Tag: USSR

The Centenary of the USSR: Contemporary Historiography (in Russian)

Michael

The collection on historiography of the Soviet period published in 2024.  It covers both Russian and foreign historiography.  The materials of the volume analyze various issues relating to the establishment of the Soviet Union, its political system, national policy, economy, culture, science and education.

Contents:

  • Preface
  • F. Asschenfeldt and M. Trecker, “From Ludendorff to Lenin? World War I and the origins of Soviet economic planning” (Abstract)
  • A. Willimott, “Time at home: the October Revolution and Soviet temporalities” (Abstract)
  • J. D. White, “Leon Trotsky and Soviet historiography of the Russian Revolution (1918–1931)” (Abstract)
  • P. Dukes, “The Russian Revolution in The Encyclopaedia Britannica” (Abstract)
  • V. P. Liubin, review of XV Plekhanovskie chteniia: Sovetskii Soiuz v geopoliticheskikh usloviiakh 1927–1941 gg.: Problemy, tseli i rezul’taty v oblasti vnutrennego i vneshnepoliticheskogo kursov stroitel’stva gosudarstva: Materialy mezhdunarodnoi konferentsii, 23–25 sentiabria 2022 g. [The XV Plekhanov Readings: The Soviet Union in the geopolitical conditions of 1927–1941: Problems, aims, and results of internal and foreign policy in state building: Proceedings of the international academic conference, 23–25 September 2022]
  • A. V. Apanasenok, “Kak bezbozhie popytalos’ stat’ religiei [How the atheism tried to become a religion]”: Review of A Sacred Space Is Never Empty: A History of Soviet Atheism, by Victoria Smolkin
  • M. Battis, “On common ground: Soviet nationalities policy and the Austro-Marxist premise” (Abstract)
  • D. V. Petrukhina, “Natsional’no-kul’turnaia politika BSSR v 1920-e gody: Probleny i znachenie [National and cultural policy of the Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic in the 1920s: Problems and significance]” (Review article)
  • O. V. Babenko, “Novye zarubezhnye publikatsii o sovetsko-pol’skikh otnosheniiakh mezhvoennogo perioda (2022–2023) [New foreign publications on Soviet–Polish relations in the interwar period (2022–2023)] (Review article)
  • E. N. Emel’ianova, “SSSR i Afrika v 1920-e—1930-e gody: zarubezhnaia i rossiiskaia istoriografiia [The Soviet Union and Africa in the 1920s—1930s: Russian and foreign historiography]” (Review article)
  • J. L. Mickenberg, American Girls in Red Russia: Chasing the Soviet Dream (Abstract)
  • M. M. Mints, “Sovetskii Soiuz vo Vtoroi mirovoi voine: za predelami istorii boevykh deistvii [The Soviet Union in the Second World War: beyond the history of military operations]” (Review article)
  • O. V. Babenko, “Deiatel’nost’ frontovykh khudozhestvennykh brigad i teatrov v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny [Concerts and theatrical performances at the front in the years of the Great Patriotic War]” (Review article)
  • “Sovetskaia drevnost’ ”: liudi, uchrezhdeniia, knigi i nauka o drevnosti v SSSR [“Soviet antiquity”: people, organizations, books and scholarship on antiquity in the Soviet Union] (Abstract)
  • K. Świder, “Ekonomiczne przyczyny i mechanizmy rozpadu Związku Radzieckiego [Economical causes and mechanisms of the collapse of the Soviet Union] (Abstract)
  • Ch. J. Sullivan, Motherland: Soviet nostalgia in the Russian Federation (Abstract)
  • About the Authors

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Andrei Volkov, Memoirs of a Lieutenant General (in Russian)

Michael

Андрей Волков. Мемуарные записки (обложка)

Volkov, Andrei Sergeevich. Memuarnye zapiski: vospominaniia general-leitenanta inzhenerno-artilleriiskoi sluzhby. Moscow: INION RAN, 2025.

The book contains the memoirs of Lieutenant General Andrei Volkov (1893–1965) and his diary covering the period from January 1942 to May 1945.  Volkov was enlisted to the Russian Army in late 1914, took part in the First World War, and joined the Red Army in 1918; he was already a major general (one-star general in the Soviet and modern Russian military hierarchy) by 1941.  In May 1941 he received a new appointment to the post of chief artillery supply officer at the Western Special Military District that was transformed into the Western Front after the German invasion 22 June (renamed into the 3rd Belorussian Front in 1944).  He served in this position until the end of the war with Germany and took part in a number of its major operations including the defeat of the Soviet troops in Western Belorussia, the first Battle of Smolensk, Battle of Moscow, Battles of Rzhev in 1942–43, Operation Bagration (one of the most successful offensive operations of the Red Army), the Battle of Königsberg.  His account is quite different from the majority of Soviet war memoirs: he describes mostly not the operations themselves, but the functioning of the supply service, with special attention to the issues of logistics and prudent use of available resources.

