FROM THE AUTHOR
The book presented to the readers is the result of many years of research. I first encountered the problems of women's history and gender history in the late 1970s. during the study of modern historiography and various trends in social history of the second half of the 20th century, which constituted the main subject of my scientific interest. At that time, the topic of women's and, especially, gender studies looked completely exotic in Western historical science, not to mention Soviet historiography, based on the methodology of dogmatized historical materialism, in which a class approach reigned and there was no place for such categories of analysis as biological or social gender Over the past quarter century, the situation has changed radically, and now the gender approach in the social and human sciences, including history, has gained not only full rights, but also popularity. The increase in historical knowledge that modern science owes to the history of women and gender history cannot be overestimated.
One way or another, in those published in the second half of the 1980s and early 1990s. In my works on social historiography of the second half of the 20th century, I had the opportunity to touch upon both “women’s” and gender history, which over time became more and more developed and methodologically equipped. Subsequently, interest in these subjects received an additional impetus due to participation in the work on a collective project on the history of private life (under the leadership of Yu.L. Bessmertny) in the mid-1990s. It is to this time that the idea of this book dates back, which, however, has since undergone significant changes, associated mainly with my teaching practice.
In introducing this book to the reader, it is obviously necessary to explain its not entirely traditional structure. In the first part of the book, which corresponds to the original plan, I had two tasks: on the one hand, to consider the formation and development of women’s and gender studies in the historiography of a very noticeable social and cultural phenomenon of our time, on the other hand, to develop key aspects of the problem of integrating gender and social analysis in historical research. The second part presents the most significant results of gender historical research, which forced us to largely reconsider the picture of the European past that has developed in historiography. In this case, specific historical material relating to the history of the largest Western European countries is used, and data from different regions of Europe is compared. Particular attention is paid to turning points in European history.
Of course, we are not talking about any systematic and consistent presentation of that truly immense material, which today does not fit even on the pages of multi-volume general publications. It seemed to me advisable to outline in a more concentrated form, in rather large strokes, the prospects opening up for historians for reinterpreting the European past, taking into account the gender dimension.
Summarizing in this book my research in the field of problems and methodology of women's and gender history of the 1980s and 1990s, I simultaneously set myself the task of developing a specific model of a special course curriculum aimed at revealing the theoretical background, research approaches, methodological searches and results specific research on the main directions and plot points of the gender history of Europe.
The final structure of the book was developed taking into account the needs of the educational process. Unfortunately, the traditional conservatism of the historical profession is also “increased” by the conservatism of the educational system. Since the introduction of relevant special courses into educational programs (as well as the introduction of a gender dimension into the programs of general educational courses in historical disciplines) encounters serious difficulties not only of an organizational, but also, which is very important, of a conceptual nature, I tried to propose one of the possible and , in my opinion, promising options for their methodological solution, built on a combination of theoretical, historiographical and problem-chronological approaches (see Part III).
Pedagogical practice has revealed an urgent need to combine historiographical analysis with analysis of original texts, and for this purpose, to provide the course with an accessible set of primary sources. In order to more effectively organize the educational process (including seminar classes, as well as independent work of students), the book includes an anthology that contains texts (or fragments of texts) from various sources, reflecting the main aspects of gender ideology, gender socialization, gender consciousness in their historical development. In addition, the book includes an extensive, systematic bibliography, which I hope will be useful to both specialists and those taking their first steps in the vast research field of gender history.
As I complete my work on the book, I take this opportunity to express my deep gratitude to A.L. Yastrebitskaya, G.I. Zvereva, as well as all colleagues from the Seminar on the History of Private Life for their kind feedback, constructive advice and critical comments: without them this book would have been completely different or, perhaps, would not have happened at all. I am also grateful to A.G. Supriyanovich for help in selecting sources.
http:// abuss. people. ru/ Biblio/ kukartzeva/ repina0. htm(date of access, 04/07/2011 13:26)
PREFACE – p. 3 4
INTRODUCTION – p. 4 4
Chapter 1. WHAT IS HISTORY – p. 8-31 8
Terms and problems – p. 8-10 8
Historical consciousness and historical memory – p. 10-11 10
Historical memory and oblivion - p. 11-13 10
Historical memory and historical fact - p. 13-16 12
Historical consciousness and historical science – p. 18 15
Objectivity and reliability of historical knowledge – p. 19-25 15
History as a science about unique and isolated phenomena - p. 25-28 19
History and social theory – p. 28-31 21
Chapter 2. HOW HISTORY IS WRITTEN – p. 32-49 24
Historical source – p. 32-36 25
Event and fact – p. 36-39 28
Chronology and periodization – p. 39-43 30
General history – p. 43-46 34
History and literature – p. 46-49 36
Chapter 3. ANCIENT HISTORIOGRAPHY: THE BIRTH OF HISTORICAL KNOWLEDGE – p. 50-123 39
At the origins of new knowledge - p. 50-52 40
Herodotus - the father of European history - p. 52-55 41
Thucydides: history as eyewitness testimony – p. 55-59 43
Greek historiography of the Hellenistic era – p. 59-63 44
Greek heritage in Roman historical writings - p. 63-67 46
Genre of world history – p. 67-70 49
Historians of the Early Empire - p. 70-73 52
At the end of the ancient tradition - p. 73-74 53
Ancient historical consciousness and historical writing - p. 74-75 55
CHAPTER 4. MEDIEVAL HISTORIOGRAPHY – p.77-123 57
Christian concept of history – p. 77-81 57
Medieval concept of historical time – p. 81-85 59
The subject and methods of work of the medieval historian - p. 85-90 62
Medieval historians and their audience - p. 90-97 67
Humanistic historiography of the Renaissance - p. 97-98 72
Antiquity in the historical consciousness and historiography of the Renaissance – p. 98-102 73
Secularization of historical consciousness and methods of historical criticism – p. 102-109 77
Byzantine historiography – p. 109-117 82
Old Russian historical works (XI-XVII centuries) – p. 118-123 90
Chapter 5. Historical knowledge of early modern times – p. 124-152 95
Scientific revolution and historical knowledge of the 17th century. - With. 124-131 95
“Philosophical history” of the Enlightenment – p. 131-139 101
Theories of progress and historical cycles – p. 139-143 108
“Philosophical history”: practices of historical writing – p. 143-152 110
Chapter 6. HISTORIANS AND PHILOSOPHERS of the 19th century: PERCEPTIONS ABOUT THE HISTORICAL PAST – p. 153-176 118
Historical culture of romanticism – p. 153-159 118
Directions of romantic historiography – p. 159-165 123
Interpretation of the historical process in philosophical systems of the second half of the 19th century. - With. 171-177 132
Chapter 7. HISTORICAL THOUGHT AND PROFESSIONAL HISTORIOGRAPHY of the second half of the 19th – early 20th centuries. - With. 177-205 137
Positivism and scientific history – p. 178-183 138
Formation of historiographic schools – p. 183-185 142
Discussions about the subject and status of history - p. 185-192 144
Russian historiography and the “Russian historical school” – p. 192-201 150
Critical method and principles of scientific research – p. 201-205 155
Chapter 8. HISTORY IN THE XX CENTURY: CRISES AND REVOLUTIONS IN HISTORICAL KNOWLEDGE - p. 206-241 158
The relativity of historical knowledge – p. 208-214 160
Economic history – p. 214-217 165
Civilizational and cultural-historical approaches to the study of the past – p. 217-221 168
“The Handmaiden of Ideology” – p. 221-225 171
"Fights for History." History as a problem - p. 225-228 175
“New historical science” – p. 228-231 178
Social history and historical anthropology – p. 231-239 180
“New local history” and microhistory – p. 239-241 187
Chapter 9. AT THE TURN OF THE MILLENNIUM: NEW PROBLEMS AND NEW APPROACHES – p. 242-275 189
From social history to sociocultural history – p. 243-254 190
What is gender history - p. 254-262 200
Historical biography and “new biographical history” – p. 262-268 207
Intellectual history today: problems and prospects – p. 268-275 211
PREFACE – p. 3
The manual presents a picture of the evolution of historical knowledge, the formation of the latter as a scientific discipline. Readers can get acquainted with various forms of knowledge and perception of the past in their historical development, become aware of modern debates about the place of history in society, concentrate on an in-depth study of key problems in the history of historical thought, the features of various forms of historical writing, the emergence, spread and change of research attitudes , formation and development of history as an academic science.
Today, ideas about the subject of the history of historiography, the model of historical and historiographic analysis, and the very status of the discipline have changed significantly. The so-called problematic historiography recedes into the background, the emphasis is shifted to the study of the functioning and transformation of historical knowledge in the sociocultural context. The manual shows how the forms of knowledge of the past changed during the development of society, being in connection with the fundamental features of a particular type of cultural and social organization of society.
The manual consists of nine chapters, each of which is devoted to a separate period in the development of historical knowledge - from the origins in the culture of ancient civilizations to the present (the turn of the 20th-21st centuries). Particular attention is paid to the relationship of history with other areas of knowledge, the most common conceptual models of historical development, principles of analysis of historical sources, social functions of history, and specific features of historical knowledge.
The article was prepared within the framework of the project “Crises of turning points in the mythology of historical memory” under the program of the Institute of Physical Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences “Historical experience of social transformations and conflicts”.
L. P. REPINA (L. P. REPINA)
Repina L.P. Experience of social crises in historical memory // Crises of turning points in historical memory. 2012. pp. 3-37.
The memorial turn in modern historical science has led to a significant expansion of the subject field of “new cultural history”, covering the issues of “places of memory” and “historical mythology”. Having begun its journey in historical science in the 1980s, the study of social, cultural, historical memory, or rather - history of memory, firmly established itself as an independent and rapidly developing interdisciplinary direction of socio-humanitarian knowledge at the turn of the 20th–21st centuries. In the 1990s. The number of studies focusing on the study of collective ideas about the past in different historical societies was already growing exponentially, covering a wide range of specific topics and subjects. In close connection with the problems of historical memory, but at the first stage less intensively, the theoretical development of the problems of historical consciousness, its structure, forms and functions began in Western historiography. Research is also progressing, although not at such a rapid pace, into the more complex phenomenon of historical culture, which acts as an articulation of the historical consciousness of society and the totality of cultural practices of individuals and groups in relation to the past, including all cases of the “presence” of the past in everyday life.
The problems of the formation and content of ideas about the past in different communities and cultures attract the attention of representatives of humanitarian scientific schools, and, despite the ongoing discussions around such concepts as historical memory, historical consciousness, images of the past, the scale of the body of research carried out using them (we are talking about the so-called “history of the second level”), as well as the results obtained in them, are impressive, and the latter eloquently testify to the very close connection between the perception of individual historical events, holistic images of the past, as well as relationships to it in historical memory, with the sociocultural context of the current present.
The now widespread concept of “historical memory” is interpreted differently by individual authors: as one of the dimensions of individual and collective / social memory; as a historical experience deposited in the memory of the human community (or, rather, its symbolic representation); as a way of preserving and broadcasting the past in an era of loss of tradition; as part of the social stock of knowledge that already exists in primitive societies; as a collective memory of the past when it comes to a group, and as a social memory of the past when it comes to a society; as an ideological history, most associated with the emergence of the nation-state; in general - as a set of pre-scientific, scientific, quasi-scientific and extra-scientific knowledge and mass ideas of society about the common past; finally, simply as a synonym for historical consciousness.
In recent decades, “historical memory” has begun to be viewed, on the one hand, as one of the main channels for transmitting experience and information about the past, and on the other, as the most important component of an individual’s self-identification and a factor ensuring the identification of political, ethnic, national, religious and social groups , their developing sense of community, for the revival of shared images of the historical past is a type of memory that is of particular importance for the constitution and integration of social groups in the present. Images of events recorded by collective memory in the form of various cultural stereotypes, symbols, and myths act as interpretative models that allow an individual and a social group to navigate the world and in specific situations: “Everything historical shows a person various possibilities. What was once real is now, as what he knows, a variety of paths, orders, basic approaches."
Historical memory is not only socially differentiated, it is subject to change. The history of various cultural and historical communities knows many examples of “actualization of the past”, turning to past experience with the aim of rethinking it. Interest in the past is part of public consciousness, and major events and changes in social conditions, the accumulation and comprehension of new experience give rise to a change in this consciousness and a revaluation of the past. In the network of interactive communications, there is a constant selection of events, as a result of which some of them are forgotten, while others are preserved, subject to re-interpretation, acquire new meanings and turn into symbols of group identity.
This line of research is based on the analysis of social experience, historical mentality and historical consciousness, which constructs an image of the past in accordance with the needs of modernity: the changes taking place in modern society give rise to new questions for the past, and the more significant these changes are, the more radically the image of the past changes, emerging in the public consciousness. At the same time, images of the past, which form an important part of collective identity, can serve to legitimize the existing order, performing the function of a positive social orientation, or, conversely, contrast it with the ideal of a lost “golden age”, forming a specific matrix of negative perception of what is happening. Through the transmission of accumulated experience, both positive and negative, a connection between generations is ensured.
Historical memory is a complex sociocultural phenomenon associated with the comprehension of historical experience (real and/or imaginary), but at the same time it can act as a product of manipulation of mass consciousness for political purposes. One of the most important problems, the solution of which is becoming increasingly urgent, concerns the study of ideas about deep social transformations and conflicts that took place in the past, since these ideas play a key role in ideological polemics and political practice. As we know, “he who controls the past controls the future”: we are talking about historical legitimation as a source of power and the use of historical myths to solve political problems. The struggle for political leadership often manifests itself as a rivalry between different versions of historical memory and different symbols of its greatness and shame, as a dispute over which episodes of history the nation should be proud of or ashamed of.
