"The second edition of Pokrovshchina" (based on the material of M. Ja. Sjuzjumov's letters to V. G. Trukhanovsky and S. P. Pavlov)

Kapsalykova Karina Ramazanovna ORCID: 0000-0003-4163-5099 PhD in History Associated Professor, Foreign Studies Department, Ural Federal University 623280, Russia, Sverdlovsk Region, Yekaterinburg, Lenina av., 51. carinne.kapsalikova@gmail.com Other publications by this author

IntroductionThe second half of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s took place against the background of the tremendous interest in the past that excites Soviet society.

In this atmosphere, the poet R. I. Rozhdestvensky's call sounded "sparkling and sharp": "History! <...> Open a living heart to people" ^{[1, p. 67]}. Despite this, historical science in the USSR experienced a relapse of the "childhood disease of leftism" of the 1920s - Pokrovshchina. Its symptoms were the dominance of sociologized schemes and the leveling of the role of source analysis, the lack of developments in the problem areas of auxiliary historical disciplines, the primacy of modern studies to the detriment of the study of classical history ^{[2, p. 32; 3, p. 340-353]}.

The consequences of the Pokrovshchina were a reduction in the terms of preparation and abominatio desolationis in the curriculum of history students. Moreover, the school teaching of this discipline was seriously rebuilt, gradually turning from a fundamental course into an empty propaganda. So, in 1959, the "All-Russian meeting on the issue of historical education in eight-year and secondary schools" was held. The meeting was attended by teachers from Moscow, Leningrad, Sverdlovsk, Kaluga and other cities, as well as researchers and representatives of the Ministry of Education. They considered several training programs, including a shortened study of the ancient world and the Middle Ages, an increase in the hours allotted to the history of the peoples of the USSR from the period of capitalism, the allocation of the lion's share of training hours to study the Constitution of the country or the "Foundations of Communism". In fact, this approach meant the elimination of historical education at school.

Many well-known scientists have expressed various points of view on the problem: from the desire to preserve the old program (M. V. Nechkin) to increasing the hours according to modernity and creating a special line of textbooks (V. G. Trukhanovsky). "History, S. D. Skazkin said, should be studied consistently. The transition from one social formation to another, more progressive, is a natural process. Without understanding this, history turns into a pile of facts. The study of ancient and medieval history should be carried out in an 8-year-old school, because in high school it will go to the detriment of new and modern history. Objecting to V. M. Khvostov, who claimed that school time is distributed unevenly, S. D. Skazkin said: we spend several years for students to learn the four rules of arithmetic, and explain Newton's binomial in several lessons. The same is true in the field of history: when there is a general idea of the slave-owning and feudal formations, then in high school the explanation of more serious and complex material takes less time" ^{[4, pp.163-179; 5, pp. 334-423]}.

The law "On strengthening the connection of schools with life and on the further development of the public education system in the RSFSR" required "the transfer of schools from seven-year to eight-year compulsory education to begin with the 1959/60 academic year", the process should be completed "by the 1962/63 academic year, bearing in mind the gradual consolidation of eight-year schools" (USSR Law of 12/24/1958 // Vestnik higher school 1959. - No. 1. pp. 6-13). Thus, the first graduates of the new decade in the USSR were already engaged in a new program focused on sociological and presentist schemes. Despite the fact that history could not be eliminated from secondary school as an academic discipline, the attack on science continued in the format of dismantling humanities in universities.

The triumph of Neo - PokrovismOn December 18-21, 1962, an All-Union meeting was held in Moscow on measures to improve the training of scientific and pedagogical personnel in historical sciences, convened by the decision of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the SNK of the USSR (Resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU, Council of Ministers of the USSR of 03.04.1961 N 299 "On measures to improve the coordination of scientific research in the country and the activities of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR" // Collection of resolutions of the Government of the USSR. 1961. No. 7, Article 50, item 11.). About two thousand researchers, archivists, teachers from all over the vast country took part in three sections: the history of the CPSU, the history of the USSR, universal history.

The meeting heard two reports of the Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, Academician B. N. Ponomarev – plenary and final. In addition, a separate collection was published, in which the debates were given according to an abbreviated transcript ^{[6, p. 5-517]}.

