Director of the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI) - once the Central Party Archive - Andrei Sorokin is ready to talk at length and in detail about the unique documents stored in the building on Bolshaya Dmitrovka, which shed light on many pages modern history Russia. As they say, there would be people willing to listen. And the main thing is to work with archival rarities...
- It’s not too crowded here, Andrei Konstantinovich...
So you didn’t come to the store for sausage, but to the archives. There are never any queues here. And our reading room is spacious. But some other archives that were not under the wing of the CPSU Central Committee have a preliminary entry.
- So, people are interested?
I would like people to become more actively drawn to historical knowledge. Over the past two years, the number of visitors to RGASPI has remained at a constant level, just over a thousand people per year. True, the number of visits is growing. If in 2013 the figure was six thousand, then in 2014 it was already over eight thousand. In other words, two years ago one visitor came to us on average six times a year, and now eight. In my opinion, this is not so little. Especially considering that we actively make electronic resources available for free access on the Internet. In this sense, RGASPI is one of the most open archives in Russia. Anyone can, in particular, get acquainted on the Internet with Stalin’s fully digitized personal fund, the Comintern archive, and other resources. These are valuable and sought-after materials from our collection, their availability on the Internet cannot but at least indirectly affect how many people come to us physically, literally with their feet.
We must also understand that we are focusing on a target, professional audience. We do not specifically invite the general public to our events; they are not in our address databases. However, we opened the last “Night at the Museum” together with the leadership of the Department of Culture of the Moscow Government on May 16 at the exhibition “At the Victory Headquarters” in the New Manege. As for such actions in the RGASPI building, there are nuances. After all, we also store secret documents and are required to comply with a certain access regime...
The key question is not even the number of visitors, but whether the archives are in demand in principle. More broadly speaking, is historical memory alive?
You can evaluate it in different ways. Let me give you an example. A few years ago, a digitized so-called “Katyn folder” was posted on the Rosarkhiv website. In two days, several million people viewed the documents on the Internet, and the site, not designed for such a load, simply collapsed, unable to cope with the influx. It is clear that the topic of Katyn is widely known, it is extremely in demand within our country and abroad, we remember the debates in the State Duma, publications that these documents were falsified. Yes, this is not an ordinary case, but a top story, but the fact of increased attention to it cannot be disputed.
Documents are published according to the publication "Main Documents of the Great Patriotic War", compiled based on materials from the Russian Archive of Socio-Political History, State Archive Russian Federation, Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, etc. (ID " Komsomolskaya Pravda", 2015).
"DECLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS ARE NEGLECTED"
But you, Andrei Konstantinovich, have repeatedly said the opposite. That RGASPI has unique materials that, as they say, have not been touched by human hands. Pristinely clean forms!
Yes, and it's true. Another dimension of the same plot. We have archival folders that seem to be in demand by both professional historians and society, however, there are no records in the use sheets. They have not been touched since declassification.
- What documents are we talking about?
One can recall the recent heated debates about the blockade and defense of Leningrad. I was also involved in the discussion, I looked at what we had on the topic in our archive. I discovered a lot of interesting things. Unfortunately, a lot of papers lie in those very untouched folders. For example, they are also in the personal fund of Zhdanov, who headed Smolny during the war, which was declassified sixteen years ago. I was the first to take some documents into my hands. Of course, after the experts who made the decision on declassification.
- This does not interfere with heated debates around the blockade and more.
Exactly! People who call themselves historians deservedly best use They passionately defend their own theories, which are sometimes built on myths and legends rather than facts. This speaks of a crisis of historical consciousness. Disputants are not entertained by the obvious idea of turning to primary sources. This means that something is wrong, and in public perception as a whole. In any debate, experts with professional knowledge of the topic should have the final say. This is not yet the case everywhere and not always.
In short, there is cognitive dissonance. On the one hand, there is a request from society for a historical document, on the other hand, this is sometimes neglected by precisely those to whom society has delegated this function.
And historian Leonid Maksimenkov recently published an article in a popular magazine in which he assures that the problem of access to archival documents from the war period has still not been resolved. He directly accuses you of misinforming the people, saying that you keep documents in safes that must be presented to the public. In particular, we are talking about Stalin’s personal fund. According to you, almost everything is open, but Maksimenkov writes that more than ten percent of the archive is still classified, and even lists which papers are hidden from our eyes...
First. Mr. Maksimenkov is well known not only to the public, but also to the professional community. Recent years For twenty years he has been successfully making a name for himself, including through publications of this kind. And Maksimenkov is not the only one. A separate topic is how much the information that our media publish from time to time with apparent pleasure corresponds to reality. Well, the recipients of such claims should also be more accurately chosen. As for the formulation of the problem as a whole, perhaps a conversation with society is overdue.
Second. Stalin’s personal fund was not kept by us; it was transferred to RGASPI from the presidential archive. As, by the way, are the documents of the State Defense Committee - the State Defense Committee. You must understand: we are not the ones who regulate what, in what volume and to whom to give for storage. When I say that 99.8 percent of Stalin’s personal fund is open, I mean the array of documents at our disposal. We are not responsible for what may remain in the Archive of the President of Russia or some other repositories, but we are preparing to submit for consideration to the interdepartmental commission for the protection of state secrets, which makes the final decisions on declassification, all RGASPI documents that are still in secret storage .
Third. Such publications are a good reason to talk about idle thoughts on the topic of the total secrecy of Russian archives. There is probably no need to deny the existence of problems in this area, however, believe me, we are no more closed than the Europeans or Americans. Moreover, I would call the organization of archival work in Russia close to exemplary. We have much more order. Almost all over the world, the volume of archival documents is measured in linear meters of shelves and racks, in the number of boxes with files. Archivists in the West often even have a vague idea of what exactly they are saving. In Russia everything is different. We keep records of storage units and have inventories in which each document is named.
Returning to what remains in secret storage at RGASPI, I can say with full responsibility: it does not contain information that can change our understanding of certain pages of the past. This is mainly personal data that is not subject to public disclosure. There are no great secrets! To make it clear: today three tenths of a percent of the total number of documents located in RGASPI continue to remain classified. They are only able to clarify the details, strokes of certain events, nothing more. In relation to our collections, the problem is absolutely far-fetched.
I repeat: professional historians, not to mention the general public, cannot cope with the volume of documents that are open, but, alas, not in demand by anyone. A lot of interesting material is not involved in scientific and social circulation. Therefore, in response to nervous sobs about giving more documents, I answer: first, at least evaluate what you have, and then make claims. The amount of first-class materials from which all the vultures were removed far exceeds the capabilities and willingness of researchers to work with them. Although this does not mean that we should not increase the volume of declassification of archival documents.
"DO NOT TAKE QUOTES OUT OF CONTEXT"
You always want to look into a locked room, what if there is a secret there? Koshcheev's death hidden, what if we learn something sensational about the repressions of the thirties or the Holodomor?..
In addition to what Russian and mainly foreign historians wrote about the famine of the early 1930s (in in this case colleagues from Ukraine, for the most part, alas, do not count due to the excessive politicization of the work of many of them), we are unlikely to be able to add. In this sense, there is nothing to fish out from the archives. Everything has long been discovered, described and published. Including in Russian. Several years ago, in the “History of Stalinism” series, a book by British researchers Stephen Wheatcroft and Robert Davis, “The Years of Famine. Agriculture USSR, 1931-1933", a three-volume documentary publication "Hunger in the USSR. 1929-1934 "... The territories of starvation deaths are clearly established and delineated. These are part of the regions of Ukraine and the RSFSR, a small piece of Belarus, significant areas of the Volga region, North Caucasus and Kazakhstan. In terms of the proportion of deaths in the total population, it was the Kazakh SSR that suffered the most significant damage. According to the same indicators, the Autonomous Republic of Volga Germans also shows a large drop. Yes, there were many victims of the Holodomor in Ukraine, but, I repeat, in specific terms these numbers are no higher than in the regions of the North Caucasus and the Volga region. Which, of course, does not diminish the tragedy of the Ukrainian people. However, like Russian, German, Kazakh... These are innocent victims of accelerated industrialization carried out in the early thirties. And you shouldn’t look for beneficiaries of state policy of that period among certain ethnic groups, it’s futile.
But how convenient it is to pull out the desired archival document from a folder and find a suitable quote in it, depending on the current moment and historical situation!
That is why I strongly support stock-by-stock digitization and posting of the most important information on the Internet. This is the only way to stop the endless speculation of those who use history for selfish purposes, primarily political ones. There is no other way to force people to positive knowledge. Not in the sense of a positive, necessarily positive, view of Russian history, but in the use of a positivist method, which presupposes the priority of a scientifically established fact and the document that records it.
Here, colleagues, is an archival collection, please work with it, but try not to take phrases out of context due to ideological sympathies or political predilections. And having done this, be prepared to be caught in bias. You cannot use a historical document or fact as a cudgel in a fight. Yes, and arbitrarily interpret whole historical periods, for example, Soviet.
For example, the undoubted heroes of the Ukrainian people are Lenin, to whom Ukraine owes its eastern borders, and Stalin, who created its western borders. It was their activities that realized the dreams of the Ukrainian elites of the early twentieth century about a certain territory. And not Petliura or Bandera at all.
"I AM ALSO AMAZED BY THE PHRASE FROM THE GKO RESOLUTION..."
- Who do you think are the heroes of the Russian people?