The content of collective memory changes according to social context and practical priorities: rearranging or changing collective memory means constantly “inventing the past” to fit the present. The image of the past that is actively imposed on the audience becomes the norm of its own self-image and shapes its real behavior. Due to the fact that these images, perceived as reliable “memories” (as “history”) and constituting a significant part of a given picture of the world, play an important role in the orientation, self-identification and behavior of individuals and groups, in maintaining collective identity and the transmission of ethical values , there is a need for a scientific analysis of the process of formation of individual historical myths, their specific functions, the environment of existence, marginalization or re-actualization in ordinary historical consciousness, their use and ideological revaluation, including in successive or competing narratives of national history (since all peoples are aware itself in terms of historical experience rooted in the past).
Modern historiography, addressing the problems of historical memory in a political context, is mainly focused on developing various aspects of the “use of the past” (including technologies of political manipulation) and the “rhetoric of memory” (both the rhetoric of “progress and modernization” and the rhetoric of “decline and nostalgia” "), as well as competing memorial practices and "memory wars". However, the diverse mechanisms of recording, accumulation, preservation, dissemination, transformation and reconstruction in the historical memory of different generations of the historical experience of peoples and individual groups of major historical events, social shifts and conflicts, especially in cross-cultural and comparative historical perspectives, still remain insufficiently studied.
The situation at the turn of the millennium, of course, fueled public interest in this issue, in how people perceived major social changes and events in which they were contemporaries or participants, how they assessed them, how they stored information about events, one way or another interpreting what they saw or experience. Moreover, this situation itself is described by many intellectuals in terms conflict, crisis And transit, which naturally stimulates the study of historical situations and processes of historical memory of turning points, characterized by a similar constellation of crisis trends, social conflicts, the experience of radical transformations, entailing the breakdown of the existing system of basic structures of social life, social norms, ideals and values. And even without going beyond European history, we will find many examples when the problems of the present time dictated the need not just to turn to the past, but to radically re-evaluate it. At the same time, when talking about crises, wars, major social conflicts and revolutions in the context of studying transitional eras, researchers are increasingly paying attention not so much to their direct role in the process of historical transformations, but to the perception of crisis phenomena and events by contemporaries, to the transmission and reception of experience their experiences in the historical consciousness of subsequent generations, on the fixation and mythologization of historical memory in the so-called “identity narratives”.
In addition to radical actualization in the light of modern social problems and cultural preferences, the high demand for the concept of “historical memory” is largely explained by both its own “laxness” and the presence of many definitions, and the fluidity of the phenomenon conceptualized in the original concept of “memory”, when it is not applied only to the individual. The conceptual link “memory - identity - trauma” today is one of the most popular tools for social and humanitarian analysis. However, these concepts, borrowed from psychology, have undergone significant redefinition. In its most general form, psychologists usually define memory as the mind's reflection of what happened in past experience through remembering, recalling, and recognizing. But this mental phenomenon with which psychologists deal turns into a socio-mental or socio-cultural one when it comes to sociological analysis, which focuses on the collective, normative and cultural-semiotic aspects of memory of the past. It is from this perspective that the forms of organization of memory are studied and the concept of trauma is used to analyze the narratives of national historiography.
Researchers, arguing on many issues, show striking unanimity in defining the basic characteristics of historical memory, which include selectivity, symbolism, and mythology. Indeed, memory is selective, it preserves only the most striking and important events, great deeds, and systems of collective ideas about the past differ not only in their interpretation of historical events, but also in what events they consider as historically significant. What people remember about the past - and also what they forget about it - is one of the key elements of their unconscious ideology. At the same time, the central events of history, the outstanding personalities of its heroes and anti-heroes, preserved by historical memory, acquire symbolic meaning. But historical memory is not only selective, not only symbolic in nature, it is also mythological, if only because it is determined not by the individual elements that make up its composition, but by the way in which these elements are combined into a holistic image of the past. The processing, selection and systematization of the experience of the past includes two interconnected, complementary and essentially inseparable processes, or two sides of the memory process - recollection And forgetting, as well as the key process of directly experiencing the real situation of the present and “designing” the future. As Antoine Pro put it: “Our society, obsessed with memory, thinks that without history it would lose its identity; It would be more correct, however, to say that a society without history is incapable of making plans.” Ideas about the future (in a “transformed” form) reflect the problems that worried the societies under study in their present: “Societies mobilize their memory and reconstruct their own past in order to ensure their functioning in the present and resolve current conflicts. Likewise, when they imaginatively project themselves into the future - in the voice of their prophets, utopian thinkers or science fiction authors - they speak only of their present, of their aspirations, hopes, fears and contradictions of modernity. When creating its mythological images, memory refers to a whole series of past events, but they are included in often opposing schemes, each of which is designed to explain the contradictions of the lived present and connect the “remembered” past with the expected and constructed future: “the power of memory determines the features of identity and makes the past a projection of the future." One of the most successful and meaningful definitions of historical memory clearly highlights its creative social role: “Memory is the creator of the past, the historical ability to be in time; in a universal sense, it is the selection, storage and reproduction of information... But human memory does not just accumulate information, it forms experience, correlates the past with the present and future, the individual with the generic, the individual with the general, the transitory with the stable.”
So, it is precisely on the basis of the patterns embedded in memory and previously accumulated knowledge that a person orients himself when faced with new phenomena that he has to understand. The content of individuals' and groups' ideas about the past changes in accordance with social context and practical priorities: reordering or changing collective memory means constantly constructing (“inventing”) the past to fit the present. Pierre Bourdieu considered the most typical design strategies to be “those aimed at retrospective reconstruction the past, applied to the needs of the present, or to the construction of the future through creative foresight, designed to limit the always open meaning of the present." The thesis about the “reconstructive nature” of historical memory, emphasizing the role of the value ideas implicit in it and the connection of the “knowledge of the past” transmitted by it with the situation of the present moment, was developed in the theory of cultural memory by Egyptologist Jan Assmann. But the role of “cultural amnesia” in stereotyping and mythologizing ideas about recently experienced experience with a radical change in the ideological and value guidelines of society, as well as the opposing strategy for activating emotionally charged individual and collective memories, historians have yet to explore. However, as for the category of historical consciousness, inextricably linked with the phenomenon of collective memory, the fundamental innovative contribution to its development belongs to the outstanding Russian historian and methodologist M. A. Barg, in whose concept the historical consciousness of any era, connecting the actual present with the past and future, acts as one of the most important and essential characteristics of its culture and determines the scheme for organizing the accumulated historical experience.
Today, historical consciousness acts as one of the most important subjects of historical analysis. Historical consciousness is understood as the totality of historical knowledge and assessments of the past. Defining the form of consciousness being studied as historical, come, first of all, from his meaningful, genetic And functional certainty, manifested in the fact that historical consciousness captures the past in its ideal forms (content ), is formed in the process of historical development ( genesis), itself participates in the creation of stable connections between time periods of social reality ( function). Historical consciousness is considered as a process and result of the cognitive and evaluative activity of the subject, directed to the past, and is expressed in various phenomena of the spiritual sphere of society. Although knowledge about the past occupies an important place in the functioning of historical consciousness, it characterizes only one of the sides of its manifestation; its second side is manifested in the subjective-emotional attitude towards it. respect. Reflecting the past in accordance with the existing system of values, historical consciousness becomes an immediate prerequisite for the use of acquired experience to meet necessary needs, but, of course, historical knowledge is not always an immediate prerequisite for human activity and, accordingly, there is no clear correlation between historical experience and the nature of practical activity .
In modern humanitarian knowledge, parallel typologies of historical memory and historical consciousness coexist. The initial, most primitive form of awareness and representation of the past is directly related to myth, in which the past and present are fused together, and is enshrined in rites, rituals and prohibitions. The Christian concept of history represents a utopian form of consciousness, with an established category of finite time. “From then on, on the basis of Christianity, it was no longer possible to study the past without thinking about the future, just as it was impossible to consider the present only in connection with the recent past.” Humanists laid the foundation for the “secularization of historiography” and the rational interpretation of historical experience (at this time not just a new form of historical consciousness appeared, but “actually historicized social consciousness"), and the scientific revolution of the 16th–17th centuries. created the methodological prerequisites for the historiographic revolution of the Age of Enlightenment. The subsequent development of historicism in line with “scientific history,” which deepened the distinction between elite (professional) and ordinary (mass) historical consciousness, led to the approval of a scheme of linear temporality corresponding to the modernist type of historical consciousness, which is called “historical consciousness in the strict sense of the word.” However, historical science does not at all displace previous forms: religion, literature, and art continue to play an important role in the formation of historical consciousness. Mass consciousness feeds mainly on old and new myths and retains a tendency towards traditionalism, nostalgic idealization of the past or utopian belief in a bright future. “Historical consciousness” in the strict (modern) sense of the word collapsed during the postmodern period. In general, modern historiography is characterized by the separation of the spaces of the present and the future and the rejection of the idea of predicting the future.
The famous German historian Jörn Rüsen considers the process of changing collective identity precisely as a result crisis of historical memory, which occurs when historical consciousness collides with experience that does not fit into the framework of familiar historical ideas. Ryzen proposed a typology of crises ( normal, critical And catastrophic) depending on their depth and severity and the strategies for overcoming them determined by this. In Ryzen's scheme, in contrast to his other critics, the model seems to me the least convincing normal crisis which can be overcome on the basis of the internal potential of the existing historical consciousness with insignificant changes in the methods of meaning formation characteristic of this type of historical consciousness. The second type (“critical”) questions the possibility of adequately interpreting past experience recorded in historical memory in connection with new needs and tasks. As a result of overcoming such a crisis, radical changes occur, and, in fact, a new type of historical consciousness is formed. It is precisely such a model that can quite adequately, in my opinion, describe crises of historical consciousness at the turn of historical epochs. Finally, a crisis defined as “catastrophic” prevents the restoration of identity, calling into question the very possibility of historical meaning-making. Such a crisis acts as a psychological trauma for the subjects who survived it. Alienation of “catastrophic” experience through silence or falsification does not solve the problem: it continues to influence modern reality, and refusal to take it into account narrows the possibilities for adequately setting goals and choosing means to achieve them.
The main way to overcome a traumatic experience perceived as a catastrophe is to create a historical narrative (narration), through which all past experience, recorded in memory in the form of individual events, is again formalized into a certain integrity, within the framework of which these events acquire meaning, and as a narrative can interpret not only written texts of historians, but also other forms of historical memory: oral traditions (folklore), customs, rituals, monuments and memorials. Ryzen identifies three main functions of historical narrative. First, historical narrative mobilizes the experience of the past, captured in the archives of memory, so that present experience becomes understandable and the expectation of the future becomes possible. Secondly, by organizing the internal unity of the three modalities of time (past – present – future) with the idea of continuity and integrity, the historical narrative allows us to correlate the perception of time with human goals and expectations, which actualizes the experience of the past, makes it significant in the present and influencing the image of the future. Finally, thirdly, it serves to establish the identity of its authors and listeners, convincing readers of the stability of their own world and themselves in the time dimension.
By giving an event “historical” meaning and meaning, its traumatic nature is eliminated. This detraumatization can be achieved through different strategies that place traumatic events in historical context: these are anonymization(instead of murders, crimes, atrocities they talk about a “dark period”, “evil fate” or “invasion of demonic forces” into a more or less ordered world), categorization(denoting trauma in abstract terms, as a result of which it loses its uniqueness, becoming part of a story-story), normalization(traumatic events are seen as something that constantly repeats and is explained by the unchangeable human nature), moralization(the traumatic event takes on the character of a cautionary case), aestheticization with an emphasis on emotional-sensory perception (provides traumatic experiences to the senses, placing them in perceptual patterns that make the world understandable and orderly), teleologization(uses the painful experience of the past to historically justify an order that promises to prevent its recurrence or offer protection against it), metahistorical reflection(bridges the time gap caused by trauma using the concept of historical change, answering critical questions regarding history as a whole, its principles of comprehension and types of representation), finally, specialization(divides the problem into various aspects, which become the field of study for different specialists, as a result of which “the disturbing dissonance of the complete historical picture disappears”). All of these historiographical strategies can accompany mental procedures for overcoming the destructive features of historical experience that are well known in psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis, Rüsen believes, can teach historians that there are many possibilities for transforming the meaninglessness of past experience into historical meaning. Those who are aware of their involvement and responsibility relieve themselves of this burden by moving the past beyond their own history and projecting it onto other people (in particular, by changing the roles of torturers and victims). This can also be done by creating a picture of the past in which a certain person disappears from the selected facts, as if he never (objectively) belonged to the events that constitute his identity. Similar strategies can be observed in historiography and other forms of historical culture, but alienating catastrophic experience through hushing up or falsifying does not solve the problem: it continues to influence modern reality, and refusal to take it into account narrows the possibilities for adequately setting goals and choosing means to achieve them.
