THE PLANNED ECONOMY FROM SUMER TO THE SOVIET UNION: THE FATE OF AN ANCIENT EMPIRE THROUGH THE EYES OF MODERN HISTORIANS

This article describes the birth of one of the most influential myths in the late Soviet and early post-Soviet historiography of the Ancient World, about the totalitarian and consequently inefficient Neo-Sumerian centralized bureaucratic state. The author proposes that the origins of this historiographic myth can be sought in the political and academic conditions of the Soviet historical profession and the response to them from leading Assyriologists such as Vasily V. Struve and Igor M. Diakonoff. Oriental Despotism by Karl A. Wittfogel had a particular influence on Soviet historiography. Since direct parallels between the Ur III State and the USSR were ideologically subversive and therefore unacceptable, just hinting at them acquired the status of profound inner truth, and thus captured the imaginations of many Soviet historians. After the collapse of the USSR, in the eyes of some scholars these analogies received ultimate proof through history itself, as the modern failed totalitarian bureaucracy shared the fate of the allegedly equally totalitarian ancient one.