The career of the Soviet historian, E. V. Tarle, bears testimony to both the methods and effectiveness of Soviet demands for conformity in historical writing. Unlike many of his colleagues, who confined their research to obscure topics or resorted to the editing of collections of documents, Tarle treated events in Russian history which carried important political implications. Outstanding among these were his works on the Napoleonic invasion of Russia. Between 1936 and 1952 Tarle wrote three basically different interpretations of this invasion, each of which reflected the current trend in Soviet historiography at the time it was written. Hitler's attack on the Soviet Union bore an obvious resemblance to Napoleon's campaign in Russia, and Academician Tarle, under pressure, changed his story to conform to the changing “party line.“