Изучение истории Царицына в годы Гражданской войны в советской историографии 1920-х гг. = A Study of the History of Tsaritsyn During the Civil War in the Soviet Historiography of the 1920s

Kleitman, Alexander and Petrova, Irina (2024) Изучение истории Царицына в годы Гражданской войны в советской историографии 1920-х гг. = A Study of the History of Tsaritsyn During the Civil War in the Soviet Historiography of the 1920s. RUSSIANSTUDIES.HU, 6 (2). pp. 81-89. ISSN 2677-0660

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Abstract

In the public thought and historiography of the Stalin era the city of Tsaritsyn (known as Stalingrad between 1925 and 1961 and Volgograd since 1961) was assigned a special ideological significance as a “city-fighter,” whose defence was organised by Joseph Stalin. This article analyses the works of Soviet historians of the 1920s devoted to the history of Tsaritsyn’s defence during the Civil War. The study of this topic was initiated by historians who had previously been military specialists. They gave special strategic importance to the fighting on the Tsaritsyn front and called Tsaritsyn “red Verdun”. These historians emphasized the importance of detachments from the Donbass led by Voroshilov, who helped to prevent the capture of the city by the Whites. The decisive importance of Stalin’s activity in the organisation of the city’s defence was first stated in 1929 in an article by Voroshilov himself, published in a book dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the future “leader of the people”. The “canonical version” of the defence of Tsaritsyn, in which Stalin’s organisational talents were assessed as a decisive factor in the victory of the Reds, was developed in the 1930s. Most of the authors who studied this topic in the 1920s were shot in 1937-1938.

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