Dmitri Antonovich Volkogonov

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Tomb of DA Volkogonov

Dmitri Antonowitsch Wolkogonow ( Russian Дмитрий Антонович Волкогонов ; born March 22, 1928 in Chita in Eastern Siberia ; †  December 6, 1995 in Krasnogorsk near Moscow ) was a Soviet or Russian Colonel General (three-star general ), philosophy professor and historian .

Wolkogonow became internationally known for his critical appraisal of Soviet history , based on an intensive study of sources . For research into the Stalin era , he is considered one of the most prominent historians of the Soviet Union and Russia due to his intensive processing of the material .

Life

family

Dmitri Wolkogonow comes from a Siberian farming family. The father was a kolkhoz manager , the mother had a university degree and became a teacher and director in Agul because of the degree in exile , as there were no teachers available there. The father was arrested and shot in 1937 for having found a brochure by the disgraced Bukharin on him. The family was then exiled to the village of Agul, Irbeysk Raion , Krasnoyarsk Region in western Siberia. The mother also died at a relatively young age during the Second World War . Furthermore, two of his uncles died in camps, simple peasants who had made careless statements.

Military service, politics and historiography

In 1945 he joined the Red Army . At the end of his three-year training to become a tank lieutenant in July 1952, he learned from a comrade who had to spy on him that he was considered a member of "enemies of the state" and that he would continue to face persecution.

He showed a talent for military history and organization and began studying at the Lenin Military Academy in Moscow in 1961 . Then he was professor of philosophy there until 1970.

1950–1990 he was a party member of the CPSU .

When Stalin died as a young lieutenant in March 1953 , he was a staunch Stalinist, believing that Stalin was not responsible for the deaths of his father and other relatives and the exile of his family. But as early as the mid-1950s he was given access to the party newspapers of the 1920s and recognized the suppression of a political debate compared to the time. He was strengthened by Khrushchev's secret speech on XX. CPSU party congress in 1956. Since then he has been collecting material for his Stalin biography.

How many high Soviet officials led Volkogonov a double life. Outwardly it rose higher and higher, inwardly it became more and more immersed in the archives, which led to a high level of personal dissatisfaction.

In 1970 he switched to the army's propaganda department . With his publications at the time , he earned the legitimate reputation of a hardliner .

In 1978 he began work on the biography of Stalin, which was about to be completed after Mikhail Gorbachev took office . In 1990 she appeared in the Soviet Union . At this point, all the principles of the past 70 years had been called into question and most of the taboos had been dealt with. In the early 1980s he blamed Stalin's drive for power for the totalitarian development, while working on the second part of Stalin's biography he changed his mind and blamed three factors for it:

  • Lenin through his authoritarian communism ;
  • Stalin through his ruthless pursuit of personal omnipotence and manipulation of intra-party rivalries;
  • the Russian people by indolence, passive character, inclination to a strong leader , ignorance of democracy and personal autonomy .

1984–1985 he was deputy chief in the headquarters of the army, as such he was involved in the psychological warfare against the West.

In 1985 he was given the alternative of giving up his research or his post in the Political Headquarters. He decided to take over the management of the Institute for Military History.

1985-1991 he was director of the Institute of Military History of the Ministry of Defense of the USSR. As such, he had the opportunity to study the party's secret archives and presented the first comprehensive, documentary criticism of the Stalinist system.

He was baptized in the early 1990s. In 1990 he collected material for his radical criticism of Lenin, who would ultimately have caused the crisis of the 1990s.

In June 1991 the draft of a new history of the Second World War appeared under his editorship. In the same month he was forced to resign by Defense Minister Dmitry Yasov and high military officials.

The forced resignation gave him practically a free hand, and he was already an open supporter of Boris Yeltsin . In the first half of 1991 he was diagnosed with colon cancer during a routine examination . His English editor made it possible for him to have an operation and another because of a tumor in the liver, as a serious operation in a Moscow military hospital seemed too risky immediately after his forced resignation.

