SOCIO-POLITICAL CONDITIONS FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE POSTWAR INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE UKRSSR (1946–1965) DURING THE KHRUSHCHEV “THAW” (MID-1950S – MID-1960S)

Abstract

The article attempts to examine the peculiarities of the scientific environment in which Soviet historical science developed in the second postwar, Khrushchev “Thaw”, decade. The period’s main feature was the fact that historical scholarship was forced to comment on and support the policies of the Soviet government. To that end, it was possible to rely on party-state decisions and official statistics that were supposed to confirm the correctness and success of the relevant course. It goes without saying that the data for such confirmations and justifications were selected in a biased manner, showing only positive changes and progressive indicators, bypassing and hiding indicators that differed from the official “world picture” of Soviet reality in closed special funds. The author emphasizes that the study of post-war Soviet history in general and the history of industrial reconstruction in particular was politicized and opportunistic due to an ideological order from the party-state leadership, narrow database, and weak human capacity since the study of modern history did not require special knowledge, language proficiency, or specific methodological tools that were necessary to deal with ancient history and history of foreign countries. The Thaw, despite its short duration, created favorable conditions for historians. However, the continuing dependence of historical science on the Soviet doctrine of social development still did not allow scholars to go beyond the party doctrine. The professional corps of historians working on history of Soviet society and party history was hardly capable of generating fundamentally different approaches from those established by the Soviet authorities, not only because of ideological dictates from above but also because of their methodological training, worldview, party affiliation, and information environment. At the same time, during the historiographical period under study, the groundwork for of the organizational “framework” of historical science was laid, which allowed for a broad front to conduct research on modern national history, and industrial development became one of the key and dominant topics. The “framework” was formed by the relevant structural units in the USSR Academy of Sciences and the UkrSSR Academy of Sciences, the departments of history of Soviet society and history of the CPSU in leading universities, and conferences on topical issues of “communist construction” and the development of industry and workforce held at the country’s top scientific and educational institutions. The author concludes that the historiographical database on the industrial development of the Ukrainian SSR was significantly expanded during the relevant period. In the array of scientific and popular science products, the authors considered a certain set of sources and came to conclusions about the steady and progressive development of the Soviet economy and industry, in particular in the socialism-communism paradigm. It is essential to emphasize that historiographical sources of the Soviet period should be selected thoroughly and ambiguously. On the one hand, it is obvious that much of the scientific and even more so the popular science and propaganda literature was created according to ready-made “standards” and “clichés,” reflecting and commenting on the ideological and political assessments of the time. On the other hand, a set of problems, especially the industrial development of the UkrSSR, were studied quite effectively in scientific terms.