This book is as difficult to characterize as it is to put down. Part personal reflection, part historiographical review, and part political and intellectual prolegomenon, it is an odd, yet extraordinarily moving, work. This opportunity to peek behind the curtain of Soviet historical practice reminds those of us privileged enough to live in open societies how much we have been smiled upon by fate. At the same time, it yields a great hopefulness about both humanity and the post-Soviet order. The decency, fair-mindedness, and generosity that characterizes Professor Litvin’s assessment of both the Soviet experience and the practice of history in twentieth-century Russia is testimony to the endurance of what Lincoln called “our better angels” in the face of totalitarian attempts to efface them. There is here, too, a pulsing devotion to the “historian’s craft,” as Marc Bloch would have it, that revives memories of the grander vistas of our calling, of “that noble dream” of objectivity and service to society writ large that once undergirded the historical profession. Finally, the essay’s few shortcomings serve as a cautionary tale of work that still needs to be done to bring native Russian historiography into the mainstream of global Russian studies. A rich work, indeed.
Alter Litvin is a professor of history and historiography at Kazan State University in Tatarstan. He has authored, co-authored, or edited over twenty works on Russian history. In Soviet times his works were on predictable topics (today oddly dissonant sounding), such as Zashchishchaia revoliutsiiu: chekisty Tatarii v pervye gody Sovetskoi vlasti, 1917-1922 (Kazan, 1980). Since glasnost and especially since the fall of the Soviet Union, however, he has produced a stream of works, testifying to his analytical sophistication and source mastery. They range from a study of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, to works on the NKVD’s dealings with Evgeniia Ginzburg and Boris Savinkov, to an essay on historical sources. The work under review here was evidently facilitated, as well as translated and edited, by John Keep, former professor at the University of Toronto and author of some interesting studies of Russia and the USSR. In fact, Litvin and Keep have another collaborative work just now appearing on Stalinism, so it remains a fertile collaboration.
One curious aspect of Writing History is the shifting “valences,” or combinations of considerations, that characterize the work. As Litvin details, his father was declared an “enemy of the people,” and the political discrimination this entailed was further complicated by the fact of their Jewishness. Despite the hardships and hurdles this personal history produced, Litvin argues throughout the work for objectivity and against the enduring Russian question of kto vinovat? (who is to blame?).
The work is about writing Russian history within Russia, but the essays compare and inform this analysis with discussion of works produced in the West. Given the unique demographic and historical circumstances of Tatarstan and the special status that the region has enjoyed since the collapse of the Soviet Union, many informative examples are drawn from Litvin’s historical work in and knowledge of his home territory. Since he seeks to situate contemporary historical writing in its own developmental locus and to help direct it into a more scholarly and less biased future, there is a frequent shift of lens and perspective. Although he explains terms like Cheka, it is doubtful that this work will be accessible to the general reader or even to the advanced undergraduate. Its appearance in English is nonetheless welcome, because it can be read with profit by historians who do not deal with Russia and the Soviet Union, even if their primary interest is not historiography. Indeed, since it is not a straightforward historiographical essay, it is far more captivating and informative.
Since I am recommending this work to all my historical brethren and schwestern, the introductory section “Did the Scholarly Tradition Survive?” is essential, a fact no doubt taken into account by both the author and his editor. This chapter discusses the pre-revolutionary historical traditions, the multiple traumas of the Soviet era, and some part of the post-Soviet experience. Perhaps because this is the part of the story I know best, I found this section the least successful. Regardless, my reservations are relatively minor and the work picks up speed rapidly after this chapter. Let it also be said that I fully concur with his conclusion that the tradition did survive, most notably in the instance of the Petr Zaionchkovskii school in Moscow and Boris Anan’ich in the St. Petersburg Institute of History. There endures a sense of connection with the so-called Moscow and St. Petersburg schools of history that is real and personal. I would differ with Litvin, however, on three aspects of this question.
First of all, though the practitioners and their scholarly traditions are worthy of respect and remembrance, pre-revolutionary historical study was increasingly stale and positivistic, as was European historical study in general. Hence, the tradition that survives should be the model of disciplinary rigor and honesty that they held forth, rather than their problematique. Secondly, the Moscow and Petersburg schools had become virtually indistinguishable by the time of the Revolution, due to Platonov’s importation of some of Kliuchevskii’s approaches into the Petersburg arena and also owing to the influence of Miliukov, especially during the time of his research in Petersburg archives. There was a cross-fertilization that left shades of difference, although admittedly to the scholarly heirs of the two schools, the differences still seem substantial. Finally, while it is good to be reminded that not all historical research done in the Soviet era was done by party hacks, Litvin’s estimation of the percentage that is useful is far higher than mine. Who is right, only time will tell.
