From the bourgeois nationalist to the fascist: the Marxist reception of Mychaiło Hruszewski’s work in the first three decades of the twentieth century

Abstract

This article investigates the reception of M. Hruszewski’s work by the Russian and Ukrainian Marxist historiography in the first three decades of the twentieth century. It aims to retrace the main lines along which Hruszewski’s work was interpreted. For a long time Soviet sociologists, while condemning the scholar’s political affiliation in the past, managed to steer clear of misrepresenting his views and tolerated the interpretation of historical process he advanced. Appreciating his work, they relied on his findings for illustrating their own theses. However, beginning in the 1920s, as the country’s socio-political situation worsened, the process of Ukrainization grew weaker, the academic world became increasingly affected by the totalitarian ideology and the new young Marxist cadres, raised in the spirit of ideological intransigence, began to enter the political scene, Hruszewski’s work came under growing criticism. The analysis of the available material clearly shows that Soviet scholars, in passing the critique of Hruszewski’s views, offered an ideologically distorted picture of his work.