A forgotten historian (the 100-year anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War)

The article tells about the research work of N.P Poletika, who was the first in the USSR to begin to study the preconditions of the First World War. His works, published in the 1930-s - 1960-s, were an important contribution to the world historiography of the First World War. The civil war in Ukraine was in full swing when he graduated from the University of Kiev in 1918. When a student he made a final decision concerning his scientific research devoted to preconditions and outbreak of the First World War. In 1923 N.P. Poletika moved to Petrograd, where he found employment as a worker of editorial staff of the newspaper "Leningradskaya Pravda", publishing the correspondence of the situation and the political struggle in the western countries. Due to profound knowledge of four foreign languages N.P. Poletika had on opportunity of making a thorough study of numerous diplomatic documents concerning the causes of the First World War, which were published then in a number of European countries. He pursued the purpose to find the answer to the question: "Who is to be blamed for it?" His first work "How the war began" in journal "Zvezda" was published in 1924 and followed by the second one devoted to Sarajevo assassination in 1930. In the latter monograph he shared the opinion of academician M.U. Pokrovski who laid the blame for the outbreak of the war on the countries of Entente and Serbia. The book contained a number of documents and got a great response in the Soviet and foreign historiography. His main monograph "The Preconditions of the First World War" was published in 1935, with its corrected edition reprinted in 1964. He revised his previous opinions and assessments and recognized that both Germany and Austria as well as the Allies were equally responsible for the outbreak of the war. In 1973 N.P. Poletika emigrated to Israel but he was not involved in any anti-Soviet actions. Since that time his name has never been mentioned in the works of Russian historians. It was not until the early XXI century that his works began to be paid attention to and quoted by historians making research on international relations on the eve of the First World War.

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