The conscious or unconscious choice of one or another strategy for overcoming a crisis is expressed in the type of historical narrative, and the typology of historical narratives can become a heuristic means of studying the principles of such a choice. There are four main types of narrative that express the consistent development of historical consciousness: 1) historical narrative of the traditional type, which asserts the significance of past patterns of behavior, perceived in the present and which are the basis for future activity (in this case, identification is achieved by accepting given cultural patterns, and time is perceived as eternity); 2) historical narrative of edifying type, which asserts a rule that is a generalization of specific cases (here identification involves the application of the concrete experience of the past, generalized to rules of behavior, to the modern situation, which makes human activity rationally justified); 3) historical narrative of critical type, denying the significance of past experience for modernity by creating alternative narratives (criticism allows one to free oneself from the influence of the past and self-determination regardless of given roles and pre-established patterns; it is this type of narrative that serves as a means of transition from one type of historical consciousness to another, since criticism creates the opportunity for the development of historical knowledge ); 4) finally historical narrative of genetic type represents an understanding of the essence of history as change (past patterns of activity are transformed to be included in modern conditions, recognition of the variability of life forms and moral values leads to an understanding of others, and therefore a deeper understanding of oneself). Generally, historicization(in its various forms) is a cultural strategy for coping with the devastating consequences of traumatic experiences.
Thus, assessing the scale of the upcoming revision of established concepts of national history after the disaster, the authors of the appeal of the scientific and pedagogical Society of History Teachers, published in the summer of 1918, spoke very precisely: “National consciousness is a connection in the tradition of generations, there is, first of all, the memory of a common past and hence the will to the common future, a sense of responsibility to the dead and duty to those who will come to accept our inheritance. The past gives shape to the present and life to the future. The richness of historical memory and awareness of the value of one’s history, together with the will to jointly grow and multiply this value, make a people a nation. School consolidates this memory and shapes this will. It preserves the living continuity of generations and builds a bridge from the best traditions of the past to the future. The nation is created in the school, and its disintegration occurs through the school.”
Of course, some changes in historical consciousness occur not only in situations of catastrophe. Let us recall, for example, the events that unfolded in Europe in the 18th-19th centuries. large-scale movements to study the people's past, folklore and culture, which were supposed to form and establish a sense of national identity. In particular, studies of the historical consciousness of post-reform Russia in the second half of the 19th century, carried out by O. B. Leontyeva, convincingly demonstrated the growing interest of educated society in the past of their country, precisely because in an era of rapid social change it was seen as the key to understanding its present, to formation of the identity of Russian society.
The transformation of everyday historical ideas was carried out everywhere under the influence of universal education, and a significant role in this process belonged to professional historiography, the achievements of which (in a significantly simplified form) were transmitted to the masses. Numerous teaching aids and textbooks for secondary and primary schools, which appeared in various European countries throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, offered clear and accessible historical images that awakened national self-awareness in the semi-literate masses. School courses in the history of the fatherland, based on the purposeful selection and ordering of events and facts, formed the fundamental basis of the national mythology of the Modern era and, being an influential social institution for the transfer of historical experience, continue to solve the same problems, although with less success, in our information age.
Traumatic events are forced out of collective memory if they do not fit into the structure of the mass self-image. Collective assessment is preceded by at least two acts: the development of this assessment and its presentation to society by an authority with sufficient authority or power for this assessment to be accepted. This is how a certain ideological construct is formed that interprets the event in the interests of the power elite. Gradually, the memory of critical events, such as war, takes on a canonical form. An official picture of the crisis (war) is being created. This formalized, socially sanctioned and cultivated “memory” sets a mandatory pattern for what exactly and how to remember (it is often reproduced in the stories and memories of participants in events). However, this memory is not the only one; it coexists with other images of the same events in the unofficial, folk, and group memory. And, besides this, there is scientific historiography. Historical research has the critical function of clarifying facts. By critically interpreting them, the historical researcher transforms trauma into history without being limited by narrative models.
In this regard, the study of the culmination points of history, its turning points, always marked by high public interest in the past, heated political debates, competition between socio-political projects and “war of position” in historiography, looks especially promising. It is at historical crossroads, when in the current situation of choosing from fundamentally different roads of historical development (ideal programs for the reconstruction of society and the state, improvement of institutions, laws and morals), the role of accidents, the difficultly predictable influences of socio-ethical and socio-psychological factors, sharply increases, a clear or, for the time being, a latent transformation of historical consciousness. A long trail of emotional experiences of political cataclysms and social conflicts that occurred in the distant and even relatively recent past is gradually lost in the mythologized images of social and cultural memory, creating a rich and truly inexhaustible spiritual resource for the formation of a wide range of programs in newly emerging crisis situations - from purely conservative to radical revolutionary, not excluding, of course, various kinds of compromise projects that appeal to a common “glorious past” shared by all groups.
A brilliant analysis of the consistent mythologization of October in post-revolutionary art and mass consciousness is presented in the article by N. M. Zorka “The Myth of October as the Crown of History”: “Having rejected (or, more precisely, silenced, “hushed up”!) the poetic-romantic religious interpretation of the socialist revolution As a kind of “Second Coming,” Soviet ideology endowed “October” with all the signs of a planetary, universal event, declared it the fulfillment of all the hopes and aspirations of humanity, the crown of history, the arrival of Eden on earth. The cornerstone of the foundation of Soviet ideology was myth. This required the further course of events to “justify the myth.” It was impossible to realize the myth of an earthly paradise. The myth of the Beginning (aka the end of everything that was) gave rise to and multiplied all new myths."
I. E. Koznova in her detailed study of the memory of the Russian peasantry in the twentieth century. , with its enormous negative experience of social catastrophes, emphasizes, along with the changes introduced into collective memory and behavior patterns by each new generation, the preservation of some universal constants and highlights in the structure of memory ideas about the past, present, future and identification ideas, significantly expanding the very concept of social memory: “...If at the beginning of the twentieth century, fighting for land and freedom and relying on historical memory, looking in the past for the main argument of its present, the peasantry rushed into the future, then at the end of the twentieth century for a significant part of the peasantry of Central Russia there was no hope the future, and the past, and the relatively recent one, was relatively nourishing and calm, giving confidence to everyday existence.”
The task of translating the analysis of socio-historical discussions of the era of perestroika (1985–1991) into the perspective of a project understanding of the reconstructed past was posed in the work of T. M. Atnashev-Mirzayants with access to the broader problem of the relationship between history and politics: “What makes historiography addressed from the present to the past, so easily politicized? And an equally productive but rarely asked converse question: what makes political ideas that look from the present to the future easily historicizable?” . The author considers the interpenetration of history and politics in the field of public history to be one of the products of social consciousness of the New Age
According to this hypothesis, the possibility of politicizing history is rooted not in deliberate manipulation, but in a “project understanding of history” as the result of the conscious and effective activity of collective or individual subjects: “the past is discussed in such a way as to predict And influence the future,” the “vast store of historical experience” is used to give “validity to all the alternative political projects embedded in historical interpretations. The guarantor of the viability of a political alternative here is historical reality as a precedent: how embryo future project or as already finished model a project carried out in the past and subject to restoration in the future. Or as decisive proof of the non-viability of a certain project or its historical futility...” It is important that this is not just about using history as an illustration for ready-made political projects, but shows how “public history partly sets the political language itself and the design horizon within which political projects are conceptualized: collective political subjects, boundaries and possibilities for future action ". The author rightly notes: “Within the framework of modernity, as a project-based approach to history, the past, which is similar to a different present, rather expands the opportunity to choose a different future, i.e. the past opens up an alternative to the present." While assessing the inclusion of the projective mode in the field of discussion of the social status of historiography as extremely positive, one cannot, however, agree that “the awareness of political projection as ... the main social function of historical science is a condition for greater scientific independence of historiography.”
However, in foreign historiography of the late twentieth century one can find similar statements about the “politics of history” and “politics of memory,” although made in other ideological contexts and with different intentions. Thus, from the point of view of F. Furet, “the politics of memory, understood as the power of thinking stereotypes influencing the present from the past, is ignored in the face of another politics, implying a conscious strategy of projecting images of the past into plans for the future.” And for renowned gender theorist and historian Joan Scott, “making history is a political act: it does not represent the past, but rather creates a template for it,” and “as we are busy constructing the future today, reconstructing our understanding of the past can only help us.” And much earlier, at the very beginning of the twentieth century. The “independence” and social benefits of history were justified in a similar way. The recognized classic of positivist historiography, Charles Senobos, posing in 1907 the question of how history can serve as a “tool for political education,” gave a very eloquent answer to it: “A historically educated person has seen in the past so many transformations and even revolutions that will not be confused if he sees something similar in the present. He saw that many societies had undergone profound changes, from those that knowledgeable people declared mortal, and yet they were not the worse for it. This is enough to cure him of his fear of change and of stubborn conservatism in the manner of the English Tories."
However, to study the role of social memory about past conflicts in specific historical situations requiring important political decisions, a more complex model of the interaction of ideas about the past, present and future, which was discussed above, is needed. Its heuristic nature is especially evident in the study of a long series of post-revolutionary crises and the accompanying competition of projects using historical argumentation, as well as in the changing images of “great revolutions” in the public consciousness, the history of political thought and professional historiography.
Patrick Hutton used the historiography of the French Revolution as an opportunity to rethink "the relationship between the memory of the past and its historical understanding", pointing to the direct impact of the memory of the revolution on French politics up to the Paris Commune of 1871. According to Hutton, the historiographical tradition, going from Jean Jaurès to Albert Soboul, “connected the sympathies of its representatives with a more promising future than the revolution itself foreshadowed.” But in the nationalist tradition, the memory of the revolution was subject to revision: the revolution contributed to the formation of a modern state, but “it no longer corresponded to its future goals.” And if for J. Lefebvre “the memory of the revolution was dissolved in the tradition of a long struggle for freedom, which would end with the implementation of the socialist ideal,” then in general “from Michelet to Furet” “in the historiography of the revolution one can trace a far-reaching decline in enthusiasm in relation to its events and personalities as factors shaping the tasks of the current day."
The experience of revolution (including the “alien” revolution), perceived as an example (positive or negative) and a lesson (inspiring or cruel), largely determined the boundaries of decisions and actions of individuals and groups. P. I. Pestel, in his testimony to the Investigative Commission, wrote: “The terrible incidents that happened in France during the revolution forced me to look for a way to avoid similar ones, and this subsequently gave me the idea of the Provisional Government and its necessity, and my always talk about every possible prevention of any civil strife.” And M. F. Orlov, in the face of the past experience of the “great disasters” of the French Revolution, argued back in December 1814: “I see how from the depths of this immense catastrophe a wonderful lesson arises for peoples and kings. Such an example is given in order not to follow it...”
Perhaps it was the understanding of the experience of two civil wars and the Interregnum in England, which discredited the revolution as a means of solving socio-political problems, that contributed to the constant search for compromises in the subsequent history of the country, and the bloodless experience of compromise in the Glorious Revolution consolidated this attitude. Attitudes towards the events of this period changed along with the changes in the state of society, but the history of the revolution became a source of examples and arguments throughout its subsequent development. Ideological disputes of contemporaries, projects for the best structure of society, experiences of events and attempts to explain them, the “living memory” of participants and eyewitnesses, captured in memoirs about the events of the revolution, and the first interpretations of the completed conflict, then the rethinking of the revolution by different generations - over the course of a century - already in the context new “revolutionary experience” of 1688–1689. and, subsequently, in the context of comparison with the French Revolution, with subsequent revisions of established historiographical concepts throughout the 19th and, especially, 20th centuries, which carry a significant charge of projective thinking.
The revolution is gradually becoming a myth. If among the participants and contemporaries of the historical Event-Conflict its interpretation is correlated with personal experience, in the “second generation” - with the “living memory of their fathers”, then the “third” and subsequent generations perceive ready-made schemes, and with increasing distance from the Event, more and more new interpretive models overlap with previous readings.
The memory of the central events of the past (in the model of “disaster” or “triumph”) forms identity, largely determining the life situation of the present. The study of memory of conflicts and disasters of the twentieth century (world wars, the Holocaust, mass repressions, etc.) is of increasing interest to historians, and precisely in connection with the role of memory in the historical construction of social (collective) identity. In the discussion of these topics, two characteristic features are revealed: firstly, the presence of irreconcilable contradictions between living experience and historical memory and, secondly, significant intergenerational differences in perceptions and ideas, as a result of which the focus is on questions of the diachronic dimension of identity: how identity extends over several generations and how it is built in the historical narrative in the form of a chain of past events that are significant for each of them. Historical events, the representation of which outlines group identity, are divided into several types: 1) events with a positive basis that create identity by approval; 2) events with a negative basis that create identity by denial; 3) events or chain of events that renew the old identity. Among these latter, the following are distinguished: a) turning events; b) events that make the previously existing models of collective identity untenable; c) events that update existing models of collective identity.
In the construction of collective identity, significant generational differences are noticeable, stemming from the contradictions between the social memory transmitted seniors, and life experience of interaction with the already changed reality of the present, which forms ideas junior and, accordingly, their “designing” of the past and future. J. Rysen, in particular, proposed the following typology of perception of the Holocaust in the minds of three generations of Germans in accordance with differences in the strategy of identity construction. In the first generation, the German identity is “okay”: the Nazis are externalized as a small group of political gangsters. In the middle (second) generation, which comes into conflict with their parents, there is a desire to consider the Holocaust in a historical perspective, to comprehend the entire period of Nazism as a whole as a counter-event that constituted consciousness in a negative way (“by contradiction”). On the basis of moral principles and moral criticism (“they are criminals, we are others”), self-identification occurs with the victims of Nazism, and the national historical tradition is replaced by universal (universal) norms. This creates a new, very intense type of collective identity. In the third generation, a defining new element arises - “a genealogical attitude towards criminals”: “these are our grandfathers, yes, they were different, but at the same time they are Germans, which means “we”.” Thus, through the conflict of generations, a reconceptualization of German identity is carried out, and the shocking historical experience “returns” to national history.
