Moscow, Moscow University Publishing House. 1984. 208 p.

In the galaxy of outstanding representatives of the first generation of Soviet Marxist historians, which included such figures as academicians M. N. Pokrovsky, V. P. Volgin, and F. A. Rothstein, the acad holds a place of honor. To Nikolai Mikhailovich Lukin.

In the 1960s, a three-volume collection of his selected works was published . Soon a number of interesting memoirs about N. M. Lukin appeared, written by his fellow student at Moscow University and the revolutionary struggle during the first Revolution, Academician N. M. Druzhinin and Lukin's students-Academician I. I. Mints, professors A. Z. Manfred, R. A. Averbukh 2 . Soviet 3 and foreign historians4 turned to the study of the life and scientific heritage of N. M. Lukin, his contribution to the study of the most important problems of modern and contemporary history of Western countries . However, until recently there was no monograph about this outstanding Soviet scientist.

Now this gap is filled thanks to the book of Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor of the Department of Modern and Contemporary History of Moscow State University, Honored Scientist of the RSFSR I. S. Galkin. The genre of this book is peculiar. First of all, this is a study based on the analysis of N. M. Lukin's diverse scientific heritage, supported by materials and documents from a number of party and state archives. At the same time, the book makes extensive use of memoirs belonging both to people who belonged to the generation of teachers of N. M. Lukin (the author cites personal records of conversations with R. Yu. Wipper, Yu. V. Gauthier, S. I. Sobolevsky), and contemporaries and students of the outstanding scientist (acad. N. M. Druzhinin, A. Z. Manfred, etc.). Among them is the author of the book under review, who received scientific training under the supervision of N. M. Lukin and was his associate in the Department of Modern and Contemporary History of MIFLI. The organic inclusion in the narrative fabric of the author's memories of N. M. Lukin, imbued with the deepest respect and love for the teacher, gives the book a special flavor. The author himself, being an eyewitness and participant in many events in the development of Soviet hysterical science for more than half a century, called his book "slovo" "about a contemporary, about the time and events that we were directly involved in, about the affairs of a revolutionary, a scientist, about the fate of a person who lived next to us in general, not only in the so long ago" (p. 5).

In the biography of N. M. Lukin, the least well-known period was the pre-October period of his life. Nikolai Mikhailovich himself, who was distinguished by great modesty, did not leave a detailed autobiography, with the exception of memoirs written in 1930 about his activities in the Rogozhsky organization of the Moscow Bolsheviks, which were used by N. M. Druzhinin in his short book on the history of the Proletarian Bolshevik organization of Moscow. 5 Therefore, the reconstruction of N. M. Lukin's life path in the pre-October period should be considered a great merit of I. S. Galkin. From the pages of the book rises the image of a purposeful young man, a native of a democratic environment (his parents were rural teachers in the Moscow region), who-

1 Lukin N. M. Izbrannye trudy Tt. I-III. Moscow, 1960-1963.

2 See Europe in modern and contemporary times. Collection in memory of Academician N. M. Lukin, Moscow, 1966.

3 Gavrilichev V. A. N. M. Lukin and his role in the development of Soviet historiography of the Great French Revolution In: French Yearbook 1964, Moscow, 1965; Molok A. I. N. M. Lukin-historian of the Paris Commune. In: Europe in the New and modern Times, Moscow, 1966; Dunaevsky V. A. Sovetskaya istoriografiya novaya istorii stran Zapada 1917-1941, Moscow, 1974; Galkin I. S. Akademik N. M. Lukin. - New and Recent History, 1982, N 3; his. Early pages of N. M. Lukin's revolutionary and scientific activity. In: French Yearbook 1981, Moscow, 1983; Ado A.V. Scientific heritage of N. M. Lukin and some problems of the history of the peasantry during the Great French Revolution. Tsfasman A. B. Voprosy istorii rabochego dvizheniya Germanii v trudakh akademika N. M. Lukin [Questions of the History of the German labor movement in the Works of Academician N. M. Lukin]. In: Antifascist struggle in Germany (1920s-1945). Chelyabinsk. 1982.

4 Resende H. Nikolai Mikhailovitch Loukine et le probleme de l'egalitarisme agraire dans la Revolution francaise. - Lendemains. -Zeitschrift fur Frankreichforschung. (West) Brl. 1978, Hf. 12.