During his second operation in Oxford in August 1991, he learned of the coup against Mikhail Gorbachev . Defense Minister Yasov had previously threatened him that something would be done to get rid of people like him. He took a high personal risk calling the Soviet Army via the BBC to defy the illegal orders of the conspirators and faxed the President of Parliament rejecting the coup .

In early September 1991 he returned to Moscow and became Boris Yeltsin's special advisor on defense matters. His main task was to reduce the political department, since political indoctrination was no longer necessary. He advised the officers concerned to work as political advisers. At that time he became the general director of the Russian Archives .

From the summer of 1991 to the end of 1993 he was also the head of the Commission for the Approval of State and Party Documents. During his tenure, 78 million files were made accessible, but Russian historians accused him of having monopolized the archives for private purposes.

In 1992 his biography of Trotsky appeared in Russia , which was even less orthodox-communist-oriented.

Since 1993 he was a member of the State Duma. He was also attacked by the Democrats when Yeltsin violently and bloody ended an uprising in October 1993 during a confrontation with parliament. Volkogonov justified the use of weapons with the insurgents' lack of cooperation despite peace offers, the risk of civil war and the return to the GULag . For him, the use of force was a painful moral dilemma, since the use of force was the basis of Marxist-Leninist rule.

At the end of 1994 Volkogonov warned against carrying out the invasion of Chechnya , even if the regime was criminal and should be overthrown.

In 1994 the biography of Lenin appeared in Russia.

After completing the biography of Lenin, he worked on his last work "The Seven Leaders ", which is partially regarded as his main work, whereby he did not simply shorten the chapters on Lenin and Stalin, but updated and revised them. From Brezhnev on he was in personal working contact with the Soviet leaders.

Volkogonov was occasionally accused of opportunism , but he soon fell out of favor under Gorbachev and was inconvenient under Yeltsin too. The subject of his books was also his personal process of change from an orthodox Marxist (and even a staunch Stalinist) to a democrat.

His theses on history are:

  • There is no point in taking revenge on history
  • It is also pointless to laugh at history
  • However, one has to know the story and remember it

He divided the seven communist leaders into three groups:

Volkogonov had a brother and a sister, was married and had a daughter who took care of the handover of his estate.

He was unable to tackle many things because of his cancer, which he died of near Moscow in late 1995. Wolkogonow was buried in the Kunzewoer cemetery in Moscow.

Works (selection)

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Wolkogonov initially wrote numerous books on military issues, and in the late 1980s and 1990s also several biographies of Soviet revolutionaries and politicians, which were also translated into other languages ​​and published abroad.

