N.A. ROZHKOV AND THE SOCIETY of HISTORIANS-MARXISTS (THE FATE OF THE HISTORIAN AND HIS SCIENTIFIC HERITAGE IN THE MIDDLE OF 1920 – BEGINNING OF 1930)

Nikolay Alexandrovich Rozhkov (1868–1927) was a prominent Russian historian of the late XIX – early XX century, the author of major works on the economic, political and social history of Russia, the Creator of the original historical concept, which he considered Marxist. For his political activity was subjected to repression under the tsarist and Communist regimes. The article aims to consider the participation of Rozhkov in the last years of his life, when he broke up with politics and was engaged only in scientific and pedagogical work, in the work of the society of historians-Marxists, which was in the second half of 1920 – early 1930 a peculiar center of Soviet historical science. The attitude of Soviet historiography to its scientific heritage after the scientist’s death is also traced. It is shown that the cooperation in the framework of the society of historians-Marxists, there was a mutual interest of both the historian and the leadership of Soviet historical science. Despite this, the leading representatives of the official historiography continued to criticize Rozhkov’s sociological and historical views for their inconsistency with the basic provisions of the orthodoxal Marxist-Leninist concept of the Russian historical process. For the first time a detailed analysis of the historian’s speeches at the meetings of the Society and his publications in the journal «Historian-Marxist», which was a printed body of the organization is carried out. It was found that at this time, as at the beginning of his scientific career, when he worked at the Moscow University, and during the pre-Revolutionary exile in Siberia, the historian focused on historical and economic problems. First of all, it was expressed in the development of methodology of microeconomics study of history of an individual industrial enterprise. On the basis of the developed theoretical approaches and source methods, a detailed study of the specific production and economic activity of Prokhorovka (trekhgornaya) textile factory of the late XVIII-first half of XIX centuries was then presented. Attention was drawn to the fact that at first after the death of the leader of Soviet historians-Marxists M. N. Pokrovsky began to spread the version of the alleged imminent ideological and political rapprochement of Rozhkov with the Bolshevik party, which was prevented by the unexpected and premature death of him. However, soon during the various ideological campaigns of the late 1920 – early 1930 aimed at combating «bourgeois perversions of history» and affirming «purity of Marxism» in Soviet historical science, the well-known characteristic of Rozhkov as a petty bourgeois historian-eclecticism, a Menshevist trend was finally determined.

Soviet historiography, society of historians-Marxists, N.А. Rozhkov, M.N. Pokrovsky, concept, ideology, «historical front».