Development of the concept of the history of Belarus in the 1960s - early 1970s
The introduction specifies the object of research - the Belarusian historiography. The relevance of the research topic is determined due to the lack of special works in science devoted to the formation of a unified concept of the history of Belarus in the 1960s - early 1970s, presented in generalizing publications on the history of the BSSR. The purpose of the research is to reveal the process of developing the concept of the history of Belarus in the preparation of the academic project “History of the Belarusian SSR” in five volumes published in 1972-1975. The main part of the article covers the beginning of the development of the project “History of the Belarusian SSR” in eight volumes in 1960, initiated by the Central Committee of the Communist party of Belarus. The idea of publishing a new general works on the history of the Byelorussian SSR came from the established practice of the celebration of national anniversaries in the country: the 50th anniversary of the Byelorussian SSR historians of the Republic was to prepare new synthetic work, only the volume had to be reduced to five volumes. The concept of the history of the Byelorussian SSR was developed on the basis of the concept of the history of the Soviet Union, which was manifested in the presence of the curators of each volume that is assigned from among Moscow historians, reviewing of the text by the staff of the Institute of history, Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Much attention was paid to the preparation of the first and second books on primitive communal, feudal and capitalist formations. The rest of the books covered the process of building and developing a socialist society in Belarus, carried out under the leadership of the Communist party and the Soviet government. The research is based on written sources provided by transcripts of scientific discussion of the concept of the history of Belarus, reviews of individual books of the five-volume edition, and decisions of the Academic Council of the Institute of history of the Belarusian SSR. The texts of unpublished sources are located in the Central scientific archive of the national Academy of Sciences of Belarus. Many of them are being introduced into scientific circulation for the first time. The results obtained can be applied in the educational and scientific activities of higher school teachers in the process of teaching academic disciplines, the development of problems of national historiography.