From the Editor

"Our future," it has been sarcastically asserted by contemporary Russian historians, "is crystal clear, but our past is absolutely unpredictable." This issue examines the changing trends of historical research in Russia following the demise of the Soviet Union. Inevitably, one of the vital tools in the process of nation building after 1991 was the resort to history. A Pandora's box had been opened, and the public was craving for "the truth" about the past. From the outset, however, the rewriting of history encountered immense hurdles. While the disintegration of the communist political system freed Russian scholarship from the ideological shackles of Marxism, it did not provide it with an alternative theoretical framework. The swift institutional changes in the political sphere and the opening of the archives were not accompanied by a conceptual volte face within the academic community. The process of breeding a fresh cadre of historians is a long and arduous one. The Russian Academy of Sciences and leading Russian universities were in no position to provide the proper guidance. The withdrawal of governmental funds from the academic sphere—offset by only limited support from the West—deflected talented students to more lucrative professions. Unlike the case of East Germany, where an influx of West German historians after reunification led a natural process of reeducation, Russian institutions lacked new faces. The inability to introduce a swift change in the historical profession meant that the old regime of the historical establishment was able to hang on to the reins of power.

And yet, fresh winds have been blowing from different directions. An increasing number of young historians, many of whom wrote their dissertations in leading European and American universities, assisted by Western scholarships, have injected new ideas into the rigid Russian milieu. Moreover, the archives ceased to be the monopoly of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the media have encouraged the presentation and publication of new histories. First-rate schools of cultural anthropology and semiotics, which had already established their international scholarly status in the Soviet era, are now flourishing. The tradition of publishing archival material has been revived, unearthing material from the Soviet period. The publishing houses, now working on a strictly commercial basis, are no longer obliged to publish archaic material and have opted for fresh and exciting monographs. Russian historians have experienced much greater exposure to the work of their Western counterparts, a body of research that had been previously relegated to the back rooms of Soviet libraries. Consequently, the last two decades have been marked by a dramatic and dynamic change in Russian historiography.

A new orientation has become discernible, introducing to the Russian scene a variety of theoretical approaches to history. A lively debate erupted on issues such as continuity and change and the interrelations between the prerevolutionary and post-Soviet historiography, emanating from and sustained by an attempt to better define Russian identity. The consolidation of a new, non-Marxist (and overwhelmingly cultural and social) historical paradigm made it possible to reexamine enduring problems of Russian historiography, such as the Russian Revolution and World War II, and opened new fields of research such as the role of the church in Russia, issues concerning the tasks of civil society, and a newfound interest in the liberal and conservative traditions in Russian political thought. Perhaps most striking was the center stage occupied by the discourse on commemoration and collective memory. The evolution of post-Soviet Russian historiography shifted from an initial theoretical reassessment of Marxist historiography to a production of genuinely fresh works of research.

This volume opens with Michael Confino's overview of the current state of Russian historiography both inside and outside Russia. The following articles are devoted to the main issues preoccupying Russian historians today, from the ongoing reassessment of the 1917 revolution (Boris Kolonitskii) and the Soviet Union's role in World War II (Teddy Uldricks) to the shifts in the conceptual framing of Russian history (Vera Kaplan), the thorny problem of relations between the Russian majority and the various ethnic minorities that constitute the Russian Federation (Victor Shnirelman), and the legacy of the mass deportations of the war years (Yaacov...