And yet, what was going on behind the fundamental facade of a respectable forum of historians? The selection of the meeting participants was not transparent. Vice-Rector for Academic Affairs M. A. Batin, Dean of the Faculty of History N. V. Efremenkov, Head of the Department of History of the USSR O. A. Vaskovsky, Head of the Department of History of the CPSU F. P. Bystykh were delegated from Ural University to the meeting. Neither the largest Byzantinist, founder of the theory of dialectical continuity, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor M. Ya. Neither a specialist in the history of international relations, a front-line soldier, candidate of historical sciences I. N. Champalov was at the meeting, requiring unequivocal approval of B. N. Ponomarev's ideas about "the need for much more attention to the study of the most important, relevant, modern problems of history" ^{[6, p. 495]}.

Already on February 27, 1963, I. N. Champalov, at a meeting of the USU party organization, stated the fact of the great fame and scientific weight of Prof. Susyumov, pointed out the specific working conditions – overload with training assignments (800-1000 hours), difficulties with access to sources, which both researchers and graduate students specializing in the history of Byzantium could work on here in Sverdlovsk. "The working conditions of this department are extremely difficult (there are no premises), the rector's office does not create conditions for work, moreover, Comrade. Batin, who actually runs the university, slows down, interferes with the work of the department; he considers only those from whom he has a benefit, and who he does not need, he throws them away. Everyone knows that our rector is like the English Queen: T. Batin blocked our access to Moscow with his broad back (he went to a meeting of historians at the head of a delegation of historians to Moscow himself, and no one from the Department of General History was at this meeting, even the head of the department, Professor Suzumov). At present, the university leaders also need to be put under party control. It is impossible to lead bureaucratically, as Batin or Yanklovich do, who has neither a degree nor a title, but deals with issues of scientific production." He gives examples: "Bortnik is not published, Syuzyumov, who is known abroad as a major scientist, is not sent to Moscow, etc. L. A. Medvedev left USU for Kalinin precisely because conditions were created for him where he went – there he is closer to literature, to scientific personnel, there he has the right to scientific business trips, etc. Currently, our faculty is at a crossroads: many of our teachers will either leave, as Medvedev left, or as scientists will wither, "not having had time to flourish"" (TSDOOSO. F. 285. Op. 3. d. 164. L. 126-127).

The collection includes only the speech of F. P. Bystry in the debate on the report of Academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences P. N. Pospelov "The main directions of scientific research and training of scientific and pedagogical personnel on the history of the CPSU". In the report, the Sverdlovsk historian raised the actual problems of personnel training, the creation of a multi-volume "History of the CPSU". F. P. Bystry, commenting on P. N. Pospelov's thesis about the need to create general works, and not only the preparation of dissertations on local topics, told about the activities of M. Ya. Suzumova: a series of conferences of the Ural Council for Coordination and Planning of Research works in the Humanities, as well as the systematic publication of the collection "Ancient Antiquity and the Middle Ages". "In Sverdlovsk, there is the Ural Council for the Coordination and Planning of Scientific Research in the field of humanities. Apparently, it would be possible with this council to create a kind of center for the publication of interuniversity literature. It is only necessary to provide him with material means. Currently, universities are beginning to practice publishing thematic collections. This is an undoubted step forward. Interuniversity collections are a more effective means of improving the quality of our products" ^{[6, p. 223]}.

Criticism of the results of the meeting was not made public, but the discussion process itself is a powerful heat of passion. In the debate, each speaker sought to share his worries and hopes with the audience. Doctor of Historical Sciences Z. V. Udaltsova emphasized the role of coordination in the scientific field, suggesting that scientists of the Academy of Sciences take on the pedagogical burden, because "there is no good research without teaching," freeing up time for university historians for the necessary research. Her speech "I personally know dozens of excellent works written in major cities of the Union, which have not yet seen the light simply for technical reasons… RISO periodically conducts a "vivisection", cutting off the works of mainly representatives of social sciences. I think that RISO employees need to take very good words from B. N. Ponomarev's report to strict execution, that relevance does not depend on chronological distance from modernity, because the victims of this sword of Damocles, which is called RISO, first of all become historians of antiquity, medievalists, sometimes historians of modern times. However, this sword often strikes others as well" ^{[6, pp. 446-447]}.

The party historian F. P. Bystykh saw the solution to the problem in a decisive maneuver: "it would be advisable to organize the release of interuniversity collections for the publication of materials on the history of the CPSU. For the publication of such collections, the Ministry of Higher and Secondary Special Education of the USSR in each district of the country could choose one of the universities or institutes as a base and create an editorial board with it. The speaker also raised the question that central publishing houses should more often include local historians in their thematic work plans" ^{[7, p. 39]}.

