ERMOLAEVA, O. E. CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN HISTORIOGRAPHY OF STALIN’S RUSSIA: METHODOLOGICAL ADVANCES AND TRADITIONAL // Proceedings of Petrozavodsk State University. 2018. No 7 (176). DOI: 10.15393/uchz.art.2018.228


Historiography, source studies, methods of historical research

CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN HISTORIOGRAPHY OF STALIN’S RUSSIA: METHODOLOGICAL ADVANCES AND TRADITIONAL

ERMOLAEVA
O. E. 		Petrozavodsk State University
Keywords:
American historiography
contemporary approaches
traditional interpretations
history of the USSR
Stalin’s period		 Summary: The article analyzes two recent scholarly works by prominent American historians in the field of the Soviet history. Contextualizing them in the contemporary American historiography of Stalin’s Russia, it demonstrates, that they combine recent methodology with the traditional, even archaic interpretations. Further on, the article contemplates upon their use of the methodology of earlier generations of Soviet historians, recent trends as well as upon general tendencies n the field. In particular, the article juxtaposes the contemporary, postmodernist and poststructuralist approach of Y. Slezkine, based on the studies of the «Soviet subjectivity» through the analysis of literary works and his rather traditional generalizations. Accordingly, it discusses the common features between them. In the second work under analysis, S. Kotkin attempts to create a new biography of I. Stalin through deep and detailed analysis of his political and personal surroundings. However, at the end he offers rather simplified version of the Soviet history of the 1930s, where major events and processes of the 1930s are viewed through the lense of the history of Stalin versus Hitler and explained with the help of the outdated conceptions.



Displays: 311;