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UC Santa Cruz UC Santa Cruz Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Within Thinkers’ Worlds: On The Anti-Soviet Promotion Of Honor And Humanity In The Works Of Soviet And Post-Soviet Historians Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0511x150 Author Bortsov-Shrago, Ilia Leon Publication Date 2017 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA CRUZ WITHIN THINKERS’ WORLDS: ON THE ANTI-SOVIET PROMOTION OF HONOR AND HUMANITY IN THE WORKS OF SOVIET AND POST-SOVIET HISTORIANS A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements of the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in HISTORY by Ilia Leon Bortsov-Shrago March, 2017 The dissertation of Ilia Leon Bortsov-Shrago is approved: Professor Jonathan Beecher, Chair Professor Melissa Caldwell, Ph.D. Professor Peter Kenez, Ph.D. Tyrus Miller Vice-Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies Table of Contents Abstract—page iii Introduction—page 1 Chapter 1) Natan Eidelman—page 37 Chapter 2) Yakov Gordin—page 142 Chapter 3) Yuri Lotman—page 232 Conclusion—page 308 Bibliography—page 336 iii Abstract Ilia Leon Bortsov-Shrago WITHIN THINKERS’ WORLDS: ON THE ANTI-SOVIET PROMOTION OF HONOR AND HUMANITY IN THE WORKS OF SOVIET AND POST-SOVIET HISTORIANS This dissertation focuses on three Soviet and post-Soviet historians: Natan Eidelman, Yakov Gordin, and Yuri Lotman. It is my intention to show that through their published works as well as their public appearances, these men used their profession to subtly work against the realities, ideology and principles of the USSR, attempting to fight against the moral degradation enforced by this society by means of Aesopian language, and by a veiled system of references to their present, hidden in their works on the past. In studying the published works of these historians, as well as their personal biographies and reputations, I was convinced that they did indeed, deliberately and with full consciousness of their actions, attempt to undermine the Soviet ideology and educational demands by providing their readers and students with examples of moral and intellectual excellence which, in Russian history, led them to seek their models in the so-called ‘Golden’, Alexandrian period, that is to say the first quarter of the 19th century. The models they found in this period—primarily members of the Decembrist Rebellion and Alexander Pushkin, became for them models of honorable and decent behavior which, in their current reality, could not be equaled. They used these models to present alternative patterns of thought and morality to their Soviet-era audience, and thereby sought to fight against the pervasive influence of communist ideology. iv Introduction The purpose of this study is to attempt a textual analysis of the works of three major late Soviet-period historians or,—as some would have it,—popularizers of history, in order to determine whether they attempted to use their works as vehicles for what the Soviet state would consider “dissident” ideas. Specifically, it is my intention to examine the published works of Natan Eidelman, Yakov Gordin and Yuri Lotman—all three of whom grew up and came of age during the first and most fearsome period in Soviet history, and began to practice writing and pedagogy in the relatively less bloodthirsty “Thaw” and “Stagnation” periods,—in search of specific points at which their manner of writing about the Imperial period of Russian history would give subtle messages to the late-Soviet reader—messages which the Soviet state would have considered improper at best and seditious at worst and at times allowed to be published only because Soviet censors in the latest period of Soviet history no longer feared or cared enough to do their jobs and when it was possible to publish practically anything. I intend to focus particularly on the elements in their writing which have to do with the topic of human dignity and the 1 role it played—and continues to play—in Soviet and Russian society. It is necessary to begin with a description of the atmosphere in which these three men came to their maturity as students of history. All three represent a bridge between the pre-and post- Revolutionary traditions of historical scholarship. Two connected elements had caused immeasurable damage to this field of study in the USSR: the initial extermination of countless people, including intellectuals of all varieties during the Revolution and the early years of so-called “War Communism” and which may be summed up, more justly, as a war of conquest by the newly-risen Bolshevik state against a country reluctant to go back under a new and harsher yoke; and the more methodical purges of the 1930’s which weeded out the temporary survivors. Daniil Al’ (1919-2012), only three years older than Lotman and later a famous historian, summarized the atmosphere of the year he started as a freshman