Андрей Дворниченко

At the beginning of his article the author postulates a general decline of culture nowadays which manifests itself in many kinds of arts, and also in the “art of History”. To the author’s dismay, the latter has been reduced to what can be called, according to Iu. I. Semenov, “istoriology”. Many historians now forget what history is, what an essence of scholar’s work is, what a scholar’s novelty is, and so on. To exemplify this tendency, the article concerns with the book recently published in Moscow. This monograph written by T. V. Chernikova consists of two books devoted to so called Europeanization of Russia. The first book focuses on the 15-16th centuries, and the second book — on the 17th century. This work is severely criticized in this review. The author shows that T. V. Chernikova does not explain the meaning of the word “Europeanization” and the essence of this notion. The author objects to the historiography and the sources in these books. However, the major criticism is co...

This article is devoted to the scholarly work of the prominent Russian historian Igor Iakovlevich Froianov who died last December. He is a brilliant representative of the Petersburg Historical School, and first and foremost — a well-known specialist in the history of so called Kievan Rus. He created a complex concept of the “obcshinno-vechevaia” civilization of Old Rus. His concept is ultimately comprehensive because he studied in consecutive order practically all sides of such a phenomenon as Kievan Rus: economy, political life, social struggle, culture. His concept emerged in confrontation with the prevalent Soviet vision of this history, and at the same time from the very beginning it became a creative continuation and development of pre-revolution historiography. He also devoted several interesting and important works to the period of Moscow Rus, particularly to the process of formation of the Russian monarchy. These works made an excellent foundation for the new original view o...