You ask difficult question. Among them, national memory traditionally includes (which is fair) primarily those who, with arms in hand, defended the Fatherland, which too often had to defend independence. I would recommend thinking about the people who gather the nation into a single civil and political whole, developing its potential - cultural, technological. I won’t undertake to indicate who specifically deserves the title of hero. My job is to make sure that people have maximum access to real, and not mythologized, sources of information to make these kinds of decisions. For decades, the mood of society in our country was shaped by historical journalism, which handled facts quite freely. We have yet to learn to rely not on emotional reasoning based on the “like it or not like it” principle, but on comprehensive research. RGASPI, like other archives, is ready to provide a documentary base. Society must decide what to take from the past into the future, and what needs to be parted with. To do this, I repeat, you need to work with primary sources. In the same Stalin Foundation, we digitized and made available for free access everything that could be discovered. They did the same with the declassified materials of the State Defense Committee, documents of the Comintern and partially - as far as they managed to digitize - the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee.
You have already shown a lot at the exhibition “At the Victory Headquarters”. I testify as an eyewitness: the exhibition is extremely interesting. Another thing is that the halls, alas, were deserted... For whom were they trying?
Well, first of all, I’ll correct it slightly: in the last days of the exhibition, visitors came... Although, I won’t hide, I have this question from time to time. Nevertheless, I believe that the one who walks will master the road. In order for an interested target audience to appear, you need to work with people. Nothing arises out of nowhere...
Yes, “At the Victory Headquarters” some truly unique documents were presented. Let's say, a handwritten draft resolution on the creation of the State Defense Committee. On June 30, 1941, Malenkov sketched it on a piece of paper with a pencil at Stalin’s “near dacha” in Kuntsevo. The most important document on the establishment of an emergency governing body for a huge power bears traces of spontaneous improvisation, which means that the top Soviet leadership did not expect such a sad development of events in the first days of the war and did not organizationally prepare the country for such a scenario. Decisions were made on the fly, documents were drawn up in haste. No pessimistic options were put on paper in advance, and no algorithm for the behavior of management structures was developed. And this in the context of the rapid advance of Wehrmacht units! Already on June 28, 1941, Minsk fell, Stalin, having learned the news, disappeared from sight of his immediate circle for more than a day, at the most difficult moment, essentially withdrawing from governing the state. On June 30, without an invitation, which was a gross violation of subordination and unwritten laws, Molotov, Beria, Malenkov, Mikoyan, Voroshilov went to the leader’s dacha... That’s when the crookedly written document on the GKO was born.
The style of some of his resolutions is amazing. Here is a quote: “The State Defense Committee must admit that individual commanders and ordinary soldiers show instability, alarmism, shameful cowardice, throw away their weapons and, forgetting their duty to the Motherland, grossly violate the oath, turn into a herd of sheep, running in panic before an insolent enemy.” ...
There is such a thing. The phrase about a flock of sheep also struck me when I read it for the first time. Of course, it is of an emotional nature, but this is quite understandable if we remember that by the autumn of 1941 the number of Soviet prisoners of war did not number tens or even hundreds of thousands. Of course, there were pockets of resistance, there remained commanders and units capable of giving a worthy rebuff to the enemy, but the old Red Army de facto ceased to exist, it was demoralized and defeated.
Essentially, everything had to be created anew. In 1941, the State Defense Committee took a number of steps aimed at increasing discipline and troop control, and at suppressing crossbows and desertion. At times these measures were excessive and draconian. One of the resolutions orders the arrest of the families of military personnel, commanders and political workers who surrendered. It was immediately clear that the order was impossible to implement: where could we get so many prisons and camps for the relatives of millions of prisoners? As they say, you can’t jail everyone. But there is also a moral side to the issue...
- There was also an order for the total deportation of Germans from the capital in the fall of 1941.
Absolutely right. From Moscow and the region alone, if I’m not mistaken, about twelve thousand ethnic Germans were expelled into the interior of the country, and then they began to evict them from Crimea and the Volga region. In 1944, as is known, entire peoples were deported in the North Caucasus, doing this not as a preventive measure, but as retribution, imposing collective responsibility on specific ethnic groups for the behavior of individual representatives. Although this motivation cannot be recognized as correct. It is worth recalling that among the collaborators there were representatives of many nationalities, not just those deported.
Another interesting document is the appeal of the future Patriarch Sergius to the Soviet people, sounded on June 22, 1941.
Yes, the spiritual father did not need ten days, like Stalin, to find words to communicate with his flock. He came to Matins at Yelokhovsky Cathedral and at the end of it he wrote what he felt in his heart. Sergius understood the complexity of the situation, was aware of the emotions the godless Soviet regime evoked among a significant part of his fellow citizens, nevertheless he called on everyone to stand up for the defense of the Fatherland.
Then the authorities picked up the banner, the orders of Suvorov, Kutuzov, Nakhimov, Nevsky appeared, shoulder straps and stars on them returned. Reference to historical memory.
In fact, the reorientation began even before the war. From the idea of an inevitable world revolution, Stalin gradually moved to a plan for building a socialist state in a single country. For this purpose, bonds were needed that could unite everyone. Stalin moved away from the initial discrimination against Russian culture and Russians in the early USSR, seeing a necessary resource here.
After all, there were not fifteen national-state formations in the Soviet Union, but much more. In the early 1920s, tens of thousands of territories, including literally microscopic ones, consisting of one or several villages, received self-government rights in the early 1920s. We will also find evidence of these facts if we turn to archival documents.
"MARBLE ILYICH DOESN'T EMBARRASS IN THE HALL"
- What kind of folders are on your table now, Andrei Konstantinovich?
Materials from the central headquarters of the partisan movement. They illustrate approximately what we were talking about. The theme of myths and historical truth. Most of us associate the image of a partisan with a kind of bearded guy in a fur hat with a red ribbon. Yesterday's collective farmer, worker or employee who went into the forest. But this is at least an incomplete picture. It is reasonable to question the very significant role of the Center in how the movement was created and managed. All this is extremely interesting to understand...
We look to the past to understand the present and anticipate the future. This is what is commonly believed. Although sometimes it seems that history teaches that it teaches nothing... What does your experience as an archivist say?
Vasily Klyuchevsky spoke wonderfully on this topic more than a hundred years ago. I will not reproduce the quote verbatim, but here is its meaning: history teaches that it teaches nothing - this is what those who did not teach history say, but those who philosophize about it. Klyuchevsky directly entered into polemics with Hegel, to whom this thesis belongs. Vasily Osipovich continues: it is not the flowers’ fault that the blind man does not see them.
And another wise thought from Klyuchevsky: if history can teach anything, then first of all, self-awareness, a clear look at the present. Actually, what you asked about. Without knowing and understanding the past, we are unlikely to be able to effectively assess reality and make the right current decisions.
- However, contrary to another aphorism, the manuscripts, unfortunately, burn.
Are you talking about a major fire in the library of the Institute of Scientific Information for Social Sciences? Afterwards, I regularly hear the question: what archives did you manage to digitize to prevent such misfortunes? I answer: RGASPI, like our colleagues in the Federal Archival Agency, creates so-called insurance funds with copies of documents on film media. There is a special storage facility for them, which is constantly replenished. Planned work proceeds without pause. As for the fire at INION, of course, this is a drama, but there is no need to turn it into a farce. For example, already in the 21st century in Germany, two largest libraries, comparable in volume of stored funds to INION, burned down. In Germany, I emphasize!
The main enemy of archives is a person who is not interested in anything - neither the past nor the present.
Don't think that this is just our national problem. There are systemic risks associated with the specifics of the work. They can be stopped using an integrated approach. An individual cultural institution cannot cope with them on its own.
- But are you ready for work and defense, Andrei Konstantinovich?
I hope so. We try, we do our best. Within the limits of allocated funding.
- And the marble Ilyich in the hall of RGASPI doesn’t bother you?
No way. We are located within the walls of a historical and cultural monument; this place must be preserved in the form in which modern Russia inherited it. The building was built in 1927 for the Lenin Institute by the future chief architect of Moscow, the author of the master plan for the reconstruction of the city, Academician Chernyshov, in the style of the Soviet avant-garde. This is part of our history, we have no right to brush it aside. For the same reason, I extremely regret that I did not save memorial museum-apartment Lenin in the Kremlin. As well as the meeting room of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. During the reconstruction of the 1990s, they were destroyed, which, in my opinion, was wrong both from a substantive and political point of view.
- Were there any attempts to take the stone Lenin out of here?
They wanted to remove the entire archive from here. Including not so long ago. They say that modern Russia does not need the Soviet past in any form, so RGASPI has no place here.
We have fought against this approach and will continue to fight. Regardless of the attitude towards Lenin, Stalin, the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and the CPSU, no one dares to abandon their own past. It cannot be erased with an eraser, like a bad picture, and redrawn again. What we had, we have and keep. We must live with this history, remember it and know it. At least in order not to repeat the mistakes made.
And the Mausoleum would not be touched. And the mortal remains of the person lying in it must be buried. People are supposed to be buried, not put on public display. This is not an attraction. True, the act of burying Lenin should complete the process of achieving public consent in relation to both this historical figure and the events of 1917, and not precede it. Sooner or later society will come to such a decision.
Regardless of the attitude towards Lenin, Stalin, the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and the CPSU, no one dares to abandon the past. It cannot be erased with an eraser, like a bad picture, and redrawn again.
"I DREAM OF GETTING WORKING WITH FAMILY ROOTS"
- By the way, does Lenin’s will exist?
