“Basically, it’s a History of the Russian State”: Russocentrism, Etatism, and the Ukrainian Question in Stalin’s Editing of the 1937 <i>Short History of the USSR</i>
Journal: Nationalities Papers
Year: 2023

Abstract Joseph Stalin and the Soviet party leadership launched a major propaganda campaign in 1931 that called for a new approach to Soviet history, not only for scholars and pedagogues but for society as a whole. A veritable “search for a usable past,” this initiative was to bolster the authority and legitimacy of the state and rally the population together in patriotic unity by connecting the prerevolutionary past to the Stalinist present. When this new historical line was finally unveiled in