8. Globality, morality, and the future

‘Globality, morality, and the future’ recounts the 1960s research in the history of political thought, which was inspired by the writings of Leo Strauss, Michel Foucault, Reinhart Koselleck, and the Cambridge School authors. The reconstruction of the meaning of texts can be seen through the scholars’ ideological contexts and perspectives. Despite the rejection of Marxist categories for interrogating history and proletarian revolution, the world created by capitalism continues to be attacked for its endemic war and fanatical politics. Aspects of the history of political thought trained scholars to see the problems of contemporary society. The history of political thought allowed political actions to be charted and evaluated for success.

Historians and opposition in Leningrad (1920s – 1930s)

In the 1920s-1930s, the political struggle in the USSR at the Politburo was closely linked with historical science. The search for “crimes” against the Communist Party that Bolshevik leaders had committed in the past became an important lever for obtaining political dividends in the contemporaneity. In this regard, the history of the Revolution was given special attention, and specialists in this field took on a great responsibility, often without even realising it. In the historiography of Soviet science, considerable attention is paid to the formation of the canon of the history of the Bolshevik Party, crowned by the Short Course of 1938. The author continues to study this topic from a different angle. The article aims to answer the question of how, under the conditions of the gradual establishment of the Stalinist vision of history, Stalin’s recent opponents existed – historians participating in Grigory Zinoviev’s opposition and the so-called United Opposition in 1925-1928. At the same time, it describes how they themselves used historical publications in the political struggle, as well as their direct participation in campaigning against Joseph Stalin’s and Nikolai Bukharin’s course. An important milestone was the publication of Stalin's letter to «Proletarian Revolution» newspaper, which, in addition to changing trends in historiography, also led to repression against former Trotskyists working in the humanities.

Improvement of doctors for the 15th anniversary of October

The fifteenth anniversary of the Great Proletarian Revolution, which rebuilt the entire life of our state and laid the foundation for the great socialist construction of our country, makes us, workers of improving doctors, turn our eyes to the path traveled in the retraining of medical personnel, set by the October Revolution to completely new beginnings.

What is Nikolai Klyuev’s “Hung Upside Down” Crying for? (On Poetic Epitaph to Victims of White Terror)

The article is devoted to the problems of historical and cultural commentary, as well as the interpretation of the ideological-figurative content and genre attribution of N. A. Klyuev’s poem “Hung upside down...”, created by the poet during the Vytegorsk period of his life (1918—1922). The analysis showed that the facts of Klyuev’s Vytegorsk life at the time of his creation “Hung upside down...” and the poet's deeply felt fear of being subjected to a cruel execution prompted him to literally perpetuate the memory of the victims of the White Terror who were martyred by hanging during the Civil War. The authors of the study come to the conclusion that references to the Bible and L. I. Palmin’s poem “Requiem” make it possible to attribute this work of Klyuev to one of the most ardent works of the poet of that time, calling on the living to selflessly serve the ideals of the proletarian revolution, and to identify its genre as a literary epitaph to the victims of the White Terror, which stands out for its monumentality and the timelessness of its valuable message to descendants. The authors of the article are convinced that the failed attempt by Klyuev to republish the poem “Hung upside down...” in 1927 betrays the poet, who is experiencing criticism of the counter-revolutionary content of his works, a desire to demonstrate the continuity of his later work with his “communard” past.

Consequences of "good neighborhood"

The most significant falsifications of historical events by the Bolshevik regime are considered and it is established that the information policy of the Russian Federation systematically falsifies and conceals historical facts and events that testify to the great contribution of Ukraine and its people to the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II. An analysis of the national liberation struggles of 1917-1920 showed that for a long time Soviet researchers called the 1917 Bolshevik coup in the Russian Empire a proletarian revolution, forming the view that this revolution was a just struggle between peasants and workers against the capitalists. time was implanted in the minds of Ukrainians. The Holodomor in 1932-1933 was studied separately as a deliberate genocide or "temporary food shortages."