There is no such written document, in the traditional sense, although the topic comes to the surface from time to time. Let us return to the question of the need to turn to primary sources, and not to their interpreters.
- And what do we have in the bottom line?
As you know, any specialist is like a flux, perhaps I am overly inclined to look for answers in the past, however, I believe that modern Russia will be easier to cope with many challenges if we pay more attention to the study of our own history and the documents that recorded it. They can tell a lot about ourselves. And protect them from vacillating from side to side in their assessments, since they keep evidence of winning pages, mistakes, and crimes. But frivolous judgments are very harmful. It is a flawed idea that the humanities are a field in which anyone can make professional assessments. This is wrong.
- And you, Andrei Konstantinovich, took advantage of your official position?
In what sense?
- Have you looked up the archives to find out the history of your family?
Not yet, but I dream of doing it. True, I need to look for my roots in the Ryazan and Smolensk regions, where my parents are from. I hope the documents will be found. The state of Russian archives is much better than the uninitiated think. Moreover, as an archivist and historian with some experience, I can say: nothing ever disappears without a trace. You just need to know where to look and work patiently...
- And who main enemy archives?
I would like to answer: mice. But no one saw them at RGASPI. So we have this in order. But seriously, the main enemy of archives is a person who is not interested in anything - neither the past nor the present. For whom value is solely cost. But such an enemy is not a rodent, so you won’t poison him with poison? All that remains is to educate with available means and instill culture. There is no other way to cure...
The editors of Rodina invite you to continue the conversation started by A.K. Sorokin. Write to us at: 125993, Moscow, st.
V. DYMARSKY: Good evening, hello, this is the “Price of Victory” program and I, its host, Vitaly Dymarsky. Today we have such an unusual broadcast, because I think that our regular audience is accustomed to the fact that the conversation is one-on-one, but today I have three historians against me at once, with whom it will be very difficult to cope. Let me first introduce the guests. Let's start, probably, with the lady: Yulia Kantor, adviser to the director of the State Hermitage. Andrei Konstantinovich Sorokin, director of the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History - I learned everything correctly. And Oleg Khlevnyuk, professor of the Department of Russian History of the 20th Century, Faculty of History, Moscow State University.
I've learned all your regalia. Now, then, the reason for which we have gathered. All my guests today are participants in the just ended international scientific conference, it is already the sixth in a row from the “History of Stalinism” series. It took place in Kyiv, and its topic was: “Soviet nations and national politics.” This is, in fact, what we have gathered about. What relation this has to the history of the war, I think, is clear, completely, so to speak, direct. But I think that the topic that we are today... I would like to discuss with my guests today is how we defined such a purely Soviet definition on the eve of the broadcast, we found, so to speak, a divergence, the dispersion of post-Soviet history, in the post-Soviet period according to national apartments, as there was such a term in the Soviet Union at one time, here. I mean that the emergence of such national histories, national historical policies in the post-Soviet space. And since the conference was held in Kyiv, then, naturally, this problem also arose there.
Who should we start with? Here, I know, Yulia Zorakhovna Kantor is always very active...
Y. KANTOR: I’ll keep quiet for now.
V. DYMARSKY: Well, why, why should you remain silent? If you remain silent, you will have to tell me.
Y. KANTOR: Well, you will succeed.
V. DYMARSKY: Yes. What is your impression? And to what extent, well, the same Ukrainian hosts of this conference, to what extent Ukraine, and other, in general, republics, have moved away from such a unified perception of history, in particular, Soviet history? Since we're talking about about the history of Stalinism.
Y. KANTOR: You know, in fact, it was doubly interesting for me to go to this conference, not only because I like the project itself, here is the annual conference on the history of Stalinism, and not only because the history of interethnic relations in the Soviet Union, in including the situation with the Second World War, the Great Patriotic War, is the subject of all sorts of different scientific interests of mine, but also because I wanted to compare it with the situation in the Baltic states, which is my, if you like, scientific patrimony, right? This is what we periodically communicate about here. And I was just interested in how much the situation with the perception of Soviet history or historiography, and the Soviet past in general in Ukraine - I will still say “on” and not “in” - differs from the situation with the perception of history in the Baltic states. There are some things in common in the Soviet period, including the war period, but there are also big differences. And, you know, again, given that historians from the Baltic countries were invited to the conference and participated in it, it was all the more interesting to watch, listen, and participate in their discussions with Ukrainian colleagues on approximately the same issues, for example, related to the history of the insurgency in the Baltic states and Ukraine, let’s say, right? How it all happened. In Moldova, where there were also historians at the conference from which they were presented at this conference. And I quite consciously went through - well, I don’t want to say that in all the sections that were, in addition to the one in which I myself participated just with the Baltic topic, but also in several others, where issues were discussed, including national and international in wartime propaganda in matters related to the insurrectionary movement, everyday life, and so on, and religious issues of the Soviet era, including wartime. And, so to speak, bringing all this to the answer to your question, I want to say that the situation in Ukraine seems to me to be quite typical for the entire post-Soviet space. You see, you said it well that everyone is trying to move into new apartments, but before they lived in the same communal apartment. And in my opinion...
V. DYMARSKY: And now everyone got a separate one.
Y. KANTOR: And now everyone has received a separate one, yes, but at the same time, it is impossible to erase from memory, no matter how much one would like it, living together in a communal apartment, crowding in the same kitchen and in the same corridor. And it's not necessary.
V. DYMARSKY: ... they added it to each other's soup...
Y. KANTOR: Yes, something. Well, after all, a common past still exists, and denying it is completely pointless. It can be interpreted in different ways. But what I saw in several rather serious reports by representatives of Ukrainian historical science today, so to speak, let me down - or rather, what I heard - led me to the idea that this is a rejection, an immanent rejection of everything that was associated with Soviet times, does not play a very good role for the state... yes, yes, yes, for the state - don’t raise your eyebrows - for the state of historical science. It is impossible to start with a clean sheet if this sheet is not the first. And, by the way, it’s often not clean. Well, and besides, by no means idealizing what is happening here, right? We are now tilting, so to speak, towards strengthening, perhaps, such super-statist positions in relation to the great Soviet power, so to speak, let’s intonate this correctly, but there is an attempt to dress in the clothes, if you are talking about war, in the clothes of fighters for independence of people who fought on the side of the Nazis seems to me at least absurd.
V. DYMARSKY: Thank you. This is the impression that Yulia Kantor has.
Andrey Konstantinovich?
A. SOROKIN: Or maybe we’ll listen to one more active participant...
V. DYMARSKY: Okay, and then you will...
A. SOROKIN: But no, I won’t summarize...
V. DYMARSKY: One of the main organizers, by the way, of the conference.
A. SOROKIN: In fact, I was not able to attend as many sections, listen to as many reports as I would like, and we mostly managed to exchange opinions on the content at the final meeting. I'm actually very interested in these live impressions...
V. DYMARSKY: I agree, then...
A. SOROKIN: I also have impressions, I also have an opinion.
V. DYMARSKY: I agree. Then a question for Khlevnyuk. Oleg, maybe I’ll change it a little then. In general, this very topic, the main topic of the sixth conference, I mean the history of Stalinism. Taking into account the fact that, of course, and I think that no one will dispute this, there is such a quiet, not so much rehabilitation of Stalinism, but some kind of softening, at least, of criticism going on in Russia, right? Stalinism, if not Stalinism, then Stalin, in any case, the figure of Stalin seems to be becoming even in the eyes younger generation very often attractive. We know that history divides many people now, right? in the post-Soviet space, what Yulia said, there are many problems there, both with the Baltic states and with Ukraine. But history in general, and the history of Stalinism, is it the main, so to speak, subject of controversy and disagreement?
O. KHLEVNYUK: Well, not only, of course, but a lot is focused on this period. I would like to say that in general we took a little risk when choosing the topic for the next conference, namely national development, national policy.
V. DYMARSKY: Did you take a risk, taking into account the choice of the venue?..
O. KHLEVNYUK: Not only, from a scientific point of view. Because it must be said that these problems in general, they are far from being the domain of the historian, they have somehow always been dealt with more by specialists from others social sciences. Historians, perhaps, are weaker than others in this area. No we have good work, but still. And so, of course, our surprise was very great when we received an incredible, significant number of applications for this conference, and it turned out that in fact, directly or, in general, somehow indirectly, but a fairly large group of historians are dealing with this issue. And so, if we talk about division, then I would say that one of the important results for me of our conference, and in general any conference, is always not only the search for a certain truth, which, it must be said, is quite difficult at large meetings, but any a conference is, if you like, a meeting of professionals, albeit not like-minded people, but professionals involved in a certain science, and getting to know each other. So, for me, of course, I knew many of those who came there, and for me the biggest and most interesting thing at such conferences was always the discovery of new young scientists. And this time we also had a lot of them, and very nice ones.
V. DYMARSKY: You mean, not only from Russia?
O. KHLEVNYUK: Not only from Russia, from Ukraine, for example, there was a large group of interesting young guys. You understand, if we talk about this division - then I would not reproach anyone, I will simply state a certain fact - there is a certain difference between scientists of the older generation, who, if you like, are overcoming their previous past and they try to explain to themselves and those around them why they used to say this way, but now they say differently, and this is all understandable from a human point of view, from a scientific point of view, maybe it’s more difficult for them. And there is a difference between them and between that younger generation of historians who are not burdened with this burden, who entered science under new conditions, in the absence of censorship, in the absence... of the presence of archival documents. And they are very free in choosing their issues, they take on such topics, well, as a rule, not very politicized, they explore certain social, cultural realities, they are not so much focused, perhaps on politics, they are not very interested these are the debates that are going on between official historiographies, so to speak, state historiographies, on both sides. That is, they do their own research, they are more integrated, if you like, into such a global historical community.
