HISTORY UNDER MODERN DICTATORSHIPS: Pokrovsky, Frank, and Von Müller

Abstract

[Both the Soviet and the German totalitarian regimes destroyed the freedom of historical inquiry by imposing political restrictions upon research and prescribing in minute detail a politically acceptable version of the past. History became a political weapon, the historian a warrior at “the historical front.” In the Soviet Union this inherent feature of totalitarianism became entangled with the Marxian legacy and its claims to have discovered the objective laws of historical development.