Russia's twentieth century in history and historiography

Discussions of Russian history have frequently been marked by a preoccupati on with the question of Russian 'backwardness', or, during the Soviet perio d from 1917 to 1991, with its obverse: the claim of the Soviet Union to pla y a vanguard role in world history. This paper offers a critical survey of twentieth-century Russian and Soviet history, and of its often highly polit icised historiography, in the light of these debates. The extent to which t he Soviet 'building of socialism' represented a project of modernisation wi ll be considered, along with differing Interpretations of this project by b oth Western and post-Soviet Russian historians. While the work of the new g eneration of post-Soviet historians promises substantive advances In our kn owledge of the Soviet past, it is suggested here that debates on Russia's p ast are once again being overshadowed by old concerns about Russia's backwa rdness vis-ci-vis the West.