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Soviet Historiography of the Latin American Countries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2022

M. S. Al'perovich
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Inasmuch as Scientific Criticism and Polemic are of the Greatest significance for the development of every branch of historical science, including, of course, the study of Latin America, I should like to offer a few thoughts on this subject.

Soviet historians of Latin America, just as scholars in other fields, attach great significance to the views of specialists everywhere-be they their colleagues in the USSR or abroad; be they Marxists or non-Marxists. Even if we hold different philosophical and methodological positions than our opponents, we are always ready to lend an attentive ear to critical observations. Disagreement with the world view or general historical conception of one or another of our foreign critics by no means prevents us from recognizing the correctness of his views on given problems, provided that the viewpoint in question is convincingly argued and scientificallydemonstrated. Even though we reject any questioning of the basic conceptions advanced by us, we are still able to accept admonitions and to seek a kernel of reason in otherwise totally inadmissible criticisms.

Type
Reports
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , Spring 1970 , pp. 63 - 70
Copyright
Copyright © 1970 by the University of Texas Press

Footnotes

*

Translated by Russell H. Bartley from the final chapter of M. S. Al'perovich‘s recent study, Sovetskaia istoriografiia stran Latinskoi Ameriki [Soviet historiography of the Latin American countries] (Moscow: Izd-vo “Nauka,” 1968), pp. 72-79. The translation has been edited by the author and is published here with his consent. The translator, in turn, has found it stylistically necessary to deviate from the Russian text at a number of points. The resultant changes, however, in no way alter the sense of the original statements. The reader, for his part, is reminded that Al'perovich here addresses himself primarily to Soviet scholars. While these remarks also concern American scholars and scholarship, no effort has been made to shape them to the sensitivities of an American readership. The entire final chapter of Al'perovich‘s study, together with another historiographical essay by the same author, appeared recently in Spanish translation under the title, Historiografía Soviética Latinoamericanista (Caracas: Publicaciones de la Escuela de Historia, Facultad de Humanidades y Educación, Universidad Central de Venezuela, 1969).

**

The author holds the degree of Doctor of Historical Sciences and is a senior research scholar at the Institute of World History of the USSR Academy of Sciences in Moscow. His varied bibliography includes the following titles: Voina za nazavisimost' Meksiki (1810-1824) [Mexico's War for Independence (1810-1824)] (Moscow, 1964); “K voprosu o chislennosti indeiskogo naseleniia Meksiki v kolonial'nyi period” [On the Question of the Size of Mexico's Indian Population in the Colonial Period], Sovetskaia etnografiia [Soviet Ethnography], No. 3 (1962), 71-80; “Miranda i ‘Velikaia Kolumbiia‘” [Miranda and “Gran Colombia”], Novaia i noveishaia istoriia [Modern and Recent History], No. 4 (1966), 56-65; “O kharaktere i formakh ekspluatatsii indeitsev v amerikanskikh koloniiakh Ispanii (XVI-XVIII veka)” [On the Nature and Forms of Indian Exploitation in Spain's American Colonies (16th through 18th Centuries)], Novaia i noveishaia istoriia, No. 2 (1957), 49-68; “Revoliutsonnaia programma Morelosa” [The Revolutionary Program of Morelos], in Ot Aliaski do Ognennoi Zemli. Istoriia i etnografiia stran Ameriki [From Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. History and Ethnography of the Countries of America] (ed. I. R. Grigulevich et al.; Moscow, 1967), pp. 306-316; “Velikaia frantsuzskaia revoliutsiia XVIII veka i ispanskie kolonii v Amerike” [The Great French Revolution of the 18th Century and the Spanish Colonies in America], Novaia i noveishaia istoriia, No. 1 (1965), 26-39.

Al'perovich has also collaborated in the preparation and editing of the following surveys: Ocherki istorii Brazilii [Essays in the History of Brazil] (Moscow, 1962); Ocherki istorii Chili [Essays in the History of Chile] (Moscow, 1967); and Ocherki novoi i noveishei istorii Meksiki 1810-1943 [Essays in the Modern and Recent History of Mexico, 1810-1845] (Moscow, 1960).