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I prepared this book for publication in cooperation with Olga Dernova, my colleague from the State Historical Public Library of Russia that had helped me in my work at The Bibliography of Middle-earth.  The descendants of General Volkov are her neighbours; the world is a small place 😉

Rebel movement in the North Caucasus in the first half of the 20th century

Michael

M. M. Mints, “Povstancheskoe dvizhenie na Severnom Kavkaze v pervoi polovine XX veka”, Sotsial’nye i gumanitarnye nauki: Otechestvennaia i zarubezhnaia literatura: Referativnyi zhurnal. Seriia 5, Istoriia, no. 2 (2018): 109–117.

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A review of two monographs and an article published in 2016 that deal with the history of the conflicts between the population of the North Caucasus and the Russian government (imperial, later Soviet) during the first half of the twentieth century.

Gennadii Kurenkov, From conspiracy to secrecy: protecting party-state secrets at RKP(b)—VKP(b), 1918–1941

Michael

An unpublished translation of my review for Gennadii Aleksandrovich Kurenkov, Ot konspiratsii k sekretnosti: zashchita partiino-gosudarstvennoi tainy v RKP(b)—VKP(b), 1918–1941 gg. [From conspiracy to secrecy: protecting party-state secrets at RKP(b)—VKP(b), 1918–1941] (Moscow: AIRO-XXI, 2015).

The original review in Russian was published in Istoricheskaia ekspertiza no. 2 (2017), 258–262.

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“If the war is tomorrow”: Soviet military-political leadership’s ideas about the political character of the future war (late 1920s—1941) (in Russian)

Michael

Published in Klio, no. 1 (St. Petersburg, 2008): 99–105.

Abstract

The study of themes such as the views of the military-political leadership of the USSR about the future war in the 1920s to the 1930s, is only now beginning. Until recently researchers have given almost no special attention to an intellectual and mental background of the events of the specified period. Meanwhile, for the understanding of our past, including the history and prehistory of the war on the Eastern Front in 1941–1945, studying the prewar views is essential.

Wars do not break out suddenly. Throughout human history, wars have often been the conclusion of long and complex processes including force development, the content and direction of which is determined by the views of how and to what end these forces would be used. It is important to note that a complex of such ideas, which can be regarded as a prognostic image of the future war, exists in any country that has its own army, even if it has no plans in the foreseeable future to conduct any particular war with any of its neighbors (otherwise an army is simply not needed). These ideas make a foundation for concrete decisions on different questions of force development and of preparation for future wars. Accordingly, the outcome of a war largely depends on how its realities relate to the prewar predictions.

The war between the USSR and Germany is no exception. The Soviet Union began to prepare for the coming battle with “world imperialism” well before the outbreak of World War II. Therefore, the study of views of the future war that existed in the prewar years in the Soviet military and political leadership, would help scholars to link the individual assessments, projects and solutions into a coherent picture, to understand more deeply the logic of the Soviet leadership’s actions on the eve of the Second World War and after it began, which, in its turn, is a prerequisite for a more objective assessment of the causes of the Red Army’s defeats in 1941–1942.

The present article is devoted to one of the key components of the image of a future war: the nature of its political character, including the Soviet Union’s aims therein, as well as the list of potential enemies. Virtually, it is these ideas that determine the political aims of the future war, and this is of great importance in development of the military doctrine and strategy.

At the beginning of the period being studied, the views of the military and political leadership of the USSR on the political nature of future war and the list of potential opponents were rather general and abstract, and were due to purely ideological reasons, perhaps even to a greater extent than the real situation. However, by early 1941 there was a gradual shift from general to more specific concepts. Thus, the older idea of a future war as a repulsion of aggression from a coalition of capitalist states (alternatively—as an involvement or even a voluntary intervention of the Soviet Union into the war between the capitalist countries) was replaced by the idea that a drastic battle with Nazi Germany was inevitable, despite the non-aggression pact.

In addition, there was a change in perceptions about world revolution: if earlier it seemed to be an inevitable reaction of the international proletariat to the outbreak of a large-scale war, especially against the Soviet Union, its implementation was now thought likely to be a result of a smashing offensive of the Red Army. It should also be noted that the possibility of the USSR’s entry into the war on its own initiative was not excluded throughout the period. This idea continued to exist in the first half of 1941 as well. At the same time the question of whether a political decision to attack Germany was actually made, should appear as incorrect a priori because such a decision could be, by definition, only if the troops were ordered to assume the offensive. Until the completion of the strategic deployment, such an order could not be given.

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