“A Historian Among Ruins” or “A Positive Contribution by a Scholar to the Process of Updating Russian Medieval Studies”? Evgeniya Gutnova’s Memoirs and the Identity Discourse of Russian Historiography as Exemplified by the Department of Medieval History a

Abstract

The protagonist of this text, a Soviet medievalist and professor at Lomonosov Moscow State University, is hardly an outstanding representative of historiography. However, it is equally difficult to remain indifferent to her memoirs, Perezhitoye (Moscow, 2001), written at the end of her life, which constitute a fascinating ego-historical source. Gutnova’s origins (she was the niece of Julius Martov/Yuliy Tsederbaum) and the fate of her immediate family forced her to master survival strategies in her early youth, which left a mark on her professional life. It was she that Aaron Y. Gurevich, author of Istoriia istorika (Moscow, 2004), called “historian among the ruins”. The point of reference for my reflections is Olga Bessmertna’s proposal of fear as an analytical category in the discussion of Soviet historiography. In this article, I analyse the mechanisms of survival in the Soviet historical community from the Stalinist era to perestroika, as described by Gutnova. Contrary to the clearly defined framework of an autobiography, the story of the Soviet historian prompts us to consider universal questions about the ethics of the historian’s profession, which remain relevant today.