COLUMN ONE : Historians Unshackle Soviet Past : Textbook writers--free of restraints--sift through layers of lies to give students the truth. But new revelations and self-censorship sometimes get in the way.

Soviet history has taken on many forms for Yuri I. Korablev, a textbook writer who published one version of history before President Mikhail S. Gorbachev came to power and another after Gorbachev’s openness policies proved the old version full of lies.

Now he is working on yet a third.

The first book was written in the late 1970s, when the only history published was history as it was proclaimed by now disgraced leader Leonid I. Brezhnev.

“All historians were conformists in the service of the regime,” Korablev said, recalling that era. “We were called soldiers on the ideological front.”

Through seven decades of Soviet power, history textbooks played an important role in the indoctrination of Soviet youth. The Communist leadership strictly controlled the texts so that they contained only statements that supported the views of the current leader.

Now, under Gorbachev’s rule, textbook writers are free of the taboos of the past and allowed to tell children the objective truth of Soviet history--if they can sort it out from the layers of lies and half-truths written previously. There are no longer numerous censors waiting to remove questionable material from the drafts and report the author to authorities.

But history cannot be changed overnight. Researching and writing the texts takes many months and is often outstripped by disclosures in the media. Historians are still denied access to some sources, and they have to sort through piles of fake accounts to find authentic documents. They must fight the instincts of a lifetime for caution and self-censorship. And history teachers must also be taught to think in new ways, which takes time.

Such difficulties are typical of the confusion that now afflicts almost all aspects of Soviet society under the impact of Gorbachev’s perestroika and glasnost reforms. Planners pondering a new economic system, Communist Party officials dealing with virulent criticism for the first time, housewives searching for scarce bread or smokers for cigarettes, all are struggling to adjust.

For the present, Soviet school children and teachers are confronted with a schizophrenic history of their country.

“As it ends up, one version of history is written in our textbook, another version is in newspapers and magazines, and our teachers demand yet another version,” Vasily Strelkov, a 10th-grader in Moscow wrote to Korablev.

For several years after glasnost had enabled the Soviet press to report a much more objective view of past events, millions of 10th-graders continued to study Korablev’s first textbook, which he now calls “falsified history.”

Parents and teachers raised such a protest that Korablev and three other historians hastily went to work on a new text, which reached some classrooms by the fall of 1989 but is called the book of 1990.

This version is the first to contain criticisms of V. I. Lenin, the founder of the Soviet state, and positive accounts of Leon Trotsky’s political life and his great oratorical skills, through which he inspired the masses.

But, even before the new text was in the hands of schoolchildren, its authors knew that its updated version of history would soon be outdated by more disclosures in the press. They immediately started gathering material for a new, even more objective text and cautioned children not to take the latest version as gospel.

“Each day, radio, television and the press bring us new information, reveal to us what once was classified to fill in the so-called blank spot of history,” the authors wrote to 10th-grade students in an introduction to the 1990 text. “This book has been written with speed as the main factor and cannot be perfect. We regard it as a transitional book, since it must serve you until new, more scientific ones appear.”

Because of the great confusion over what version of history is true, history exams were canceled in 1989. This year, students have been allowed, for the first time, to voice their own opinions during informal oral or written exams.

Intellectual Chaos

Although the old books were still in circulation, a supplement covering Josef Stalin’s era, including the dictator’s many purges, was handed to the children. So they had two versions of history at one time.

Teachers, many of whom are learning their country’s real history for the first time themselves, teach half from the press and half from texts. The result is often intellectual chaos, which encourages restless teen-agers to be disruptive in the classrooms.

In one class last autumn, a teacher was trying to tell his class about the secret protocol of the 1939 pact between Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler and Stalin, under which the Baltic states were incorporated into the Soviet Union. But the supplement, which they were using, does not mention the protocol; nor does the 1990 textbook, because the government had only officially recognized the pact’s existence weeks before the classroom discussion. The teen-agers giggled about the irony.

“It will be very difficult for me to give history lessons on the Soviet period,” teacher A. Belyatsky, 36, told the official news agency Tass on the eve of the new school year, “because there is still only one textbook, which does not present alternative views of the processes that have taken place in our society.”

The monopoly on history textbooks is bound to continue for at least a couple of years because Korablev’s book is the only text now being prepared.

A contest for the best history text was canceled because of insufficient entries.

Korablev, a 71-year-old who lived though most of Soviet history, enjoys his new freedom to tell children the true history of their country but suffers for his own part in creating the deception of the past.

“We historians are guilty because it was with our hands and our minds that this falsified history was created,” he said.

