ABSTRACT
Michael N. Pokrovsky, who was a prominent Russian historian, in Moscow in 1930. He held a leading position in Soviet cultural administration. He soon became chairman of the Moscow soviet–the chief of all the soviets–and ultimately he was elected to the Central Committee of the party. When, in 1932, Pokrovsky died, he was given a State funeral in the Red Square in Moscow. In countless commemorative articles it was declared that in him the Soviet Union had lost a faithful disciple of Marx and Lenin and a great Bolshevik. Pokrovsky's achievement, and the Pokrovsky school, were condemned root and branch. The decree of May 16th, 1934, completely reversed all that. On that day Stalin and Molotov signed a decree concerning the teaching of history, which was to introduce a new Bolshevik ideology diametrically opposed to the earlier one. On that day Pokrovsky died a second death.
