A change in the political nature of a regime, from a democratic towards a totalitarian one or the other way round, will have consequences on all levels of society, including in its historiography. The interwar period and the birth of the three European totalitarian states – Soviet, Nazi and Fascist – brought about major changes in how history was written. Suddenly, historians found themselves forced to write a different history, one that favoured the new regime and that glorified the new state, doctrine or leader. The Soviet Union and Marxist historiography After the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and the birth of the USSR, in 1922, the Russia historiography changed dramatically. The new totalitarian regime changed the way history was written in Russia and it allowed the birth of a Marxist historiography. From a Marxist point of view, Russia was far from ready for a communist revolution. Marx had predicted this revolutionary change in the Western capitalist states – Germany and Great Britain, not in Tsarist Russia, considered one of Europe’s most backward countries. It was Lenin who stated that a proletarian revolution could take in Russia, with the help of the party without whom the workers could not reach a revolutionary conscience. Therefore, a well organised and disciplined party was needed. Lenin’s article was the most significant contribution to the Marxist theory to be written after Marx and Engels’ works. If the two German writers had talked about the Revolution from a philosophical point of view, Lenin took the analysis further and developed an action plan. Even more important is the fact that Lenin promoted the crucial element of communist development in the 20th century: the Party. Russian historiography in the 19th century, based on the European model, had been dominated by one particular historian: Karamzin. Its main tendency was to promote nationalism and