Major social shifts and political cataclysms give a powerful impetus to changes in the perception of images and assessment of the significance of historical figures and historical events (including purposeful intellectual activity): there is a process of transformation of collective memory, which captures not only “living” social memory, the memory of the experiences of contemporaries and participants in the events, but also the deep layers of the cultural memory of society, preserved by tradition and turned to the distant past. Historical memory is always mobilized and updated during difficult periods in the life of a nation, society or any social group, when they are faced with new difficult tasks or a real threat to their very existence is created. Such situations have arisen repeatedly in the history of every country, ethnic or social group.
Discussing artificially constructed “biographies of nations,” B. Anderson wrote: “The consciousness of being located in the worldly, consistently progressive flow of time, with all the continuity that follows from this, but at the same time with the “oblivion” of the experience of this continuity - the product of breaks that occurred at the end XVIII century - gives rise to the need for a narrative of “identity.” This kind of need for a historical narrative of identity, as well as vivid evidence of gaps in sociocultural memory, are found in much earlier eras of world history.
Studying the historical writing that followed the crises, one can see that the integrity of the mythological canvas of memory over time (in the absence of catastrophes on a global scale), as a rule, was restored. The outstanding British historian and philosopher Herbert Butterfield in his book “The Englishman and His History” wrote: “Always, even plunging into a sea of changes and innovations, England did not break ties with its traditions... We were prudent, because we were attentive to everything that connects the past and the present together, and when great changes occurred - for example, during the Reformation or the Civil Wars - subsequent generations did everything possible to repair the holes and tears they made in the fabric of our history. The English who lived immediately after this seemed to return with a needle and, with a thousand small stitches, again sew the present to the past. That is why we have become a country of traditions and living continuity is constantly preserved in our history." This idea is developed and introduced into it by S.A. Ekshtut: “History has its breaking points, points of oblivion, points of repression of historical memory. On its pages, along with the unexplored and mysterious, there is so much unspoken and unspoken. White spots alternate with default figures. Both indicate a memory gap. And a professional historian is not always able to bridge this gap. Moreover, sometimes it is he – consciously or unconsciously resorting to lies and distorting historical events – that strengthens this gap and contributes to the final displacement from the world of unwanted remnants of the recent past.”
In maintaining and “reformatting” collective identity during dynamic social changes, the role played by deeply rooted national historiographical traditions is extremely important. In this regard, there is a need to analyze not only the historical myths of mass consciousness that form the basis of national identity, their specific functions, their marginalization or re-actualization, but also their use and ideological revaluation in successive or competing narratives, including “national history” as a form professional historical writing, in which, at different stages of the development of society, a new image of a single national past is created, corresponding to the needs of its time.
The combination of cognitive-critical and national-patriotic functions allowed “scientific” versions of the past to make a significant contribution to strengthening national self-awareness. The very laws of the “biography of a nation” genre require a dramatic development and plot completeness of a series of events, converging on the subject of identification and demonstrating key “places of memory” and symbols of a “common fate.” National history “most often is actually the autobiography of the people. Other participants in history turn out to be only a background, a context for it... As a result, national historiographies consist of a centuries-old dialogue (dispute, sometimes conflict) of ethnocentrisms.”
The central structure-forming elements and key moments of ethnic identification in the powerful force field of a cultural tradition of a communicative nature are the ethnogenetic myth - the myth of a common origin (“common ancestor”), the idea of a special territory recognized as a “historical homeland”, and a common group the past (no matter - real or supposed) that makes up the perceived community of individuals (living and gone into oblivion). Within the framework of an integral historical canvas, myths about the origin, place of residence and settlement, about common ancestors, cultural heroes, glorious leaders and wise rulers of antiquity, about “fateful” events of the common past, captured in the “legends of deep antiquity” and constantly reproduced in rituals and symbols and texts, act as the basis of any ethnocentric identification. Ideas about the past, and often about the very distant past, emphasizing the continuity and deep roots of national tradition, also act as an important factor in national identity, which takes shape in the Modern era from ethnocultural and territorial-state components. Thus, at the center of V. A. Shnirelman’s research on contemporary modernity is precisely the “image of the distant past of peoples,” since “those key periods in the life of modern society are of great importance when history is radically revised, and it is important for us to understand what these moments, why they require such a reverent attitude towards history and how exactly the socio-political situation influences the new images of the distant past being created.” In this case, we can talk not only about the reproduction or re-signification of old myths, but also about the birth of new ethnocentric myths (in the context of a new “identity narrative”), designed to clearly delineate the boundaries of “one’s” community, isolating it from a broader territorial-political entity or combining several such entities.
The national idea, which for more than a century determined the themes of historical writings in the genre of “national history,” was embodied in different ways in states of various types: in monoethnic and multiethnic nation-states. In the context of dynamic social changes, appeals to “roots” and the concept of unchanging identity can strengthen the idea of national “uniqueness” and even exclusivity (including along the line “civilization” - “barbarism”, or in the updated form of a “clash of civilizations”). In this regard, there is a need to analyze not only the historical myths of mass consciousness that form the basis of national identity, their specific functions, their marginalization or re-actualization, but also their use and ideological revaluation in successive or competing narratives, including “national history” as a form professional historical writing, in which, at different stages of the development of society, a new image of a single national past is created, corresponding to the needs of its time.
The social function of “national histories” has long been known: after all, “without awareness of a common past, people would hardly agree to show loyalty to comprehensive abstractions.” Ideas about the past, emphasizing the continuity and deep roots of national tradition, act as an important factor in national identity, which took shape in the Modern era and then for more than a century continues to be fueled by the writings of professional historians in the genre of academic “national historiography.” The combination of cognitive-critical and national-patriotic functions allowed “scientific” versions of the past to make a significant contribution to strengthening national self-awareness. The role of the intellectual constructs of historical science of the New and Contemporary times, translated into educational literature, in the formation of national identity and the ideology of nationalism, and the mobilization of national movements turned out to be extremely important.
The idea of progress, which dominated European historiography in the 19th century, justified the positive coverage of the strategy of “annexing” and “counting” small nations with larger nations from the point of view of the prospects for overall development. At the same time, in multi-ethnic countries, not to mention empires, ethnocentric history and nation-state history (with varying degrees of “nationalism”), acting in the logic of traditional “master narratives,” could enter into dissonance, emphasizing negative differences (“the image of the enemy "), confrontation, tension and open conflict.
Mark Ferro once convincingly showed that educational texts that are used in different countries to teach young people often interpret the same historical facts in very different ways, depending on national interests. However, even in the 21st century. traces of harsh mutual hostility (especially in relation to neighboring countries and peoples), a scattering of “taboo topics” and the ineradicable persistence of ethnocentric myths in national educational programs, instilling a sense of patriotism in growing citizens, cause historians and educators to feel a serious threat to the process of European integration. And here it is important not only to highlight the triumphal past or situations of historical tragedies of national humiliation, but also blockade layers of memory about the shameful past, the use of significant omissions to construct an acceptable picture of the past. Often, in public debate, competing models of national identity are formed, correlated with different types of worldviews and value orientations, with different pictures of the past and projects for the future, with different political and pragmatic goals.
What is the difference between the “history of historians” and other representations of the past? History as a science strives for a reliable idea of the past, to ensure that knowledge about him were not limited to what is relevant at a given moment in the present. While social memory continues to create interpretations that satisfy new socio-political needs, the dominant approach in historical science is that the past is valuable in itself, and the scientist should, as far as possible, rise above considerations of political expediency. Memory “...draws strength from the feelings it awakens. History requires arguments and evidence.” Meanwhile, the historian’s position regarding social memory is not always consistent, and professional historians actively participate in the process of transforming collective memory, responding to social needs. Here we find a feedback connection with the most important ethical problems of the historical profession, including the inadmissibility of “inventing the past,” its distortion and instrumentalization for any purpose.
One of the most important tasks of historical science is the demythologization of the past, but still historiography does not have a sufficiently strong immunity from pragmatic considerations. There are many means of social control over history - not only direct pressure or prohibitions, but also softer, hidden restrictions and special “incentive mechanisms”, which, one way or another, influence the formation of various historiographical traditions. Observing the situation that has developed in modern historiography, one cannot help but notice contradictory trends: on the one hand, in the statements of famous historians and public discussions, questions are raised about the most important ethical problems of the historical profession, overcoming Eurocentrism, “Orientalism” and myths about national exclusivity, and the inadmissibility of “invention” is emphasized. of the past,” its distortion and “instrumentalization” for political and any other purposes, and on the other hand, the role of history as a factor of “social therapy” that allows a nation or social group to cope with the experience of “traumatic historical experience” is actively discussed.
All of the above problems have been the subject of research in a number of projects carried out at the Center for Intellectual History of the Institute of General History of the Russian Academy of Sciences since 2000. The diverse historical material, covering more than two millennia, collected in the collective work “History and Memory: Historical Culture of Europe before the Beginning of Modern Times” demonstrated the closest connection between the perception of historical events and social phenomena: with the expansion of cultural contacts and profound changes in the living conditions of society, the priorities of historical memory, interpretation and assessment of key phenomena and events, the pantheon of heroes, etc. changed. There were different channels for broadcasting social memory of the past : oral memories, legends and traditions, various kinds of records and documents, monumental monuments, festivals, stage performances, etc. Such a role was played, for example, by the concept of “eternal Rome” in both pagan and Christian writings of the transitional era from late Antiquity to the Middle Ages, which ensured the continuity of the universalist idea, the medieval modifications of which were reflected in the empire of Charlemagne, the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation, in theocratic claims of the papacy, as well as in the concepts of the “second” and “third” Rome. The transition to the New Age gave a powerful impetus to the development of historical consciousness and the formation of a new historical culture.
The large-scale comparative project “Images of Time and Historical Representations in a Civilizational Context: Russia – East – West” aimed to develop key aspects of the problem posed using specific material from different regions of Western Europe, Russia and the countries of the East, to explore how existing cultural universals (with all the pluralism of historical cultures and the specifics of the trajectories of their development), as well as civilizational features, as well as their refraction at various stages of development of societies. To obtain comparable results in specific studies, a number of key categories and parameters were identified, including such fundamental aspects of historical consciousness as its rootedness in historical experience, normative value character, recognition - to varying degrees and in different terms - of the differences between the past and the present and understanding history as a process - connections between events over time. The forms of historical consciousness and methods of constructing images of the past, the peculiarities of the functioning of historical legends and myths, multiple interpretations and ways of describing events, various models of representation of the past and types of historical discourse, methods of constructing the national past, memorial practices and models of historical writing, processes of translation, interaction and contamination of historiographical traditions in vast cultural areas in Western Europe, Russia and the countries of the East. It is shown how representatives of various civilizational systems interpreted their past, comprehending the present, reinforcing old ideals, norms, behavioral canons, heroic models or putting forward new life guidelines and outlining pictures of the future; how meaningful and universal were the concepts and categories they used, how these images, judgments and assessments were connected with life priorities, with the depth and vector of historical memory, and much more.
Some results of the third project (“Crises of turning points in the mythology of historical memory”), aimed at a comprehensive study of ways of understanding the experience of social conflicts and disasters, their subsequent transmission and transformation into cultural and historical memory, are presented in this publication.
The bibliography of this kind of research, starting with the innovative project of Pierre Nora (see: Les Lieux de Mémoire. Ed. P. Nora. T. 1–7. P., 1984–1992), already numbers hundreds of books and articles. At the same time, a huge body of it consists of works that analyze the memory of the traumatic events of the 20th century.
For more information about this, see: Repina L. P. Historical memory and modern historiography // New and Contemporary History. 2004. No. 5. P. 33-45; Axle O. G. “The History of Memory” - a new paradigm of historical science // Historical science today: theories, methods, prospects / Ed. L.P. Repina. M., 2011. P. 75-90. Appreciating the heuristic potential memory studies, Axle rightly warns enthusiasts of the new approach against its absolutization: “The concept of “history of memory” should not at all replace all other forms of historical knowledge, it is complementary to them and should complement them” (p. 90).
Rüsen J. Was ist Geschichtskultur? Überlegungen zu einer neuen Art, über Geschichte nachzudenken // Historische Faszination: Geschichtskultur heute / K. Füßmann, H. T. Grütter, J. Rüsen. Koln, 1994. S. 5–7. This direction of historical science, which arose under the direct influence of the study of pictures of the world within the framework of the history of mentalities, gradually expanded its methodological foundations. For more information, see: Repina L.P. Historical culture as a subject of research // History and memory: Historical culture of Europe before the beginning of modern times / Ed. L.P. Repina. M., 2006. P. 5-18.
Jaspers K. World history of philosophy. Introduction. St. Petersburg, 2000. P. 115.
“It is impossible to change the actual material side of the past, but the semantic, expressive, speaking side can be changed, because it is incomplete and does not coincide with itself (it is free).” Bakhtin M. M. Aesthetics of verbal creativity. M., 1986. P. 430.
At one time, the outstanding British historian Christopher Hill spoke very accurately and succinctly on this subject: “We are shaped by our past, but from our vantage point in the present we are constantly giving a new form to the past that shapes us.” Hill C. History and the Present. L., 1989. P. 29.
