Historiography Of Imperial Russia The Profession And Writing Of History In A Multinational State

This collection of the best new and recent work on historical consciousness and practice in late Imperial Russia assembles the building blocks for a fundamental reconceptualization of Russian history and history writing.

This collection of the best new and recent work on historical consciousness and practice in late Imperial Russia assembles the building blocks for a fundamental reconceptualization of Russian history and history writing.

It is commonly held that a strict divide between literature and history emerged in the 19th century, with the latter evolving into a more serious disciple of rigorous science. Yet, in turning to works of historical writing during late Imperial Russia, Frances Nethercott reveals how this was not so; rather, she argues, fiction, lyric poetry, and sometimes even the lives of artists, consistently and significantly shaped historical enquiry. Grounding its analysis in the works of historians Timofei Granovskii, Vasilii Klyuchevskii, and Ivan Grevs, Writing History in Late Imperial Russia explores how Russian thinkers--being sensitive to the social, cultural, and psychological resonances of creative writing--drew on the literary canon as a valuable resource for understanding the past. The result is a novel and nuanced discussion of the influences of literature on the development of Russian historiography, which shines new light on late Imperial attitudes to historical investigation and considers the legacy of such historical practice on Russia today.

What was the role of historians and historical societies in the public life of imperial Russia? Focusing on the Society of Zealots of Russian Historical Education (1895–1918), Vera Kaplan analyzes the network of voluntary associations that existed in imperial Russia, showing how they interacted with state, public, and private bodies. Unlike most Russian voluntary associations of the late imperial period, the Zealots were conservative in their view of the world. Yet, like other history associations, the group conceived their educational mission broadly, engaging academic and amateur historians, supporting free public libraries, and widely disseminating the historical narrative embraced by the Society through periodicals. The Zealots were champions of voluntary association and admitted members without regard to social status, occupation, or gender. Kaplan's study affirms the existence of a more substantial civil society in late imperial Russia and one that could endorse a modernist program without an oppositional liberal agenda.

An examination of how land became a measured entitlement in Russia.

This study is an intellectual biography of Nikolai N. Bolkhovitinov (1930–2008), the prominent Soviet historian who was a pioneering scholar of US history and US–Russian relations. Alongside the personal history of Bolkhovitinov, this study also examines the broader social, cultural, and intellectual developments within the Americanist scholarly community in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia. Using archival documents, numerous studies by Russian and Ukrainian Americanists, various periodicals, personal correspondence, diaries, and more than one hundred interviews, it demonstrates how concepts, genealogies, and images of modernity shaped a national self-perception of the intellectual elites in both nations during the Cold War.

Kati Parppei examines the development of the perceptions and images concerning the battle of Kulikovo, fought between Muscovite and Tatar troops in 1380, in Russian history writing from the 15th century to the present.

Reformulating Russia provides a thorough narratological and contextual analysis of Russian émigré historiography as it appears in Georgii Fedotov’s Saints of Ancient Russia, Georgii Florovskii’s The Ways of Russian Theology, Nikolai Berdiaev’s The Russian Idea and Vasilii Zenkovskii’s History of Russian Philosophy.