Pokrovskii was a leader in the creation of the "historical front"—an organization of scholars authorized to work out a Marxist theory of the past. He formalized the bond between scholarship and politics through his belief that historians should assist party authorities in effecting a cultural revolution; thus he supported Stalin's collectivization of agriculture and leg a campaign to silence non-Marxist scholars, some of whom he had defended earlier. Yet his accommodation with Stalin was uneasy, and after Pokrovskii's death in 1932 his allegedly "abstract sociological schemes" were condemned and his career was dubbed pokrovshcina—era of the wicked deeds of Pokrovskii.
George Enteen teaches European History at The Pennsylvania State University. After receiving his PhD from George Washington University, Dr. Enteen studied at Moscow University, pursuing his interest in Soviet historiography that began when he was an exchange student at Leningrad University.