Russian ancient history; preliminary essay

"The subject, categories, and essence of historical knowledge"

This essay is first presented to the students. For us, maybe it is good just to get into the rest of the book first, and read this later. (Or, it definitely has some good considerations.)

Any science begins with a definition of the concepts on which it relies for cognition. The original meaning of the word history goes back to the ancient Greek term meaning "investigation," "recognition," "establishment." This is what Herodotus, the "father of history" (484-431/25 B.C.), called his work. A clear distinction between science and art was not yet made at that time. This is clearly reflected in the mythology of the ancient Greeks: the goddess Athena patronized both the arts and the sciences, while the muse Clio was considered the patroness of history. History was identified with the establishment of authenticity, the truth of events and facts. It was then that "history" began to refer generally to any account of an event, an occurrence, real or fictitious. Currently, history as a scientific term has two interrelated meanings. The first is history as a process of social development, and the second is history as the science of this process.

The object of historical science is considered by most historians to be human society in all the diversity of its past, in its development and change. The subject of history as a science is the historical process of development of society, but scientists define it ambiguously. The subject of history can be social, political, economic, demographic history, history of the city, village, family, or private life. The definition of the subject of history is inextricably linked to the level of development of society, the ideology of the state and the worldview of the historian. Historians who stand on materialistic positions, believe that history as a science studies the patterns of development of society, which ultimately depend on the mode of production of material goods. This approach gives priority to economics and society in explaining causality. Liberal historians are convinced that the subject of the study of history is man (the individual) in the self-fulfillment of natural rights granted by nature. The famous French historian Marc Bloch defined history "as the science of people in time”.

So, history is a science of man, which studies the past of society as a process created by people, the result of human activity. The basic categories of historical science are historical fact, historical source, historical time and historical space. Historical facts are objectively existing facts of reality, which are in certain spatial and temporal framework. Historical fact is a real event of the past. The entire past of mankind is woven out of historical facts, there are many of them. Fact - conquest of Genghis Khan, the wars of Alexander the Great, the fact - a single event in the personal life of one man. A historical source refers to various testimonies that contain information about historical phenomena and processes.

Historical time is in constant motion. Each segment of movement in historical time is woven of thousands of connections, material and spiritual, it is unique and has no equal. Outside the concept of historical time, history does not exist. Events, following one after another, form a time series, between the events in it there are internal links. The concept of historical time has repeatedly changed. The ideas of progressive development in history, historical progress, as well as their variants - such as the idea of spiral, discontinuous and reciprocal movement of history - by the beginning of the XXI century have moved into the background. The main direction was the search for a multi-dimensional interpretation of the structure of historical time. The creation of models of synchronous (simultaneous) and diachronous (successive) interaction in history became widespread. These approaches explain the reasons for the diversity of civilizations, the peculiarities of their ways of development, the ways of interaction.

Under the historical space understand the totality of natural-geographical, economic, political, socio-cultural processes taking place in a certain territory. Under the influence of natural-geographical factors formed the life of peoples, occupations, psychology, formed features of socio-political and cultural life.

It is impossible to measure historical space mathematically precisely in physical units, as, for example, to measure historical time in years. Thus, in particular, cities located in different civilizations are farther apart in historical terms than some more distant in spatial and geographical terms cities of the same countries and civilizations.

Since ancient times there has been a division of peoples into western and eastern. At the same time, it does not mean belonging to the West (Europe) or the East (Asia) in the geographical sense, but the commonness of the historical destiny, the social life of these peoples. The notion of "historical space" is often used outside of the connection with a specific territory. For example, the Christian world was synonymous with the West, and the Muslim world was synonymous with the East.

So, history is an attempt by professional historians to reconstruct and record the past by examining facts drawn from various sources. In its broadest context-political, social, economic, and cultural-it is concerned with the study of man's role in society and his relationship with nature. History looks at trends, their real implementations, leaps in development and evolutionary changes, unique and typical in events.