Here it is appropriate to recall the words of Yu. M. Lotman that even if “this kind of text diverges from the reality of life that is obvious and known to the audience, then it is not he who is questioned, but this reality itself, even to the point of declaring it non-existent” . Lotman Yu. M. Literary biography in historical and cultural context // Lotman Yu. M. Selected articles. T. 1. Tallinn, 1992. P. 368.
The vagueness of the concept of “historical memory” causes quite understandable dissatisfaction and the desire to find an alternative to it among supporters of more strict theoretical principles of conceptualization. Cm. Savelyeva I. M., Poletaev A.V.“Historical memory”: on the question of the boundaries of the concept // Phenomenon of the Past. M., 2005. pp. 170-220. In particular, recognizing the legitimacy of using the concept of “historical memory” to describe conventional images of past events, the authors point out the incorrectness of extrapolating the cultural-anthropological approach to collective memory to modern society with its structures of mass general and special education and the Internet and prefer to use the term social (collective) ideas about the past.- Right there. pp. 216, 218.
This approach has already proven its high productivity. See for example: Zerubavel, Eviatar. Social Memories: Steps to a Sociology of the Past // Qualitative Sociology. 1996. Vol. 19. N 3. P. 283-300; Idem. Social Mindscapes: An Invitation to Cognitive Sociology. Cambridge (Mass.), 1997; Idem. Time Maps: Collective Memory and the Social Shape of the Past. Chicago, 2003; Idem. The Social Marking of the Past: Toward a Socio-Semiotics of Memory // Matters of Culture: Cultural Sociology in Practice / Ed. by R. Friedland and J. Mohr. Cambridge, 2004. P. 184-195.
Assmann Ya. Cultural memory. Writing, memory of the past and political identity in the high cultures of antiquity. M., 2004.
Barg M. A. Historical consciousness as a problem of historiography // Questions of history. 1982. No. 12. P. 49-66.
Barg M. A. Epochs and ideas. M., 1987. P. 167.
Barg M. A. Epochs and ideas. pp. 305-323.
In one of his lectures, V. A. Shkuratov proposed a typology of historical memory that is similar in meaning: a) archaic memory, characterized by cyclicity and the absence of the concept of linear time, dissolving individual experience in the archetypal present, i.e. in eternity; b) traditional memory, with the concept of the axis of time, but still an archetypal connection between the past and the future (the creation of the world and the end of the world); c) modern (modern), embedding human experience in linear time from the present to the past and the future and depriving history of its axiological coloring; d) postmodern, or postmodern, with the opposite sequence of temporal modalities “future - present - past”: we construct our past, which comes to us from the future (through captured trends in the present). Let me continue this reasoning: each historical type of memory corresponds to a certain form of historical consciousness: archaic memory - myth, traditional - utopia, modern - historical science, or scientific history.
Rüsen J. Studies in Metahistory. Pretoria, 1993; Ryuzen J. Losing the consistency of history (some aspects of historical science at the crossroads of modernism, postmodernism and discussions about memory) // Dialogue with time. Vol. 7. M., 2001. pp. 8–26. See also: Ryuzen J. Crisis, trauma and identity. pp. 38-62.
“Historicization” is a meaning-generating relationship of events in time that connects the situation of today with the experience of the past in such a way that from the course of changes from the past to the present a future perspective of human activity can be outlined. On the historicization of the catastrophic experience of total wars of the twentieth century, see, in particular: The experience of world wars in the history of Russia / Ed. I. V. Narsky, O. S. Nagornaya, O. Yu. Nikonova, Yu. Yu. Khmelevskoy Chelyabinsk, 2007.
Ryuzen J. Crisis, trauma and identity. pp. 56–60. Upon comparison, it becomes obvious that while differing terminologically, Rysen’s typology is very similar “in spirit” to M. A. Bargh’s reasoning about the change in types of “historical writing” and “schemes for organizing historical experience.” Wed: Barg M. A. ↩ Labutina T. L. English revolutions of the 17th century in the assessments of early enlighteners // Clio Moderna. Foreign history and historiography. Vol. 4. Kazan, 2003. pp. 53-61; Erlikhson I. M. English social thought of the second half of the 17th century. M., 2007.
For more information about this, see the book: The English Revolution of the mid-17th century: To the 350th anniversary. M., 1991.
Cm.: Repina L.P. Conflicts in the historical memory of generations: towards the formulation of the problem // Conflicts and compromises in the sociocultural context. M., 2006. P. 62.
See for example: Boroznyak A. I. Redemption. Does Russia need the German experience of overcoming the totalitarian past? M., 1999; He's the same. Against oblivion. How German schoolchildren preserve the memory of the tragedy of Soviet prisoners and Ostarbeiters. M., 2006.
Ryuzen J. Crisis, trauma and identity. pp. 52-54. See, for example, the analysis of the mythologization of events in Polish history in national memory and historiography: Domanska, Ewa. (Re)creative Myths and Constructed History. The Case of Poland // Myth and Memory in the Construction of Community: Historical Patterns in Europe and Beyond / Ed. by Bo Strath. Brussels, 2000. pp. 249-262.
For more details see: Repina L.P. Time, history, memory (key problems of historiography at the XIX Congress of ICIN) // Dialogue with time. Vol. 3. M., 2000. P. 5–14. S. A. Ekshtut examines the problem of generational memory from a slightly different aspect: “In our time, the time lag between the moment of an event and the beginning of its study by scientists, it is quite comparable to the period of active life of one human generation. “The historian gets acquainted with declassified documents that deal with the events of modern history and their mechanisms hidden from the views of contemporaries, which prompts him to solve difficult ethical problems: direct witnesses of the recent past are still alive, painfully experiencing the very fact of the revaluation of past absolutes taking place before their eyes values. Death has not yet gathered its harvest, but a specialist in modern history is already beginning and completing his work - and he will not only have to meet with readers, but also communicate with veterans...” Ekshtut S. A. Battles for the Temple of Mnemosyne. St. Petersburg, 2003. P. 33.
Anderson B. Imagined communities. Reflections on the origins and spread of nationalism. M., 2001. P. 222. From a different perspective, the topic of ethnic and national identities in their temporal refraction is discussed in the book: Friese N. Identities: Time, Difference and Boundaries. N.Y.; Oxford, 2002.
Among the ethnopolitical myths of the Middle Ages, the most striking example is the “myth of Trojan origin” (“the legend of Troy”), the role of which in the “construction” of the identity of the peoples of Western Europe is undeniable. Cm.: Maslov A. N. The legend of the Trojan War in the medieval Western tradition / Dialogues with time: Memory of the past in the context of history. pp. 410-446. See also: Smith A. D. Chosen Peoples: Sacred Sources of National Identity. Oxford, 2003.
Butterfield H. Englishman and his history. L., 1944. P. 5.
Ekshtut S. A. Battles for the Temple of Mnemosyne. P. 103.
Wrzosek, Wojciech. Classical historiography as a carrier of the national (nationalist) idea // Dialogue with time. 2010. Issue. 30. pp. 10-11.
Shnirelman V. A. Memory Wars. M., 2003. P. 26.
By the way, some universal components of modern ethnocentric versions of the past, such as: “myth of autochthony”, “myth of ancestral homeland”, “myth of linguistic continuity”, “myth of ethnic family”, “myth of glorious ancestors”, “myth of cultural heritage” ", "myth of ethnic homogeneity", "myth of the sworn enemy", "myth of ethnic unity" ( Shnirelman V.A. National symbols, ethno-historical myths and ethnopolitics // Theoretical problems of historical research. Vol. 2. M., 1999. pp. 118–147), have their prototypes in historical works and official documents of many previous eras.
Tosh J. The pursuit of truth. M., 2000. P. 13.
Cm.: Hobsbawm E. Nations and nationalism after 1780. St. Petersburg, 1998; Gellner E. Nations and nationalism. M., 1991. However, the idea of a nation dominated minds much earlier ( Armstrong J.A. Nations before Nationalism. Chapel Hill, 1982). The richest concrete material reflecting the development of national ideas, national consciousness and different versions of the ideology of nationalism in Western Europe is presented in the collective monograph: The National Idea in Western Europe in Modern Times. Essays on history / Rep. ed. V. S. Bondarchuk. M., 2005.
Hobsbawm E. Nations and nationalism after 1780. pp. 54-62.
Ferro M. How the story is told to children around the world. M., 1992.
Approaches to European Historical Consciousness – Reflections and Provocations / Ed. by Sharon MacDonald. Hamburg, 2000; Phillips P. History Teaching, Nationhood and the State: A Study in Educational Politics. L., 2000. See also: Lowenthal D. Possessed by the Past. The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History. Cambridge, 1998. It is noteworthy that even under the label of academic “global history”, a “hidden ethnocentrism” sometimes manifests itself in the form of the exclusion of non-European examples. See about this: Rüsen J. How to overcome ethnocentrism: Approaches to a culture of recognition by history in the twenty-first century // History and Theory. 2004. Theme Issue 43. P. 118-129.
About A. Twelve history lessons. P. 319.
See: History and memory: historical culture of Europe before the beginning of modern times (Moscow, 2006).
The scientific results of this project are reflected in the collective work “Images of Time and Historical Representations: Russia – East – West” (M., 2010).
(from book Lyudmila Rashidovna HutTheoretical and methodological problems of studying the history of modern times in domestic historiography at the turn of the XX-XXI centuries: monograph / L. R. Hut; Moscow Pedagogical State University; Adyghe State University. – M.: Prometheus, 2010. pp. 529–549)
L.R. Hoot. Today, June 14, 2009, we are talking with the Deputy Director of the Institute of General History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, President of the Russian Society of Intellectual History, Head of the Center for Intellectual History of the Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, member of the All-Russian Association of Medievalists and Early Modern Historians, the Association of British Studies, the International Commission on the History of Cities at the International Congress of Historical Sciences, executive editor of the periodicals “Dialogue with Time. Almanac of Intellectual History", "Adam and Eve. Almanac of Gender History", member of the editorial boards of the journals "New and Contemporary History", "Middle Ages", "Social History", Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor Lorina Petrovna REPINA.
Lorina Petrovna, how can you characterize the current situation in Russian historiography? In particular, does it, in your opinion, fall under the concept of “crisis”?
L.P. Repina.(Laughs) A very interesting question, considering how much we have written and how much is said about the crisis. It seems to me that we are a little late in our characteristics. We had a period that, indeed, could be unambiguously characterized as a crisis. True, taking into account what we mean by crisis, since different people understand this word differently. At one time, back in the 1980s, when we discussed the problem of the crisis, our community was clearly divided into two parts. Some understood the word “crisis” as something that ends in an almost fatal outcome. Others, optimists, apparently understood the word “crisis” to mean that, in the end, it ends in some very new and positive situation, that one must go through a crisis in order to move away, in order to reconsider what seems already outdated and, perhaps, really requires revision and going in some new direction. As an optimist by nature, I naturally adhere to precisely this point of view, especially since, in general, it seems to me that reality has proven that crisis is generally a very characteristic state for historical science. If we look from the point of view of the history of historiography, we will see that from time to time science remains in this state.
L.R. Hoot. In other words, is a crisis not an indicator of ill health?
L.P. Repina. This is not an indicator of ill health, it is a signal, it is an indicator that it is necessary to take inventory of everything that has been done by this time. See what does not satisfy the accumulated knowledge, that is, those theories, perhaps those concepts that already look outdated, not because it seems to us that we need to change our dress to a new one, but because we actually discover some contradictions that, in general, do not allow us to continue working in the same paradigm. Although, as always, supporters of the old paradigm have existed for a very, very long time, and, perhaps, will outlive those who seem to be in the vanguard. So, if we look at the history of historiography, we will see a number of situations when such a crisis occurred. Moreover, the historiography of science in general, and not just historical science, also shows the presence of such crisis situations when, in fact, this renewal occurs. Therefore, it seems to me that there is no need to perceive this so dramatically. On the contrary, if there were no crisis... The dead actually don’t have a crisis, that’s for sure, they never fall into a crisis... (Laughs).
L.R. Hoot. Those. is the organism of science alive?
L.P. Repina. Absolutely. This is precisely an indicator of his vitality. I can’t say that we are now at the peak of development, of course, it would be ridiculous to say such a thing, but, in the end, we have very interesting work, we see something new, and it’s not always new - only what comes after along some paths outlined by Western historiography. Of course, you and I understand that a lot was borrowed. While we were busy solving some of our other issues, foreign historical literature has moved quite far forward. Moreover, it seems to me that we completely ignore one more point. Why did foreign historiography develop so rapidly in certain periods, and more precisely, in the second half of the 20th century? This was also connected with the rapid development of social and humanitarian knowledge in general, in the West, first of all. In this sense, we had very strict restrictions precisely on social theories. And they didn’t just borrow these theories from related sciences. They processed them, they adapted them, they applied them to working with historical sources, and they were able to reach many positions that, unfortunately, were poorly developed in our country, although there were individual, as you and I know very well, examples, who, in general, were in the vanguard. But as for the 2000s, even now, in my opinion, it is fundamentally wrong to consider this situation only from the standpoint of the crisis. It seems to me that this is just a completely obvious way out.
L.R. Hoot. We can say that in the history of domestic historical science at the turn of the 20th – 21st centuries. Two stages can already be distinguished quite clearly: this is, relatively speaking, the end of the 1980s - 1990s. – search for a new self-identification, and the 2000s. - finding your face.