V. DYMARSKY: That is, - excuse me for interrupting you - you want to say that these 20 years of disengagement, including historical topics, were they not affected in any way? They grew up in this atmosphere.
O. KHLEVNYUK: Well, it probably had some influence, but, nevertheless, one feels that they are not very interested in this. It is possible that somewhere, when they have to, I don’t know, I just don’t know this situation, they have to say some necessary words, which we all said, so to speak, back in the 80s, let’s say, in the early 80s, I...
Y. KANTOR: I didn’t say it, I didn’t have time.
O. KHLEVNYUK: You didn’t have time, so, here you are, you’re still young, yes. But, well, that means here they are, and this is their problem. For example, they study there the social appearance of political elites, there, the formation of a way of life in new cities from the point of view of, say, confessional...
V. DYMARSKY: ...not politicized...
O. KHLEVNYUK: Not politicized, yes, they are interested in how people classified themselves as a particular nationality, what was the practice of this classification. This, by the way, is also not such a simple question, because it is very... I remember one letter that I saw in the archives from the post-war period, when all sorts of well-known anti-Semitic campaigns began, a man wrote a letter to the Supreme Council that, According to my passport, I am a Jew, but what kind of Jew am I? I don’t know the language, everyone laughs at me: I don’t even look Jewish. Allow me, he says, to rewrite myself from a Jew to a Russian. That is, in this anecdotal situation, a very serious interesting problem actually manifested itself, which is also now being studied using purely scientific tools. And for me personally, this is the most encouraging sign in the current historiographical situation.
V. DYMARSKY: But I would allow myself, not to disagree, now I’ll turn to Andrei Konstantinovich with the same question then Sorokin, not to disagree, well, okay, of course, you can go into everyday life, you can leave into problems, so to speak, that are not politicized, but where do we go, it still remains, still in limbo, in an unresolved state, a problem that is still connected with politics.
O. KHLEVNYUK: Well, let it remain.
V. DYMARSKY: This reminds me, I don’t know to what extent it is, so you, as historians, will confirm or deny me, but as far as I know, once upon a time between historians of Russia and Ukraine, by the way, there was an agreement to sort of write such a common textbook.
O. KHLEVNYUK: No.
V. DYMARSKY: No?
O. KHLEVNYUK: Well, then I...
A. SOROKIN: There was an agreement, as I understand it...
V. DYMARSKY: ... when we sat down, let’s, they say, not write about what divides us. We throw this out, we throw this out, we throw this out... And in the end there was nothing left, it became empty.
O. KHLEVNYUK: No, I just...
V. DYMARSKY: Maybe this is an anecdote, but I think that it is close to the truth.
O. KHLEVNYUK: I will add one phrase in connection with this. These discussions, well, for example, about hunger, they have, from my point of view, reached an absolute dead end, and in general, I, frankly speaking, simply don’t see much point in continuing them.
V. DYMARSKY: That is, life itself...
O. KHLEVNYUK: Everyone will remain with their own point of view, that’s it.
A. SOROKIN: I would not agree with this. I think that not a single historical scientific discussion can reach a dead end. A political or near-historical discussion may reach a dead end. From the point of view of a set of historical facts, if Oleg mentioned the topic of famine, well, the situation is more or less clear to all professional historians around the world today. If some time ago, certain gaps remained unexplored, documentary complexes were not fully involved in scientific circulation, but now even those Western historians who adhered to the well-known concept of the Holodomor as genocide, well, they already look at this topic differently today. And by the way, within the framework of the “History of Stalinism” project, several books have been published by both Russian researchers and the most famous foreign ones. I will only mention the names of Whitcraft and Davis and their famous huge book “The Years of Famine”, for example, in which, in general, the most famous researchers of this topic have long been looking at this topic from other approaches...
V. DYMARSKY: ...do Ukrainian historians agree with them?
A. SOROKIN: Ukrainian historians, this is exactly what Oleg is talking about, they don’t really agree with this, but this is not directly related to historical science. You may not agree with historical facts, but historical facts this will not cease to be facts, and documents will not cease to be documents. The famine of the early 30s affected not only Ukraine; hundreds of thousands of people and millions of people died in the North Caucasus, the Volga region, and Kazakhstan. Let me remind you that Kazakhstan suffered more than all other republics Soviet Union. As a result of death from starvation and migrations, the republic, by the way, lost almost 40% of its population to neighboring China. So, all this is both complex and simple. Well, in this regard, I cannot help but say, since we have touched on the topic of documents and facts, that the Federal Archival Agency, unfortunately, is not very fast, but, nevertheless, is moving along this path, two have already been released a multi-volume, four-volume, planned, publication of documents on the history of the famine. Well, the historiographic picture as a result of this publication is quite clear, it seems to me. Yes, during the Stalinist period we dealt with a number of national campaigns of a repressive nature, and it makes no sense to deny this, but the basis of these campaigns was, of course, not ethnocide in any of its forms, but the same desire to build a new social reality, the desire to social structuring, to social construction was also manifested in the sphere of national relations. This was one of the activities of the leadership of the Soviet state to build that very new world, which ended with the events known to us quite recently by historical standards. Here. As for separation, repulsion, I wouldn’t dramatize the situation either. It seems to me that our project has done a lot in just the opposite sense, in the sense of consolidating efforts and organizing, let’s not be afraid of this word, on a global scale of this community. It seems to me that we have institutionalized this field, and I, for example, am pleased with what Oleg also said: in the overwhelming majority of cases, professional historians are neither involved in the politicization of history nor in attempts to politically instrumentalize it. An objective analysis of the complex historical past takes place, and we, by the way, encountered this in Kyiv as well. Well, I will mention the concept of positive activity of the Soviet state in the national question, recently born in the vastness of the United States of America. early period existence of the USSR in the 20s - early 30s, and, in general, according to my observations, almost the overwhelming majority of professional historians today have accepted this concept and work within its framework, because it is quite pointless to deny the real policy of the USSR in constructing new nations, to support national cultures, to create national territorial entities. Here you go…
V. DYMARSKY: ... by the way, excuse me, but we know very well the boundaries that were drawn then, they are becoming a source of conflicts today.
A. SOROKIN: This can be argued, I think that...
V. DYMARSKY: The most shining example– this is Karabakh, right?
A. SOROKIN: No, I generally agree with you, I just want to draw your attention to the fact that there could be much more problems.
V. DYMARSKY: Well, then this is a positive activity, if there could be more problems, of course.
A. SOROKIN: Well, that’s exactly how our foreign colleagues perceive and analyze this story, but some of our Ukrainian colleagues treat this concept with skepticism similar to yours, although they are less allowed to do so, because you can formulate skepticism, without confirming it and without providing a scientific basis for it...
V. DYMARSKY: We are irresponsible people...
A. SOROKIN: Because, yes, you are the publisher of a well-known magazine with the self-explanatory title “Amateur,” when a professional...
V. DYMARSKY: Are you kidding me?
A. SOROKIN: No, I'm joking. But when a professional historian, coming to the podium, declares this concept simply outdated, without citing any arguments or facts...
V. DYMARSKY: Sorry, we, of course, have little time left before the break. Maybe I’ll ask a question then, and then...
A. SOROKIN: Ask.
V. DYMARSKY: You say that you do not give any arguments, but the state of interethnic relations already in the post-Soviet period in Russia itself is not an argument that says, this is not a legacy, as they say, of the past, right? This is not an argument against the national policy that was pursued in Soviet era?
A. SOROKIN: But, you understand, when we talk about the concept of positive activity, let’s not forget that I am positioning this period quite accurately chronologically; during the existence of the USSR, politics both in the national sphere and in the social sphere changed greatly. And we certainly cannot but agree with you that everything that we have in interethnic relations today is a direct legacy of the national policy with which we all dealt while living on the territory of the former Union.
V. DYMARSKY: Andrei Konstantinovich began to answer this question, and we will continue the conversation a few minutes after the news release. Let me remind you that this is the “Price of Victory” program, and today we are talking about national politicians and national stories in the post-Soviet space.
NEWS
V. DYMARSKY: Good evening again, we continue the “Price of Victory” program. Let me remind you that I am its presenter Vitaly Dymarsky. And when I’m visiting today – can I go without the long regalia? – Yulia Kantor... three historians: Yulia Kantor, Andrey Sorokin and Oleg Khlevnyuk. And we are discussing the conference in the “History of Stalinism” series that just ended in Kyiv and dedicated to national politics, and all three of my guests today, naturally, were participants in this conference.
We haven’t touched on it yet, we haven’t gotten to the war yet, but I think, although our program is dedicated to the history of the war, I think we will touch on this topic too.
Before our short break, Andrei Konstantinovich Sorokin just... that we must agree...
A. SOROKIN: ... we need to explain the complexity...
V. DYMARSKY: ... with the American position on the concept of positive activity of the Soviet state in its early years, am I stating it correctly? Positive activity, right? in national politics, we tried to argue, and Yulia Kantor wants to continue to defend either the American concept, or...