Like any science, history has its social functions. In modern conditions several social functions of historical science are distinguished:

1. The scientific-cognitive function is aimed at the self-knowledge of society. It is impossible to understand the present in all its complexity and contradictory processes without elucidating their historical roots. Therefore, the most important function of historical science is to prepare the basis of concrete-historical facts for other social sciences: philosophy, political science, economics, sociology, psychology, etc. Historical science communicates its method to other social sciences for the study of spatial and temporal phenomena, the elucidation of general patterns of development of human society. Only by the methods of historical science and on the material of history can the operation of the laws of history be discovered.

2. Educational function of historical science makes the experience of the past available to contemporaries, thus playing an important role in their social education. The historical facts themselves educate. The unconventional dramatic nature of history determines its enormous educational role. It is no coincidence that Plutarch called history "the mentor of life”.

3. The function of social memory is that historical science reconstructs a picture of the world in all its diversity. In this regard, history is an indispensable prerequisite for the development and very existence of human civilization. No generation starts from scratch, each generation enters the arena of historical activity having assimilated, to one degree or another, the experience of the past. The science of history is the link between the past and the present. Knowledge conveyed by it is a necessary element of spiritual culture, without which its progressive development is impossible

4. The prognostic function is not only to explain the past, but to show the tendencies of social development in the future. All science should be able to describe phenomena, diagnose and make predictions. History is a dialogue between the present and the future. Historical science forms the necessary basis for the scientific prediction of trends and prospects for the development of society in the future. It should be noted that even Hegel on the basis of the study of world history suggested that subsequent generations do not take into account the lessons of history. However, as the great Russian historian V.O. Kluchevsky rightly noted, history does not teach those who are unwilling to learn from it. It teaches the following generations for their ignorance. After all, it's not because of the flowers, that the blind do not see them.

To implement its functions, historical science has developed a whole arsenal of methods of knowledge. The decisive role among them occupy utiruetikoo geneti-cheskogo, historico-comparative, historiko-tipologicheskogo and historiko-systemicheskogo. In recent decades are also actively used mathematical methods and information technology. These methods allow you to discover the essence of historical events and processes, to give them a quantitative and qualitative description, to make a typology of historical events and processes.

By the beginning of XXI century the historical science has accumulated a significant potential of research theories and concepts. Studying the history of mankind, researchers have constantly improved the methodological tools, formulated and substantiated new approaches to the study and explanation of historical experience. Currently, there are several theories of the historical process. Theory is a logical system that explains the historical facts. Historical facts themselves as "fragments of reality" do not explain anything. Only the historian gives an interpretation of the fact, which depends on his worldview, ideological and theoretical views.

What distinguishes one theory of the historical process from another? The difference between them lies in the subject matter and the system of views of the historical process. Each theory chooses from the set of historical facts only those that fit its logic. Based on the subject of historical research, each theory identifies its periodization, defines its conceptual apparatus, creates its historiography. Different theories in their own way identify patterns or alternatives - options for the historical process - and offer their vision of the past, make their predictions for the future.

Before the Enlightenment, history was dominated by theological approaches. History was comprehended through scripture, sacred history, church history, and the history of Christian states. In this approach the past was seen as the "absolute ideal" and history as the "teacher of life. History had a canonical character.

The Age of Humanism and the Enlightenment posed the question of the meaning of historical writings, the subject of history, and its functions in a new way. Man, with his unlimited possibilities, was placed at the center of historical events. At the same time, historical writings were devoted mainly to kings, ecclesiastical figures, and generals.

In the XVI-XVII centuries the basis of the concept of Russian history as the history of the great princely (royal) power was formed. At the end of XVII - first half of XVIII centuries the process of historical knowledge transformation into a science began. History as a science was distinguished from the general body of knowledge, methods of historical source criticism were developed, rationalistic theoretical ideas about historical process were forming, signs of scientific registration of historical works (scientific reference system, and notes) appeared.

