning right away that this definition was used in the sense that the phenomenon of Stalinism consists in the deviation of Stalin and his political and economic course from the main direction Bolshevism.

In the initial period, i.e. at 30 - early 50 XX century, no scientifically reliable and unbiased study of this problem was possible. Well, what can we say that such a problem itself “did not exist.”

Only in March 1953, after Stalin’s death, would a course to end Stalin’s “personality cult” begin. This term was first used by G. Malenkov and soon became a replacement for the term “Stalinism.” The main document of this stage is the report prepared by P.N. Pospelov and N.S. Khrushchev, and then presented by the latter in February 1956 at the XX Congress. When analyzing the main document of the 20th Congress, which had a decisive influence on the development of the problem of Stalinism in the 1980s, it is necessary to have at hand the actual text of the report. But historians don’t have it. In the published collection “Report of N.S. Khrushchev about the cult of personality of I.V. Stalin" presents an extensive selection of documents devoted to both the report itself and the reaction to it. But what is considered the report of N.S. Khrushchev, are later versions of the speech he read on the night of February 24-25. Historians have at their disposal an edited version, sent to party officials for review no earlier than March 5, of the mentioned report by P.N. Pospelov and additions dictated by N.S. Khrushchev on the eve of the congress.

Nevertheless, it is worth noting the fact that this document was more an instrument of political struggle than a historical work. The purpose of this report was an attempt to separate the system of power itself from the figure of the tyrant, its leader, who for a long time were identified and inextricably associated with the very essence of the new communist system.

Despite this, this report represents the most important and main source for the study of the politics of Stalinism, and is also a large-scale source of information, for the creation of which a huge amount of work was done in collecting information, processing statistical data, assessing government decisions, etc.

A review of the second group of studies should begin with the article by A.S. Tsipko “The Origins of Stalinism”, which proves the point of view that Stalinism is an objective process arising from the very foundation - socialism. Stalinism is a direct consequence of the very essence of the socialist concept. This article marked the beginning of a discussion about the relationship between the terms Stalinism and socialism. In a broader sense, it represented a debate between supporters of Marxism and anti-Marxists.

The answer to this was the work of O. Latsis and the collection “History and Stalinism”. The main feature of these studies is the small source base and unreliable theoretical basis for evidence of these points of view.

In contrast to these works, N.A. Simonia in her study tries to analyze the concept of Marxism-Leninism from deep theoretical positions. This is a general theoretical study based on the works of K. Marx, F. Engels and V.I. Lenin - and these sources are presented not as infallible dogmas, but as “ever-evolving” theories applicable to today. The conclusion, however, correlates with the conclusion of other researchers in the group: the Stalinist model is a special, initially crude model of socialism. This work is distinguished by the use of a significant array of sources, primarily documents of a theoretical nature, to which other supporters of the concept only refer.

A different approach was used in the study of this issue by L.A. Gordon and E.V. Klopov. They analyzed the relationship between socialism and Stalinism from the perspective of economic theory.

During this period, international cooperation was also attempted for the first time to jointly study this issue. The result of this was the release of the collection “50/50: A Dictionary of New Thinking.” The title of this work clearly reflects the task set - overcoming the previous ideology, an attempt to enrich historical science with new conclusions. The collection is a set of articles defining key historical and social terms, which is built on a two-sided principle - the same concept (repression, destanilization, socialism, democracy) is defined by foreign and domestic historians. A more detailed explanation of Stalinism is given in his article by M.Ya. Gefter. n offers a different, philosophical dimension, capturing both the political system, the mechanisms of managing society, and the philosophy of the new system (“Stalinist anthropology”).

Another group of studies of this problem focused their attention on the issue of Stalin’s personality cult - on the personality itself. In 1989, the collection “Stalin’s regime of personal power - on the history of its formation” was published. A term designed to combine the theory of totalitarianism, i.e., the definition of Stalinism as a regime and system, with the problem of the personal role of I.V. Stalin and the relationship of his personality with this system was substantiated in an article by Yu.A. Shchetsinova. This article consistently proved the conclusion that socialism was perverted into the regime of Stalin’s personal power.

Scientists who adhered to anti-Marxist positions also published the previously mentioned collection “Understanding the Cult of Stalin,” which for the first time attempts to use psychological and social approaches in solving this problem. As a result, the statement is formed that Stalinism is a product of mass social consciousness and is studied as an ideology: “totalitarian ideology in a radical form,” “the ideology of bureaucratic socialism and the administrative command system.”

