A Textbook and Its Author: The Pre-Revolutionary Russian Tradition and Soviet Innovations in Nikolay M. Nikolsky’s Work

In this paper, the author analyses Professor N. M. Nikolsky’s 1933 school textbook on ancient history. Nikolsky introduced a number of interesting innovations in his work uncharacteristic of scholarship of the time. He was able to combine the pre-revolutionary school tradition and elements of Marxism. Equally, the textbook matched the level of historical scholarship of the first third of the twentieth century. Nikolsky’s innovations were almost completely rejected in the 1930s because of the replacement of the pre-revolutionary Marxist tradition with Soviet Marxism. As a result, his contribution to the renewal of the national system of teaching ancient history has been underestimated. Many of his ideas were not unpromising, but simply unfinished. This essay discusses the rivalry between N. M. Nikolsky and V. V. Struve, which the former lost.