The detailed speech of the Doctor of Historical Sciences V. G. Trukhanovsky (1914-2000) ^{[8, pp. 485-503]} concluded with the following passage: "We, he said, are very harmed by a conciliatory attitude towards those people who, working in research institutes and universities, have not given anything to historical science for many years. Public money goes to their maintenance, they hold full-time positions. If such a "pustotsvetu" manages to become the head of a sector or department, then he considers the success of his colleague, who works productively and writes books, as a reproach for himself and will not rest until he completes a sector of his own kind. Of course, one should not exaggerate the importance of these people. They are a small minority compared to honest, talented scientists. But they are there. And when you read in the newspapers what collective farmers and workers — followers of N. G. Zaglada are doing in the struggle for an honest attitude to work ^{[9, p. 3-38]}, I would like to wish: if we could raise such a campaign in historical science against those who occupy a place in it, but does not bring benefits" ^{[10, p. 25-26]}.

From 1960 to 1987, V. G. Trukhanovsky, as the editor-in-chief of the journal "Questions of History", could well "raise such a campaign" on the pages of an authoritative scientific publication.

"Historical science is losing its specificity..."The State Archive of the Sverdlovsk region (Fund P-802) contains letters of the famous scientist, the founder of the theory of dialectical continuity M. Ya.

Suzumova. For almost half a century – from 1937 to 1982 – he worked at universities in the Urals. On May 17, 1954, he defended his doctoral dissertation "Industrial Relations in the Byzantine city-Emporia during the genesis of feudalism" in the Council of the Institute of History of the USSR Academy of Sciences. For ten years he remained the only Doctor of Historical Sciences at the Ural University. In 1950-1960, the historian took part in a series of All-Union discussions: on the patterns of transition from a slave-owning to a feudal formation and the "pre-feudal period" in Byzantine history; on the genesis of a medieval city; on land ownership in the empire.

Sverdlovsk,

Wednesday, May 5, 1965

Dear Vladimir Grigorievich,

I received your letter dated April 30 with a proposal to express my opinion on how historical science in the USSR has changed under the influence of the All-Union Meeting of Historians held in December 1962. I am sending you my thoughts, but I don't think you are using them: historically, it has been the custom to sing hallelujah in such campaigns about the results of Meetings. But I am not able to adhere to this custom, I am very critical of the Meeting, I consider the days of the Meeting to be "black days" for historical science. Instead of the existing view of history as the study of human development as a single process, the Meeting declared that the main thing in historical science is the only relevant study of modern society. Historical science loses its specificity, dissolving into a system of different sciences that study and analyze modern society. I believe that such decisions were made at the Meeting only because there were almost no historians of the ancient world and media scientists present as delegates of universities. The composition of the Meeting was rigged. Example: two historians of the USSR of the Soviet period, one historian of the CPSU, one writer of the history of literature of the Soviet period were sent from our Ural University. I protested pointing out that I have every right to be a delegate – I am the only professor at the Faculty of History, head of the Department of General History, chairman of the expert commission of the Coordination Council for the Ural zone on historical sciences, participant in three All-Union discussions in the central historical press. But I was given in response that it was necessary to send historians of modernity. That it was as if there was an instruction!!! I was not surprised, because I realized that the purpose of convening the Meeting was discrimination against the history of the ancient world, the Middle Ages, partly modern times, discrimination against historicism in research, extolling the abstract–logical before working on sources!

I am well aware that not all historians admire the results of the Meeting, but I believe that my opinion will be a dissonance in the stream of delight at the role of the Meeting and I ask you to excuse me for the frank, but uncomfortable for the magazine position.

With deep respect

and with best wishes

M. Ya. Suzumov

(GASO. F. R-802. D. 172. L. 1.)

Typing, vacation

M. Ya. Syuzyumov wrote a detailed analytical article on the results of the meeting for historical science. Unfortunately, for unknown reasons, it was not published in the "Questions of History" and saw the blackness of the printing ink only half a century later ^{[11, pp. 294-303]}.

In more detail, the position of M. Ya. Suzumova is represented in his letter to Sergei Pavlovich Pavlov (1929-1993), the first secretary of the Komsomol Central Committee in 1959-1968 ^{[12, pp. 165-172]}.

Sverdlovsk, Friday, July 2, 1965

Dear Sergey Pavlovich,

Mikhail Yakovlevich Suzumov, professor of the Ural University, a Byzantinist, writes to you.