The result of the development of rationalism in Russia was the activity of N.M. Karamzin. His "History of the Russian State" (vol. 1 - 12, 1816 - 1829) stimulated general interest towards Russian history; this was contributed to the rise of Russian national consciousness during Napoleonic and Patriotic War of 1812. N. M. Karamzin introduced into scientific circulation numerous historical sources - new annalistic lists and legislative materials, judicial letters, tales of foreigners.

"History..." N. M. Karamzin for the first time combined a scientific systematization of the material with its high artistic presentation. N. M. Karamzin for the first time divided the history of Russia into ancient, middle and more than other rationalist historians, he saw historical continuity and conditionality of phenomena and events. At a time when the country was facing the question of reforming the government, N.M. Karamzin argued for autocracy ("Russia was founded by victories and one-man rule, was ruined by diversity, but was saved by a wise autocracy"), but saw in it not the autocracy, but "a reasonable system", commensurate with its activities to the historical experience, the needs of the country; in the history of Russia he sought to find and make available to the monarchs and their subjects examples of "wise government".

The role of university scholars, adherents of the Hegelian philosophical system, Westerners in their social positions, increased further in the study of Russian history. In mid-1840-s T.S. Granovsky and K.D. Kavelin declared the main principles of the new direction: the progressive nature of the historical process, which is realized in the struggle of various principles; the people as the bearer of the absolute spirit (beginning); the legal and spiritual institutions developed in the course of evolution as the main object of historical study.

The possibilities of the new direction were to a large extent realized in the work of S.M. Soloviev "History of Russia" (Vol.1-29, 1851 - 1879). He viewed the history of the country as the history of the people, producing and developing due to internal factors (geographical location, properties of the national character, attitude towards other people), the basics of life, law and social relations. S.M. Solovyev paid special attention to the change of the main fundamentals of social life - the struggle of patrimonial beginning with patrimonial (XII century), of state beginning with patrimonial (XVI century). The result of his work was the creation of an organic, evolutionary picture of the historical process in Russia in the interrelation and interdependence of phenomena and events of legal and political life.

In the end of XIX century the Russian historical science simultaneously with the European one passed to positions of positivism. (Positivism is a philosophical movement, which proceeds from the fact that all genuine /positive/ knowledge is the cumulative result of special sciences). In Russian historiography it was especially manifested in a significant renewal of the historical scheme, in increased attention to the facts of economic and social history, in the desire to compare the domestic historical process with European and world history. V.O. Kljuchevsky in the "Course of Russian History" formed a new vision of the country's history. It was based on the recognition of a multiplicity of factors that determined the historical process (geographical, economic, social, political and administrative, personal, etc.). In Russian history V.O.Kljuchevsky has allocated four epochs changing each other:

"Dnepr Rus, city, trading" (VIII - XIII centuries); "Rus upper Volga specific-princely, free-agricultural" (XIV - ser. XIV centuries. ); "Russia Great, Moscow, tsarist-boyarist, military-agricultural" (mid XV - second decade of XVII centuries); "the All-Russian, imperial-noble period of serfdom, agriculture and factory farming" (till the middle of XIX century). Works of V.O.Klyuchevsky have brought in many new positions in representations about economy, a social structure, a life and mores of a society, about culture.

By the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, historians increasingly felt the exhaustion of the classical positivist methodology. The gap between evolutionist ideas about Russian history and their mechanistic projection into the future and the actual development of the country was becoming most acute. More than ever before, history became - especially in the hands of extremely radical currents - a means of justifying political programs. Classical positivism was giving way to neopositivism, which tried to reconcile the study of material (real) factors with ideal factors (spirituality, "internal sociological tendencies") and the neo-Kantian current, which posed the problem of the relation of the knowing subject (historian) to the object being cognized. The positivist methodology was considerably displaced in the minds of liberal scholars by Marxist ideas about the economic conditionality of historical processes. Marxism also questioned the historical process as the history of the unfolding of the class struggle.

