SUMMARY:

The article discusses the conflict between a leading Marxist historian and social scientist of the 1920s, Mikhail N. Pokrovsky, and Ukrainian Marxist historians at the First All-Union Conference of Marxist Historians in December1928–January 1929. Renowned for his staunch criticism of Russian nationalism and imperialism and support of oppressed nationalities, Pokrovsky was dismayed when accused of Great Russian chauvinism by Ukrainian colleagues. The article reconstructs the ambivalent worldview of Pokrovsky, who was torn between scholarship and politics, but also between anti-imperialism and a profoundly Russocentric approach to history.