Moscow’s Embrace of the Political

MORE THAN FINANCIAL CONSTRAINTS AND overly ambitious plans threatened Istpart’s future at the center and in the provinces. By the mid-1920s, an escalating politicization of historical scholarship challenged the integrity of Istpart’s mission and thus the agency’s very existence. As noted in this book’s introduction, this process was not a matter of any explicit dictate by party leaders. It occurred, as John Barber has described it, from “the largely spontaneous activity of militants” in the profession itself.¹ A highly partisan version for 1917 emerged as a result. Not everyone in Viatka, however, was in step with the center’s grand narrative