L.P. Repina. Yes, like any phenomenon, it is, of course, very heterogeneous. There are inconsistencies in different areas of historical science, this is understandable. This, of course, is conditional, like any periodization is conditional, but these two stages are very clearly visible. I would even say this: maybe not until the very end of the 20th century, but somewhere until the mid-1990s, in general, somewhere, maybe from 1996-1997. It seems to me that a new stage is beginning.
L.R. Hoot. You are a person holding a high position in the corporation of Russian historians, burdened with various kinds of official powers. In this position, from the height of these official encumbrances, what worries you most as a representative of the corporation of Russian historians? And in general, do you feel like a member of a corporation?
L.P. Repina. I feel like I'm a member of a corporation, but the point is that when we talk about a corporation, we have to understand what we mean. If we are talking about the corporation of Russian historians in general, then it is very difficult to identify ourselves here. Yes, of course, I am a historian who lives in Russia, works in Russia, and in this sense is a Russian historian. But at the level of communications, especially at the level of everyday communications, this is certainly very difficult to talk about. On the other hand, we have corporate associations. Our medievalists, for example, are very fond of saying that they are members of a corporation of medievalists. With that in mind, I consider myself a member of another corporation. We can talk about corporations within the framework of one or another direction in the development of historical science (I do not specifically use the word “subdiscipline”), because, as you and I know, there is a disciplinary division of historical science, but I take a broader view here - let’s say, directions, approaches , which can be shared by people, and this is realized very clearly, and clearly manifests itself in everyday communications. What I'm talking about now, first of all, is the Intellectual History Society. You know, in fact, when we just started creating it, I must say, it was very interesting, because in a sense it arose spontaneously. Actually, what were we talking about? It was about new approaches, a new look at what is the history of ideas, the history of human creative activity¸ including many areas of this creative activity. How can you look at it differently? And suddenly it turned out that a lot of people whom I did not know personally began to be attracted, like a magnet, to each other and to those who, in fact, started talking about it. And we started talking both at conferences and in periodicals... These people were absolutely unknown to me, I didn’t even imagine that they were doing something that was part of this space, a very vast space of intellectual history.
L.R. Hoot. In conversations with fellow historians, I have heard more than once that the Society for Intellectual History, which you head, is one of the few examples in modern Russian historical science of successful cooperation between a fairly wide conglomerate of historians, representatives of both metropolitan and regional science, who have found a common field for cooperation, I would even say collaboration in the conditions of modern “fragmented” knowledge, which takes place in historical science. This Society is an exceptional example. How did you do this?
L.P. Repina. This succeeded somewhat unexpectedly. When we just started, when my first publications on this topic began to appear, communication with people began, I did not expect such a reaction at all. I thought that this was the direction that interested me, which I have been partly involved in all my life, since we are talking about the history of historical science as part of intellectual history. And suddenly I noticed that people, seemingly completely unrelated to this, were interested, approached, and sent letters. I think that this was due to some kind of need of the people, which by that time was already clearly expressed. There was a need for renewal, a new look at the same historiography. You know very well how for a long time we understood historiography, which was generally on the margins of historical research, perceived as something almost the most marginal even within the framework of auxiliary historical disciplines. Only as problematic historiography, i.e. something auxiliary for writing a thesis or dissertation. That's all. I remember how I submitted a certificate for our director about the most promising areas of modern historiography, including the direction of intellectual history. And, after reflection, Alexander Oganovich decided to create such a Center for Intellectual History at our institute. At the end of 1998 it was created, and suddenly some strange movement began. Philosophers, sociologists, political scientists, even economists came to us, but to a lesser extent, those who studied the history of economic thought. We held a wonderful conference on intellectual communities in Perm with political scientists. We thought we spoke different languages, but it turned out that we could talk to each other, although this was our first experience. You see, intellectual history is a very broad interdisciplinary field. It is interdisciplinary by definition, because we are talking about human mental activity in a variety of fields, in a variety of fields of knowledge and not only knowledge. By the way, we have a lot of people who study the history of art, the history of literature, and literary scholars come to our seminars. It turns out that there was a need to combine the efforts of everyone in such a stereoscopic vision of this space of intellectual history. Indeed, I hear people talking about this at various conferences both in our and other institutes, that this is a rare case when such a realization suddenly happened. Of course, we then needed another stage of extensive organizational work, but this was already the second stage. The first is a genuine interest, purely human, in communication, very active. Moreover, oddly enough (now you only understand that it was not strange, but then I thought how strange it was), we have many people from different regions who respond and work very actively - and much less in the capital. Now, however, the situation has changed in the capitals. We have a very large regional branch in St. Petersburg, the largest regional branch in general. In Moscow, too, they are actually quite active. Literally every year we add more and more regional branches.
L.R. Hoot. I can voice my own, as a regional historian, subjective feelings about this. You know, you want to feel like you're part of something. This is a growing need. I would like to be in a profession not on the principle of “being your own historian” and “weaving patterns” alone. I admit that for metropolitan and Moscow historians, communication with colleagues is objectively excessive. For example, I saw with my own eyes that they don’t really go to each other’s seminars. And I’m incredibly interested in everything. You see, I think that people from the regions were drawn to the structure you created precisely for this reason - the desire to be part of that whole, which is still called historical science.
L.P. Repina. Absolutely right. You see, if we talk about Moscow, at the Academy of Sciences and universities we have many platforms for meetings. Even if we talk only about our institute, we have so many seminars that it is simply physically impossible to participate in each of them. Of course, this is less in the regions. But what is absolutely amazing and very interesting is that ultimately, regional branches are created, and people begin to actively communicate in the region after they have joined this large community. I don’t just mean everyday communication, but scientific communication. Do you understand how interesting this is? They did not find each other, although they were nearby, until they joined a large community, this conventional center.
L.R. Hoot. I keep returning to the question “about the role of the individual in history.” So, after all, you need a person who will appear at the right time in the right place and feel the vibes that are literally in the air?
L.P. Repina. Yes, they were literally in the air.
L.R. Hoot. What if Lorina Petrovna Repina had not existed? What would be…?
L.P. Repina. Maybe there would be something different.
L.R. Hoot. Are you sure?
L.P. Repina. By the way, I can say that it happened. Here, for example, is the seminar that Yuri Lvovich Bessmertny had. After all, a lot of people gathered around him. Of course, there were fewer people from the regions, there were mainly Muscovites, Moscow scientists, but he gathered people around him for a very long time, precisely because it is not just a person who collects, something must be offered in which everyone will see an opportunity of your participation. And it was. It was an absolutely wonderful seminar that taught everyone a lot. Then they somehow separated. And not because Yuri Lvovich died, it started earlier. But at that moment it was necessary. These were 1994-1996. It is very important that there was such a seminar, and perhaps if Yuri Lvovich had been alive, there would have been many more people around him now, since not everyone is involved in intellectual history. A different field would have been suggested there. But there really were much fewer of the regions there. I don't know what this is connected with. We have a very great friendship and contact. Maybe this is due to the fact that I actually travel a lot. This year, I think, I traveled less than usual, and then I had trips all the time, every month, or even two. And this is very important. Thank God, we now have the Internet, we have e-mail, without which, by the way, all this would have been impossible, because, I believe, now a community that actively communicates online, via the Internet, through e-mail is proving viable. We have a huge country, otherwise it is impossible to unite it. Can you imagine the situation at the end of the 1990s?
L.R. Hoot. I can imagine it very well.
L.P. Repina. But we had a society even in Irkutsk. True, we did not reach Vladivostok, although I went there, but somehow our community did not arise there. But Irkutsk was our easternmost regional branch, and what would we do if there were no email. We have a lot of branches in Siberia. Everyone wonders why you have so many regional branches in Siberia? And Siberia turned out to be unusually responsive to this proposal. For some reason, there really are a lot of them in different Siberian centers, starting from the Urals and further to the East. Our branches in Omsk, Tomsk, and Yekaterinburg are very active. Do you know what else is surprising, and I really like it, thanks to which this all unfolded? Each department found its own “zest”, its own niche in this huge space. For example, Omsk. In this common space, they even more clearly formulated and highlighted their direction, which they had been doing before. These are problems of historiography, historiographic life, a new subject of historiography, a historical-anthropological approach based on the material of historiography. They work great. Our Rostov branch has a wonderful niche - a supporting person in history. Six issues have already been released, and they are continuing this project. Do you know what happened interestingly? Now people from regions travel to each other. Not to Moscow, but to each other, and sometimes from afar. So, is there something there, exactly where they are going? It already has its own space, there are some things that have been developed there. This cannot be replaced by anything. Or the Tomsk branch, for example. Tomsk has always been famous for its school of historical methodology. Our colleagues in Pyatigorsk are working very interestingly. By the way, there is no classical university as such in this city. First, we had a Stavropol branch that worked very successfully in the direction of new local history. Then they, as it were, spread their experience further, carrying out such a unique colonization. And now in Pyatigorsk, at the Linguistic University, another branch of ours is opening. We also have branches in Bryansk, Tambov, Yaroslavl, Saratov. The branch in Kazan operates very successfully. Now, taking into account the new regional branches that are opening in Voronezh and Nizhny Novgorod, there will be about 37 of them in total. That's a lot actually. You know, there are very small organizations, for example, in Ufa or Cherepovets, where there are only a few people, but they united thanks to this movement. I might actually call it some kind of movement. Suddenly people appear, write to me, for example, from Barnaul, asking how they can join the Society. We respond and enter into correspondence. It even seems to me that people are perhaps not so much striving to deal with the scientific problems of intellectual history as such, but rather to find interlocutors with whom they could discuss some of their scientific problems. We are now more and more faced with the fact that we are joined by people who, in fact, are not engaged in the full sense of the word in the history of ideas, the history of science, etc. They are somewhere on a tangent, i.e. they have something that goes into this space, but the main problem is different. For example, we have many who are engaged in social, rather than intellectual, history.
L.R. Hoot. I think that again, willingly or unwillingly, we are returning to the question of the role of the individual. It is probably no coincidence that the head of this Society is a person for whom methodological reflection is an organic part of his stay in the profession. In this regard, this is a very painful question for me, which was born from the practice of the reality around me. Why, in your opinion, the so-called “Practicing” historians for the most part are so wary, I still insist on this, towards the so-called. “rootless” methodologists and epistemologists? (L P. Repin laughs heartily) Why does the very phrase “methodological reflection” often cause such an inadequate, biased reaction from those who consider themselves a true representative of the corporation, i.e. workshops of professional historians?
L.R. Repina . You know, firstly, this is, of course, a reaction in the literal sense of the word, this is the heritage that we have. It is clear what the attitude towards methodology was at one time, and, naturally, it cannot be eliminated immediately. Moreover, there is still very actively functioning, as you could see from the example of our institute, a generation of historians who are accustomed to considering methodology or as a recipe (i.e., there is a methodology that we adhere to, and this, as it were, relieves us of the need think about this themselves), or those who are completely outside of this (believing that what they do is a purely historical profession, not based on any methodology, much less ideology, etc.) I am very skeptical I relate, as you understand, to this kind of way of thinking about your profession. But I'll tell you more. The fact is that since I have been studying English history and historiography all my life, mostly British, I had to communicate a lot with British historians. It started in 1988, because before that I had never gone anywhere. I paid attention to how the situation in foreign historiography is changing. There, too - this is especially, by the way, always characteristic of British historiography, because there they were proud of their empiricism and, in general, also did not pay much attention to the methodology of historiography. They also asked me with great surprise at the beginning: “What do you do? The history of historiography? It’s like outside the profession, or at least in its margins. Every year the situation changed, because historiography, history itself as a discipline changed. She has changed dramatically. In the last third of the 20th century. Our science itself, our discipline has changed its image. And now to say that I don’t think about what I do, but simply take the source and rewrite... As one of our historians recently proved to me: “The source reports, that means it is so.” What is there to talk about? It's difficult to talk. We just speak different languages. And it seems to me that after what has been done not only in foreign historiography, not only in foreign methodology of history, but also in ours, after Aron Yakovlevich Gurevich, Yuri Lvovich Bessmertny, we can already talk about what we do like this, because that we take a source and quote from it, and it tells us something, it’s just strange. Then we really like to talk about interdisciplinarity, but 90 percent. Such statements are purely declarations, just declarations. They don’t understand at all, firstly, that the very idea of interdisciplinarity is historical, it has changed, it has been very different, and, secondly, interdisciplinarity is not what I tell you, that I use such and such non-traditional sources, that I I’m borrowing such and such a method, but we need to think of ourselves in this interdisciplinary context. How can you understand your place in this context without methodology? What are you then, if you do not understand this place of yours, your characteristics? In order to understand the features of the historical method, one must understand the methods of other sciences and be able to reflect on this matter. After all, we don’t just take something and, you know, like an iron, move it from one place to another. Or any other toolkit, if we talk about material tools. This thing can be moved like this, and there is a danger of getting burned. And when we talk about creative, research tools, this does not happen mechanically. Understanding is always needed here. Here’s reflection for you, and you can’t do without it.
L.R. Hoot. Do you have your own methodological “label”? How do you position yourself methodologically?
L.P. Repina. Maybe yes. (Laughs). Although, you may have noticed that they are now talking about pluralism, by the way, with different assessments, both plus and minus, and, probably, they don’t quite understand...
L.R. Hoot. Let me clarify right away?
L.P. Repina. Yes.
L.R. Hoot. You said "pluralism". I have heard two mutually exclusive statements on this matter. On the one hand, “pluralism is good, but pluralism in a single head is schizophrenia.” On the other hand, “I use research analysis methodologies characteristic of various methodological directions; I can be accused of eclecticism, but eclecticism is also a style.”
