History as politics

Abstract

The actual majority of the Soviet writers officially listed (Miliband, 1975) as historians would hardly figure under that appellation in any non-Marxist country. In a few cases they would be excluded on technical grounds, such as the extension of the term in Russia to embrace for example prehistory, anthropology and ethnology (A. P. Okladnikov and others) or museum-curatorship (e.g. V. T. Dashkevich). Moreover some of those in Miliband’s directory had very little to say on Japan in particular. Much the greater and more sweeping reason is however that by far the majority appear by non-Soviet lights to deal very largely in day-to-day commentary on current happenings and political prognostications — the functions in the West of the journalist, publicist or agitator rather than that of the historian. The procedure adopted here is to go through the Soviet listing — first in this section the historians, the most numerous contingent — taking the names simply in alphabetical order and giving brief characterisations of the life and work of each. This will give a useful overview of the field, identifying the kinds of persons involved and the general nature of their interests and activities.