Revolutionary theory of Р.N. Tkachev in the context of discussion on Russian Jacobinism in the Soviet historiography of 1920s.
In the article estimations of sociopolitical views of P.N. Tkachev within the discussion on the Russian Jacobinism in the Soviet historical science of the 1920s are considered. The discussion was caused by heterogeneity of the structure of its participants. First, higher schools had a part of the prerevolutionary professorate who carefully preserved the academic traditions of the unbiased historical analysis. Second, many outstanding figures of the Bolshevik party, people who were not only witnesses, but also direct participants of the historical events, came to study the past. Third, the young growth of the Red professors actively gained power wishing to declare themselves. Besides, despite the victory in the Civil War, the Bolsheviks had the feeling of their insufficient argumentation and unstable positions in the society, so, they wished to strengthen the ideological basis by proving the inevitability of the October Revolution, its presentation as the logical end of the preceding stages of the revolutionary movement in Russia. During the debate the opinions of the researchers were essentially divided. One part of historians (B.P. Kozmin, S.I. Mitskevich, B.I. Gorev) insisted on the significant role of Tkachev and the Narodovoltsy (Populists) in the establishment of the Bolshevik model of a socialist revolution. Others asserted that the revolution theory of Tkachev was utopian, as it relied on a peasant revolt; and Bolshevism appeared despite Tkachevism, contrary to it, it was a new, more adequate and progressive form of revolutionary struggle led by working class. As a result the conclusion is made that the interest of researchers of the 1920s in P.N. Tkachev's revolution theory is directly connected with studying the Jacobin-Blanquist direction in the Russian revolutionary movement and searches of ideological roots of Bolshevism. Trying to find unarguable proofs of inevitability of the October Revolution and thus justify cardinal social, economic and political changes in the country, historians of the first years of the Soviet rule concentrated their attention on the recent revolutionary past, on the Narodnichestvo (Populism) as a direction of the Russian public idea of the second half of the 19th century in particular. Tkachevs Doctrine as the most radical in the Narodnichestvo turned to be most attractive to scientists who aspired to establish a continuity of their contemporary ideology, the practice of the Soviet authorities and the concepts of the pre-Marxism period in the Russian revolutionary movement. During that period the historical interpretation of Tkachevs creative heritage began; the thesis on the eclecticism of his ideas is questioned; their specificity and originality are emphasised; the continuity in the Russian revolutionary tradition where the Marxist component was not dominating and crucial is marked.