Nicolas Werth

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Nicolas Werth (2012)

Nicolas Werth (* 1950 in Paris ) is a French historian who is considered a specialist in the history of the Soviet Union . He is director of the research department at the Institut d'histoire du temps présent , part of the Center national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS).

Life

Werth's father was the English journalist Alexander Werth , who had been in the USSR during the Second World War . Nicolas Werth attended the École normal supérieure Lettres et sciences humaines and later taught in the Sécondaire and abroad in Minsk , New York City , Moscow and Shanghai . During perestroika he was cultural attaché at the French embassy in Moscow.

Werth has been concerned with the history of the Soviet Union since his first book ( Être communiste en URSS sous Staline , Gallimard, 1981). He is particularly interested in the social history of the Soviet Union from 1920 to the beginning of the German-Soviet War (1941). He is particularly interested in the relationship between state and society, for example state attacks and social resistance. He joined the CNRS in 1989.

plant

One of the aims of Werth's research is to overcome the division between the “ totalitarian ” and the “ revisionist ” schools, the controversies of which have long shaped the historiography of Soviet history. Werth regards them as outdated after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the opening of the archives. With his research, he not only enriched the knowledge of western Sovietology, but also the work of his Russian colleagues ( Russian is his mother tongue). Because of his ties to social history , which was "long the poor relative of a Sovietology fixated on politics", he saw himself more on the side of the "revisionist" historians. He declared, in contradiction to some other historians who believed the totalitarian control of Soviet society to be effective, that the reports of the political police only "expose the distortion between the desired reality and the actual reality".

As the author of the section in the Black Book of Communism , which is devoted to the Russian Soviet Republic and the USSR , he publicly distanced himself from the idea that Stéphane Courtois formulated in the preface of the Black Book, which claimed that communism itself provokes crimes. He has denounced false numbers and "a slipping of pure political history" in this publication. In 2006 Werth published a monograph on the tragedy of Nasino ( L'Île aux cannibales. 1933. Une déportation-abandon en Sibérie ). In 2009 he published a monograph on the Great Terror ( L'Ivrogne et la marchande de fleurs. Autopsy d'un meurtre de masse, 1937–1938 ).

Nicolas Werth has been taking part in the seminar "Histoire soviétique: sources et méthodes" (German: Soviet history: sources and methods) since 1997, under the direction of Vladimir Berelowitsch. He is also a member of the editorial committee of the historical journals Vingtième Siècle. Revue d'histoire and Cahiers du monde russe .

Publications (selection)

  • Être communiste en URSS sous Staline (= Collection Archives. Vol. 89). Gallimard / Julliard, Paris 1981, ISBN 2-07-026327-4 .
  • La Vie quotidienne des paysans russes de la Révolution à la collectivisation. (1917-1939). Hachette, Paris 1984 ( La vie quotidienne ), ISBN 2-01-008678-3 .
  • Les Procès de Moscou. (1936–1938) (= La Mémoire du Siècle. Vol. 48). Éditions Complexe, Bruxelles 1987, ISBN 2-87027-211-1 (Nouvelle édition revue et augmentée. Ibid 2006, ISBN 2-8048-0101-2 ).
  • Histoire de l'Union soviétique. De l'Empire russe à l'Union soviétique. 1900–1990 (= Thémis. Histoire ). Presses universitaires de France, Paris 1990, ISBN 2-13-043572-6 (6., édition mise à jour: De l'Empire russe à la Communauté des États indépendants. 1900–1991 (= Thémis. Histoire). Ibid 2008, ISBN 978-2-13-056120-0 ).
  • Une source inédite. Les svodki de la Tchéka-OGPU. In: Revue des Études Slaves. Vol. 66, No. 1, 1994, ISSN  0080-2557 , pp. 17-27.
  • with Gaël Moullec: Reports secrets soviétiques. La société russe dans les rapports confidentiels, 1921–1991. Gallimard, Paris 1994, ISBN 2-07-073239-8 .
  • Histoire de l'Union soviétique de Lénine à Staline. (1917–1953) (= Que sais-je? 2963). Presses Universitaires de France, Paris 1995, ISBN 2-13-046983-3 .
  • Histoire de l'Union soviétique de Khrouchtchev à Gorbatchev. (1953-1991) (= Que sais-je? 3038). Presses Universitaires de France, Paris 1995, ISBN 2-13-047332-6 .
  • 1917. La Russie en Révolution (= Découvertes Gallimard 327 Histoire ). Gallimard, Paris 1997, ISBN 2-07-053415-4 .
  • Un état contre son peuple. Violences, répressions, terreurs en URSS de 1917 à 1953. In: Stéphane Courtois et al. (Ed.): Le Livre noir du communisme. Crimes, terreur, repression . Robert Laffont, Paris 1998, ISBN 2-221-08861-1 , pp. 45-313.
  • Ile aux cannibales. 1933. Une déportation-abandon en Sibérie. Perrin, Paris 2006, ISBN 2-262-02434-0 (in German: The island of the cannibals. Stalin's forgotten gulag. From the French by Enrico Heinemann and Norbert Juraschitz. Siedler, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-88680-853-X ).
  • Les enjeux politiques et sociaux du “dégel”. In: Stéphane Courtois (ed.): Le jour se lève. L'héritage du totalitarisme en Europe, 1953-2005. Éditions du Rocher, Monaco 2006, ISBN 2-268-05701-1 , pp. 121–145, 450–456 notes.
  • The gulag in the prism of the archives. Approaches, findings, results. In: Eastern Europe. Vol. 57, No. 6, 2007, ISSN  0030-6428 , pp. 9-30.
  • La Terreur et le désarroi. Staline and système. Perrin, Paris 2007, ISBN 978-2-262-02462-8 .
  • Les années Staline. Photographies collectées by Mark Grosset. Texts by Nicolas Werth. Chêne, Paris 2007, ISBN 978-2-84277-547-6 (in German: Die Ära Stalin. Life in a totalitarian society. Translated from the French by Enrico Heinemann. Theiss, Stuttgart 2008, ISBN 978-3-8062- 2185-5 ).
  • L'Ivrogne et la marchande de fleurs. Autopsy d'un meurtre de masse. 1937-1938. Tallandier, Paris 2009, ISBN 978-2-84734-573-5 .

Web links

Commons : Nicolas Werth  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Alexander Werth wrote the book " La Russie en guerre " (Russia at War) about it . 2 volumes (Vol. 1: 1941–1942 la patrie en danger. Vol. 2: 1943–1945 de Stalingrad à Berlin. ). Paris, Stock 1964.
  2. ^ N. Werth: Une source inédite. 1994, p. 26.
  3. ^ N. Werth: Une source inédite. 1994, p. 25.
  4. ↑ Le Monde , November 14, 1997.
  5. ↑ In an interview with the newspaper Le Monde , September 21, 2000, p. 32.
personal data
SURNAME Werth, Nicolas
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French historian
DATE OF BIRTH 1950
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris