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Klyuchevski and Recent Trends in Russian Historiography1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2017

Michael Karpovich
Michael Karpovich*
Affiliation:
Harvard University
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Extract

Works of broad historical synthesis have been rare in all periods and all countries. Modern Russian historiography is not an exception. Among the Russian historians of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, only three names can be cited as coming under this head: Karamzin, Solovyov, Klyuchevski. And of these three Klyuchevski occupies a position which is, in a sense, unique. Karamzin, the “Columbus of Russian history” as Pushkin has called him, discovered that subject for the general reader to whom he appealed more than to the specialists in the field. By no means a mere dilettante, as he has been so often pictured, he still was primarily a great literary artist, and only in the second place a scholar. His importance lay more in the field of general Russian culture than in that of historical scholarship. On the contrary, Solovyov has remained essentially a historian for historians. Devoid of literary brilliance, and lacking in architectonic ability, he has left us the twenty-nine volumes of his History of Russia from the Earliest Times, to be consulted with the help of the index rather than to be read through and enjoyed. Both the size and the arrangement of his monumental work have given it a somewhat forbidding nature. For a casual reader his general conception of Russian history is hidden behind the mass of detailed material, for the most part presented in a strictly chronological order. Of the three masters of Russian historiography, Klyuchevski alone combines a great literary skill, rivaling that of Karamzin, with profound scholarship, not inferior to that of Solovyov; hence his simultaneous and equally powerful appeal to the general reader and the specialist.

Type
Research Article
Information
Slavonic and East European Review American Series , Volume 2 , March 1943 , pp. 31 - 39
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 1943

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Footnotes

1

Based on a paper read at the 1940 annual meeting of the American Historical Association.

References

2 Istorija Rossii s drevneiśich vremen (1851–1879).

3 Karamzin's Islorija gosudarstva rossiskago was published in twelve volumes in 1816–1829. For the summary of contemporary criticism, see P. Milyukov, Glavnvja techenija russkoi istoričeskoi mysli (1898) and N. Orlov's introduction to Nikolai Polevoi i materialy Po istorii russkoi literatury i žurnalistiki tridcatych godov (1934).

4 “Juridičeskaja škola v russkoi istoriografii,” Russkaja Mysl, 1886, VI.

5 Kurs russkoi istorii, I-IV (1904–1910). The fifth volume was published posthumously in 1921.

6 Cf. A. Kizevetter, “Pervy kurs Ključevskago,” Za piski Russkago Naučnago Institute v Belgrade, III (1931).

7 “Rossija Ključevskago,” Sovremennyja Zapiski, L. (1932).

8 S. Tkhorzhevsky, “V. O. Ključhevski kak sociolog i političeskii myslitel,” Dela i Dni, II (1921).

9 Klyuchevski's minor historical monographs have been collected in his Opyty i izsledovanija (1915).

10 See, however, his Istorija soslovii v Rossii (1913), for one expression of a somewhat more favorable attitude.

11 I am omitting from this discussion any consideration of the Marxist historiography in Russia as a subject that requires separate treatment. Tor .Marxist attitude towards Klyuchevski, see M. nechkind, “ Ključcevski,” Russkaja istoričeskaja literatura v klassovom osveščenii, II (1930).

12 Ellinstvo i iranstvo na iuge Rossii (1910). English version: Iranians and Greeks in South Russia (1922). Cf. his “South Russia in the Prehistoric and Classical Period,” American Historical Rtvirui, xxvi (1921).

13 “Zvičaina schema russkoi istorii i sprava racionalnogo ukladu istorii schidnogo slavjanstva,” Sbornik statei po Slavjamnedeniju, I (1904). Hrushevski's own “scheme” was expounded in his Istorija Ukrainy-Rusi, I-IX (1898–1931).

11 See his Načertanie russkoi islorii (1927) and Opyt istorii Evrazii (1934). In the English works of the same author “Kurasianism” has been somewhat toned down.

15 Knjažoe pravo v drevnei Rusi (1909) and Obrazovanie velikorusskago gosudarstva (1918).

16 A convenient summary of recent investigations of the subject can be found in J.Polosin, “Le servage russe et son origine,” Revue Internationale de sociologie, XXXVI, (1928) or in D. Odinetz, “Les origines du servage en Russie,” Revue historique du droit français etranger, 4me série, X (1931).

17 See the introductory chapter to the Course.

18 Feodalizm v drevnei Rusi (1907) and Feodalizm v udelnoi Rusi (1910).

19 See, for instance, C. Vernadsky, “Feudalism in Russia,” Speculum, XIV (1939).

20 These have been collected in his Očerki i reči (n.d.).

21 Očcerki po istorii russkoi kultury, I-III (1896–1903). The last revised edition (1930–1937) as yet has remained incomplete.