M. N. Pokrovsky Pioneered Russia’s Marxist School of History

Mikhail Nikolaevich Pokrovsky was the leading Soviet historian during the 1920s. He is credited with being the first person to present the history of Russia from a Marxist perspective. He was responsible for establishing the main academic institutions of the Soviet era, and for founding the leading historical journals. However, the Soviet authorities denounced Pokrovsky’s writings after his death in 1932, branding them as schematic and anti-Marxist. It was not until Joseph Stalin’s death in…