A. SOROKIN: But it’s not American, let’s clarify.
V. DYMARSKY: No, well, I heard what I heard from Andrei Konstantinovich.
A. SOROKIN: ...summarized by a very famous American, he is actually Canadian by origin.
V. DYMARSKY: The American continent...
Y. KANTOR: Well, okay, then let’s not make the globe smaller. It seems to me that, in fact, perhaps these arguments will not seem entirely convincing to Andrei Konstantinovich, but nevertheless. I'm not talking about the theory itself, but about practice, right? That is, activity is a practical thing. Like everything that the Bolsheviks did, from 1917 onwards, everything they did was mainly declarations, especially in the sense that we are talking about, positive, right? these were declarations. In fact, unfortunately, for the most part they were not implemented, and even the notorious, well, what, perhaps, should have started chronologically, the notorious abolition of the Pale of Settlement, right? so this is also not their merit, this happened much earlier, under the Provisional Government, this is not theirs either. Well, and so on. A declaration that for all peoples, there, nations, in addition to the right to self-determination, right? which, by the way, many took advantage of, for which Comrade Stalin later tried to attract them back. I mean, of course, the Baltic states and Finland. And Poland. But the peoples of the East, so to speak, oppressed in the “prison of nations” of the Russian Empire, I repeat this rhetoric, well, have they, all their national problems been solved? Have all tribal relations suddenly stepped from feudalism to developed socialism? At first not very developed, and then just developed? What actually happened? In fact, all the problems in interethnic relations that existed in Russian Empire, well, and, accordingly, as an inheritance they were received by the Soviet state, both before the war, during and, by the way, after. And war is such a peak, right? this is a kind of sublimation, if you like, including interethnic, interethnic conflicts, which the Germans used in the occupied territories and among Soviet prisoners of war. There have been no major changes in solving this problem. In solving, I mean, the national question. And if we connect the national issue with the religious, confessional one, then the problem was simply driven deeper, because, having declared itself atheistic, the Bolshevik state renounced all religions that are represented on the territory of the country, and accordingly deprived the people of this aspect of national cultural self-identification.
V. DYMARSKY: Oleg Vitalievich?
O. KHLEVNYUK: Well, I think that...
V. DYMARSKY: Positive... positive or not positive?..
O. KHLEVNYUK: I think that, yes, everything must be treated as history is such a thing, specifically historical, excuse the tautology. You see, of course, we understand perfectly well that any policy, including national policy, during this period operated within the framework of a certain system. It was a tough, repressive system, you can call it totalitarian, authoritarian - this is already the subject, as they say, of our agreements. And naturally, she bore the corresponding imprint. However, it is important to emphasize here. You see, this policy took shape during the period when the old empires collapsed as a result of the First World War, when the national question acquired incredible urgency, and when it became clear what destructive power it possessed. And the Bolsheviks, to whom, in principle, this positive activity in the national question, it was alien to them, because they were centralizers at their core, nevertheless, they began to look for an answer to the question: what to do? What's with this a huge amount nations, nationalities, nationalities, which each, in general, in the new conditions demands something of its own, how to deal with them? As if they didn't blow it all up. And the idea was simple: we need to go ahead of their demands, and, not making political concessions, but making concessions to such cultural and national construction, making concessions to local elites, in general, not allowing this cauldron to explode. And it must be said that in the 20s this policy, in general, worked normally. Well, at least she was acting. You just shouldn't forget what happened next. In the early 30s, in the wake of the crisis caused by the policy of the Great Leap Forward, famine, crisis, this policy of affirmative action, cultural indigenization, as it was called then, it was simply eliminated. All these national, so to speak, builders were declared Petliurists, well, according to their affiliation, or some kind of Finnish nationalists, or Belarusian nationalists. Corresponding repressions on national grounds followed, which, during the period of such an obvious increase in the threat of war, turned into massive operations in 1937-1938 on a national basis, the so-called counter-revolutionary operations against national contingents. And with this, unfortunately, this legacy, which was further aggravated by those purges and deportations that were carried out in the territories that became part of the USSR in 1940, these are the Baltic states, Moldova, this...
V. DYMARSKY: Western regions of Ukraine.
O. KHLEVNYUK: ...Western regions of Ukraine and Belarus. It was with this inheritance that we entered the war, not with the inheritance of indigenization, but with a different inheritance. And I think this is for... these are such nuances, let some call them significant, others less significant, but they existed, and they must be taken into account.
V. DYMARSKY: ... I think that they are significant, if we really touch on problems related to the war, that’s what Yulia mentioned, there, the UPA, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. Well, Yulia, so to speak, jumped out... expressed her opinion, and...
Y. KANTOR: She jumped out and spoke out.
V. DYMARSKY: She jumped out, yes, and jumped up... and so to speak, she completely rejected what was going on there, this is all understandable, on the one hand. On the other hand, it is still necessary in this, in the same activities of this UPA, whether there is still an element of struggle, let’s say, for national independence.
Y. KANTOR: Come on... I’ll jump out now...
V. DYMARSKY: Julia perked up, right? What, in fact, many Ukrainian nationalist historians say...
Y. KANTOR: Everything is clear, yes, this is also a question, firstly, of interpretation, and secondly, I did not reject anything.
V. DYMARSKY: This is a question of interpretation...
Y. KANTOR: I didn’t reject anything that was there. I suggested admitting everything that was there, admitting everything, right? Now, in fact, although the OUN and UPA, yes, these are two faces of the Mobius ring, right? which one flows into the other.
V. DYMARSKY: ...UPA?
Y. KANTOR: Yes.
V. DYMARSKY: ...as if armed...
Y. KANTOR: ... and its armed units, yes, so to speak, formed much later, already during the war. Now, although this is not exactly, so to speak, the subject of my activity, but, nevertheless, this is also a question of interpretation in the same way as in the Baltic states, only there were SS and police battalions, but in Lithuania there was not just SS, right?
V. DYMARSKY: It’s different there...
Y. KANTOR: It is not known who is worse.
V. DYMARSKY: ... this is not the same thing.
Y. KANTOR: This is not the same thing, I mean the question of interpretation: can this be considered... can such activity, anti-Soviet in the literal sense, in the literal sense of the word, be considered a struggle for independence. In the case of the OUN-UPA, this means that we understand that the organization of Ukrainian nationalists operated on the territory of Eastern Poland, I emphasize, Eastern Poland until 1939, although one of my Ukrainian colleagues of academic status said that there is no such thing as Eastern Poland than, Of course, it left me in amazement. This is not even a question of interpretations, it is simply a question of statements. So, the congress, the United Congress of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists took place in 29, and not on the territory of Poland for obvious reasons, but in Vienna. That’s why this structure, which actually declared - perhaps not only declared, but actually set goals for itself not only national culture, but also autonomy on the territory of Poland, which is important, but also the reconstruction of the Ukrainian state, in relation to “re-creation” it is difficult to talk about, because when did Ukraine have its own independent state? Never.
V. DYMARSKY: It was.
Y. KANTOR: Well, how? somehow it doesn't work out. When? Well, when?
O. KHLEVNYUK: Well, when? In the 17th and 18th years.
Y. KANTOR: Well, until the moment, yes, that’s it, a short piece of time! If you can count it...
V. DYMARSKY: Many former Soviet republics refer to this experience. And there was Georgia, right?..
Y. KANTOR: Of course. No, but when we talk, there, yes, about a longer period of existence not associated with Civil War, with the situation of the collapse of the empire, then perhaps we need to talk about this with more caution. I mean about the state, which lasted, there, a year. So what does the struggle for independence mean? This is a struggle related to crossing borders or destroying the borders of the Polish state, right? and, so to speak, the reunification of that very Ukraine as a single state. In this sense, at the conference, for which I give her another special thanks, there were many, I would say, linguistic finds. Well, besides the very interesting term “sub-Soviet Ukraine” - not Soviet, not Sovietized, but sub-Soviet Ukraine - a good neologism, isn’t it? – there were several more terminological discrepancies, for example: what happened in 1939? In 1939, the reunification of two Ukraines took place, said a Ukrainian historian at section No. 1, which I attended. In parallel with this, an hour later, in another section, where I moved, the question arose that as a result of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Eastern Poland was occupied. So what happened in this sense? The answer is simple: what resulted from the occupation of Eastern Poland, its division between Stalin and Hitler, right? two Ukraines reunited - there is a certain cause-and-effect relationship here. Only each of the speakers, relatively speaking, in different spaces, territorial and historical, in different audiences, interprets these two facts differently. The OUN thus advocated, in fact being a fifth column, a fifth column for Poland, right? at the same time, being fighters for the reunification of Ukraine for that Ukraine, which at that moment was part of the Soviet Union. And that's why the unification. And then the OUN, and subsequently the OUN-UPA, begins to play the role of a fifth column for Soviet Ukraine, because we are talking and this is already happening during the war, during the Nazi occupation of Ukraine, we are talking about the supposed restoration of the Ukrainian state, which, between By the way, the Germans, we must give them their due, never made such promises, just as, by the way, the Balts, in general, never made such promises. They called and actually recruited quite consciously to fight against Bolshevism under their banners. In the case of Ukraine, unlike the Baltic states, there was not even a question of protectorate in principle, right? that's how it is. That's why…
V. DYMARSKY: But were they collaborators of the fascists, nevertheless? Nazis, more likely.
Y. KANTOR: Well, from my point of view they were. How else?
V. DYMARSKY: Well, as I understand it, this is where the controversy is going on.
Y. KANTOR: Well...
A. SOROKIN: Well, you know, a year ago we published a 2-volume collection of documents “Ukrainian nationalist organizations during the Second World War.” And they even dared to hold a rather large representative presentation in the city of Kyiv. Well, over the past year, our Ukrainian colleagues, alas, or fortunately, could not present any arguments or a set of documentary materials that our Ukrainian colleagues, alas, or fortunately, qualified the activities of the OUN-UPA by Yulia, who represents this 2-volume volume. But, unfortunately, this is so. Although I would not like to paint this picture too broadly and simply. Any collaborationism is an extremely complex phenomenon, just like Russian collaborationism, by the way. By the way, we are preparing the same 2-volume book on the Russian Liberation Army and General Vlasov. This is generally...