References

Notes

1. Al'perovich, Sovetskaia istoriografiia stran Latinskoi Ameriki, pp. 17-64. [Indeed, scholarly polemic among Soviet Latin Americanists has not yet developed to any significant degree. Historiographical problems which have elicited divergent views include the social content of Latin American independence, the nature of tsarist responses to the independence movement in Spanish America, and periodization of the Cuban revolution. There are also conflicting viws on IU. V. Knozorov's analyses of the Mayan writing system.

Independence-period polemic has centered primarily on the writings of the late Vladimir Mikhailovich Miroshevskii (1900-1942), regarded by Russian scholars today as the initiator of serious Soviet scholarship in Latin American history. Their author having passed from the scene, these pioneering contributions to Soviet historiography of Latin America can now be criticized with relative impunity—R.H.B.]

2. J. Gregory Oswald, “México en la historiografía soviética,” Historia Mexicana, XIV, núm. 4 (abril-junio 1965), 698.

3. Al'perovich, Sovetskaia istoriografiia. See also idem, “Izuchenie istorii Latinskoi Ameriki v Sovetskom Soiuze. (Kratkii obzor)” [The Study of Latin American History in the Soviet Union. (A Short Review)], in Latinskaia Amerika v proshlom i nastoiashchem [Latin America Past and Present] (ed., V. V. Vol'skii et al.; Moscow, 1960), pp. 450-463, and idem, “Izuchenie istorii stran Latinskoi Ameriki” [The Study of the History of the Latin American Countries], in Sovetskaia istoricheskaia nauka ot XX k XXII s'ezdu KPSS. Istoriia zapadnoi Evropy i Ameriki [Soviet Historical Science from the 20th to the 22nd Congress of the CPSU. The History of Western Europe and America] (ed., N. M. Druzhinin et al.; Moscow, 1963), pp. 151-170.

4. Thomas Perry Thornton, ed., The Third World in Soviet Perspective. Studies by Soviet Writers on the Developing Areas (Princeton, 1964), pp. xi-xii.

5. J. Gregory Oswald, “Contemporary Soviet Research on Latin America,” Latin American Research Review, I, No. 2 (Spring 1966), 78.

6. Edward B. Richards, “Marxism and Marxist Movements in Latin America in Recent Soviet Historical Writing,” Hispanic American Historical Review, XLV, No. 4 (November 1965), 578-579.

7. Ibid., p. 582. An English-language edition of this journal is published under the title World Marxist Review (London and Ottawa).

8. Armin Rappaport, ed., The Monroe Doctrine (New York, 1964).

9. S. A. Gonionskii, “Nepogrebennyi trup doktriny Monro,” Mezhdunarodnaia zhizn' [International Life], No. 10 (1960), 82-90.

10. N. N. Bolkhovitinov, Doktrina Monro (proiskhozhdenie i kharakter) [The Monroe Doctrine. Its Origin and Nature] (Moscow: Izd-vo Instituta mezhdunarodnykh otnoshenii, 1959).

11. In particular, N. N. Bolkhovitinov's monograph is characterized in another collection of articles dedicated to the Monroe doctrine as the most important and detailed Soviet study of this problem. See Donald Marquand Dozer, ed., The Monroe Doctrine. Its Modern Significance (New York, 1965), pp. 200-201.

12. See L. IU. Slëzkin, “Neobosnovannyi vypad protiv sovetskoi latinoamericanistiki” [A Groundless Attack against Soviet Scholarship on Latin America], Novaia i noveishaia istoriia, No. 1 (1964), 177-178.

13. J. Gregory Oswald, “La Revolución Mexicana en la historiografía soviética,” Historia Mexicana, XII, núm. 3 (enero-marzo 1963), 355.

14. Juan A. Ortega y Medina, Historiografía soviética iberoamericanista (1945-1960) (México, 1961), p. 38.