student at the History Department of the Leningrad State University—1937, the year the state began its final destruction of the St. Petersburg school of history. “The department, like all other institutes of higher learning in the country, existed, as it were, in two unmixable state. Like the yolk and the white in an egg. One of these substances—the constant atmosphere of denunciation, the search for ideological enemies, all manner of mistakes, perversions, ‘a struggle against the dulling of vigilance’. On the other hand, institutes of higher learning and other scientific establishments continued— unshaken—intense, truly scientific scholarly work, the preserved 2 the high potential and spirit of big scholarship. Naturally, history as a science was in a harder position than any other. First of all because this discipline, by its very nature, is ideological to the limit. Secondly, its sphere included specifically ‘Party-oriented’ departments; the history of the CPSU, the history of the Civil War and, finally, the current history of the country which included such themes as collectivization, industrialization, USSR foreign policy and so on. Objective investigation in this area was out of the question in principle. Although, as Peter the Great used to say, ‘the impossible happens’1 Individual scientific—truly scientific, not just so-called—works appeared on these themes as well. Largely on personal concerns. Under these conditions true investigatory-scientific life intensified in those compartments of historical knowledge which can, using modern terminology, be called relatively ‘free zones’. This includes the history of ancient peoples and civilizations (and thus of archeology as well), the history of antiquity and the Middle Ages. The history of feudal Russia. To a certain extent this included the modern history of a number of countries, including Russia of the 19th century. It goes without saying that scientific work in these spheres of historical scholarship also had to abide by certain rules of the game. Not to forget, for instance, about class struggle and historical materialism generally, which, to my mind, does not always do history harm. The selection of students took place accordingly. Some—weak largely, because of flaws in their general education, for instance incapable if only for reasons of age of mastering foreign, much less ancient languages or, having calculated the benefits of timely service, became ‘Party’ historians. Others, most prepared and, most importantly, sincerely determined to go into true scientific work chose a more difficult and less prestigious, but in exchange a truly scientific path, and went to study with true, big scholars. Luckily, the students of my generation, then had people from whom to learn.”2 Very shortly, however, the situation changes drastically for the worse. “In our childish naivety, having crossed the threshold of the department we felt ourselves to be in a temple of pure scholarship where one serves only truth, only the true verity of history. We wanted to learn this truth so that we could serve it— 1 “Небываемое бывает.” 2 Al’, Daniil, St. Petersburg Tells the History of Russia, St. Petersburg, Neva Publishing House, p. 346. [Here and elsewhere all citations are in my translation—ILS] 3 selfless and inspired. We, first-years, did not take real notice of the dark clouds gathering above us. […] Soon the thunder struck right above us. In January of 1938, in front of hundreds of history students, a group of employees from Yezhov’s NKVD, guns in hand, arrested and took away Chernitsky, the deputy-dean. Soon it became known that he has been shot as a former leftist SR. One after the other professors, lecturers and even students who ‘turned out to be enemies of the people’ began to disappear. Almost every day one student or another was loudly thrown out of Komsomol for ‘connections to an enemy of the people’—their own father, friend or teacher, or for ‘connections to a daughter of an enemy of the people’, in other words, for connections to his own wife. His stick crashing on the floors, the then-famous officious historian of the USSR, Nikolai Arsent’evich Kornatovski strode through the department, forbidding students to ask him questions concerning pre-Soviet history. Passing his ignorance off as courage, he even boasted of not knowing or wishing to know the history of Russia prior to the reform of 1861. Karnach (karaul’nyj nachal’nik or ‘watch commander’ in army terminology), was his nickname to all the generations of history students who knew him—and he correspondingly despised his fellow-historians who worked on earlier, that is, ‘feudal’ and ‘bourgeois’ history. Quite understandably, this watchful guardian of the party purity of historical scholarship expressed party, that is, state approaches to history.”3 Thus, in Russian and particularly Soviet scholarship history, no matter how distant, was never a topic free of ideological concern.