“Historian by inclination” and “Zoshchenko in philosophy”: The scandalous career of the writer H. G. Ajemyan

In the 1940s and 1950s, the writer H. G. Ajemyan actively participated in a number of important scientific discussions on history and philosophy: a meeting of historians in 1944, a discussion about the movement of Caucasian mountaineers, a philosophical discussion in 1947, a discussion of a report on the nature of nations in 1957, at which he was the main “troublemaker”. His bold ideas about the monistic unity of the state and the people, the harm of class struggle and national liberation movements to strengthen the power of the Russian state, the use of Orthodoxy to fight the Vatican, and the priority of cultural factors over economic factors in the formation of nations were criticized by academic science and party ideologists. At the same time, Ajemyan’s speeches were used by the authorities to identify ideological positions in the professional scientific community, and his interpretation of the reactionary essence of Muridism and Imamate Shamil became official after a while. In 1943, he appealed to Stalin with an absurd plan to end the war.