Soviet Assyriology and its Aftermath
December 2021 | Vol. 9.12
By Sergey Krikh
What was the outline of Assyriology in the early Stalinist period of Soviet scholarship? Stalin came to power in 1924 with the death of Vladimir Lenin and ruled until his own death in 1953. The 1920s were politically related to Soviet history, from an intellectual point of view, but still continued (with some significant changes) pre-revolutionary traditions. The features of Soviet scholarship, however, took shape precisely during the Stalin years.
Stalin confers with an ailing Lenin at Gorky in September 1922. Photo by Maria Ulyanova, Lenin’s sister.
What was the status of Assyriology during the Stalin years? The Soviet political system defined historical scholarship as one of the types of intellectual front on which Soviet scholars fought against bourgeois historiography (and at the same time against traitors in their own sphere). Obviously, the history of the ancient world was not the vanguard of this fight, therefore, ideological influence in this sphere was lesser. Nevertheless, the Marxist paradigm sought a holistic understanding of history; therefore, without an image of ancient history, the puzzle could not come together.
Assyriology played an important role in ensuring that ancient history was fully explained – from the point of view of Soviet Marxism. In the 1920s, not only among historians but also among Marxist theoreticians, the prevailing view was that the ‘Eastern’ civilizations were fundamentally different from the slave system of ancient Greece and Rome. In a paper published in 1934, the Soviet Orientalist Vasily Struve firstly introduced the concept of the slave system in the ancient Near East. His central example was the tablets of the Third Dynasty of Ur. Ironically, Struve was first an Egyptologist who by 1933 or 1934 had been studying Akkadian and Sumerian for only a few years. Most of the historians of the ancient Near East in the USSR at that time were also Egyptologists.
Vasily Vasilievich Struve (1889-1965). Image via CDLI
Accordingly, very few scholars could dispute Struve’s references to Sumerian sources. Alexander Tyumenev was one of the historians of antiquity who retrained as a Sumerologist to check Struve’s arguments; his book on Sumer was published in 1956 when the image of the slave system in the Near East had fully taken root in Soviet scholarship. Despite some discrepancies with Struve’s theory, Tyumenev’s book did not influence this image. Thus, Soviet Assyriological studies determined the solution to the question of the “Asian mode of production” already in Stalin’s time.
How did scholars adapt to the necessity to conform to Marxist-Leninist theory, both in terms of specific research and larger frameworks? Soviet historical scholarship was not an autonomous social institution, as in the Western democracies. Therefore, the thesis that there were some “pure” scholars who had to somehow get along with Marxist-Leninist theory imposed by the authorities is incorrect.
On the other hand, the belief that Marxist-Leninist theory already existed in some finished form, especially when it came to understanding specific historical epochs (notably antiquity and the Middle Ages) or specific historical regions is also incorrect. The peculiarity of Stalin’s time lies in the fact that both the Soviet historians’ community and the understanding of Marxist theory (indeed, the emergence of Soviet Marxism which later called “Marxism-Leninism”) formed in parallel and influenced each other. If we add to this the fact that these processes were taking place against the background of intense political struggle in the Bolshevik party leadership, then we can understand why the history of Stalin’s time is very far from such a straightforward scenario of “the party ordered – the historians followed.”
In reality, the party (more precisely, specific members) did not know what it wanted in terms of results, and historians did not understand exactly what was required of them. Some clarity came only towards the end of Stalin’s time. Importantly, the community of Soviet historians consisted of people with different backgrounds. Put simply, two generations existed in early Soviet times: “old” historians (who received an education and even started scholarly activity before the 1917 revolution) and new historians who received or completed their education in the Soviet period, under the conditions of ideological indoctrination and the decline of the value of classical humanistic disciplines.
Indeed, the “old” historians had to adapt to new conditions, and surprises would await them along the way. Logically, under these new conditions, historians who were Marxist before the revolution were in a better position. But the example of the dispute between historian and folklorist Nikolai Nikolsky and Vasily Struve showed that matters was much more complicated. Nikolsky was associated with the Bolsheviks even during the period of the 1905 Russian Revolution and could not teach at universities under the tsarist regime. Struve began his scholar career before the First World War and did not admire Marxism. Moreover, he began to study Marxism only in the late 1920s.