Accepting the Blame

“If I were to stand before the schoolchildren who studied my first text, I would tell them it contains a lot of lies, and I am to blame,” the historian said thoughtfully during an interview in his home. “I would only add that the reason the book has so many lies is that at the time no one could write otherwise, and, also, we historians did not know the entire truth ourselves.”

Under the oppressive regimes of Stalin and Brezhnev, historians knew the price for straying from the official line would be death, imprisonment, exile or at the very least forced retirement.

“Both I and my colleagues feel sorry about what we did in the past,” the textbook writer continued. “We wasted our energy, the power of our minds and bodies, on nothing. All those multivolume history publications in which we participated--’The History of the Communist Party,’ ‘The History of the U.S.S.R.’ and others--are absolutely nothing.”

Like most historians of the pre-Gorbachev era, Korablev vigorously believed in the ideals of the Communist Party and its leadership. When crafting his first book, he followed the directives of the Communist Party ideologues exactly, believing that he was doing his part to build socialism by instilling in children the politically correct version of history.

“I can honestly say that, up to that time, I was still sure that what I wrote in the book was all that should be told to children, although I knew it was not the whole truth,” he admitted.

Korablev avoided telling children what the government did not want them to know by leaving out all parts of history that showed Lenin in a negative light. Absent from previous renditions were the peasants’ hostility toward the Bolsheviks during the 1918-1920 civil war; the Kronstadt Munity, a 1921 revolt of naval officers who demanded free elections; and the Red Terror, a bloody wave of murders by Lenin’s security police, the Cheka.

Stalin’s brutal purges, which killed tens of millions of Soviets, also were overlooked until the most recent editions. And important historic figures such as Trotsky, the Bolsheviks’ foreign affairs and war commissar who later was forced into exile under Stalin and then murdered, were often completely left out or sparely referred to as traitors.

Korablev and the three others on his team--they are each writing a section of the new book--have experienced great changes in their personal ideologies, which influence how they interpret the past.

“History looks different depending on what ideological glasses you wear,” said Yuri S. Borisov, a member of Korablev’s team who is also working on his third version of history.

“In all those years we believed we were building a new, better society called socialism,” Korablev said. “We believed the people were suffering for a better future, but now we know this was all a sham.”

Some other historians say Korablev and his team excuse their past activities too easily.

“I don’t think there is one person who can say he did not know, did not understand or did not see. Everyone knew we were living in a totalitarian state,” said Galina V. Klokova, 59, who has been writing books for teachers of history for three decades.

“It’s a big tragedy of our lives. We must all repent, because we are at fault before all of our countrymen and our own consciences.”

Korablev sees his new textbooks as his way of making amends. The 1990 text includes many mentions of Trotsky’s political career and “cautious” criticisms of Lenin.

The textbook now being prepared goes much further to indict Lenin for ruthlessness toward his own people.

“We do not separate Lenin from the Red Terror any longer,” Korablev said. “We quote him speaking in favor of the merciless Red Terror, the repressions and the expediency of concentration camps. The conclusion is: Lenin was primarily responsible for that policy.”

Students will also read in a textbook for the first time that Lenin alone ordered the preparations for the bloody Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, while other Bolsheviks favored peaceful means.

But even the new version, due to be in the classroom in the fall of 1991, will refer only vaguely to the “many hundreds of thousands” who died as a result of Lenin’s policies.

“We cannot yet find exact figures because the archives of the KGB (the state security police) are still closed to historians,” Korablev explained.

Soviet historians still face many obstacles when trying to write objective history, Korablev said, despite the fact that “there are no longer any official taboos.”

Unlike most of the world, where children’s textbook writers re-compile existing historic accounts, Soviet textbook authors must do original research. Unfortunately, although many archives have been opened, others, such as archives of the KGB and Communist Party Central Committee, remain closed.

Elusive Truths

Historians here must also sift though mounds of falsified history and try to determine what documents can be trusted

Other obstacles are internal. Many older historians who have worked under the watchful eye of the censors of totalitarian regimes now censor themselves out of habit.

“I am really struggling to objectively portray Lenin in the next book,” Korablev admitted.

Klokova, who now considers herself a radical liberal, believes that Korablev was an old-style historian for too long to be able to write a progressive text.

“The truth that ends up in a book depends on what kind of beliefs the author has,” she said. “I would say Korablev has never had a liberal thought. He’s too middle-of-the-road.”

Korablev himself concedes that it is time to hand over his trade to a younger generation of historians who did not live under totalitarian regimes.

“Young historians not corrupted by their past works should write the new versions of history,” he said.