“TO REFLECT THE HISTORY OF THE PARTY AS IT WAS” 1 THE UKRAINIAN BRANCH OF THE MARX-ENGELS-LENIN INSTITUTE IN CRITICAL TIMES (1945–1949) ÉRIC AUNOBLE in Official History in Eastern Europe (Eds. : Korine Amacher, Andrii Portnov and Viktoriia Serhiienko), Fibre – Deutsches Historisches Institut, Osnabrück – Warsawa, 2020, pp. 65-86. In the Soviet Union, Party history was indeed official history as the Communist Party had “the role of organizer and leader of the proletarian revolution” in 1917 and then “direct[ed] the first Socialist State of Workers and Peasants in the world”. 2 These lines are taken from The Short Course of History of The Communist Party of The Soviet Union (Bolsheviks) which became compulsory reading for millions of Soviet people when it was published in 1938 and until it was repudiated in 1956. In dealing with such an important subject, Party historians set themselves apart from their colleagues. Since the 1920s they had worked within the framework of several Commissions for the History of the October Revolution and of the Communist Party (Istpart). 3 These commissions became institutes in the 1930s when they merged with the bodies responsible for the publishing of official Marxist literature and with those managing Lenin’s legacy. They were eventually centralized as a Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute (IMEL) with local branches. 4 The leaders of these institutions seem to have been the watchdogs of state power in the field of historiography. In Ukraine, for instance, Mykhailo Rubach, the head of the local Istpart stood against the ‘Revision of the Bolshevik scheme concerning the driving forces and the character of the 1917 revolution in Ukraine’ in 1930 and put an end to the influence of Matviĭ Iavors’kyĭ in historiography. 5 In 1944, Fedir Ienevych, the would-be director of the Ukrainian Branch of the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute , 1 Savchuk, 14 January 1948, F. 319, op. 2, s. 11, ark. 8, Central State Archive of Public Organizations of Ukraine (hereafter: TsDAHO–U). 2 History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks): Short Course (New York: International Publishers, 1939), 1, 355. 3 Eric Aunoble, ‘Commemorating an Event That Never Occurred: Russia’s October in Soviet Ukraine in the 1920s’, in Echoes of October International – Commemorations of the Bolshevik Revolution 1918–1990, eds. Jean-François Fayet, Valérie Gorin, and Stefanie Prezioso (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 2017), 26–53. 4 ‘ “Institut marksizma-leninizma pri TsK KPSS (IML)” & “Istpart” ’, in Bol’shaia Sovetskaia Entsiklopediia, ed. Aleksandr Prohorov, 3rd ed. (Moskva: Sovetskaia Entsiklopediia, 1969–1978), t. 10, 293–294; Nataliia Moskovchenko, ‘Dvoznachnist poniattia “iedynyĭ derzhavnyĭ arkhivnyĭ fond” (rol’ Istpartu v rozvytku arkhivnoï spravy Ukraïny)’, Studiï z arkhivnoï spravy ta dokumentoznavstva 13 (2005), available at https://web.archive.org/web/20190315101604/http://www.archives.gov.ua/Publicat/Studii/Studii_2005.13.01.php (last visited 3 July 2020); Iuriĭ Shapoval, ‘Instytut Istoriï Partiï pry TsK Kompartiï Ukraïny’, in, Entsyklopediia istoriï Ukraïny, vol. 3, ed. Valeriĭ Smoliĭ (Kyïv: Vydavnytstvo Naukova dumka, 2005), 489–490. 5 Myhaĭlo Rubach, ‘Proty reviziï bil’shovyts’koï skhemy rushiĭnykh syl ta harakteru revol’iutsiï 1917 roku na Ukraïni’, Litopys revoliutsiï, 5 (1930), 5–98. See also TsK KP(b)U, ‘Dokladnaia zapiska istorika M. A. Rubacha o diskussii po voprosam istorii Ukrainy’, 1929, F. 1, op. 20, s. 2920, TsDAHO–U.