  • Актуальные проблемы советской военно-этической теории. Moscow: 1972.
  • Этика советского офицера. Moscow: Воениздат, 1973.
    • German translation: Ethics for the Soviet officer. 1975.
  • Моральные конфликты и способы их разрешения. Moscow: Знание, 1974.
  • Воинская этика. Moscow: Воениздат, 1976.
  • Идеологическая борьба и коммунистическое воспитание. Moscow: Знание, 1976.
  • Беседы о воинской этике. Moscow :, ДОСААФ, 1977.
  • Научно-технический прогресс и развитие личности. Moscow: Знание, 1977.
  • О героях и героическом. Moscow: Знание, 1977.
  • Школа героизма и мужества. Moscow: Воениздат, 1977.
  • Милитаристский характер идеологии и политики маоистов. Moscow: 1978.
  • На страже социалистического Отечества. Moscow: Знание, 1978.
  • Воинская этика. Moscow: Знание, 1980.
  • Методология идейного воспитания. Moscow: Воениздат, 1980.
  • Доблести. Moscow: Молодая гвардия, 1981.
  • Маоизм: угроза войны. Moscow: 1981.
  • Ideological education. Questions of the theory of ideological educational work in the Soviet armed forces. 1981.
  • Идеология - важнейший фронт классовой борьбы. Moscow: Знание, 1982.
  • Угроза миру - реальная и мифическая. Moscow: 1982.
    • Translation into Swahili: Uzushi na ukweli kuhusu hatari kwa amani. Moscow: APN, 1982.
  • War and army. Philosophical-sociological outline. Berlin: 1982 (with AS Milowidow and SA Tjuschkewitsch).
  • Борьба идей и воспитание молодежи. Moscow: 1983.
  • Психологическая война. Moscow: Воениздат, 1983; ²1984.
    • German translation: The psychological war. The subversive actions of imperialism in the field of social consciousness. Berlin: Military Publishing House, 1985.
  • Вооруженные силы в современном мире. Moscow: Знание, 1984.
  • Man in modern war. Problems of the political, moral and psychological preparation of the Soviet soldiers. Berlin: Militärverlag, 1984. (with GW Sredin and MP Korobejnikow).
  • Феномен героизма. Moscow: Политиздат, 1985.
  • Мужество и память. Moscow: Воениздат, 1985.
  • The Marxist-Leninist doctrine of war and army. Berlin: Military Publishing House, 1986.
  • На страже мира и социализма. Moscow: Знание, 1986.
  • Оружие истины. Moscow: Политиздат, 1987.
  • Советский солдат. Moscow: Воениздат, 1987.
  • Контпропаганда: теория и практика. 1988 (editor).
  • Триумф и трагедия. Политический портрет И. В. Сталина. Moscow: APH, 1989. New editions Barnaul: 1990; Kemerovo: 1990; Moscow: Художественная литература, vol. 1 1990, vol. 2 1991.
    • German translation by Vesna Jovanoska: Stalin. Triumph and tragedy. A political portrait. ; Düsseldorf: Claassen, 1989; Berlin: edition berolina, 2015.
  • Сталин. 2 vols. Moscow: Новости, 1991–1992. New edition 1996.
  • Троцкий. Политический портрет. 2 vols. Moscow: Новости, 1992; ²1994.
    • German translation by Vesna Jovanoska: Trotsky. The Janus face of the revolution . Düsseldorf: Econ, 1992; Berlin: edition berolina, 2017.
  • Ленин. Политический портрет. 2 vols. Moscow: Новости, 1993–1994.
    • German translation by Markus Schweisthal, Christian Geisinger, Jana Neik and Christiane Sieg: Lenin. Utopia and terror . Düsseldorf: Econ, 1994; ²1996; Berlin: edition berolina, 2017.
    • English translation by Harold Shukman : Lenin. A New Biography. The Free Press, 1994; HarperCollins, 1996.
  • Этюды о времени. Moscow: 1998.
  • Семь вождей галерея лидеров СССР. Vol. 1: Vladimir Lenin, Josef Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev; Vol. 2: Leonid Breshnew , Yuri Andropow , Konstantin Tschernenko and Michail Gorbatschow . Moscow: Новости, 1995.
    • German translation by Udo Rennert: The Seven Leaders. Rise and Fall of the Soviet Empire. Frankfurt / M .: Societät, 2001.
  • 10 вождей. От Ленина до Медведева. Eksmo, 2011 (with Леонид Млечкин).

Publications about Dmitri Volkogonov

TV documentaries with contributions by Dmitri Volkogonov

Other publications, estate, etc. by Dmitri Volkogonow

Material collections on various topics

  • As director of the Institute for Military History: two-volume collection on the 45,000 officers arrested during the Great Purge of the 1930s, 15,000 of whom were shot
  • Collection of materials for a book about the Battle of Stalingrad
  • large number of short biographies of people whom he had met as an army officer and civilian

At least part of it is being prepared for publication by his daughter.

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ The introduction by the translator and editor of the English edition, Harold Shukman, contains a biography of Volkogonov.
personal data
SURNAME Volkogonov, Dmitri Antonovich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Волкогонов, Дмитрий Антонович (Russian)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Soviet 3-star general, philosophy professor and historian
DATE OF BIRTH March 22, 1928
PLACE OF BIRTH Chita , Eastern Siberia
DATE OF DEATH December 6, 1995
Place of death Krasnogorsk , Moscow