For the rest, the book is positively littered with fascinating information, both historical and historiographical, both contemporary and of older vintage (for example, the fact that Stalin’s personal library contained 20,000 plus volumes, over half of which were literary works). That the focus is largely political is clear from the list of subjects discussed: the October Revolution, the Civil War, the Age of Stalin, the Great Terror, World War II, the Nationalities Problem, and Soviet Foreign Policy. This is as good a short list of the most controversial questions in Soviet historiography as one could hope to draw up. Particularly helpful is the information he provides about scholarly conferences, roundtables, and so on, in which these issues have been discussed and which is unavailable in as digestible a form elsewhere. Some of what he covers will be known to Russian historians who keep up with the main historical journals, but even they will benefit from Litvin’s insider information, seasoned judgments, and comparative perspectives (for example, his work in the archives and on special commissions in Tatarstan).
Aside from the renewed subordination of history to political purposes, both in Russia and in other successor states, and the related issue of the continued limitation of access to the Presidential Archive, Litvin comes out most strongly against biased history and the search for people to blame. Since he and his family suffered the hardships they did under the Soviet system, this defense of dispassionate science is all the more praiseworthy. While one can question the meaning or definition of an occasional detail (for example, the assertion that almost three quarters of national income was spent on the military in 1989!), what emerges most saliently from this study is a sense of the wealth of new historical work, the genuine and enthusiastic recovery of the past, the opening up and flushing out of long-festering historical wounds. This is so hopeful and encouraging a sign; after the long decades in “Sovdepia,” the people are tearing off their mankurts, or, even better, being born free of them.
My personal opinion is that a new Russian historical school will emerge that in some way incorporates dominant considerations of the past – such as emphasis on the role of the state and the search for scientific bases of historical analysis – and that is different in kind and concern from what is produced elsewhere. Litvin describes the open-mindedness, absence of blindered thinking, and unfettered inquisitiveness of his current students. It has been said that Moses could have led the Jews directly to the Promised Land, but that he wandered forty years in the desert so that all those who had experienced slavery could have passed away. Perhaps that is what is happening among Russian historians today. But a cautionary note must be sounded here. One element missing from Litvin’s work is the full range of Western historical works. He has gained access to many works, presumably with Professor Keep’s assistance, but time and again Western works that recommend themselves to the items he is discussing are absent from the notes and bibliography. This is not intended as a criticism of Litvin (or Keep), but rather a reminder to all of us in the West that we have an obligation to assist the historical community in Russia. If someone of his stature and connections has trouble getting access to world scholarship, what must be the circumstances of other scholars, especially outside of the capitals? Again, Litvin’s example can further encourage us that a ferment of new, path-breaking scholarly work can percolate up “from below,” that is, outside of the recognized historical centers. This is the premise behind Semion Lyandres’s series on Modern and Contemporary Russian History.
But they need help. We owe them this for all that they have given us in scholarship and fellowship, and so that Russia can continue moving toward an open society. Russian history from Russia is achieving global standards, and we are and will be learning from them. We can expand our efforts to assist in making this more than a temporary and passing phenomenon. In a recent review in Kritika, Boris Mironov called for the translation into Russian of eminent works of Western scholarship on Russia, as a means of drawing our historical communities together.^[1] We need to do that and more. Given the expansion and cheapening of technology, we can webcast more meetings and discussions, be they as ambitious as historical conferences or as routine as departmental “works in progress” seminars. In general, we should be thinking much more ambitiously about ways to insure that the decency and disciplinary dignity embodied in this work and that of other scholars, who, like Litvin, were steeled in the hard school of Soviet conditions, is not lost on a new generation. As they seek their own way into the future, that new generation can look to works like Writing History in Twentieth-Century Russia to discover and recover a sense of groundedness in a scholarly tradition that, while badly scarred and sorely tested in the twentieth century, has spirit and substance enough to endure into the twenty-first century and beyond.