V. DYMARSKY: It must also be said, a heterogeneous formation...
A. SOROKIN: A heterogeneous formation that has brought together...
Y. KANTOR: Heterogeneous, but unambiguous.
A. SOROKIN: ... gathered under its banner different people with different ideological attitudes, and often without ideological attitudes. And all this is very difficult. Ukrainian nationalists united ideological people, on the one hand. On the other hand, they are often just bandits, and you don’t need to turn a blind eye to that either. And let’s remember the so-called Volyn massacre, as a result of which these same Ukrainian nationalists, fighting for Ukrainian independence, massacred, excuse the jargon, several hundred thousand Polish citizens, the future, so to speak, Ukrainian state, apparently freeing up the territory for real Ukrainians. This is all history, this is also reality, which cannot be refuted either by political declarations or by arguments that lie outside the scope of historical research. This is a fact that needs to be dealt with, if we talk about politics, let’s remember that the tension between recent inseparable friends Poland and Ukraine today exists precisely around this plot. For the Poles, this is an even more traumatic story than the Katyn affair. And for Ukraine too. And the positions of the parties are irreconcilable and polar. And I think that we still have a lot to learn and see, watching this near-historical, now political, drama and political dimension of the historical process flaring up around the Ukrainian nationalists.
V. DYMARSKY: You weren’t interested - somehow I suddenly had this question - well, thank God, Ukraine is still there, I hope, and will remain a single state, but the differences between Western and Eastern Ukraine, they are known, that here hide. But the child comes to school, right? and teaches history. Do they have a single history textbook?
O. KHLEVNYUK: I don’t have an answer to this subject.
Y. KANTOR: I know because I asked.
V. DYMARSKY: Do they teach the same thing in the West and in the East?
Y. KANTOR: I know, because I was interested in this issue, after all, I was interested for the same reason as you, and also because I am still a professor of the department general history Pedagogical Institute. And therefore - this is a second place of work - and therefore, what is taught, how they are taught, and what awaits us, that is, should we expect parallels of this kind, of course, I was interested.
V. DYMARSKY: ... Oleg Vitalievich also teaches at our history department...
O. KHLEVNYUK: ... yes, but according to Russian textbooks, not Ukrainian, so I’m not up to date with the matter...
Y. KANTOR: ... that is, I prepare future teachers, so to speak.
V. DYMARSKY: Yes, yes, I understand.
Y. KANTOR: In this sense, there was interest. Here. So, the situation there is this: there is a textbook, or textbooks, sanctioned and recommended by the state, but they are identical. But there is such a concept, by the way, which now exists throughout our country as a regional component. Accordingly, well, we, for example, in Tatarstan have a certain accent, this, by the way, is sometimes criticized...
V. DYMARSKY: ... concerning the Tatar-Mongol yoke?..
Y. KANTOR: No, and including, no, concerning the history of Tatarstan in general, right? And, so to speak, not that they are alternative, but let’s say so...
O. KHLEVNYUK: ...developing...
Y. KANTOR: Developing the topic of the history of Tatarstan in a more profound volume, perhaps, or from a slightly different angle, let’s be honest, I saw just Kazan textbooks than this, say, in Moscow, St. Petersburg, or somewhere else. Well, let’s say...
V. DYMARSKY: ... I didn’t even ask as a joke.
Y. KANTOR: I understand.
V. DYMARSKY: And what really concerns the Golden Horde?
Y. KANTOR: Well, including those related to the Golden Horde. This does not mean that the theory is refuted there...
V. DYMARSKY: I read a lot of works not in the textbook, but the works of Tatar historians, who, so to speak, and not only historians, by the way, who have a very common positive point of view there, maybe this is really true? The role of the Horde...
Y. KANTOR: Well, of course. There is such a point of view.
A. SOROKIN: Well, not only Kazan historians write about this...
(unintelligible)
V. DYMARSKY: But we are talking about a textbook.
Y. KANTOR: About the textbook. As for Western Ukraine, this situation is completely special, and there is no need to focus only on textbooks, because, one way or another, the textbooks are state-owned, there is a unified state program, just like we have the Unified State Exam, there is an exam, yes, which everyone passes, regardless of what part of Ukraine, in the Donbass or, there, in Lviv, they graduated from school. But you know, it is very characteristic that, let me remind you that the language of our conference was Russian, well, like at all previous ones.
A. SOROKIN: I’ll correct: Russian and Ukrainian are officially declared...
Y. KANTOR: At the last stage? This is what I didn’t know. In fact, I didn’t know this, because in all programs...
A. SOROKIN: In the program you will find...
O. KHLEVNYUK: This is indicated in the program.
V. DYMARSKY: ...here I have the program in two languages, in front of me...
Y. KANTOR: ... on two, but official language conferences...
A. SOROKIN: ... it’s written there, rest assured...
V. DYMARSKY: Now we’ll find...
O. KHLEVNYUK: It’s there, yes.
Y. KANTOR: I didn’t pay attention, to be honest, because in the electronic version that was sent to us all, the working language of the conference was Russian. What am I talking about? Well, since there are two languages, you see, I just missed it, it’s very interesting. I understand where this last stage came from, but the only participant from those whom I heard, despite the fact that there were representatives of 16 countries at our conference, were the French, who usually always - to you, as a Francophone, Vitaly Naumovich, This is known better than all of us - the French try to speak only French wherever possible, right?
V. DYMARSKY: They don’t try, they just don’t know any better. It's very simple.
A. SOROKIN: Not only them.
Y. KANTOR: No, no, no, just the French, the Americans, not to mention the Germans and others, right? The Baltic people spoke Russian, the Baltic representatives spoke Russian...
V. DYMARSKY: Do you want them to speak Ukrainian? That would be even weirder.
Y. KANTOR: No, no one spoke any other language. Sole participant, who spoke Ukrainian, was a participant from Lvov. The people of Kiev, Kharkov, and so on, spoke Russian. We have...
V. DYMARSKY: Yes, we Lviv residents are like that...
Y. KANTOR: You are from Lviv, right? I understand, I touched your national pride, Vitaly Naumovich. But this is also really interesting, this often occurs in other scientific forums, even domestic Russian ones, and some in general, when it is representatives of Western Ukraine who insist on their own language.
O. KHLEVNYUK: Let me intervene. I think that in this case this was caused by the fact that the conference took place in Ukraine, and one of the participants from Lviv at the section where I was present, he explained that when I was in Moscow, I spoke in Russian, it was such a bad experience that I just don’t want to cripple the Russian language once again, and... But I must say that he would have an absolutely magnificent Ukrainian. This even pleased some of the participants, because it was not the kind of mixture that we often hear...
Y. KANTOR: The mixture is surzhik, it’s not a language...
O. KHLEVNYUK: It was a real beautiful language, well, nothing at all, we figured it out...
A. SOROKIN: I wouldn’t dramatize this at all.
O. KHLEVNYUK: Well, someone needed a translation...
Y. KANTOR: ...for example, I translated for my neighbor from Estonia, I translated...
O. KHLEVNYUK: Someone needed it.
A. SOROKIN: ... there was simultaneous translation at the meetings, but there was no simultaneous translation in the sections. I wouldn't really focus on this, these are unimportant things.
Y. KANTOR: No, I just mentioned this in connection with Lvov, because a person from Kyiv would not say...
V. DYMARSKY: I would still repeat once again the question that was asked today, I’m just interested, maybe, in a slightly broader way for you to say. Whether it was heard at this conference, or if it wasn’t, or was heard, it doesn’t matter, in any case, what is your opinion about the actual influence of that period on the state of interethnic relations today in today’s Russia. I'm not talking about the state of relations between Russia and Ukraine, between Russia and Kazakhstan, between Russia and Georgia, and so on. And inside Russia. This is when it was laid? Or was it, as we say, a legacy of the tsarist regime?
A. SOROKIN: You know, the art of public administration, in my opinion, lies, among other things, in responding in a timely manner to various challenges that arise. The Soviet state failed to cope with these challenges. The national question has been quite acute, to put it mildly, throughout the entire existence of this state.
V. DYMARSKY: There were such outbreaks, but nevertheless it was somehow possible, maybe, indeed, to drive it all inside somewhere, and they really continued to exist, these problems, but they did not come out so often and not so They still came out strong.
A. SOROKIN: But this is the problem, this is not called reacting: pushing the disease deeper, not answering questions until they take you by the throat, this is not public administration. This, in fact, is the problem. If the early Bolshevik governments, faced with a challenge, generated, it can be treated differently, but a coherent policy, and this was a response to the challenge of the time. Then in the later period there were no answers. There were challenges, there were questions, but there were no answers. Of course, today we are faced with this legacy in many ways, which, by the way, does not in any way relieve us of responsibility for the same thing. These are questions for public administration. We have challenges that need to be answered. Simply covering the problem with asphalt and hoping that nothing will grow through the asphalt is pointless and harmful.