Nikolay Vasilyevich Nikolsky (1878-1961)
Nikolsky published a great deal in the 1920s, including a popular book about the history of the Russian Church. In 1933 he was the sole author of the textbook on ancient history for schools for the People’s Commissariat of Education. In this textbook, the Eastern civilizations were presented as feudal, in contrast to the slave system of antiquity.
But soon everything changed: Struve’s concept won, possibly because Struve himself did not profess Marxism from the beginning which was why he was ready to quickly adapt to the Stalinist regime’s new understanding of the theory. Nikolsky tried to challenge Struve’s concept, but in 1935 he admitted that he was partially mistaken, and soon began to call the ancient Eastern societies slaveholding. (He retained, however, the desire to argue with Struve until the end of his life). This case shows that “sincere” old-time Marxist sometimes had fewer chances of success under the new regime than “precocious” (and opportunistic) ones.
Nevertheless, the regime’s real problems with historians began in the post-war period, when a new generation of “sincere” Marxists came to the forefront. They believed that on the basis of Marxist theory they could analyze all historical facts. Since they were well trained in theory, and “old school” historians had taught them languages and how to work with sources in general, they unwittingly revealed the contradictions and inconsistencies of Soviet Marxism, when they tried to seriously apply it in the practice of historical research. But these problems were a general characteristic of the post-Stalin era.
How did this legacy shape post-Stalin and post-Soviet Assyriology? In Stalin’s time, a community of historians emerged and the main views on history were formed. This predetermined the humanistic disciplines’ development not only in the late Soviet but also in the post-Soviet period. Famed Assyriologist Igor Diakonoff was an important figure here. When he applied Marxist theory to the history of the ancient Near East, he arrived at insoluble contradictions: theory dictated that he had to find a slave system in communities where slaves were barely present and where slavery as a whole did not determine social structure. The first thesis was not a problem for the Marxism, but the second made it completely unusable. As a result, Diakonoff, after the fall of the USSR, admitted that slavery in general could not be seen as a defining characteristic of a stage of social development.
In Classical times, it became accepted all around the Mediterranean and was widely imitated in the Near East. Many states did not issue coinage at all until Hellenistic times with Sparta being a celebrated example. Presumably, they met their coinage needs from other states. It is important to note that silver in the form of bullion or larger denomination coins would have been used to settle larger transactions. Perhaps as little as 10% of silver was coined. By Hellenistic times, if not earlier, coins were minted primarily to meet military expenditure.
The study of coins using new analytical techniques and statistical methods together with wider surveys of mining districts and a more nuanced conception of the geology of ore deposits is quickly changing our understanding of silver sources. The literary evidence is seen to be anecdotally useful but potentially misleading especially concerning the range of ore sources. Silver was accessed from Spain to Iran and traded largely independently of, or despite, political factors. Ironically, to end this story where it began, a main reason why money was invented was so the state could enforce payments at a profit.
But rejecting Soviet ideas is not the only characteristic of later developments in Russian Assyriology. Of course, the late Soviet and post-Soviet periods should be distinguished. In the late Soviet period, Assyriology in the USSR became in the fullest sense a professional discipline, and it was not isolated from communication with the world scholarly community. Diakonoff, for example, willingly wrote papers for European and American journals (although he was the most active Soviet Assyriologist in this regard).
The achievements of Soviet scholarship were also of interest to world scholars, especially during the 1960 and 1970s. Soviet and foreign scholarship came to the same point from different directions: Soviet scholarship was always inclined towards theory, but it had been increasing the quality of work with primary sources while Western scholarship was long focused on sources, but had increasing interest in theory. Because of this, for example, a useful dispute between Diakonoff and University of Chicago Assyriologist Ignace Gelb about the status of a guruš (workmen who appear in ration lists) could appear.
But inevitably there was a breakup. In the post-Soviet period, economic issues in which the Soviet scholarship achieved results become less interesting to Russian researchers. Many have now turned to archaeological research (expanding a long and important tradition of excavations and surveys in Iraq and elsewhere) and to the analysis of culture and religion, areas that had previously been at least partially off limits. But Russian Assyriology and ancient Near Eastern studies have continued to broaden and engage with global scholarship.
How to cite this article:
Krikh, S. 2021. “Soviet Assyriology and its Aftermath” The Ancient Near East Today 9.12. Accessed at: https://anetoday.org/soviet-assyriology-aftermath/.
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