Another approach is an attempt to use the religious-psychological method of considering Stalinism as a result of the creation of a mechanism of social faith, proposed by D. Furman in his article. L.I. follows this direction even more deeply. Sedov, who states that the cult of personality is a direct result of the development of Russian history and a feature of Russian culture.

Thus, the researchers come to the conclusion that the system of Stalinism was not generated by Stalin himself, but was a logical result of development in the context of the entire Russian culture and history.

Speaking about the source base and methodological foundations of research into the phenomenon of “Stalinism” during the perestroika period, several comments should be made. First, almost all research is primarily articles published in journals and collections. Consequently, they represent preliminary theses and reflections to be developed further, rather than fundamental works based on an extensive source base. Secondly, the style of “reflection” was determined by the closed nature of the archives and the inability of a wide range of researchers to access documents from the period 1930–1950. Therefore, the basis for articles was often works of fiction, memoirs and memoirs.

The third group of analyzed studies is characterized by a more complete understanding of the subject of research. This statement follows from the fact that in the first half of the 90s. wide access was opened for scientific study of a huge amount of materials from many closed archives. For the first time in history, such a large array of documents that were previously not available was examined.

Another important feature of the research of this period is the apologetic nature of the research. The figure of Stalin takes on a different meaning. From a tyrant, he turns into a “gatherer of Russian lands,” the founder of Great Russia, the creator of a superpower. And the huge sacrifices of the government’s course are finding new explanations. So, for example, according to O. Zhukov, the reforms of the 30s. are associated primarily with the transition to a democratic regime, and victims of repression are associated with opposition to the partyocracy.

Other studies tend to study Stalinism in line with studies of totalitarianism. These works argue that totalitarianism began to take shape during the Civil War and War Communism, and that it is now viewed as an administrative command system (ACS).

This term was first introduced in the work of G.K. Popov, and the main features were developed by T.P. Korzhikhina.

Another approach was characterized by closer attention to the very figure of I. Stalin - his political and personal life.

A revisionist movement developed separately, which studied mainly not political, but social history. The main goal of these studies was to revise existing findings “from below”, and not from the point of view of the state apparatus of power. The main representatives of this school are Sheila Fitzpatrick, John Arch Getty, Lynn Viola.

At the end of this paragraph, I would like to separately highlight the large-scale series “History of Stalinism,” which includes more than 80 monographs that examine this phenomenon from a large number of different points of view. A more detailed study of such a large-scale literary heritage is an extremely interesting topic for study, but unfortunately, it goes beyond the modest scope of our work.

Assessments of Stalin's personality are contradictory and there is a huge range of opinions about Stalin, and often they describe Stalin with opposing characteristics. On the one hand, many who communicated with Stalin spoke of him as a widely and diversified educated and extremely intelligent person. On the other hand, researchers of Stalin's biography often describe his negative character traits.

Some historians believe that Stalin established a personal dictatorship; others believe that until the mid-1930s the dictatorship was collective in nature. The political system implemented by Stalin is usually referred to as “totalitarianism.”

According to the conclusions of historians, the Stalinist dictatorship was an extremely centralized regime, which relied primarily on powerful party-state structures, terror and violence, as well as mechanisms of ideological manipulation of society, selection of privileged groups and the formation of pragmatic strategies.

According to Oxford University professor R. Hingley, for a quarter of a century before his death, Stalin wielded more political power than any other figure in history. He was not just a symbol of the regime, but a leader who made fundamental decisions and was the initiator of all any significant government measures. Each member of the Politburo had to confirm his agreement with the decisions made by Stalin, while Stalin shifted responsibility for their implementation to the persons accountable to him.

Of those adopted in 1930-1941. decisions, less than 4,000 were public, more than 28,000 were secret, of which 5,000 were so secret that only a narrow circle knew about them. A significant part of the resolutions concerned minor issues, such as the location of monuments or the prices of vegetables in Moscow. Decisions on complex issues were often made in the absence of information, particularly realistic cost estimates, accompanied by a tendency for designated project implementers to inflate these estimates.

