Red against Empire: Bolshevik Historians and a New Past for the Cossacks

• In Event: The Radical Utopianism of the Soviet Twenties I: Words

Abstract

The purpose of Bolshevik nationalities policy was to erase all traces of empire from the Russian Empire, which was a clear precondition for any utopia worthy of the name. In the present, that meant elevating the formerly-oppressed nations to the point where they no longer felt colonized. At the same time, Bolshevik historians went to work on the past, producing a body of scholarship—today largely forgotten—in which colonialism was the old empire’s defining feature. This paper introduces and interprets one such historian, who rode into the archives of the steppe and did battle with the founding Cossack legend.

Author

• Joseph Kellner, U of Georgia