Breaking the Cipher: Criticism of the Russian National-State Narrative in Soviet Historiography of the 1920s

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the consideration of Soviet Marxist historiography of the 1920s. The main object of analysis is criticism of the national-state narrative of pre-revolutionary Russian historiography. The inspiration for the widespread criticism was M. N. Pokrovsky. He organized a historiographical seminar at the Institute of Red Professorships, where historical concepts were analyzed in terms of their presentation of the history of non-Russian peoples. This article focuses on the political situation of the 1920s. In this context, published and unpub- lished texts by M. N. Pokrovsky, Z. V. Lozinsky, M. A. Rubach, A. V. Shestakov, S. A. Piontkovsky are explored. It is concluded that historiographic texts served as a radical deconstruction of the myths of pre-revolutionary historians of the 19th — early 20th centuries. In addition, historians revealed the “class essence” of their predecessors and exposed their ideas as manifestations of “Great Russian chauvinism”. This “historiographic cleansing” opened the way for reformatting national history and the transition from “History of Russia” to a new historical project — “History of the Peoples of the USSR”.