a214  1052  09 Apr 88
AM-Filling the Blanks, Bjt,0645
Soviets Turn to American Scholars to Help Write Their History
By BRYAN BRUMLEY
Associated Press Writer
    WASHINGTON (AP) - Stephen Cohen of Princeton University was taken
aback when, during the summit in Washington last December, Soviet
leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev said he'd read Cohen's biography of
Nikolai Bukharin, a Bolshevik theoretician who for 50 years was a
''non-person.''
    A month later, Cohen stood before a packed lecture hall in Moscow
and led what he says ''must have been the first public discussion (in
the Soviet Union) of Bukharin since he was executed, in March 1938.''
    American historians of Russia, for years denounced by the Kremlin as
''bourgeois falsifiers,'' are now finding eager ears in Moscow as
Soviet scholars heed Gorbachev's call to fill in the ''blank pages''
in Soviet history books.
    Cohen has been at the forefront, because his writings have been
among the most thorough examinations of the theory that Joseph
Stalin's bloody collectivization of agriculture, forced
industrialization and purge of the party were needless.
    Despite Gorbachev's reforms, however, the Stalinist form of
government remains largely intact and until Gorbachev came to power,
official histories praised Stalin.
    Even now, the rewriting of history is directed by central Communist
Party authorities.
    Another American historian, Robert V. Daniels of the University of
Vermont, says he is going to Moscow this fall to discuss with Soviet
historians their efforts fill in the blanks.
    ''I make no bones about my independent position,'' said Daniels, who
has been much more critical than Cohen of many aspects of Soviet
history. ''I have been frequently denounced in the Soviet press as a
'bourgeois falsifier' and all that sort of thing.''
    But Soviet scholars have told Daniels, ''you won't have to take that
any more. They are interested in hearing what you have to say.'' He
said Russian scholars have encouraged him to submit articles to
Soviet journals.
    A Soviet historian, Yuri Mukhachev, denied speculation that the
Soviets might go so far as to publish Cohen's biography of Bukharin
and a book by Daniels, ''Conscience of the Revolution.''
    But ''as to scholarly debates with our colleagues in the West
concerning Soviet history, we are willing to engage them,'' Mukhachev
said in answer to questions posed by The Associated Press through the
semiofficial Soviet news agency Novosti.
    Mukhachev took part in a conference with foreign scholars last May
on the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, and ''we saw that we had more
points in common than differences on a lot of topics.''
    Many important episodes of Soviet history remain outside the bounds
of official scholarship, despite the rehabilitation of Bukharin.
Among them are:
    -The central role of Leon Trotsky, murdered in Mexico on Stalin's
orders, in directing the Bolshevik revolution and creating the Red
Army.
    -The Bolshevik decision in 1917 to dissolve the Constituent
Assembly, whose anti-Bolshevik majority was considered likely to form
a more democratic form of government;
    -The suppression of religion, including widespread executions;
    -The forced relocation of large ethnic populations under Stalin,
involving hundreds of thousands of deaths;
    -The deaths of thousands of Polish officers at the beginning of
World War II. Western and many unofficial Polish historians blame the
executions on the Russians, but the Soviets blame the Nazis. Few
observers expect an objective assessment from a joint Soviet-Polish
commission appointed to study 8hh↑
bj4z8h      l.of people who died in the forced
collectivization of agriculture in 1929-32, estimated by Western
historians to be as high as 10 million. Recent Soviet articles have
said that ''millions were repressed,'' but have not delved into the
actual number killed.
    Bukharin was the leading opponent of the collectivization and the
forced industrialization that accompanied it, and many Western
Sovietologists view his rehabilitation as an important step in
rewriting Soviet history.
    
 
AP-NY-04-09-88 1338EDT
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