Viktor Nikolaevich Zemskov | |
|---|---|
| Виктор Николаевич Земсков | |
| Born | (1946-01-30)30 January 1946 |
| Died | 22 July 2015(2015-07-22) (aged 69) |
| Citizenship | Russia |
| Alma mater | Moscow State University |
| Known for | His studies onpolitical repression in the Soviet Union |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | History |
| Institutions | theInstitute of Russian History |
Viktor Nikolaevich Zemskov (Russian:Ви́ктор Никола́евич Земско́в, 30 January 1946 – 22 June 2015) was aSoviet andRussian historian, doctor (habil.) of historical sciences (2005), and research associate of the Institute of Russian History of theRussian Academy of Sciences.[1][2] He was a specialist on theGulag.[3] Zemskov revealed in detail the secret-police statistics about the Gulag, resolving many disputes among Western historians about the number of people affected bypolitical repression in the Soviet Union.[4]
In 1981, Zemskov defended his candidate's (PhD) thesis "Contribution by working class to strengthening the material-technical base of agriculture in the USSR in the 1960s".[1] In 1989, he joined the commission of the History Department of theUSSR Academy of Sciences led by its corresponding member Yuri Polyakov to determine population losses and received access to statistical reports made by theOGPU-NKVD-MGB-MVD and kept in the Central State Archive of the October Revolution (CSAOR), now theState Archive of the Russian Federation.[5][6] Between 1990 and 1992, he published the first precise statistical data on the Gulag which were based on the Gulag archives.[7] According to Leonid Lopatnikov, Zemskov was the only historian admitted to the archives for the reports, and later the archives were again "closed."[8]
Zemskov's papers were criticized bySergei Maksudov. In Maksudov's opinion,Lev Razgon and his followers, includingAleksandr Solzhenitsyn, did not accurately enumerate the total number of the camps and markedly exaggerated their size. At the same time, from their experience, they knew something extraordinarily important about the Archipelago - its diabolical nature. On the other hand, Zemskov, who published many documents by the NKVD andKGB, is very far from understanding of the Gulag essence and the nature of socio-political processes in the country. Without distinguishing the degree of accuracy and reliability of certain figures, without making a critical analysis of sources, without comparing new data with already known information, Zemskov absolutizes the published materials by presenting them as the ultimate truth. As a result, in Maksudov's view, Zemskov's attempts to make generalized statements with reference to a particular document, as a rule, do not hold water.[9] In response, Zemskov wrote that the charge that he allegedly did not compare new data with already known information could not be called fair. In his words, most western writers did not benefit from such comparisons. Zemskov added that when he tried not to overuse the juxtaposition of new information with "old" data, it was only because of a sense of delicacy, not to once again psychologically traumatize the researchers whose works used figures that turned out to be incorrect after the publication of the statistics by the OGPU-NKVD-MGB-MVD.[5]
In 2005, Zemskov defended his doctoral thesis "Special settlers in the USSR. 1930–1960".[1]
