Contemporary early soviet society studies in the context of changing paradigms

The article is devoted to the analysis of the key historiography problem of the early soviet state history of 1917 - middle 1930s -the issue of the soviet system's nature. The author focuses attention on the formation and evolution of the methodological approaches to this problem in contemporary historiography. The article argues that historians characterize the nature of the early soviet system primarily by assessing the state mechanism's functioning and by analyzing the means of power and public interrelationship. The article starts with the overall description of the historiographical situation of the early 1990s, which could be seen as a starting position for the contemporary Russian historiography of the Soviet epoch. The author shows a conceptual influence of Western historiography, especially of American Russian Studies and sovetology, on Russian post-soviet and contemporary historiography of this problem. The article discusses the role of totalitarian theory and social history as two main competing approaches to the early soviet society research in the Russian historiography of the 1990s-2000s. The author takes into consideration the significance of the methodological discussions of the 1990s - beginning of the 2000s in overcoming the totalitarian theory extremities and in elaborating deeper understanding of the social processes of 1917 - the 1930s. Special attention is paid to the polemics between the proponents of the theory of totalitarianism and the so-called 'revisionist' movement in historiography. The article shows variants of methodological synthesis and hybrid concepts which have a multiplicative effect on the epistemological potential of theoretical ideas used for the explanation of key mechanisms of soviet society functioning and researching its institutional and socio-cultural parameters. The author focuses on the contemporary methodological models and achievements in the studies of anthropological and cultural dimensions of social historical processes. In particular, the concepts of European military-revolutionary crisis (P. Holquist, D. Sanborn), the theory of modernization (V. V. Alekseev, I. V. Poberezhnikov) and the theory of mobilization (S. A. Krasilnikov) are analyzed in details. The article examines fruitful ideas of contemporary historiography which help to comprehend the early soviet society as a realm and subject of realization of a new world and human being creation Bolshevik project. The author makes a conclusion about the prospective ways of studying the early soviet society, defining the newly-emerging cross-disciplinary approaches (like 'new cultural history or 'new political history') and the broadening of source base as the pivotal directions of development in the years to come.

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