Historical scholarship's reflection of the value bases of Soviet statehood in the mid-1950-1960s

Historical thought has always been an instrument of mass consciousness, which preserved the unity of the country. A brief analysis of the problems of conceptualization of historical scholarship that took place in the mid-1950-1960s in the context of some liberalization of the established order of Soviet society is presented in this article. New trends in the country after the XX Congress of the CPSU were positively received by the historical community. A young generation of “sixties” historians, who embodied the so-called “new direction” and regarded source studies as the basis of historical research, entered science. But since the mid-60s, censorship has been tightening again and historians' access to sources of domestic and foreign information has been restricted. It was noted that in these conditions the development of science nevertheless continued, and the confrontation between history and politics in the country is explained by the government's desire to preserve the unity of society, to prevent freethinking, shaking the foundations of statehood, which remains relevant for Russian society todayrci