The XXth Century Political History of Russia: lecture materials. Gennady Bordyugov
its cooperation with historical neighbors. The appearance of this concept was caused by the creation of the national idea, which justifies the cultural and political pretensions of the ruling classes. National historians of the Commonwealth of Independent States «change» the history to justify the process of the formation of independent post-Soviet states.
Some kind of rehabilitation of national history began in 1988. Criticism of such notions as «empire» and «imperial thinking» and later of the process of the formation of the Russian Empire as the series of Tsarist Russia’s crimes against peoples, caused in Russian society a peculiar guilt complex about its «imperial» past. The collapse of the Soviet Union led to the modification of former complexes and pretensions. «Nationalities» were confronted by the co-existence of old and new identities, including national ones. This provoked an identity crisis and a desire to overcome Russia’s status of being on the historical and cultural periphery, of its role as a nation being driven by outside forces. People started searching for arguments to prove that their achievements were in keeping with the great patterns of world civilization.
Of course not every detail of the national life came to the fore. In the course of reconsidering «their» past, even historians approved of depicting their peoples as heroes and sometimes as victims, they were inclined to make their statehood more ancient, to exaggerate the level of political and social development of ethnic groups, to assert their nation at the neighbors’ expense, and to create a modified pantheon of the outstanding national figures.
Historical circumstances and the «nationalization» of popular historical consciousness automatically consolidated the historians’ inclination toward nationalist ideology and nationalistic movements. Moreover historians often became founders or supporters of nationalist doctrine. German, French, British and Japanese researchers tried to estimate and understand this phenomenon. They created historiography which could substantiate states’ ambitious aspirations. Even the evolution of nationalism became historical, especially when in the 20th century after World War I a new type of nationalism (ethnonationalism) appeared.
There are several stages in the evolution of the national idea in the USSR. Official historiography focused on a class-based and internationalist approach to historical problems. The term «nationalism» was used in a pejorative sense, as a political label to compare it negatively to internationalism. Meanwhile during the first decade after the October Revolution histories were being written in the atmosphere of cooperation between the central government and indigenous elites, which stimulated the nation-building process among large ethnic groups.
In the late 1920s, there emerged a contradiction between the Russian scientific community, which represented the official historiography of the USSR, and national historians of the other Soviet republics. National histories became the equivalent of anti-Marxism or deviation from Bolshevism. Stalin’s reign dealt a serious blow to national elites and cultures, which were consistently and systematically repressed and contained in the context of the assertion of Bolshevik ideological priorities. Stalin’s regime was concerned with the tension among intellectuals. Turning historiography into a way of substantiating Russian greatness was accompanied by the collapse of Lenin’s class-based historiography. The idea of «national» histories was a way to secretly preserve cultural orientations during this period. National historiographies came to function as part of an official Soviet historiography.
After Stalin’s death, political leaders of the country gave up trying to turn Russian patriotism into a total ideology and historiography. That period of time was characterized by reconstruction of the nation, the formation of new national elites and the search for national histories. The ideological system and official historiography supported the domination of the idea of Soviet patriotism.
In the late 1980s national histories obtained the status of official historiographies. A great myth about a new historical community «the Soviet Nation» began to disappear. It was replaced with new historical perceptions on the part of Soviet nationality groups. National histories now offered a way for up and coming political elites to assert themselves. The political elites of post-Soviet states had to create nations with great national traditions. This is why they needed myths that combined the old and the new.
Science has been studying myths for more than two centuries. Researchers began to realize that myths were a valid attempt to make sense of the world and they began to study myths as an important part of culture and a way to perceive people’s consciousness. Myths challenged ideology, and ideology in its turn started to use myths.
Schematization, simplification, simulation of complicated religious and social processes provides a basis for ideological systems (doctrines). Myths reflect rituals as well. Scientific theories try to make something clear through research, examination, and experience, while myths reflect canonical explanations. A theory tries to formulate a law, which is always open to challenge and falsification. A myth is not. It is ideal when myths and scientific theories are balanced. The predominance of myth is dangerous: it is much easier to manipulate people’s consciousness and actions when the irrational dominates (myths always use irrational proofs).
In Russia myths have not only been reconstructed, but have become a strange mixture of pre-revolutionary, Soviet and post-Soviet myths. They prevent us from approaching actual history, as ideology did before. These old/new myths operate as a support, identity, orientation, protection and demarcation. These functions are neutral but they can become positive or negative according to the situation. Myths can soften crises; they let us deal with all the contradictions and complications of reforms. However they can be used and they are used to achieve certain goals, to take people under control.
Political myths, myths created by and about the ruling class, are of great contemporary interest. They became a distinctive feature of the twentieth century. Political and ideological myths have a tendency to create imagery of a new reality, to determine people’s behavior. Sometimes history chooses as a leading myth a notion advanced by the authorities, such as «enlightened power» or the «power of an iron fist»; sometimes state ideology portrayed the country as a «united and indivisible Russia», or Moscow as the «Third Rome.» The USSR created its own «sacred history» with its own «precursors,» like the «revolutionary events of 1905», with its own predecessors («revolutionary democrats» of the nineteenth century), with its prophets, ascetics and martyrs, its rituals and ceremonies. The October Revolution provided an opportunity to create a new world. History then had to describe the fight against domestic and foreign enemies (the «continuation of class struggle»), and the «era of battles» (The Great Patriotic War). According to Soviet ideology, Stalin was not only the successor of Lenin, he was Lenin’s incarnation: «Stalin is Lenin today.»
It is important to stress that these non-traditional myths were made artificially. But it is pointless to debate whether a myth is «true» or not. As Roland Bart claimed: «the myth doesn’t hide anything, it doesn’t show anything, it’s characterized not by telling lies or the truth, but by diverging.» In other words, the basic principle of myth is to transform history from a record of the actual contingent actions of human beings into the unfolding of a preordained and determined process of nature.
The thesis that only the authorities set the range and define the norms and truths of knowledge was rejected during the last decade. Today history is not officially exploited by the State as a political instrument, although there have been many attempts to revival of Soviet tendencies to «protect» Russian history and of imperial or monarchic tendencies in public thinking.
New conditions of social and academic life, and new communication links, make it impossible to «usurp the past,» although the fight to do so still exists. Understanding the fact that historical science has a public nature strengthens the positions of amateur historians, who defend their right to speak and write about history. Many historians have resorted to «new historicism,» which demands «a more equal exchange between the two halves of a kaleidoscope facing the past» – between history and literature, as Russian sociologist Alexander Etkind has written. Overcoming barriers between the humanities, striving to get out of the «disciplinary ghetto,» and new opportunities for communication has provoked a discussion about the language with which to describe the past and about ascertaining the range of connections between different branches of science which analyze the past.
Theme 2
RUSSIA