Bridging the Gap: The Legacy of the Soviet “Revisionist Turn”
Perhaps the principal legacy of revisionism, then, is the light that it shed on the quotidian experiences “from below” that were occluded by earlier, state-centric ideas of repressive regimes. One role of historians in the present is to bridge the gap between inherited simplifications and more nuanced understandings; by advancing academic arguments in more accessible forms historians can foster more meaningful public engagements with history and its uses in the present. When we look at Russia today, we cannot turn away from its suppression of free speech nor its persecution of political critics, but we should also acknowledge the limits of this vision. We must consider, to invoke a Russian concept, that individual and independent “existence” (byt) are also aspects of Russian life.