In addition to the Georgian and Russian languages, Stalin read German relatively fluently, knew Latin, ancient Greek, Church Slavonic well, understood Farsi (Persian), and understood Armenian. In the mid-20s, he also studied French.

Researchers note that Stalin was a very reading, erudite person and was interested in culture, including poetry. He spent a lot of time reading books, and after his death his personal library remained, consisting of thousands of books, with his notes in the margins. Stalin, in particular, read books by Guy de Maupassant, Oscar Wilde, N.V. Gogol, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, L.D. Trotsky, L.B. Kameneva. Among the authors whom Stalin admired were Emile Zola and F.M. Dostoevsky. He quoted long passages from the Bible, the works of Bismarck, and the works of Chekhov. Stalin himself told some visitors, pointing to a stack of books on his desk: “This is my daily norm - 500 pages.” In this way, up to a thousand books were produced per year.

Historian R.A. Medvedev, speaking out against “often extremely exaggerated assessments of the level of his education and intelligence,” at the same time warns against downplaying it. He notes that Stalin read a lot, and widely, from fiction to popular science. In the pre-war period, Stalin devoted his main attention to historical and military-technical books; after the war, he moved on to reading political works, such as “History of Diplomacy” and the biography of Talleyrand.

Medvedev notes that Stalin, being the culprit for the death of a large number of writers and the destruction of their books, at the same time patronized M. Sholokhov, A. Tolstoy and others, returns from exile E. V. Tarle, whose biography of Napoleon he treated with great respect interest and personally supervised its publication, suppressing tendentious attacks on the book. Medvedev emphasizes Stalin's knowledge of national Georgian culture; in 1940, Stalin himself made changes to the new translation of “The Knight in the Skin of the Tiger.”

The English writer and statesman Charles Snow also characterized Stalin's educational level as quite high:

One of the many curious circumstances related to Stalin: he was much more educated in a literary sense than any of his contemporary statesmen. In comparison, Lloyd George and Churchill are surprisingly poorly read people. As, indeed, did Roosevelt.

There is evidence that back in the 20s, Stalin attended the play “Days of the Turbins” eighteen times by the then little-known writer M. A. Bulgakov. At the same time, despite the difficult situation, he walked without personal security or transport. Stalin also maintained personal contacts with other cultural figures: musicians, film actors, directors. Stalin also personally entered into a polemic with the composer D.D. Shostakovich.

Stalin also loved cinema and was willingly interested in directing. One of the directors with whom Stalin was personally acquainted was A.P. Dovzhenko. Stalin liked films by this director such as “Arsenal” and “Aerograd”. Stalin also personally edited the script for the film Shchors. Modern Stalin scholars do not know whether Stalin liked films about himself, but in 16 years (from 1937 to 1953) 18 films with Stalin were made.

L. D. Trotsky called Stalin “an outstanding mediocrity” who does not forgive anyone for “spiritual superiority.”

Russian historian L.M. Batkin, recognizing Stalin’s love of reading, believes that he was an “aesthetically dense” reader, and at the same time remained a “practical politician.” Batkin believes that Stalin had no idea “about the existence of such a “subject” as art”, about the “special artistic world” and about the structure of this world. Using the example of Stalin’s statements on literary and cultural topics given in the memoirs of Konstantin Simonov, Batkin concludes that “everything that Stalin says, everything that he thinks about literature, cinema, etc., is completely ignorant,” and that the hero of the memoirs is “ quite a primitive and vulgar type.” To compare with Stalin’s words, Batkin cites quotes from marginalized people - the heroes of Mikhail Zoshchenko; in his opinion, they are almost no different from Stalin’s statements. In general, according to Batkin’s conclusion, Stalin brought “a certain energy” of the semi-educated and average layer of people to a “pure, strong-willed, outstanding form.” Batkin fundamentally refused to consider Stalin as a diplomat, military leader, and economist.

During Stalin’s life, Soviet propaganda created an aura of “great leader and teacher” around his name. Cities, enterprises, and equipment were named after Stalin and the names of his closest associates. His name was mentioned in the same breath as Marx, Engels and Lenin. He was often mentioned in songs, films, and books.

