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450 DONALD OSTROWSKI"K voprosu" (1956) "Kreshchenie" (1960)Although the popular masses Although the popular massesled the anti-feudal struggle under stood for the old religion . . .the banner of the old religion ... (p. 80)(p. 407)A comparison of "K voprosu" with "Kreshchenie," leads one to concludethat Budovnits was a perfectionist who fiddled with his text until the lastpossible moment. For example, in Obshchestvenno-politicheskaia my si,Budovnits includes a reference to a work published in 1960, when his bookwas already v nabore. 26 A likely explanation is that something occurredbetween 1954, when "K voprosu" was typeset, and 1960, when "Kreshchenie"was published, that led Budovnits to modify his text. Such a conclusionis important for my investigation because, if we eliminate the likelihoodof Budovnits's personal reassessment of Grekov's work, we are leftwith "the thaw" as a possible explanation, that is, that changes in the politicsof the society in which Budovnits lived had an impact on his work andallowed him to write in a way that was less blatantly ideological.Budovnits is critical of "gentry-bourgeois historiography," includingN. M. Karamzin, S. M. Solov'ev, and S. F. Platonov. He perceives theirarguments about the acceptance of Christianity as a biased favoring of thenew faith over paganism. Instead, he argues, they should explain whyChristianity, if it was so superior, was not accepted in Rus' before Volodimer.After all, Budovnits argues, "in the ninth century and first half of thetenth century in Byzantium there were enough experienced and articulatemissionary-philosophers," yet the Byzantines were not able to convert Olegto Christianity.A noteworthy alteration in "Kreshchenie" of "K voprosu" is theinclusion in "Kreshchenie" of a critique of the pre-Revolutionary work ofV. A. Parkhomenko. 27 It is not likely that Budovnits did not know ofParkhomenko's work when he wrote "K voprosu," and only learned aboutit by the time he revised it for "Kreshchenie." Parkhomenko was a fairlywell-known historian and a colleague of Budovnits. What occurred in themeantime that Budovnits felt obliged to include criticisms ofParkhomenko's pre-Revolutionary work? Why did he choose not to26Budovnits, Obshchestvenno-politicheskaia mysl\ p. 42, fn. 35. This particular referencewas to a work published by Tikhomirov, which raises the question why Budovnits did notinclude in "Kreshchenie" mention of Tikhomirov's article on the Christianization of Rus',which appeared in 1959.27See, especially, V. A. Parkhomenko, Nachalo khristianstva Rusi (Poltava, 1913), pp.75-189.