5 Druzhinin N. Istoriya Proletarskoy (ex. Rogozhsko-Simonovskaya) Bolshevik organization (1906-1916). Moscow -l. 1931.

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roi made his life choices early on. Having entered Moscow University in 1903 and started studying under the guidance of R. Y. Wipper, he chose the path of a historian. A year later, at the age of 19, he became a member of the Bolshevik Party. These two paths - revolutionary and historian-organically merged in the personality of N. M. Lukin, defining his entire future life and activities.. The university years were a time of active participation in the student revolutionary movement and working as a Bolshevik propagandist. They ended with a brilliant graduation study, " The Fall of the Gironde." N. M. Lukin himself and everyone who wrote about him, including the author of the book under review, considered the work lost. Recently discovered in a Moscow archive, it allows us to judge not only the scientific and political interests of the young scientist, but also his mature Marxist historical views.) Left at the insistent request of R. Y. Wipper at the Department of General History of Moscow University to prepare for professorship and subsequently received the title of privat-docent, N. M. At the same time, Lukin continued to actively participate in the underground revolutionary struggle as a member of the special bureau of the MK of the RSDLP to direct the illegal work of the Bolsheviks, and then as one of the organizers and employees of the Bolshevik newspaper "Our Way", on the pages of which his first popular scientific works were published.

Immediately after the February Revolution, N. M. Lukin's main field of activity was party journalism. Several dozen of his articles were published on the pages of the Moscow Bolshevik newspaper Sotsial-Demokrat (under the pseudonym "N. N."). Antonov") on the most acute, topical issues - on war and peace, on the attitude towards the Provisional Government, on the tasks of the proletariat in the revolution, etc. From March 1918, N. M. Lukin became an employee of Pravda. From its pages, he convincingly exposed the policies of counter-revolutionary forces, and argumentatively rejected the absurd Menshevik analogies between the fate of the French Jacobins and the Russian Bolsheviks. He wrote a number of major newspaper articles on the history of the international labor movement, as well as popular science pamphlets. "Lukin's active party journalistic activity constantly opened up new horizons in understanding and comprehending the acutely heated social and class reality," writes I. S. Galkin (p.69). It might be added that this activity, in turn, helped him to gain a deeper understanding of the dialectic of the class struggle of the past and strengthened his interest in studying those revolutions in which the revolutionary energy and creativity of the masses were most fully manifested - the Great French Revolution of the late eighteenth century and the Paris Commune of 1871.

The year 1919, as noted in the book, was a turning point in the activity of N. M. Lukin (p.70): on behalf of the party, he joined the scientific, organizational and pedagogical work. In the first post-revolutionary years, he was one of the founders of the Socialist (later Communist) Academy, a member of the Commission for restructuring the teaching of social sciences, dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences (FON) of Moscow University, a teacher at the Institute of the Red Professorship, the Communist University named after Ya. M.Sverdlov, and the Academy of the General Staff of the Red Army. In all this activity, he was close to M. N. Pokrovsky, V. P. Volgin, M. P. Pavlovich, F. A. Rothstein, I. I. Skvortsov-Stepanov and other Bolshevik scientists.

The year 1919 was also significant in scientific terms: it was then that the first major scientific work of N. M. Lukin was published-the book "Maximilian Robespierre", which S. Galkin rightly assesses as "the first fairly successful attempt in Soviet historical science to create a brief history of the French revolutions, understood through the personality of its most prominent figure - Robespierre" (p. 80). The first scientific work of N. M. Lukin was very important for the formation of Soviet historiography of the Great French Revolution. Continuing to study this topic in the following years, he was one of the first to draw attention to the need to study peasant movements" as the most important force in the development of the revolution. His articles on the food policy of the Convention in 1794 in the countryside and the policy towards agricultural workers showed the internal contradictions between the Jacobin dictatorship and its class-ogre state.-

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limited character. Of great methodological importance was N. M. Lukin's article "Lenin and the Problems of the Jacobin Dictatorship", in which Lenin's views on the most important problems of the French Revolution were analyzed for the first time in a generalized form. The chapter on N. M. Lukin as a historian of the French Revolution contains a section that reflects his assessment of the works of J. P. Blavatsky. Jaurès, A. Olard, A. Mathiez, and J. Lefebvre. In it, N. M. Lukin appears as a master of scientific polemics, a deep and informative reviewer.