V. DYMARSKY: You know, Andrei Konstantinovich, right now I catch myself doing something, and I made such a very cursory review in my head, and can you name me at least one country where this problem has been solved? Through wise or effective government.
O. KHLEVNYUK: This is not a question for historians.
V. DYMARSKY: I understand, yes.
V. DYMARSKY: I can’t find or name such a country. Because what we can consider wise and effective is, alas, I am not defending the Soviet state in this case, it’s only those who managed to drive it inside somewhere, and still it always pops up somewhere.
O. KHLEVNYUK: No, but this is a problem that exists constantly, it cannot be solved, it will always be there. But the criterion here is simple: does this state exist as a multinational state or does it not exist?
V. DYMARSKY: Does Russia exist as a multinational state?
V. DYMARSKY: Especially now we see this clearly in Biryulyovo...
O. KHLEVNYUK: True, but despite this, Russia exists as a multinational state. And this is a criterion that, as they say, not a lot of mistakes are made, and there are some correct decisions.
Y. KANTOR: The Russian Empire also existed as a multinational... it never denied this.
O. KHLEVNYUK: Yes, and as long as it existed as such, that means, let’s say, what held it together outweighed what destroyed it. It was the same in the Soviet Union.
Y. KANTOR: We know what happened in the Soviet Union.
O. KHLEVNYUK: Yes, absolutely right. What other criterion could there be, so to speak, for the degree to which the national issue has been resolved? Only this one. But so far we are not talking about the fact that the whole country, like in Yugoslavia, is turning into one big Biryulyovo.
V. DYMARSKY: Well, yes.
O. KHLEVNYUK: Until then, we can say that everything is not at all hopeless.
V. DYMARSKY: Well, yes, I just remembered Yugoslavia...
O. KHLEVNYUK: Of course.
V. DYMARSKY: But at the same time, there are examples of what we usually call a civilized divorce, right? there, the Czechs and the Slovaks parted ways quietly, calmly...
Y. KANTOR: In general, they show us that time has expired.
V. DYMARSKY: Time is running out, really. It even moreover, has expired, so, alas, I must thank our, my guests today: Yulia Kantor, Andrey Sorokin and Oleg Khlevnyuk for the conversation. We may not have talked much about the war, but it seems to me that the conversation is useful and interesting. See you in a week.
Start: 16.02.2010 | Ending: 10.03.2010
Sorokin Andrey Konstantinovich
- Candidate of Historical Sciences, Vice-President of the Russian Association of Political Science (RAPS), member of the Scientific Council Russian Academy sciences on problems of Russian and world economic history, member of the scientific council of the Russian State Archive of Contemporary History, member of the Scientific Council of the Federal Archival Agency, member of the editorial board of the journal “Historical Archive”, member of the Bureau of the Board of the Association of Book Publishers of Russia (ASKI).The main direction of scientific activity of Andrei Konstantinovich Sorokin is the political and economic history of Russia. He is the author of more than 40 scientific works on the economic and political history of Russia at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries.
In 1991, Andrei Konstantinovich was one of the initiators of the creation of the publishing house "Russian Political Encyclopedia" (ROSSPEN), and now - general manager and editor-in-chief of the publishing house. The main goal of ROSSPEN is the implementation of scientific and publishing projects in the field of social and humanitarian knowledge. The publishing house deals not only with the publishing activities, but also acts as an intellectual and scientific-organizational center in the field of history, political science, sociology, and social philosophy.
Andrei Konstantinovich Sorokin is a laureate of the State Prize of the Russian Federation in the field of science and technology for 2002 (awarded for the preparation and publication of the scientific publishing project “Political Parties of Russia. Late XIX– first third of the 20th century. Documentary heritage" in 44 volumes).
He was also awarded the Honorary Badge “For the Protection of Human Rights” by the Commissioner for Human Rights in the Russian Federation (for the preparation and publication of “The History of Stalin’s Gulag. The late 1920s - early 1950s. Collection of documents. In 7 volumes” edited by with a foreword by A. I. Solzhenitsyn); Silver memorial badge of the Chairman of the State Duma of the Russian Federation “One hundred years since the establishment of the State Duma in Russia” (for the preparation and publication of the encyclopedia “State Duma of Russia. In 2 volumes. Vol. 1. State Duma of the Russian Empire. 1906–1917. Vol. 2. State Duma of the Russian Federation 1993–2006"); Order of Yu. V. Andropov of the Academy of Security, Defense and Law Enforcement (for the preparation and publication of the collective work “State Security of Russia: History and Modernity”); Prize of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia “Person of the Year 2005” (for the preparation and publication of the encyclopedia “Holocaust”), etc.
Questions and answers:
Question:
Evgeniy
Andrey Konstantinovich, was the twentieth century progress or regression for the development of Russia?
Question:
Alexander
Hello.
1. Is Russia destined to be an empire?
2. What position of Russia in the world do you see in 10-20 years?
Question:
NT
The topic “RUSSIA’S IMPERIAL HERITAGE” sounds, frankly speaking, ambiguous. What do we mean by IMPERIAL HERITAGE? Empire within the borders before 1914? Or the USSR before 1985? If the territorial issue does not relate to HERITAGE, then what is the main thing? Economy? Culture? Or maybe (inter) NATIONAL politics? Surely there must be something important? Or is it the same as always...
Question:
Nikolai Miailovich Kartashev
Andrei Konstantinovich, the history of the state is inextricably linked directly with every citizen. Each person leaves some trace in the history of his family, the region where he lived and, ultimately, the country. It’s not difficult to find out about the top officials of the state, famous names Russia, etc. But I’m actually interested in the history of my family, my last name. There are many archival documents (scribal books, revision tales, etc.), but the difficulty is that they are hidden by dust and the walls of archives. The question is simple: “Are there projects to expand Internet users’ access to the resources of the State Archives, and how easily can this be implemented in the near future?” Thank you.
Question:
Igor
Hello! The question of the need for a titular nation for Russia. I think it's necessary. What do you think about this?
Answer:
Sorokin Andrey Konstantinovich
The titular nation is a part of the population of a state, the nationality of which determines the official names of the given state.” It's clear that titular nation in Russia there is.
Question:
Alexander
I live in Siberia. The existing government does not pay any attention to Russia beyond the Urals, except for pumping out resources. But the measures of Stolypin and Stalin on the use and development of Siberia and Far East have exhausted themselves. Do you think it is possible to preserve Russia within its current borders in the next 15-20 years? What measures should the government and society take to maintain unity, since a spiritual split has already occurred?
Question:
Pavel Simonov
Good day Andrey Konstantinovich!
An empire is a state that has a cultural and historical layer that influences world processes. Maybe our Russia belongs to it (the Empire) at the moment? Why then are we, people - the descendants of generations who lived in this territory and having EVERYTHING in the depths - “hungry”? Isn’t the Government giving us a fishing rod? Look at the birth rate, I think the project has failed. This is not what the majority needs, but their own corner and the opportunity to earn money (jobs), which is what the state should do. This is not the way of the Empire! This is, rather, her backyard! What are we going to do? (Oh, our eternal question). Thank you!
Question:
Alexander Petrovich
Dear Andrey Konstantinovich!
Working with young people, I see a growing interest in dictatorship strong personality as the only means of effective struggle of the state with the elite in the form of oligarchy and bureaucracy. There are more and more dissatisfied with the current hopeless situation, especially among young people and educated youth. Can such a craving for dictatorship be considered society’s nostalgia for the Soviet empire?
Answer:
Sorokin Andrey Konstantinovich
Not quite like that. The young people you are pointing to do not have Soviet experience and do not know what it is. She is nostalgic not for a reality that is a thing of the past, but for a mythologized history in which everything was good - strong, wise leaders - fathers of the nation; great power, happy and satisfied people.
Question:
Irina Yudina
Dear Andrey Konstantinovich!
My husband, Alexey Betmakaev, Ph.D., believes that Russia was destroyed by Orthodoxy, and all our troubles are from it. It seems to me that all our troubles are that we have very narrow-minded people in power who think more about their place in history than about the greatness of Russia. But we have something in common about her future. Russia doesn't have it. What do you think about this?
Answer:
Sorokin Andrey Konstantinovich
The elites in Russia are the same as its citizens. The future, like the present, for Russia is not cloudless, but, nevertheless, it is in our hands.
Question:
Isabel
According to "P.S." more than 30% of our country's GDP is in the hands of oligarchs. What has happened, it seems, is that the country can no longer be returned to its former greatness. Nobody is asking to return the USSR, but the country needs its former spiritual wealth without worship of money, without a fetish. Anyone from statesmen thinking about it? And how are they going to change the situation?
Andrey Sorokin. Photo: Mikhail Nilov
About who today in Europe remembers and honors the truth about the Second World War, how to preserve the memory of the past, drawing lessons for the future, which archival funds today are deprived of the “top secret” stamp - the director of the Russian State archive of socio-political history (RGASPI) Andrey Sorokin.
Andrey Konstantinovich, you once said that the archive is a doctor of historical memory. Please decipher this definition.
It's simple. The archive stores documents in full, showing us without exception history with all its victories, triumphs, mistakes and crimes recorded in the documents. And our common task is to learn lessons from this historical experience, refract it in the present, heal from ignorance of history, and take into account its experience.
