V. Levchenko, PhD in History, Assistant Professor

Odessa National Maritime University, Odessa, Ukraine

DOI: https://doi.org/10.17721/1728-2640.2018.138.7

TOUCHES TO THE PORTRAIT OF THE SOVIET HISTORIAN N.I. MEZHBERH

The article is dedicated to the study of the fragments of the intellectual biography of the historian N.I. Mezhberh on the basis of the first introduced to the scientific circulation of documentary material of the five funds of the State Archives of the Odessa region. As a result of the study, it was possible to identify four main stages of his biography. The main stages of the biography of the scientist coincide with the time of formation of the "early Soviet" generation of historians of the USSR. As a historian of the Soviet formation in the study of individual fragments of socio-economic and socio-political life of the Odessa region at the beginning of the 20th century he used the Marxist methodology and vocabulary inherent in the Soviet humanities of the 1930’s. The orthodox Marxist position of the intellectual biography of N.I. Mezhberh was formed under the influence of the revolutionary ideas and events that he was party to, and under the pressure of the existing dictatorship of the Bolsheviks and the totalitarian regime of the USSR. Despite many years of political persecution, he remained faithful to his left conviction, and in the 1960’s he continued to study various aspects of revolutionary events in the USSR. One of the works of the last period was a logical result of the historian's dedication to the ideals of the Communist Party and Soviet power. The intellectual biography of N.I. Mezhberh is subordinated to the unity of life as a moral experience and intellectual requests of time, the socio-political background of the era. In general, this study revealed the great importance of the Marxist orientation in the Soviet historiography of the 1920’s-1930’s and in the formation of the "early Soviet" generation of historians of the USSR.

Key words: N.I. Mezhberh, historian, scientist, generation, historical science, historiography.

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