The second area of scientific research of N. M. Lukin from the beginning of the 1920s was the Paris Commune of 1871. His treatment of this topic was "not just the academic interest of a scientist, but the party duty of a revolutionary, a communist who fulfilled the requirements of his revolutionary class and his epoch" (p.139). Having highlighted the progress of work on the first edition of the Paris Commune of 1871, published in 1922, and showing what it brought to the understanding of the historical significance of the Commune, I. S. Galkin rightly notes that this monograph "was the first scientific history of the Commune in Soviet historiography "(p. 142). a highly valuable original work, which opposed many works on the Commune written before it not only by its ardent enemies, but also by petty-bourgeois radicals, Proudhonists, and social reformists who sympathized with the Commune" (p.141). This assessment is entirely consistent with the one that V. P. Volgin gave back in 1929, justifying the election of N. M. Lukin as an academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences, who wrote that "neither in Western European nor in our Soviet historical literature has there yet appeared a work at least somewhat equivalent to the work of N. M. Lukin"6 .

I.: S. Galkin tells in detail about the preparation of the fourth edition of the book about the Commune by scientists, about the search for new documents, about the in-depth study of Lenin's works on the Commune, while emphasizing how convincingly and eruditely N. M. Lukin revealed "high quality". dialectical thinking and Lenin's revolutionary skill in developing the Marxist theory of the Proletarian Revolution " (p. 158).

The monograph describes N. M. Lukin's research on other problems of universal history. Among them are the problems of German history discussed in "Essays on the modern History of Germany". Especially valuable in this book was the section that revealed the essence of revisionism in German social democracy, which Lukin subjected to a fundamental scientific criticism from the standpoint of Leninism. The historical essay "Germany", published in the first edition of the BSE, was also innovative (N. M. Lukin did a lot of work in the BSE as a member of its Main Editorial Board and head of the Department of Modern History). It traced the influence of the imperialist era on the country's internal development and foreign policy. The problems of studying the era of imperialism were raised by N. M. Lukin in a report at the first All-Union Conference of Marxist historians (December 1928 - January 1929). The article "Marx as a Historian" published by him in 1933 was of great methodological importance. N. M. Lukin was the first among Soviet historians to be able to deeply analyze the process of fascization of historical science in Russia. Germany, linking it to the progressive crisis of bourgeois historical science. As the head of the Soviet historians who studied the history of the West, he did much to prepare a generalizing fundamental work on world history, especially in developing issues of methodology and periodization of the world-historical process.

As it is clear from the book, the range of scientific interests of N. M. Lukin was extremely extensive. And in each of the problems that he touched upon, he left a deep scientific mark.

Speaking about N. M. Lukin as a teacher and organizer of science, I. S. Galkin emphasizes his huge role in the training of scientific personnel of Marxist historians. N. M. Lukin's scientific and pedagogical school was attended by a large group of scientists who formed a significant part of the second generation of Soviet historians, who made a major contribution to the Marxist-Leninist development of the problems of modern and contemporary Western history. The case of N. M. Lukin,

6 Volgin V. P. Note on the scientific works of Professor N. M. Lukin. In: Notes on the scientific works of full members of the USSR Academy of Sciences in the Department of Humanities, selected on February 12 and 13, 1929, L. 1930, p. 66.

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according to the author, "numerous disciples have multiplied" (p.198).

Noting the merits of the book by I. S. Galkin, it is impossible not to touch upon the expressive characteristics of the personality of an outstanding scientist, portrait sketches made with love by his student. "In his lectures," the author writes, " Lukin presented himself to his listeners in a harmonious combination of two powerful spiritual principles: revolutionary pathos and deep scientific knowledge... A brilliant analyst of the process of historical development, the motives of the behavior of classes, parties, and historical figures, Lukin provided examples of a large-scale style of thinking " (p. 192). And here is a portrait of N. M. Lukin during a public lecture "On the fascization of historical science in Germany", which he delivered on September 5, 1934 at the opening of the History Department of Moscow State University: "Short stature, large forehead, glasses gleam, purposeful forward strong-willed look; as always, taut, collected, occasionally nervous Coughing, Simply, slowly, gives a lecture in which creative restless, revolutionary thought pulsates... Lukin spoke sincerely, and his opinions were distinguished by a strict scientific depth and the conviction that is so characteristic of the Bolsheviks "(p.191).

The personality and activities of N. M. Lukin were so large-scale and multifaceted, and the topic itself is so extensive, that it is hardly necessary to reproach the author of a book about him for any omissions. Let's note the main thing: an interesting, necessary and instructive work has been created about the outstanding Soviet historian, released very timely-on the eve of the 100th anniversary of his birth in 1985. And for this we should be grateful to its author.

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