To solve such problems, we set out to digitize our most important funds and make many documents accessible. Two years ago, on our initiative, the Federal Archival Agency created the website “Documents Soviet era", which completely houses Stalin’s personal archive, which is available today online, partly the Politburo fund with digitized documents from the period 1919-1932, as well as the Comintern fund.
- Will the State Defense Committee fund be located there?
Yes, this large-scale project is for the 70th anniversary Great Victory to create a database based on a collection of records and annotations will be completed by May 9. We plan to hold its public opening by the end of the month.
In my opinion, there is an equal sign between the words “archive” and “truth”. How many people come to the institution you run for it?
On the one hand, rest assured, the archive is popular. It is known not only in our country, but also abroad, being in the last 25 years a point of attraction for many Russian and foreign researchers studying the history of the Soviet Union - and not only. In addition, since the archive created its own website three years ago, the number of visits has already exceeded a million!
On the other hand, I have to admit that professional historians and society as a whole today do not sufficiently appeal to documents. It is especially painful to see when this concerns archival materials related to the period of the Great Patriotic War. Look, there are folders on my desk, including those related to this topic. And on many sheets of their use, you may not find any notes from specialists who should be interested in this. Despite the fact that these materials were declassified years and years ago.
- Don't need the truth?
It’s unlikely, there’s just something stopping us from getting to the bottom of it. I see this as a manifestation of a crisis in the historical consciousness of society. Therefore, archivists and historians face the important task of introducing positive knowledge, objective knowledge of their own history. I’m not talking about the fact that you need to know and remember exclusively the positive pages of this very history, but that the positivist method insists on the priority of fact and document over speculative construction. Sometimes you feel uneasy when you hear certain speeches of some foreign politicians related to history: decisions today are too often made by those who do not know or do not want to know basic things.
- KaWhat is the level of interaction between Russian historians and Western colleagues today?
All that a historian has is his scientific reputation, and therefore he cannot afford to argue or refute obvious things. Yes, we do not encounter such attempts. For example, I recently returned from Austria, where our archive took part in an exhibition dedicated to the liberation of the country from Nazi occupation. There, on the initiative of historians and public figures A lot of work is being done with the burials of Soviet military personnel who died on its territory. A gigantic database has been created, and a large reference volume dedicated to the codification of this information has been published. And in the center of Vienna, let me remind you, there is a monument to the Soviet soldier-liberator. People there are well aware of who Austria owes for the restoration of its statehood, and they do not intend to revise history.
- How can we make sure that politicians hear the voice of historians?
I don’t yet fully understand how to transform objectified knowledge about the past into the political plane. Moreover, being the vice-president of the Russian Association of Political Science, I probably should imagine such a mechanism. History and the historical past continue to be used by politicians for their own purposes. They, often out of ignorance, have subjective ideas about the historical process that in no way correlate with real facts. But there is also a deliberate distortion of the historical past for the sake of momentary goals.
- What do you mean?
It is impossible not to pay attention to the fact that today modern Russia and the USSR are deliberately identified negatively. There are myths that have no relation to reality about the secrecy of our archives, about the revival of Stalinism, about the refusal of Russian society to work with the difficult pages of the past. Unfortunately, historical science today remains largely hostage to politics. But we still have to deal with the domestic perception of the past, which becomes increasingly relevant as we approach the centenary of the events of 1917. And here one must be extremely objective, moving away from extreme - exclusively positive or exclusively negative - not even assessments, but myths rooted in the sphere of political predilections of their apologists.
- Will work on the digitization of documents related to the Great Patriotic War continue after the anniversary?
- Don't even doubt it! It's time for us to abandon the negative Soviet experience in the field of propaganda, when work was very often built on the principle of a campaign dedicated to a particular date. You need to understand: one discourse leaves, it is immediately replaced by another. You need to work with your historical past every day. Preparations now for the 75th anniversary of the Victory, which will begin next year, will allow us to begin digitizing documents from the Central Headquarters of the partisan movement. A number of other Politburo documents are also awaiting their turn to be discovered.
- Which state archive funds do you, as a historian, turn to most often?
We store a number of documentary complexes that are important for Soviet history. My attention is often drawn to the personal fund of Stalin, the Politburo, and the State Defense Committee. Personally, I work most of all now with documents from the Great Patriotic War. After all, our archive is the former Central Party Archive, where the most important documents on the history of the war are stored.
IN " Rossiyskaya newspaper"No. 6347 dated April 3, 2014, the article "Test Tube Revolutions" was published. Is it possible to stage a coup for money?" http://www.rg.ru/2014/04/03/tayni.html. In this article, RGASPI director Andrei Sorokin answers questions on the topic of "German money" and the Bolsheviks. Readers of the article can think, since we turned to Andrei Konstantinovich Sorokin with these questions, then apparently he is a very great expert in this matter, writes articles and monographs on this topic. But alas, those of the readers who think so are deeply mistaken. , he received this scientific degree after defending his dissertation in 1990 on the topic “Profits of joint-stock enterprises in Russia under the conditions of monopolization of industry (1900-1913).” Also, readers will not find a single article or monograph by Andrei Konstantinovich on the topic “German”. money" and the Bolsheviks. But since journalists decided to talk to such an "expert" on the topic, then all we have to do is read this interview. maybe Andrei Konstantinovich will tell us some interesting facts. And such “facts” really exist.
Andrei Konstantinovich informs us: “And finally, an autograph directly related to the “trip in a sealed carriage.” I read a piece from this document: “We have more money for the trip than I thought than on January 10-12, because they helped us a lot comrades in Stockholm." Apparently Andrei Konstantinovich found in the archive some kind of autograph of V.I. Lenin "unknown" to historical science. After all, previously all historians interested in the topic knew that a telegram for I.F. . Armand with the following content:
“I jotted down the previous piece of paper the day before yesterday in response to your letter with questions; I didn’t want to send it without adding it.
And there was so much fuss that I didn’t have time, couldn’t complete it, until this evening.
I hope that we are going on Wednesday - I hope, together with you.
Grigory was here, we agreed to go with him.
I hope we received the money (100 frs) in the express sent in the morning.
We have more money for the trip than I thought, enough for 10-12 people, because our comrades in Stockholm helped us a lot."
All readers will be waiting with great impatience for Andrei Konstantinovich to publish the “unknown” autograph of V. I. Lenin that he found
“The only weak point is considered to be the acquisition by the Bolshevik Party in June 1917 of the largest printing house in St. Petersburg, in which the newspapers Pravda, Rabochaya Pravda, Soldatskaya Pravda, and so on began to be printed in large quantities. How was money extracted from commercial circulation? or were they received as so-called sponsorship contributions? As I understand it, a network of commercial firms, trading and intermediary, was created, which, having working capital at their disposal, bought goods abroad, including German ones, those that were prohibited. imported into the territory of the Russian Empire. They were brought here, sold, and from the profits from these commercial transactions, apparently, the activities of the Bolsheviks were financed."
It is interesting that Andrei Konstantinovich, regarding the topic of acquiring a printing house, does not even know that not in June 1917, but on April 22 (May 5), 1917, the Trud printing house was acquired, but with the condition that the final payment would be made on May 15 ( May 28). Thus, on May 15 (28), 1917, the Trud printing house legally became the property of the Bolsheviks. It is strange that a person who has not studied at the proper level the issue of purchasing a printing house. So the newspaper publisher suddenly begins to tell us how he understands this issue. The question is, how can you understand a question if you absolutely do not know it and have not studied it at the proper level? It turns out that this is not understanding, but ordinary fantasy, i.e. presentation as one would like, but not as it actually is.
In an interview, Andrei Konstantinovich says that “the ends of that same Ganetsky-Furstenberg scheme are emerging, a scheme for financing the Bolshevik Party with the participation of Parvus, Kozlovsky, Sumenson.” Of course, I understand that Andrei Konstantinovich can talk about a wide variety of schemes that can only come to his mind, but still, readers will be waiting for Andrei Konstantinovich to publish documents that would clearly indicate the dates of the transfer of money, amounts, named persons, and also representatives of the Bolsheviks, who in these documents indicated that they received such and such amounts from such and such persons. Since such documents have not been published before, I think Andrei Konstantinovich will not hide in RGASPI from all historians such unknown documents that apparently only he saw, since he so confidently tells readers about the “emerging ends” of a certain scheme for financing the Bolsheviks.
Andrei Konstantinovich also tells readers that “All the activities of the Bolshevik Party are presented in the affairs of the Investigative Commission of the Provisional Government, in particular related to the investigation of the German trace. All these documents are stored in our archive and are presented in these modest folders. They belong to the category especially valuable, I think that in the near future we will assign them the status of unique." It is strange that Andrei Konstantinovich, for some reason, does not tell readers that the bulk of the volumes of the case file of the Investigative Commission of the Provisional Government are stored precisely, not in RGASPI, but in the State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF).
Regarding “German money,” Andrei Konstantinovich noted: “But returning to 1917. The Bolsheviks were not the only authors of the revolution. There were other political parties that did not receive German money. Therefore, the events of 1917 cannot and should not be reduced in any way to the problem of financing." Thus, the “expert” on the topic made it clear that it turns out that the Bolsheviks were a “corrupt” party receiving “German money.”
Reading the article, I would like to end with the words of Andrei Konstantinovich Sorokin - “Before arguing about history, you need to know it”
