Logotyp: till Försvarshögskolans hemsida

This study investigates The Committee for Nordic exploration of Russian archives and what we can learn about the historiographical situation in the interwar period. The committee was active during 1928-1932 and was a collaboration between many senior historians from Sweden, Denmark and Norway. During the 1920s they gained permission and access to the Soviet central archives in Moscow, to look at documents that was related to Scandinavian history. The problem this study is trying to tackle is what kind of shape historiography took in Sweden when historians were involved in a large international project. The study’s purpose is to learn what Swedish historians thought was interesting and important in the subject of history, which in turn can aid the understanding of the historiography of military history since that is a subcategory of history in large. To achieve the purpose this study asks the question “is there a type of historiography that characterized the planning and work carried out by the Committee for Nordic Exploration of Russian Archives?”. As theory this study will use Carsten Holbraad’s interpretation of the concepts of liberal nationalism and liberal internationalism and to see if these concepts can be observed within the work and research of The Committee for Nordic exploration of Russian archives. The research will rely on qualitative methodology and will use textual analysis to answer the research question. During the research it will be established that the Swedish historians within the committee, was the most interested in obtaining and copy documents from the years after 1809, the 1760s and from 1648. In the end this study concludes that the committee represented the academia’s general view on history but were sometimes hindered in publishing everything they found due to pressure from above. The historians also did not mind the research into periods of peace and periods of national trauma. In the case of the concepts of liberal nationalism and internationalism, the study concludes that they are somewhat present in the committee’s work.