During Stalin's lifetime, attitudes towards him varied on a spectrum from benevolent and enthusiastic to negative. As the creator of an interesting social experiment, Stalin was regarded, in particular, by Bernard Shaw, Lion Feuchtwanger, Herbert Wells, and Henri Barbusse. Anti-Stalinist positions were taken by a number of communist figures, accusing Stalin of destroying the party and departing from the ideals of Lenin and Marx. This approach originated among the so-called. “Leninist Guard” (F.F. Raskolnikov, L.D. Trotsky, N.I. Bukharin, M.N. Ryutin), was supported by individual youth groups.

According to the position of former USSR President M.S. Gorbachev, “Stalin is a man covered in blood.” The attitude of representatives of society adhering to liberal democratic values ​​is reflected in particular in their assessment of the repressions carried out during the Stalin era against a number of nationalities of the USSR: in the RSFSR Law of April 26, 1991 No. 1107-I “On the rehabilitation of repressed peoples”, signed by the President RSFSR B. N. Yeltsin, it is argued that in relation to a number of peoples of the USSR at the state level, on the grounds of nationality or other affiliation, “a policy of slander and genocide was pursued.”

According to Trotsky’s book “The Revolution Betrayed: What is the USSR and where is it going?” point of view on Stalin's Soviet Union as a deformed workers' state. The categorical rejection of Stalin's authoritarianism, which distorted the principles of Marxist theory, is characteristic of the dialectical-humanistic tradition in Western Marxism, represented, in particular, by the Frankfurt School. One of the first studies of the USSR as a totalitarian state belongs to Hannah Arendt (“The Origins of Totalitarianism”), who also considered herself (with some reservations) a leftist.

Thus, a number of historians and publicists generally approve of Stalin’s policies and consider him a worthy successor to Lenin’s work. In particular, within the framework of this direction, a book about Stalin by Hero of the Soviet Union M.S. is presented. Dokuchaev “History Remembers”. Other representatives of the movement admit that Stalin made some mistakes despite his overall correct policy (R.I. Kosolapov’s book “A Word to Comrade Stalin”), which is close to the Soviet interpretation of Stalin’s role in the history of the country. Thus, in the index of names to the Complete Works of Lenin, the following is written about Stalin: “In Stalin’s activities, along with a positive side, there was also a negative side. While holding the most important party and government posts, Stalin committed gross violations of the Leninist principles of collective leadership and the norms of party life, violations of socialist legality, and unjustified mass repressions against prominent government, political and military figures of the Soviet Union and other honest Soviet people. The Party resolutely condemned and put an end to the personality cult of Stalin and its consequences, alien to Marxism-Leninism, approved the work of the Central Committee to restore and develop Leninist principles of leadership and norms of party life in all areas of party, state and ideological work, took measures to prevent such errors and perversions in future." Other historians consider Stalin to be the undertaker of the “Russophobes” Bolsheviks who restored Russian statehood. The initial period of Stalin’s reign, during which many actions of an “anti-system” nature were taken, are considered by them only as preparation before the main action, which does not determine the main direction of Stalin’s activities. One can cite as an example the articles by I. S. Shishkin “The Internal Enemy”, and V. A. Michurin “The Twentieth Century in Russia through the prism of the theory of ethnogenesis by L. N. Gumilyov” and the works of V. V. Kozhinov. Kozhinov considers repressions to be largely necessary, collectivization and industrialization to be economically justified, and Stalinism itself to be the result of a world historical process in which Stalin just found a good niche. From this follows Kozhinov’s main thesis: history made Stalin, not Stalin, history.

Based on the results of Chapter II, we can conclude that the name of Stalin, even decades after his funeral, remains a factor in the ideological and political struggle. For some people, he is a symbol of the country's power, its accelerated industrial modernization, and merciless fight against abuses. For others, he is a bloody dictator, a symbol of despotism, a madman and a criminal. Only at the end of the 20th century. in the scientific literature this figure began to be considered more objectively. A.I. Solzhenitsyn, I.R. Shafarevich, V. Makhnach condemn Stalin as a Bolshevik - a destroyer of Orthodox Russian culture and traditional Russian society, guilty of mass repressions and crimes against the Russian people. Interesting fact - on January 13, 2010, the Kyiv Court of Appeal found Stalin (Dzhugashvili) and other Soviet leaders guilty of genocide of the Ukrainian people in 1932-1933 under Part 1 of Art. 442 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (genocide). It is alleged that as a result of this genocide in Ukraine, 3 million 941 thousand people died. However, this is more of a political decision than a legal one.