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At the height of the Great Terror in 1937, Joseph Stalin took a break from the purges to edit a new textbook on the history of the USSR. Published shortly thereafter, the Short History of the USSR amounted to an ideological sea change. Stalin had literally rewritten Russo-Soviet History, breaking with two decades of Bolshevik propaganda that styled the 1917 Revolution as the start of a new era. In its place, he established a thousand-year pedigree for the Soviet state that stretched back through the Russian empire and Muscovy to the very dawn of Slavic civilization. Appearing in million-copy print runs through 1955, the Short History transformed how a generation of Soviet citizens were to understand the past, not only in public school and adult indoctrination courses, but on the printed page, the theatrical stage, and the silver screen.
Stalin's Usable Past supplies a critical edition of the Short History that both analyzes the text and places it in historical context. By highlighting Stalin's precise redactions and embellishments, historian David Brandenberger reveals the scope of Stalin's personal involvement in the textbook's development, documenting in unprecedented detail his plans for the transformation of Soviet society's historical imagination.
"In the Stalinist USSR of the 1930s, the dictator decided that the country needed a new, multinational, Marxist history to inspire the people and legitimize his regime. David Brandenberger's magisterial work demonstrates how writing about the past became a battlefield between official versions of the national myth." —Ronald Grigor Suny, author of Stalin: Passage to Revolution
"David Brandenberger's fascinating study reminds us of history's malleability, of its uses and abuses, which seem as potent as ever in our 'post-fact' world." —Bryan Karetnyk, Times Literary Supplement
"Brandenberger does an excellent job of detailing how Soviet citizens during the Stalin era were expected to view the past.... Moreover, Brandenberger's analysis reveals the major influence that Stalin had over the crafting of Soviet history and Marxism-Leninism. Brandenberger's close reading and analysis of the Short History also reveals the ideological shortcuts and compromises that Stalin was willing to make in creating a usable past, which cast into doubt the ideological foundations of the Soviet Union." —Jonathon Dreeze, H-Russia
"Brandenberger's work exemplifies the fact that the past can never retire. Even in old age it is, whether enthusiastically or reluctantly, drafted back into active service when political exigencies call. We see that in Putin's heavy hand on current Russian history texts, and in battles in the US courts and schools about portrayals of the American past. Brandenberger's work provides a readable blow-by-blow account of how one such effort proceeded at a key point in the history of the Soviet Union." —Jeffrey Brooks, Journal of Modern History
List of Maps
Acknowledgments
A Note on Conventions
Terms and Acronyms
Introduction to the Critical Edition
The Short History of the USSR
Introduction
I. Our Country in the Distant Past
II. The Kiev State
III. Eastern Europe under the Rule of the Mongol Conquerors
IV. The Rise of the Russian National State
V. The Expansion of the Russian State
VI. The Peasant Wars and Revolts of the Oppressed Peoples in the 17th Century
VII. Russia in the 18th Century. The Empire of Landlords and Merchants
VIII. Tsarist Russia—the Gendarme of Europe
IX. The Growth of Capitalism in Tsarist Russia
X. The First Bourgeois Revolution in Russia
XI. The Second Bourgeois Revolution in Russia
XII. The Great October Socialist Revolution in Russia
XIII. Military Intervention. The Civil War
XIV. The Turn to Peaceful Labour. Economic Restoration of the Country
XV. U.S.S.R. is the Land of Victorious Socialism
Chronological Table
Appendix: Further Revisions to Stalin's Usable Past, 1937–1955
Notes
Index