L.P. Repina. Let's make an analogy with an artist. Of course, an artist is not a scientist, that’s just it. But all the same, these are creative professions, here and there.
L.R. Hoot. Certainly.
L.P. Repina. Here is an artist, will he paint a portrait, a landscape, an everyday scene, and a still life in the same way? Will he use the same techniques when painting completely different paintings? He probably changes his palette, he changes the colors with which he paints, he changes, perhaps, his strokes, i.e. somewhere he paints with smoother strokes, somewhere he applies them differently. The same is probably true for the historian. After all, he cannot write a microhistorical subject in exactly the same way as he would write a course on, say, national history, regional history, etc. Does he use different methods? Undoubtedly. So I don't think it's "schizophrenia". The fact is that any method can be effective and ineffective, depending on what it is applied to, on understanding the subject of research and understanding of what you want from this subject, what you want to learn from it. Therefore, it would be very strange if we all operated with only one paint. What is the shortcoming of our historical education? In my opinion, the problem is that we are not given the whole palette when preparing a historian. At best, he will be taught quantitative methods and computer science. And who teaches us content analysis, discourse analysis, all the sets of methods that exist in social and humanitarian knowledge? The same interviewing method that you are doing now? I’m not saying that every historian should use all these methods. But he must, firstly, know about their existence, and secondly, understand what their essence is and what they can be applied to. He must have this palette. Another thing is that he may prefer warm or cold tones, but he must have a palette. But with us he doesn’t have it. Not a single university trains a historian in such a way that he masters the totality of at least the basic methods used in modern social and humanitarian knowledge.
L.R. Hoot. A historian not only can, but also must be different?
L.P. Repina. Obliged, of course. In our profession now, professional skills and competencies, as is now commonly expressed, are understood much more widely than in the 19th century.
L.R. Hoot. If we are talking about competencies, then we probably cannot ignore the so-called activity-based approach to learning.
L.P. Repina. Yes, but all this is possible only in seminars and practical classes. Lectures on methods are just ridiculous, you know? This is not how knowledge is transmitted. How was even the knowledge that we conventionally call positivist in historiography transmitted? From hand to hand. M. Blok was absolutely right, it’s still a craft. This is the only way the craft is passed on, from hand to hand. How about from hand to hand? You do it together. I always remember how Evgenia Vladimirovna Gutnova worked with me. We started with her by reading and commenting on the source together. This is the activity approach. It’s not that she told me how to do it, we did it together. She taught me the same way Evgeniy Alekseevich Kosminsky taught her in his time. She had a portrait hanging on the wall, where she sat next to him with a volume of the statutes of the kingdom, and they read it together. This is the only way to pass on the craft. And if we are talking about modern methods and we assume that the teacher will come and during 10-20 hours of lectures will talk about all the methods, and we will have an approximate idea of what it is, then this disdain and negative attitude towards methodology is born from such courses .
L.R. Hoot. Lorina Petrovna, if you again take a bird’s-eye view of those methodological innovations that happened, even if they were relayed, in domestic historiography at the turn of the 20th-21st centuries, which of them seem to you the most interesting, the most promising?
L.P. Repina. Do you mean innovation in the sense of theory or in the sense of practice, i.e. Are there any historical directions?
L.R. Hoot. I'm more interested in theory.
L.P. Repina. You probably already understood from my articles that I am very interested in new sociological theories that are associated with an attempt to synthesize structural and activity approaches. There, of course, there are a lot of examples, they have something in common, I have already written about how they converge in one space, they simply call some things differently. The terminology of sociological theories varies. But, essentially, if we talk about their application in history, they orient us in approximately the same key, these are attempts at such a synthetic approach, which, by the way, can be implemented in history. I gave examples of such exemplary research, which require enormous painstaking work, but, nevertheless, allow us to show how structures are born from the activities of people, which themselves then determine this activity. These are the sociological theories of E. Giddens and P. Bourdieu, of course. Although we can add some of our dissatisfaction to each of these authors. In particular, many people criticize P. Bourdieu for his concept of habitus, because there is too much determinism there. You know, torn quotes always greatly simplify and round out the concept. You must not tear out quotes, you must carefully read everything, even where it seems to you that he is talking about something of little significance. To understand the concept, you have to be very, very careful. In fact, if you read carefully, there is no hyperdeterminism there. By the way, our St. Petersburg sociologists are working very interestingly. For example, V.V. Volkov and O.V. Kharkhordin. Their “Theory of Practices” is an absolutely wonderful book. They, in fact, represent different theories of practices. For a historian, this is a treasure trove. It is clear that we do not borrow these theories. We are simply trying, on this basis, to comprehend the material with which we are dealing. They simply guide us, for the historian these theories guide us, and when we do this, we greatly enrich our own work. In general, what is a “method”? “Path”, if you translate this word into Russian. They show us the way, and not at all that we must rigidly build everything we want into this scheme.
L.R. Hoot. I think you said very correctly about P. Bourdieu. I tried to read him selectively, for example, the section “Field of Science” from his work “Social Space: Fields and Practices”. It didn’t work, and I realized that I had to read everything, because, indeed, the concept can only be perceived after a deep immersion in the author’s argumentation system.
How did your “bridge” to the developments of Russian historiography at the turn of the 19th – 20th centuries happen? It is very significant for me what you write in your recent work “The Idea of General History in Russia: From Classics to Neoclassics.” You search and find in the works of famous Russian historians of this period something that is in tune with the searches of modern Western historiography and our relays on this matter. How did this happen for you?
L.P. Repina. Actually, I must say that this was all a long time ago; I have always been interested in the history of historiography. I knew this when I wasn’t doing it myself. I was just interested in it, I read a lot. Then, you know, in our country in the 19th century. there was a very strong English school. Willy-nilly, even when I was studying the specific historical problems of medieval England, I naturally read the works of our leading specialists. So I was very familiar with the intellectual context of the time.
L.R. Hoot. Now you have a lot of articles on the idea of universal history. What is this connected with?
L.P. Repina. I can't even say what exactly this is connected with. Probably with my constant interest. The thing is, when I read these works, I try not to read into them what is not there, you know? I don’t want to bring together what is written there, those ideas, those thoughts that are reflected there, with what I now imagine. Another thing is very important. You understand what’s the matter, because what grew up in world historical science at the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st centuries did not fall from the sky either. It has sprouted. You probably didn’t pay attention, but many Western historians, I mean major ones, who think methodologically, very often refer to their same Western historians (Russian literature, they, of course, either don’t know at all, or know very poorly) , for some reason old, XIX and especially early XX centuries. They also discover in them some thoughts that stimulate their creative activity, their creative reflection today. They are in some ways consonant, but in some ways they are the opposite; they always allow you to find something new, but appealing to something, i.e. comparing it with something. You can say, yes, this is new, when you compare it with what already exists. In this sense, why are these our historians interesting? Firstly, the second half of the 19th century. - This is the golden age of all historiography. Both global, foreign, and ours, domestic. Our leading, wonderful, great historians of the 19th century. were not only at the level of world science, they were in many ways superior to Western historians in their respective fields. I really like to quote T. N. Granovsky when he talks about what we, Russians, can see in foreign history, not Russian, but universal history, something that neither French, nor English, nor German historians will see, because that for them this story is their own. And we look at these processes from the outside, and even at a moment when we are experiencing similar processes, although for them they have long passed. And here’s a wonderful expression by P.G. Vinogradov "Antiques of British History". So, they say, Russian historians are interested in the antiques of British history. Why? Because for them this is not an antique, it was the reality in which they lived. The processes were very similar, but, of course, they were different in many ways. And it was no coincidence that they were so interesting to them. Or, for example, the same Vladimir Ivanovich Guerrier. I have long dreamed of writing, but unfortunately I have not yet written, a long article “Vladimir Ivanovich Guerrier and the beginning of intellectual history in Russia.” What V.I. did Guerrier, - this is now the intellectual history we are talking about. Contemporary intellectual history is just entering this space. We don’t yet have the kind of work he did on W. Leibniz, not at all. He has not just Leibniz, not just his ideas, not just his life. He has the whole intellectual context, the whole of Europe, he shows all the communication networks. This is the modern idea of smart networks. He doesn't call it an intelligent network, but he has it all demonstrated. He shows how these ideas spread, not just connections between some intellectuals, but how these ideas spread more widely to educated society, even if it was only the top of society, but how they spread. By the way, he writes about the role that women played in this, salons. When was the work written? In the middle of the 19th century! They completely forgot about her. And now we wanted to re-release it. When I agreed, a reissue was published in St. Petersburg. And what did they do? They published it one by one, without comments, without anything, you know? What kind of disservice is this to Vladimir Ivanovich Gerye? This is a monument of thought, after all, it needed a thorough commentary, a huge research article was needed so that his own work, not W. Leibniz, whom he placed in the intellectual context of the era, but his work was placed in the intellectual context of the era when this work was written and published for the first time. So what? Well, they reproduced it, just like a lot of things here. You have probably seen the new publications of our historians of the 19th century. I really “like” how R.Yu.’s textbooks. Whipper was published, remember? Students say to me: “Lorina Petrovna, why Whipper?” I ask in response: “Do you know who this is?” They don't even know that. They do not understand. How can you do this? I had a paper called “Contexts of Intellectual History.” She is very small and short. Of course, it was necessary to expand it, I plan to do this over time. There are also many contexts, these are social, political, and, in fact, intellectual and cultural contexts of that era. But the analysis of intellectual history is also another context, a vertical one. This is a constant interaction with the ideas of centuries gone by, but they live because they are in books, in texts. Here is intertextuality in a completely living embodiment. What is a library? It creates such a context. But we always forget that a philosopher of the 17th century, for example, lives not only in his century, not only with the ideas of his century, he also communicates with the philosophers of Antiquity, the Renaissance, the scholastics of the Middle Ages, etc. And historians too. Don't historians read? Didn't the same Jean Bodin read historians of an earlier period? Or historians of the 18th century. were they illiterate? The researcher forgets that these ideas coexist at the same time, they do not just lie on shelves, they interact with us.
L.R. Hoot. When we talk about interdisciplinarity, we, first of all, mean dialogical relations between historians and representatives of related and sometimes non-related branches of knowledge. What about an intra-shop conversation? Let's say, between medievalists and historians of modern times? Can and should they communicate? If so, what should we talk about first?
L.P. Repina. I don't understand this as a question at all. I am surprised by this division. After all, very often our mistakes and some incorrect interpretations arise, in particular, in those areas that are on the border. Why? Because medievalists believe that this is “not theirs,” and Novists believe that this is also “not theirs.” And as a result, a whole layer remains, not only completely unexplored, but somehow poorly studied.
L.R. Hoot. For example, early modern times...
L.P. Repina. Yes, it always suffered. XVII century – this is a sufferer, you understand? Because what was it like with us before? Until the end of the 16th century. – after all, medievalists still studied this, it was enshrined in textbooks. Novists have been studying it since the English Revolution. And what happened? The English revolution took place in the middle of the 17th century. And so the entire 17th century, I’m talking not only about the history of England, but about the 17th century in general, turns out to be in some kind of gap, in some kind of corridor that didn’t particularly shine for anyone. They didn't do much of it. Now the periodization has changed, thank God! But still, I don’t see that it’s particularly... Do you understand what’s the matter? In our institute, the early modern era is more inclined towards the Middle Ages. At RSUH this is New History. This is purely institutional, these are personal and institutional factors. I can’t even imagine what’s at the university.
L.R. Hoot. A recent article by the head of the Department of New and Contemporary History of European and American Countries of the Faculty of History of Moscow State University L.S. Belousov, published in the journal “New and Contemporary History,” indicates that this issue is not fully clarified for them either.
L.P. Repina. You see, this happens very randomly. This happens purely institutionally. It's different at different universities. I don’t have such a division – medievalists, neovisists – precisely because I have always been interested in history as a science, as a way of thinking. I am also interested in reading books and articles on modern history, although it is interesting to read, of course, good books, which is very rare. I really like reading books on Russian history, although I have never studied it. I am now very friendly with orientalists, and many of them participate in our projects. By the way, they discovered a completely new communication, a new circle. They were like in a ghetto in their Institute of Oriental Studies. Moreover, they sit there in “apartments”, Sinologists do not communicate with Indologists, Arabists do not communicate with anyone in particular. But they entered into this project. What is modern historical science? These are projects, collective projects. I believe this is the future. Of course, individual monographs and everything else remain. But where can a breakthrough be made? Collective projects that respect neither geographical nor chronological boundaries. And this is exactly how we did all our projects. Our most global project is on intellectual history. There are no boundaries, no geographical or chronological boundaries, we all worked together. And our project on the history of memory, the history of historical consciousness is proceeding in the same way. It is attended by orientalists of various directions, specialists in Western countries, different eras, from the Ancient East to modern times, modern Russia and other countries. There are absolutely no restrictions in space and time. And, you know, a completely different view arises. A lot of people began to look at their own material differently. For example, one of our very talented young researchers, a cultural scientist by profession, has now written an excellent book, which has not yet been published, about monumental practices.
L.R. Hoot. What is her name?
L.P. Repina. Svetlana Eremeeva. She gave reports to us several times, attended our conferences, and published articles. True, she did not participate in the project itself as the main performer, but her article was published. An absolutely magnificent work on memorial practices in Russia from the end of the 18th to the end of the 20th centuries.
