Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Stadelmann, Matthias

Titel

The Russian Revolution in German Historiography after 1945

Ist Teil von

• Cahiers du monde russe, 2017-01, Vol.58 (1/2), p.57-78

Ort / Verlag

Paris: Éditions de l’EHESS

Erscheinungsjahr

2017

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• The article traces the paths of West German historiography on the Russian Revolution during the post‑war period. After the great caesura of 1945, German historiography on Russia had to venture into new beginnings beyond national‑socialist paradigms of perception. Historians then concentrated on political activities, perspectives of development of a constitutional monarchy in Russia and the destructive force of Bolshevism. The general turn to social history brought about a paradigm shift in the interpretation of 1917. Scholars now problematized the seemingly deficient structures of “Old Russia” and changed their perspective from state and politics to the needs and interests of society. This led to the insight that the Bolsheviks could carry out their coup only due to considerable support by the masses. Mostly the attitudes towards the bolshevist concern were rather sympathetic; sometimes the pendulum swung even to a Marxist‑Leninist self‑positioning, which never was the result of an influence by East German historiography, but came from a widespread “progressive” mood among younger generations in West Germany. Towards the end of the 1980s, however, the fascinating appeal of the Soviet Union had tapered off. As a result, German historians chose among two different paths—overall descriptions and evaluations of the revolutionary event on the one hand and experiments in cultural‑historical approaches on the other. Novel grand narratives of 1917 did not arise out of that; whether comparative and longue durée approaches lead to a revival of innovative research on 1917 is—even in the anniversary year of 2017—not yet conceivable.