RUSSIAN HISTORY AND EUROPEAN IDEAS: THE HISTORICAL VISION OF VASILII KLIUCHEVSKII
Abstract
To the general public, Vasilii Osipovich Kliuchevskii (1841-1911) is above all known for his Course in Russian History (Kurs russkoi istorii), which he began reading at the University of Moscow in the 1880s and which was published for the first time two decades later.1Since then, his history of Russia has been republished several times; in the late 1980s, a new nine-volume edition of his works even became a best-seller. Kliuchevskii has had tremendous impact on Russian historical self-awareness. His skills as a historian, his appealing schemes and his eloquent style are all factors that have contributed to his canonical position. As the Russian émigré historian Georgii Fedotov (1886-1951) wrote in 1932, Kliuchevskii’s history “is not just one among many – it is the Russian History on which two generations of Russians have been brought up. Specialists may have voiced their objections, but whenever any of us think of historicalRussia, what comes to mind is the Russia Kliuchevskii visualized” (Fedotov 1986: 204).Kliuchevskii’s idea of Russiaalso involves an idea of Europe. According to Charles Halperin, “even when Kliuchevskii emphasized the distinctiveness of Russian historical evolution compared to West-European, West-European history remained the standard by which the past of Russia – or anywhere else – would be judged” (Halperin 2000: 404). It is not difficult to find quotations from his history that testify to this tendency; a typical formulation of Kliuchevskii is “let us now have a look at Moscow’s location in relationship to the other European states [at the end of the sixteenth century, KJM]” (2: 397, italics added).2 His numerous comparisons, by implication, do not primarily aim to maintain an antithetic relationship; rather, they implicitly inform the readers thatRussia forms a part ofEurope.References
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