A Soviet Historian Looks at Reconstruction

A SOVIET HISTORIAN LOOKS AT RECONSTRUCTION Translated and Edited by John V. Bratcher Three or four review essays usually appear in each monthly edition of Voprosy Istorii, the Soviet Union's leading historical journal. In a review essay published in January, 1960, pp. 186-190, A. V. Efimov reviewed The Negroes' Struggle for Land and Freedom in the South, U.S.A. (1865-1877), by R. F. Ivanov (The Academy of Sciences. U.S.S.R Moscow. 1958). This review is quite different from that usually encountered in this journal because it deals with a non-Russian theme. In this essay Efimov presents an interesting interpretation of the Negro 's role in the American Civil War and Reconstruction and a critical analysis of American historiography of that period. Although he critically reviews Ivanov's book Efimov devotes the major portion of his essay to his own interpretation of these and related themes. This interpretation must approximate the Soviet interpretation since A. V. Efimov is a Correspondent Member of the Academy of Sciences and the review contains terminology which indicates that the ideas are not solely those of the author. A translation of that essay forms the basis for the text that follows. To preserve intact Efimov's original ideas no liberties have been taken by the translator. Expansion of proper names and added footnotes are contained in the translator's brackets.« « « « The Civil War in North America approximates the most important turning point in the history of the United States of America. Millions of farm laborers, workers, and Negroes fighting for freedom from the yoke of slavery participated in the war. As a maker of history the role of the popular masses grew considerably during the Civil War (18611865 ) and later in the reconstruction of the South (1865-1877). Consequently three and a half million black slaves received their personal freedom from the revolution. Although lacking political experience and having almost no political leaders from among their ranks, they contributed significantly to the victory of the North over the slaveholding confederation and actively participated in the most acute class struggle in the period of reconstruction. In the work being reviewed only the introductory chapter is devoted to the Civil War. The primary object of investigation is the period of 257 258CIVIL WAR HISTORY reconstruction of the South which was a continuation of the Civil War or the second phase of the bourgeois-democratic revolution in the U. S. A. The events of this period are most flagrantly falsified by reactionary bourgeois historiography which ignores the revolutionary character of these events and the active participation in them of a great mass of people , especially Negroes. The racist conception of the hisotry of this period finds its expression in the works of J[ohn] W[illiam] Burgess, J[ames] F[ord] Rhodes, and William Afrchibald] Dunning and their successors, who completely deny the progressive aspects of reconstruction.1 According to them the negroes, representatives of the lowest race, "never created any kind of civilization". For instance, Burgess regards the activity of the reconstruction governments in the South, which had a revolutionary character, as the establishment of a supremacy "of barbarism over civilization". He considers the program of reconstruction worked out by congress a most gross error and a direct violation of the constitution .2 At the end of the nineteenth—beginning of the twentieth centuries there appeared in bourgeois historiography in the United States the socalled "economic orientation" with its most distinguished advocate Charles Beard. For the first time individual historians acknowledged the revolutionary character of the Civil War and regarded it as the second American Revolution. Beard considered the Negroes a weak-willed instrument in the hands of "ruling groups" and denied them a political role in the Civil War and reconstruction like the racist-historians. A majority of the advocates of the "economic orientation" emphasizes the struggle against the revolutionary traditions of the American people. As a group this school has conducted an active fight with Marxism. Contemporary American reactionary historians have adopted the racist conception of their predecessors. The revolutionary character of the events of the Civil War and Reconstruction is completely denied in the works of E[llis...