L.R. Hoot. Having great respect for the truly strong corporation of medievalists that endured a lot “in the dashing 90s,” I, however, have more than once expressed a claim, the essence of which is as follows. They are too closed in on themselves, including when discussing those issues that, in my opinion, cannot be discussed only by medievalists or only by novists. Maybe this comes from the best intentions, from a natural and normal sense of self-preservation, I don’t know. Let me give you a specific example. Having carefully read the materials of the three-day reading conference of the journal “Middle Ages”, especially with the materials of the third day devoted to the discussion of the problems of early modern times, in particular the problem of periodization, I was very surprised to discover that, firstly, they discussed something This problem was addressed only by medievalists, and, secondly, one of the final slogans and appeals sounded like this: “We must take care of our clearing!” What does “our clearing” mean? And in this sense, I still believe that in this part, building your relationships with colleagues in a very respected corporation of medievalists is not entirely correct.
L.P. Repina. By the way, pay attention to who participates in this corporation, because there are a lot of not medievalists, but specialists in the early modern era. In general, medievalists are characterized by guild thinking, although, of course, to a lesser extent than classical scholars. Classical scholars are generally a closed corporation. But still, there is this guild thinking, the idea of oneself as one’s own corporation. In part, there are some advantages to this, but in the modern situation, if we talk about the modern historiographical situation, this is not a plus, but a minus. There must be dialogue. And with representatives of other disciplines, I mean other sciences, and with representatives of other branches of our historical science. But there are difficulties on both sides. The fact is that many of our medievalists and our modernists speak different languages. If we talk about specialists in modern history, there are still much more of them; we have groups on both the 18th and 19th centuries. And they do completely different things, they look at the material they deal with completely differently, and from a methodological point of view they take different positions. If our group on the history of the 18th century. sees his main task as identifying as many archival documents as possible about connections between educators from different countries, then what should medievalists talk to them about? There is simply no platform from which to conduct the conversation. And our specialists in the 19th century. the main project is now related to the formation of civil society and certain institutions, but, in general, they are still mainly engaged in political or socio-political history. You know, it's very difficult to interact here. Why are new research fields so attractive, which perhaps came from Western historiography, but, nevertheless, blossomed in full bloom here? Precisely because they do not know such boundaries. They are built around an approach. Methods can be different, if we are talking about a method, not about methodology as a whole, but about a method. But, for example, the gender approach. It unites, because we won’t talk here, you’re a medievalist, and I’m studying modern times. If your focus is on sociocultural ideas about masculinity and femininity, you don’t care what period your interlocutor is engaged in. You are interested in his material because you see these familiar fields that give you some food for your own thoughts. Or intellectual history is the same. And if you are engaged in identifying and publishing an archival source as such, as our colleagues in the 18th century do. , or if you are engaged in specific, I would say, social history, which has not yet turned into sociocultural history, then what should I talk to you about? If you are engaged in a medieval workshop, what should you talk about with the person who is engaged in the 19th century? The platform for your conversation is very limited. You can only say something in general, but it doesn’t generate much interest. Why do I think that so-called sociocultural history, broadly understood, or cultural-intellectual history has good prospects? It brings people very close, it gives them a more or less holistic, unblinded, or something like, view of what we are studying. After all, when we talk about the study of cultural ideas, we have the same ideas about everything, i.e. We are not highlighting here any purely political, economic, etc. Why did those who studied the history of economic thought, for example, come to us and work with us with great interest? What we were talking about? And we have common positions, this intellectual context. Even if we talk about living people of that time. They didn’t sit in separate cages, they communicated. The same Charles Darwin, for example. He communicated with people who were engaged in completely different sciences, but, nevertheless, what impact did all this have, and what interaction. So, you know, it's interesting. If we are dealing with a very specific problem, this does not mean that all our thoughts and interests should be limited to this. It is not for nothing that the most outstanding historians of all times and peoples have always been broad-minded people and did not isolate themselves in their specifics.
L.R. Hoot. I will risk formulating a question that is also a statement. After getting acquainted with a fairly large number of studies by domestic medievalists and novists at the turn of the 20th-21st centuries. I noticed that the corporation of medievalists is more focused on working within the framework of, generally speaking, micro-approaches to the study of the past. Novists still gravitate more towards macro. I got the impression that the material calls some people and others in different directions. Thus, attempts at a holistic view of the realities of the development of the historical process are, first of all, brought to life by the needs of a globalizing, as they say today, world. There is a well-known discourse that history has always been world history, but in the real sense of the word it becomes so precisely in the era of modern times. So it is precisely the era of the New Time that requires a substantive interest in interaction. Hence the demand, first of all, for comparative analysis. The field of medieval studies, in my opinion, provokes, first of all, interest in these “patterns”, in localities, in particular subjects.
L.P. Repina. I would disagree with you on this. If we talk about New History, then in Western historiography there is a huge amount of research specifically on local history, as well as on medieval studies and early modern history. You know, local history is blossoming now. True, this did not start today, but, nevertheless, this is a lot of research. Just a few days ago I was looking through a magazine that I really love, called Economic History Review. It regularly publishes a bibliography on the economic history of England for a particular year. It seems to be an economic magazine, but there is so much more to it than just economic history. The detailed bibliography (in small print on 54 magazine pages) includes a section on “Local History.” It clearly stands out in volume. Local history, regional history. In many countries, these terms are perceived almost as synonyms. Those. it is independent of chronology.
L.R. Hoot. Does not depend?
L.P. Repina. Does not depend. I’m not talking about our current historiography, but about the world’s, i.e., this is also in the 19th century. So. Probably in the 20th century, but I just don’t do it. He somehow doesn't interest me in this regard. So that's not the point. The point, apparently, is different. On the one hand, the development of local history of the Middle Ages in the West, including in Britain, which I specifically studied, is largely due to the fact that local archives were brilliantly preserved there - parish, rural, and urban. On the other hand, there are much fewer of these medieval documents than documents from the 19th century. In addition, in the 19th century. very many documents are in the central archives, because at that time the state was already playing a different role, and they, firstly, partly passed into the state archive, the central one, and secondly, for example, qualifications, i.e. Censuses were also state censuses. And all the documents ended up there. And in the Middle Ages, such documents ended up in local archives. Therefore, there are indeed many such works written on local archives within the framework of local history. You come to one village, sit in it for as many years as you need, and do a dissertation on the material of this very village. But to do work on a larger scale using specific historical material, and even on a later period, when, naturally, there are more sources, is quite difficult. This means you need to use either mathematical or quantitative methods, because you need to take a sample; you cannot master all the documents. Or you need to come up with something, so to speak, some other techniques for mastering this material. I am talking now about specific studies. Another thing is generalizing works. Of course, these are completely different things, this is a different genre of work altogether. As for micro- and macrohistory, everything depends on the tasks that the historian sets for himself in each specific case. For example, my favorite local historian, by the way, the former head of the Leicester school of local history, Charles Fithyan-Adams, had different books. He studied purely local history. But one day he was asked to write a general work on the history of England in the 16th – 17th centuries. And he realized that this was a completely different job, a different view of history. And so he wrote a special work, “The Historian between the Local and the National.” This is a different genre, a different vision, it’s quite difficult to move from one to another. And very often, I think, historians are simply flirting, saying that they are adherents of such a very specific, scrupulous, subtle study, so they will not engage in any generalizations. In fact, this is funny to hear, because the historian always makes generalizations, no matter what specific material he works with. He still deals with some kind of generalizations, if, of course, he works with more than one sentence in one source, it’s just that the levels of this generalization may be different. To be honest, I wouldn't do it that way. This is largely an accident. This, you know, has to do with the brain; special brains are probably needed in order to generalize. This is not so simple in reality, unless you think in abstract schemes, but are trying to generalize a very large and very diverse material. With any generalization, the details always suffer, this is understandable, it cannot be avoided. But, nevertheless, how else would we navigate the world if we did not generalize? Therefore, it seems to me that there is no such dilemma here. In general, I believe that the greatest successes were achieved by those historians who knew how to work in this shuttle way - from micro to macro and back. And then they could increase something, some kind of knowledge that is not captured at any one level. And at one time, Evgenia Vladimirovna wonderfully said that it is very important to study not the lowest, not the smallest sociocultural forms, and not the highest, at the state level, for example, but the middle ones. In fact, the same Fithyan-Adams wrote about this in great detail in his reflections on the local and national in history. This, as I call it, “mesohistory” is not just located in the middle, all the interaction between micro and macro goes through it.
L.R. Hoot. Lorina Petrovna, “will Clio survive globalization?”
L.P. Repina. Question from Mikhail Anatolyevich Boytsov. (Laughs). History will survive, of course. History has lived and will live. A person cannot navigate in time, cannot be aware of himself without being aware of his past, i.e. no biography. Both one person and groups as a whole, not to mention large societies. History - what is it? If we speak according to T. N. Granovsky, this is a biography of humanity. The national state will go away, but humanity will remain. Just imagine the Russian 19th century. It would seem that nation-building is underway, state history is at its peak, and they, our great historians of the 19th century, are talking about the history of mankind, and not about national history. A N.I. How did Kareev perceive all this? You know, they don't read well here. This is either due to inattention, or lack of interest, or laziness. Read N.I. Kareev - he said everything about global history. Everything is absolutely. He talked about what history is from a global point of view. This is a story of interactions and relationships. So write global history this way, starting from the earliest times.
L.R. Hoot. History – science or art?
L.P. Repina. It all depends on what we mean by this word. As you know, the word “history” has many meanings. If we consider professional historiography, this is, of course, a science. But, probably, along with this science, there is so-called popular history, which, in principle, is designed to popularize scientific knowledge, but not in our country, that’s for sure. In our country, what is called popular history does not popularize scientific knowledge, but is simply engaged in journalism. This is absolutely clearly visible. That's why I never do popular history. It’s a shame, of course, but in our country this is impossible.
L.R. Hoot. Is the line separating the natural sciences and the humanities really impassable?
L.P. Repina. You know, now the natural sciences have become very close to the humanities. They also went beyond their limits.
L.R. Hoot. This is good?
L.P. Repina. This is very good. Perhaps so be it.
L.R. Hoot. Do you know what I noticed? Representatives of the natural and mathematical sciences want to get closer to history, but historians for the most part distance themselves. I can’t understand what this is connected with?
L.P. Repina. We talk about whether the story will survive. What about without a past? After all, in order to understand the current situation, we need to understand where we came from to this situation. After all, we see a lot of such cases when mathematicians begin to get involved in history, thinking that they will understand everything in it perfectly, because they are so smart, and do not understand what the essence of the historical method is, and the results are similar to Fomenko. Of course, historians are trying to simply move away from this, because it is useless to argue with these people. It happened before. They came to our institute and tried to discuss. They were told, they were shown, even clearly. I remember G.A. Koshelenko told them: “You come to me for excavations, I will give you a shovel in your hands, dig up.” And they responded: “They just buried it there. They deliberately falsified history and buried everything.” What to talk about with these people? These are, of course, isolated cases, but there are others.
L.R. Hoot. Why are these books, by Nosovsky and Fomenko, for example, being published so actively?
L.P. Repina. This is a question for those who publish these books. Pavel Yuryevich Uvarov is partly right in this when he says that we do not have a community. He means, first of all, the expert community. We have no expertise. But everything doesn’t depend on us here. After all, you have to become an expert. There should be an independent examination, but where do we have it? Who invites us as independent experts? The same publishing house, for example, before publishing this or that book? It is important for him to get money in his hands. It doesn't matter to him what is depicted there. Therefore, he will never call a specialist who will say that this book cannot be published. They had a lot of money, they published their books in millions of copies.
L.R. Hoot. Where does the money come from?
L.P. Repina. I think they had many sponsors, different patrons. And then, you know, it’s easy. After all, everything that is simplified is especially scandalous, it’s interesting, very often people are invited to appear on radio and television. By the way, I remembered how Western historians write about this, it’s simply wonderful. Haven’t you read how P. Bourdieu wrote about this? This is the song as he describes it. They invite you and say: “You will have 3 seconds to speak.” (Laughs). He has a wonderful book about television. There are thoughts that are not only for television, but for everything. These are his lectures. He didn’t go to such events and said: “I don’t understand, why? This is profanation." I respected him and respect him for this.
L.R. Hoot. But doesn’t it turn out that precisely because of the presence of such communities of “money makers” on such “hot” topics or “incredible” ideas, the road to a normal organic natural dialogue between historians and mathematicians is complicated?
L.P. Repina. Absolutely right, I give this example precisely in this regard. Sometimes people come to me with special offers. Or they send us something. There is a clean clinic, I’m not talking about that at all. When, for example, a person writes that he has discovered the law of the development of human civilization, and wants me to look at this law, what can I say about this? But there are quite normal people, from physicists, from some techies, to whom you are trying to show (and I tried before, I don’t discuss this with them now) that this is wrong, that there is no material to reason like this, that you need to work with sources. They don’t understand what sources are at all. He is L.N. I read Gumilyov and believe that nothing else exists. What to talk to them about? There will be no conversation. Who can you talk to? For example, Leonid Iosifovich Borodkin. He came from there at one time, from a completely different environment. Even now I have something to argue with him about, but still he became a historian, acquired historical thinking, works with historical sources, with a historical audience. This is a completely different matter. And many people think that historical methods are nonsense. However, the critical method of source material analysis is one of the most difficult methods to really get right.
L.R. Hoot. Lorina Petrovna, you can’t even imagine how many things you said that were very meaningful to me. Thank you very much!