I am writing to you about the ideological meeting currently working in Moscow. I would very much like to pour out my bitter feelings to you in connection with the current state of historical education and the attitude of the leading part of the public to historical science. I have already experienced a period of humiliation of historical science in the 20s, when the ideas of pokrovshchina, this kind of proletcult in historiography, philosophically realized by elements of Machism, adapted to the needs of the proletcult, triumphed. It was a time when history was banished from everywhere! I also experienced the delight when the Pokrovsky school was liquidated, although not completely. I could not have imagined then that this hatred and contempt for historical science inherent in the patronage would be repeated again in a quarter of a century! Alas! since 1954, a systematic offensive against historical science began – with the fanaticism of the medieval Inquisition, universal history began to be expelled or infringed from everywhere! General history was expelled from party schools, evening universities of Marxism-Leninism, from philology, journalism faculties, etc. In 1958, it was difficult to defend the preservation of history in secondary school, but ancient, middle and new history were reduced to a minimum. History in high school began to be considered a third-rate subject. Historical faculties in pedagogical universities and universities are being closed one after another. (And this is in a country where the worldview of society is Marxism, completely imbued with historicism!)

In the Faculty of History, with each new program and curriculum, they began to reduce the number of hours allotted to ancient and middle history!

In 1962, a "meeting" of historians was held, at which, under appropriate pressure and appropriate preparation, a definition of "relevance" in historical science was put forward in part of the meeting, which in fact was a call to young people not to engage in universal history as a science of the development of social existence, especially ancient and middle history.… This immediately affected the mood of the students, among whom questions began to be heard: "why should we especially deal with middle and ancient history? after all, we don't live in an ancient society!" This logically followed from those provisions on relevance, as topicality, which were interpreted at the "meeting" and on the pages of the "Communist" magazine after the "meeting".

Naturally, after this "meeting" the persecution of historical science intensified. New "superfluous" historical faculties were closed. The culmination of the persecution was the decision to reduce the period of study at the Faculty of History from five years to four years. While maintaining the deadlines for production and special practice, historical education at the history faculty was actually reduced to three years! The murderously new plan is reflected in the independent work on historical scientific literature. The new curriculum launched by the ministry forces students to work on collective farms in three months (September goes to work on collective farms!) complete the entire course of ancient history – the East, Greece, Rome and immediately pass the exam! If we keep in mind that students have just entered the university, have not acquired the skills to read scientific research on history, do not yet know how to record lectures, their team is not yet an educated audience, then those voices in the departments that speak about the complete anti–pedagogy and anti-science of the new curriculum for history schools are quite legitimate.

It is necessary to create new plans for the history faculty, but not to worsen, but to improve historical education. I would consider that it is necessary to put two new courses in the first year of study: "What is historical science, its tasks" and "Technique of historical research" for 32 hours. So that as a result of listening to this course, obscurantistic thoughts do not appear among the students that they should not deal with the history of the past, but only with what can reflect our life experience! (I am preparing such a course, but I doubt that with a real curriculum it will be possible to read it). It is also necessary to introduce a 32-hour course on "The current international situation" in the first year of study (with information on the economic and political geography of the world, with an overview of general policy directions and the current situation). This will help students to read newspapers, explain the contents of newspapers to the guys during the pioneer practice that students of the Faculty of History conduct before listening to the course of modern history.

The persecution of historical science affected the non-historical faculties after the "1962 meeting". Even the latest history has been removed from the curriculum of the Faculty of Journalism, which has been replaced by an overview of the current international situation. It is strange that there are such responsible persons in our Union who believe that in order to understand modernity, our journalist does not have to know history at all! Strange and inexplicable.

It seems even more ridiculous to create a model plan for philosophy faculties, in which the universal history is completely absent. The question is, how will these newly minted "philosophers" read historical materialism? Students will bombard such a lecturer with questions that such a "philosopher" should answer, whose historical knowledge is limited by the amount of knowledge of a student of grades 5, 6, 7 of secondary school. Such "philosophers" should be deprived of the rights to teach historical materialism as soon as possible. If philosophers refuse to study universal history, then the reading of historical materialism should be entrusted to historians and, most rationally, to mediaevists: after all, mediaevists deal with the phenomena of four formations – primitive communal, ancient, feudal societies and moments of capitalism. And mediaevists know modernity no worse than philosophers, philosophical subjects are deeply studied at the historical facts.

