Several Theoretical Problems during the Preparation of the History of the Civil War and its Various Solutions (1930– 1935)

Abstract

This article examines terminological and theoretical issues concerning the writing of the history of the Civil War and its connection with the 1917 Revolution: its chronology, its political and military dimensions and its psychological aspect. Archival funds from RGASPI (Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History), RGANI (Russian State Archive of Contemporary history), the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Archive, the Gorky Archive at the Institute of World Literature and Art and the Manuscripts Department at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Russian History. The authors examine how a military historical approach to the writing of the history of the Civil War, developed during the summer of 1930, was replaced by a political approach, developed between 1931–1932. Moreover, it examines how the chronological dating of the outset of the conflict changed over time. If early on, the Civil War was considered to have begun long before 1917 and the revolution of that year was held to have two phases — February and October — this all changed with Stalin’s intervention in the book’s editing during the summer of 1935. Stalin’s intervention also broke all ties with earlier conceptions that connected these developments to the global place of the USSR and the country’s foreign policy.