The Lost Civilization: Minoan Crete in Soviet Historiography

The article is devoted to the study of the Cretan and Mycenaean civilization in Soviet historical science. In giving a brief outline of the study of Cretan culture at the beginning of the twentieth century, the author draws attention to the fact that works about Crete and Mycenae that appeared in the first decade after the revolution cannot be considered in the full sense as the initial phase of Soviet historiography as they continued the pre-revolutionary traditions of historical writing. The bulk of the article is devoted to the analysis of the 1940 discussion about the Crete-Mycenaean civilization in which the "new conception" of Boris Bogaevsky, a professor from Leningrad, was criticized by most of the historians. They approved a more "conservative" vision of the topic by Vladimir Ser-geev, a professor from Moscow, for a chapter in the projected academic World History edition. Bogaevsky was an unpleasant figure even for the 1930s, the times when fierce rivalry for the top place in Soviet science was reinforced by the peak of purges for all the Soviet society. He began his career in pre-revolutionary Russia and in his early works we can see traces of an idealistic vision on the historical process. However, he wanted to get the best position in a new Soviet society, so he cooperated with the new administration of Leningrad University and was one of the organizers of the persecution of "old" professors. He became an active follower of Academician Nikolai Marr's new linguistic theory, which in the late 1920s was declared Marxist. At the end of the 1920s, when the coexistence of the "old" and "new" science was over (by repressions of "old" academicians), Bogaevsky began to actively master the Marxist theory. The result of this was a complete change in his views on the Greek prehistory. In 1933 he declared that the Cretan and Mycenaean society was pre-state, a late stage of the tribal society. But in 1940 he lost in the discussion, and his theory was completely rejected in the successive Soviet historiography. After this, there was a significant decline in interest in the study of the Minoan Crete in Soviet studies. The study of the Mycenaean society continued, but Crete was almost completely forgotten. Bogaevsky's conception, with it insincere and flashy Marxism, had one important advantage: it emphasized the complexity of the transition from the primitive stages to the civilization. This became an intellectual fashion in world historiography after the Second World War, but in Soviet science one of the opportunities for development in this direction (in the study of the Minoan society) was actually lost. The author comes to the conclusion that the Soviet desire to bring the vision of history to the final and only correct view was ultimately detrimental to Soviet historiography itself.

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