Historians are also deeply impressed by the creation of a new "science" – sociology; what is it for? In bourgeois countries, where, as a rule, the study of laws is rejected for history, the existence of such a science, sociology, which deals with abstract generalizations, is quite understandable. But in our country, Marxist history is a science of the development of social existence with all the laws, factors, trends, and accidents…

The existence of a special science of "sociology" is inexplicable. What is it? Should our historians imitate foreign ones and abandon the study of patterns, entrusting this matter to "brilliant thinkers" – sociologists? Will we, historians, remain Marxists in this case? And sociologists themselves, apart from self-study of sources reflecting the objective reality of the development of social life in the past, are unlikely to remain Marxists. There is only one science about the development of human society in the past – it is history. The issues of modernity, of today, are studied by hundreds of other sciences – technical, humanitarian, biological, etc. For history, it is enough that it highlights modernity and the path to the future on the results of the past.

The question of "concrete sociological surveys" also confuses the historical public. Of course, these surveys are not a method of historical research. These surveys have nothing to do with philosophy either. But who, if not journalists, everyday educators of souls, should not engage in such surveys? Our journalists still remain at the level of the rabcors and stencors of the 30s. It is these "concrete sociological surveys" with the broadest conclusions about the laws of the development of our modernity that should become the foundations of the work of our Marxist journalism. Of course, the unjustified transfer of the Faculty of Journalism to a 4-year training plan does not provide opportunities for such work. Soul tutors are the most difficult profession. A journalist should be widely educated historically, economically, literarily and philosophically. But to do this, you need to achieve not even a 5-year, but even a 6-year education.

I am addressing you as the head of the ideological conference. I don't know if there are representatives of ancient and Middle history on it? At the "meeting" of 1962, they diligently tried to keep them out of the delegations to the meeting, especially from provincial universities, limiting the delegations to historians of the party and modernity.

We dream that the ideological meeting will raise the question of the reverse transfer of the history faculty to a five-year plan. It would be highly desirable for the meeting to address the most important issues of our public: what is relevance in historical science, especially in terms of relevance in research work on ancient history and media linguistics and modern history. It would be very necessary to raise the issue of revising the curricula of history schools, journalists, philosophers, philologists, and to put historical education at the proper height. It would also be necessary to discuss whether it is possible to entrust the reading of a course of lectures on historical materialism to those philosophers who have not completed a complete systematic course of universal history. The scientific community, one must think, expects a lot from the ideological meeting.

Please excuse me, Sergey Pavlovich, for taking up your time – but I consider it my civic duty, wherever possible, to try to act in the interests of historical science and historical education.

With deep respect,

Professor, Doctor of Historical Sciences

(GASO, F. R-802, Op. 1. D. 169. L. 1-6)

Typing, vacation

The decisions of 1959, 1962 and 1964 contradicted the logic of the development of a country in need of highly qualified specialists. The remark of a well–known specialist in the history of the Urals, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor A.V. Chernoukhov about the corresponding stage of the development of the history faculty of USU is fair: "Reason and critical reviews have won - since 1967 they have restored five-year education, sent a new curriculum. Therefore, in 1970 there was no graduation of specialists, and in 1967 it was "double" – for the 5th and 4th courses. Four-year-olds were also produced in 1968-1969" ^{[13, p. 54]}.

The results of increasing the training period and significantly expanding the curriculum were not long in coming. By the early 1970s, the History Faculty of USU had become one of the leading scientific centers of the country. The restoration of historical education in 1967 gave a chance to grow and flourish to a new generation of researchers: historiographers N. N. Alevras and V. D. Kamynin, orientalist V. A. Kuzmin, novist O. G. Zakrzhevskaya et al.Conclusion

Interest in historical science in Soviet society has always been great ^{[14, p. 4-15]}.

Meanwhile, the second edition of "Pokrovshchina", which began with the reduction of school curricula in 1959 and supported by the results of the All-Union Meeting of Historians in 1962, continued with the transition to a four-year plan of training future historians at universities. One of the greatest historians of the twentieth century, M. Ya., opposed the elimination of the history of antiquity, the Middle Ages and modern times in favor of dubious pseudoscientific sociologized schemes. Suzumov.

In letters to the editor-in-chief of the journal "Questions of History" V. G. Trukhanovsky and the first Secretary of the Komsomol Central Committee S. P. Pavlov, he justified the need for historical education, the scientific inconsistency of sociologized constructions. The struggle for historical science took place before the eyes of a new generation of researchers. The students of the first graduation after the return of the five-year plan became famous scientists.

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