S207987840000791-9-1

Article

Published

Volume 5 Issue 6 (29)

This article represents the author's reflection to the subject of relevance of the scientific heritage of well-known Soviet medievalist A. N. Chistozvonov (1914—1998) for the purposes of studying and teaching Early Modern History in the system of high history education today. There are two aspects of scientific works of A. N. Chistozvonov: the history of the Netherlands and the «Netherlands bourgeois revolution», and the problem of the genesis of capitalism. The author gives a positive answer to the question “Are A. N. Chistozvonov’s works still relevant?” noting that interest to this question today is the interest to generalizations in history, based on the socio-economic factor. Using the matherial that gave him the studies of the Netherlands revolution A. N. Chistozvonov reaches the level of a theoretical analysis of the phenomenon of social revolution in general. The author of the article underlines that the socio-economic themes held a leading place in the researches of Soviet historians, including medievalists. Considering themselves as the followers of the Marxist tradition of historical writing, the «official» Soviet medievalists gave the emphasis to the study of those aspects of the past, which could be well described in the framework of the Marxist methodology of history, with its traditional interest to the macrostructures, their characteristics, origin, functions, and decay. Despite the fact that the socio-economic history is not in favor among the younger generation of medievalists, the author predictes a renaissance of this previously strong ‘branch’ of national historical science. But A. N. Chistozvonov’s texts are of interest not only for historians who study the specific problems of history of Early Modern period or challenges of generalizations in history. They also can attract the historiographers, first of all dealing with the studies and analysis of discursive practices of Soviet historiography, methods of constructing of the historical past, typical for Soviet historians. The author of the article concludes that A. N. Chistozvonov’s texts are very informative for those researchers who tend to explore the development of the Soviet version of Marxist’s theory in medieval studies in the second half of the XXth century.

09.08.2014

09.11.2014

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