S.F. Platonov who created "Essays on the History of Troubles in the Moscow State XVI - XVII centuries" (1899) worked in the classical positivist methodology. (1899) and a number of other studies, who led the St. Petersburg school of Russian historians. In his works "Feudalism in Ancient Russia" (1907), "Feudalism in Specific Russia" (1910) N.P. Pavlov-Silvansky proved a fundamental similarity of feudal institutions (landholding, social and political relations) in Russia and in Europe. Pavlov-Silvansky has developed the scheme of Russian history which was suggested by S.M.Solovyov as a successive change of communal relations (till XII century), boyarshchina-seniority (till the middle of XVI century), state relations (with preservation of "social feudalism").

The neo-Kantian direction was most evident in the works of A.S. Lappo-Danilevsky and historians who dealt with the problems of universal history. A. S. Lappo-Danilevsky in his works "The Organization of Direct Taxation in Moscow State" (1890), "Russian Industrial and Trading Companies in the First Half of the 18th Century" (1899) gave a broad picture of economic life and attributed the beginning of the birth of capitalist relations to the 17th century. The leftist Marxists P.B. Struve and M.I. Tugan-Baranovsky investigated the history of capitalist economy and, against the late Narodniks, idealized this way of development, calling for its purification from "Russian uncultivation". Later Narodnichestvo and its political successors (the SRs, the People's Socialists) focused on agrarian history (A.V. Peshekhonov, V.A. Myakotin, L.E. Shishko), viewing it as the history of the small-scale peasant economy.

The radical, Bolshevik direction, represented by Lenin and some professional historians (N. A. Rozhkov, M. N. Pokrovsky), viewed Russia's past mainly as a change in forms of exploitation and class struggle. The process of development of national historiography received a different direction due to a sharp change in the political and social situation in 1917, although some lines of pre-revolutionary historiography can be traced both in the country (1920's - early 1930's), and abroad.

In the USSR, the official interpretation was historical-materialist. The scheme of the development of society, based on the theory of socio-economic formations, was developed. In the Russian history the following formational-class approaches were used: 1) the primitive communal system (up to the IX century); 2) feudalism (IX - the middle of the XIX century); 3) capitalism (the second half of the XIX century - 1917); 4) socialism (since 1917). A new interpretation of Russia's place in world history appeared. It was emphasized that after 1917 Russia turned from a backward European country into "the first country of victorious socialism in the world", the power which "shows the main way of development for the whole mankind".

Currently, in historical science, there are various theories of study to explain the real historical facts. As rightly points out B. V. Leachman, they are all "true, objective, true" and reflect the difference of worldviews, systems of views on history and modern society. Criticism of one theory from the position of another is incorrect because it substitutes a worldview and a subject of study. Attempts to create a general (one), universal theory, that is, to combine different theories - worldviews (subjects of study), are anti-scientific, since they lead to a violation of cause-effect relationships, to contradictory conclusions.

According to the subjects of study, there are currently three theories of historical process, or three theories of study: religious-historical, world-historical, local-historical.

In the religious-historical theory, the subject of study is the movement of man toward God, man's connection with the Supreme Mind, the Creator-God. The essence of all religions is the understanding of the transience of the existence of the material human body and the Eternity of the soul. Within the religious-historical theory, there are several trends (Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, etc.).

The Bible is an important historical and literary monument which is a collection of Jewish and Christian traditions from the territory of Western Asia developed in the 11th-1st centuries B.C. The Bible reflects a certain methodology the essence of which is divine predestination of events and phenomena, i.e. providentialism (lat. providentia - providence) - religious idealistic viewpoint that tries to explain the course of historical events not by their internal laws but by the will of providence (divinity). It was this methodology that subsequently had a major impact on the historiographical tradition of medieval authors (in particular the writings of Augustine the Blessed, Thomas Aquinas, and the medieval chronicles).

