Regarding the Scientific Heritage of G.A. Gerasimenko: “Democracy” and “People’s Power” as Antonyms<sup>*</sup>
The article emphasizes that it is quite a necessary and timely task for modern historical research of the Russian Revolution of the twentieth century to pay substantially closer attention to investigating the role of the grassroots organizations of peasantry in the Revolution. The scientific heritage of an outstanding historian G.A. Gerasimenko helps to see the overall picture of the revolution in a significantly different way as compared to what Soviet historiography offered in this regard, let alone the post-Soviet version of the events. The possibility to rely on more adequate ideas about the level of people’s power (not “democracy”) in Russia in the first decades of the twentieth century allows us to move away from the theory of progress as a methodology of historical research. This theory considers the economic aspects of historical development as the basis that forms the logic of the political history of our country in the recent period, and this is in common for both the Soviet and anti-Soviet historiography. One of the results of preservation of this theoretical approach in historical science, with its idea of “universal human values”, was an absurd and offensive to our country resolution of the European Parliament in September 2019 “On the importance of preserving historical memory for the future of Europe”. The approach to the events of the Russian Revolution offered in the article allows us to see that it was primarily a peasant revolution, which was described in detail by V.P. Danilov, V.M. Bukharaev, T. Shanin (England) and continues to be described by V.V. Kondrashin, D.I. Lyukshin (Kazan) and other historians. It also makes it possible to question equalizing the very notions “democracy” and “people’s power”.