ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the history of Soviet historiography. Stalin's new historical doctrine means in the first place the destruction of Marxism as an absolute teaching of truth. The uniqueness of Bolshevism, together with the worldwide revolutionary movement it led, had consisted in the fact that Bolshevism rested on the broad and independent foundation of the teaching of Marx and Engels. The manuscript of the first volume of the history of the civil war was closely examined by Stalin and given numbers of corrections. It was said at first that the "History of the Communist party of the Soviet Union", published in 1938, had been inspired by Stalin; it is now said that it was written by him. In that letter Stalin mentions that Marx and Engels had no faith in the possibility of establishing Socialism in a single country, whereas the development in the Soviet Union had proved the possibility of doing so.