Final Chords of M.N. Pokrovsky’s “Brainchild”: Society of Marxist Historians in the Early 1930s

Introduction. The Society of Marxist Historians established in 1925 went down in the history of Soviet historiography as a militant organization that did much to combat “old school” historians, assert the monopoly position of the Marxist-Leninist methodology, and draw a party line in historical science. Methods and materials. The research is based on traditional methods of historiographical analysis. It uses materials from historical journals of the 1920s and 1930s and archival documents. Analysis. The first all-Union conference of Marxist Historians (December 28, 1928 – January 4, 1929) became the apogee in the history of the Society. In the future, despite the growth in numbers and the creation of local structures, in the conditions of the “great turning point” it loses the features of an amateur organization and a number of functions of the scientific nature. The priority is to “actively participate in the socialist construction” by deploying mass propaganda of historical knowledge and fighting “distortions of Marxism-Leninism”, including in the ranks of the organization itself. The last debate and “study” of Stalin’s famous letter to “Proletarian revolution” journal had a negative impact on the internal state of the Society and strengthened the distrust of the results of his work from the government. In 1931–1932, the Society management unsuccessfully tried to make its work more popular, hold a plenum and re-registered a new charter. Results. However, at that time, the Central Committee of the CPSU(b) embarked on the path of reformatting the structure of societies and unions in the country and eliminating those of them that had exhausted their mobilization potential and did not meet the new ideological course. In addition to this circumstance, the rapid curtailment of the Society of Marxist historians by the end of 1932 was influenced by the position of the leadership of the Communist Academy and the death of M.N. Pokrovsky, the undisputed leader of Soviet historians.

The Criterion of Immanence and the Transformation of Structural Causality: From Althusser to Théorie Communiste

Setting out from a critique of Althusser’s reliance upon references to the “structured whole,” Chapter 9 pursues a revision of the Althusserian theory of structural causality through the work of the group Théorie Communiste. Disentangling Althusser’s concept from its Spinozist framework, I show that Althusser’s references to the whole compromise his emphasis on the immanence of historical causality. I reconstruct an approach to the relation between immanence and lack through Théorie Communiste’s “theory of rift.” In the process, I engage with Jacques Rancière and Paul Mattick to assess the difference between humanist and anti-humanist approaches to proletarian revolution, and the chapter concludes with a consideration of Althusser’s influence upon Théorie Communiste.

The art of ceramics in the works of E.Ya. Danko: “Vase of Chinese Khan”, “Ceramic Cup” and “Chinese Secret”

This article is the first try to research the connection between the art of ceramics and word in the work of children's writer and artist E.Ya. Danko. The relevance of the study is due to the need to expand the idea of the image of China in Soviet children's literature of the 1920s. Compared to the history of Russian poetry, the poems “Ceramic Cup”, “Chinese Secret” and the novel “Vase of Chinese Khan” are considered diachronically, and synchronously - in the context of the indestructible myth of Ancient China and the Chinese proletarian revolution. Special attention is paid to the genesis of the ideal image of China in the work of E.Ya. Danko, which traces back to the ideas of F.M.A. Voltaire, M.V. Lomonosov and Russian poets of the XIX - early XX centuries. Works by E.Ya. Danko meets the idea of A.M. Gorky - to create literature on factories, crafts, and technology. In her works about China, upholding the classical understanding of Chinese culture and admiring the talent and hard work of the Chinese people, E.Ya. Danko found a way out of the chaos of the 1920s.

The Road to Collective Security: Soviet Russia, the League of Nations, and the Emergence of the ius contra bellum in the Aftermath of the Russian Revolution (1917–1934)

This article argues that the quest for ‘peaceful coexistence’, sometimes depicted as an inherent quality of Soviet foreign policy, rather reflects a re-interpretation of actual practice in the light of subsequent developments – in connection with the emergence of Joseph Stalin’s doctrine of Socialism in one country. The latter was primarily inspired by tactical necessities rather than doctrinal dogmas. Even though Soviet Russia was perceived and sometimes acted as an outsider, if not a disrupting agent, until the accession of the USSR to membership in the League of Nations in 1934, Soviet foreign legal policy discourse in the 1920s and early 1930s, with its increasing focus on ‘peaceful coexistence’ and collective security rather than world proletarian revolution, contributed substantively to the emergence and development of modern ius contra bellum.

Modernization of Soviet Russia in 1920-1930-ies: transformation programme of the RCP(b) — VKP(b) as instruments of struggle for power

The monograph is devoted to studying the process of implementation of modernization projects of the RCP(b) - VKP(b) 1920-1930-ies in the context of intra-party struggle for power. A lack of managerial experience in the leadership of the country, declared utopian ideas, the bureaucratization of the party-state apparatus and the commitment to radical ways of solving problems gave rise to political and socio-economic crises affect the results. Revealed the limits of the political life of leaders of the ruling party in the implementation of the political-administrative projects considered as a series of unjustified social and economic experiments, criticized the concept of the Soviet state as an apparatus of violence in the interests of the world proletarian revolution. Intended for specialists in the history of Soviet Russia of the twentieth century, University professors, and for anyone interested in Russian history.