UDK 355.48

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The main trends in the development of the national historiography of the Battle of Kursk in the 2000 — 2020  

 

Zamulin V. N.

 

Abstraсt

The large-scale military operations that unfolded in July — August 1943 in the center of the Soviet-German front, in the area of the Kursk Bulge, between the troops of two German army groups and six Soviet fronts, entered the world military history as the Battle of Kursk. Its main results were the disruption of the last strategic offensive of the Wehrmacht in the east, which aimed to defeat two Soviet fronts near Kursk, and the rapid breakthrough of the Red Army formations to the Dnieper River. Soviet military historians began to study those events according to documentary material already in the second half of 1943, and they were the first who identified the results of the Battle of Kursk as a radical change in the Great Patriotic War. This work was carried out with varying degrees of activity throughout the post-war period. However, our scholars did not have a real opportunity to study deeply and to evaluate objectively the battle of the Fiery Bulge as a whole, and to convey the results of their work to a wide readership. Only after the collapse of the Soviet Union, which resulted in the elimination of censorship in our country and the opening of access to combat documents of the headquarters of Soviet formations and units that participated in the summer campaign of 1943, this process acquired the character of a syste­matic, comprehensive study. This article deals with the state of the historiography of the Battle of Kursk at the end of the previous — the beginning of this century, the analysis of the trends of its development from 2000 to 2020, the evaluation of the problems and prospects of an objective reflection of the fighting in the Kursk Bulge area on the basis of the study of memoirs, military, historical and scientific literature.

 

Keywords: the Battle of Kursk, radical change, historiography, scientific research, monograph, scientific articles, memoir literature, historical science

 

For citation: Zamulin VN. The main trends in the development of the national historiography of the Battle of Kursk in the 2000 — 2020. Center and Periphery. 2023;18(2):19—30. EDN BCUUBT

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Information about the author:

Valery N. Zamulin, Leading Researcher of Department of Theory and History of State and Law of Southwest State University (94 50 let Oktyabrya Str., Kursk 305040, Russia), Candidate of Historical Sciences, ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8976-5672, valery-zamulin@yandex.ru

 

Conflict of interests: the author declares no conflict of interests.

 

The author has read and approved the final version of the manuscript.

 

The article was submitted 09.01.2023; approved after reviewing 28.02.2023; accepted for publication 07.03.2023.