From the Christian point of view, the meaning of history lies in the successive movement of man toward God, in the course of which a free human personality is formed, overcoming his dependence on nature and coming to the knowledge of the ultimate truth given to man in Revelation. The liberation of man from his primal passions and his transformation into a conscious follower of God is the main content of history. The Christian interpretation in Russian history is presented in the annals, the works of G. Florovsky, E. Golubinsky, M. Tolstoy, A. Nechvolodov, and others.

In world-historical theory, the subject of study is the global progress of mankind, which allows for ascending material wealth. All nations go through the same stages of progress. Some go through progressive development earlier, others later.

The world-historical theory was projected onto 19th century England, Germany and France and revealed the features of humanity's formation as it took place in Western Europe. Inherent in this theory Eurocentrism reduces the possibility of constructing a picture of world history, because it does not take into account the peculiarities of development not only of other worlds (America, Asia, Africa), but even the so-called European periphery (Eastern Europe and especially Russia). Absolutizing the concept of "progress" from a Eurocentric position, historians "lined up" the nations in a hierarchical ladder. A scheme of historical development with "advanced" and "backward" nations was formed.

Within the world-historical theory of study there are strands: materialist, liberal, modernization.

The materialist (formational) direction, studying the progress of mankind, gives priority to the development of society, social relations associated with forms of ownership. History is presented as a regularity of change of socio-economic formations, at the juncture of which there are revolutionary changes. The pinnacle of society's development is the communist formation. The basis of the change of formations is the contradiction between the level of development of productive forces and the level of development of production relations. The driving force of the development of society is the class struggle between the possessors of private property (the exploiters) and the have-nots (the exploited), which ultimately leads to the destruction of private property and the building of a classless society. The first chapter of the Communist Party Manifesto, written by C. Marx and F. Engels in 1848, begins: "The history of all hitherto existing societies has been the history of class struggle. Some countries pass through the stages of socio-economic formations (primitive communal, slave-holding, feudal, capitalist, communist) earlier, and others a little later. The proletariat of the more progressive countries (the European continent) helps the proletariat of the less progressive countries (the Asian continent).

Liberalism, in its study of human progress, gives priority in it to the development of the individual, to securing his individual freedoms. The individual serves as the starting point for the liberal study of history. Liberals believe that in history there is always an alternative to development. And the choice itself, the vector of progress, depends on a strong personality - a hero, a charismatic leader. If the vector of progress of history corresponds to the Western European way of life - it is the way of human rights and freedoms, and if - to the Asian way of despotism, the arbitrariness of the authorities in relation to the individual.

In post-Soviet Russia, the liberal-historical interpretation is becoming predominant. Scientific monographs and textbooks draw attention, not to the significance of any activity for the "greatness of Russia" (as it used to be), but to the price of the activity itself (human sacrifice, suffering). From this, edifying lessons are drawn. For example, emphasis is placed on the cost of the oprichnina of Ivan the Terrible, the reforms of Peter the Great, the victory in the Great Patriotic War, and then from this are derived "lessons”.

The modernization direction, studying the progress of mankind, emphasizes that mankind is "doomed" to technical development, going from separation "from the animal world" to mastering the spaces of space. Milestones in this development are fundamental discoveries: the emergence of agriculture and cattle breeding, the development of iron metallurgy, the creation of horse harness, the invention of the mechanical loom, the steam engine, etc., as well as their corresponding political, economic and social systems. Fundamental discoveries determine the progress of mankind and do not depend on the ideological coloring of this or that political regime.

Modernization is a transition from traditional agrarian society to urban, industrial, post-industrial, information society. It is a complex process that covers all aspects of social life: economic, social, legal, political, cultural. In the course of modernization less developed societies acquire the features of more developed societies. It began in Western countries in the XVI century and provided in the XX century mass consumption, high level of welfare, democratization and other values of the modern world.

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