Irina Tunkina

This is the story of the last large-scale work by the well-known Russian historian, written in the late 1920s and early 1930s but not published in the full version during his life for ideological and political reasons. The author of the article draws on archive materials (in the first place, Buzeskul’s vast correspondence) to give a detailed account of how the monumental work was made. She evaluates the objective importance of the book, analyses the methods employed therein and describes the complicated and tragic circumstances it was written in, as well as the reasons why its publication was delayed. The new full edition of Buzeskul’s book prepared by the author of this article is an important contribution to a fuller study of Russian historiographical heritage.