Mikhail Sergeyevich Voslensky

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Michail Sergejewitsch Voslenski (also Michael Voslensky; Russian Михаил Сергеевич Восленский , scientific transliteration Michail Sergeevič Voslenskij ; born  December 6, 1920 in Berdjansk , Taurian Governorate (now Ukraine ); † February 8, 1997 was a Soviet historian and political scientist in Bonn .

Life

He was a Soviet interpreter at the Nuremberg Trials and on the Allied Control Council for Germany . He completed his habilitation as a historian in Moscow and as a philosopher in the GDR .

Since 1955 he worked at the Academy of Sciences of the USSR ; he was Academic Secretary of the Commission on Scientific Problems of Disarmament at the Academy's Presidium. A visiting professorship led him to the Westphalian Wilhelms University . From 1950 until his departure from the Soviet Union , he was in close contact with the apparatus of the Central Committee of the CPSU . He was Vice President of the Historians' Commission USSR - GDR . Woslenski gave a lecture on “European Security and Disarmament” to the Austrian Society for Foreign Policy and International Relations , in which he assumed that “militarist circles in West Germany” were striving for nuclear weapons and in which he further said that “West Germany [would] be the forces of Neo-Nazism fed up ”, led to diplomatic controversy in 1969.

In 1972 he went to the West and from then on lived in the Federal Republic of Germany . He worked at the Research Institute for the Soviet Present in Munich . From 1977 he was an Austrian citizen .

He was internationally recognized as an expert on the internal conditions of the Soviet Union and an authentic critic of communism .

plant

Woslenski's major work, published in the West , is a trilogy about the Soviet nomenclature . The first volume was translated into fourteen languages ​​and had a lasting influence on the sociological discussion of society in the Soviet Union; there it was initially only published in samizdat , the first edition was published in 1991 by the Oktyabr publishing house in Moscow.

The third volume is based on a detailed study of the archives of the Central Committee of the CPSU made accessible after 1991, in the Woslenski, such as B. also Wladimir Bukowski , took a detailed and extensive insight. Here Woslenski uses many original documents to document, among other things, the millions of payments made by the Soviet Union to western communist parties and left-wing workers' organizations, which were either handed over by KGB employees or transferred to friendly companies in many European and non-European countries, including the Federal Republic of Germany.

Voslenski viewed the transformation of parts of the former party elite into a new entrepreneurial class that took place in Russia in the 1990s with skepticism. He was of the opinion that the former nomenklatura was in principle incapable of establishing social elements in a market economy that was emerging. Consequently, it is an obstacle to shaping social change.

criticism

Other reviewers have described Woslensky's third book, in particular his "... Declaration for Terror [... as] not coming beyond the level of investigative journalism in the Russian daily press". Unlike the title, the year 1917 plays in Voslensky's book doesn't matter. " He is accused of "not having taken any notice of the far advanced discussion about the number of victims in Stalinism [...]". Voslensky calculated "... a number of 140,000 victims killed by the NKVD during the actions of the Great Terror " in 1937/38. However, we have known from the Russian archives for some time that over 680,000 people were shot. "And finally:" Anyone who wants to see the history of the Soviet Union only as a history of the crimes of the CPSU and the KGB will find confirmation in Voslensky's book . If you are looking for an answer to the question of how the Soviet Union survived over seventy years and why it then collapsed, you can fall back on a whole range of well-founded and more readable works. "

"MS Voslensky's book" Nomenclature "is one of those extremely rare books that, after being published, immediately enters the treasury of political thought. It is needed today because of its relevance and exceptional merits.

First of all, the book is structured clearly and logically. It takes the reader step by step through different parts of the Soviet system without losing sight of the system as a whole. So in itself there is a holistic picture. "(Milovan Djilas, from the preface to the book)

Works

  • Nomenclature. The ruling class of the Soviet Union. Molden, Vienna 1980, ISBN 3-217-00564-3 ; 3rd updated and expanded edition under the title Nomenklatura. The ruling class of the Soviet Union, past and present. Nymphenburger, Munich 1987, ISBN 3-485-00524-X
  • Mortal gods. The teachers of the nomenklatura. Straube, Erlangen / Bonn / Vienna 1989, ISBN 3-927491-11-X ; Ullstein, Frankfurt / Berlin 1991, ISBN 3-548-34807-6
  • The secret is revealed. Moscow archives tell. 1917 - 1991. Langen Müller, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-7844-2536-4

Individual evidence

  1. ^ [1] Der SPIEGEL, August 18, 1975, accessed on June 1, 2018
  2. ↑ [2] Der SPIEGEL, January 7, 1980a, accessed on June 1, 2018
  3. ↑ [3] Die ZEIT, October 10, 1969, accessed on June 1, 2018
  4. ↑ Robert Allertz : The defector. last chapter
  5. ↑ "Useful Pacifists" The Soviet Attitude to Pacifism Die ZEIT, August 28, 1981, accessed on June 1, 2018
  6. ↑ Michael S. Voslensky: The Secret is revealed. Moscow archives tell. 1917-1991. Translated from the Russian by Kurt Baudisch. Langen Müller Verlag, Munich 1995. 546 pages.
  7. ↑ Markus Wehner : What kind of infamous documents these are. In: FAZ.net . October 25, 1995, accessed December 16, 2014 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Voslensky, Michail Sergejewitsch
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Восленский, Михаил Сергеевич; Voslensky, Michael
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian historian, political scientist and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH December 6, 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH Berdyansk ( Ukraine )
DATE OF DEATH February 8, 1997
Place of death Bonn