Moscow, Nauka Publ. 1983, 416 p.
"An amazing case! - there are no large monographs or books devoted to any of the outstanding historians of pre-revolutionary Russia yet. There is information about writers, but not about historians. There are no such works about V. N. Tatishchev, I. N. Boltin, M. M. Shcherbatov, N. M. Karamzin, or S. M. Solovyov, " 1 Academician M. V. Nechkina wrote in her monograph about V. O. Klyuchevsky.
Of course, this was not due to the indifference of researchers to the largest representatives of pre-Soviet historical science. There are many articles devoted to them, and in works on Russian historiography they are given special chapters. And there really were no monographic studies about them. And not least among the reasons that led to this situation is the complexity of this scientific task. How exactly should a monographic study of prominent representatives of noble and bourgeois historiography be conducted? What complex of problems does a researcher face when trying to study the history of their life and work as fully as possible, interwoven into the context of each given stage of historical development?
These questions were answered by M. V. Nechkina's monograph on V. O. Klyuchevsky 2 . The meaning of the book is not only deep and that's all-
1 Nechkina M. V. Vasily Osipovich Klyuchevsky, Moscow, 1974, p. 5.
2 See also: Zimin A. A. Formation of historical views of V. O. Klyuchevsky in the 60s of the XIX century-Historical Notes, 1961, vol. 69; Kireeva R. A. V. O. Klyuchevsky as a historian of Russian Historical Science, Moscow, 1966; Chumachenko E. G. V. O. Klyuchevsky-source studies, Moscow, 1970.
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third-party disclosure of the image of perhaps the brightest, most insightful and at the same time complex and contradictory representative of bourgeois science. M. V. Nechkina's monograph on Klyuchevsky is a historiographical phenomenon, an experience that provides prerequisites for monographic research on other outstanding representatives of Russian historiography. And so, over the next decade, there are studies about N. M. Karamzin, S. M. Solovyov, N. A. Polev, I. N. Boltin and other historians .3 However, the publication of material about outstanding historians that has not yet been mastered by science also retains its significance.
The reviewed publication was preceded by the collection " V. O. Klyuchevsky. Letters. Diaries. Aphorisms and thoughts about history "(1968). Both of them represent an indissoluble whole, they are connected primarily by the personality and creativity of Klyuchevsky. The authors of both are R. A. Kireeva and A. A. Zimin, and the executive editor is M. V. Nechkina. We are thus dealing with the same principles of publication, the nature of their commentary, and the direction of editorial activity. Naturally, there will be more than one newly published collection in the field of our attention below.
General idea of the book "V. O. Klyuchevsky. Unpublished works " gives its main sections. So, the course "Western Influence in Russia after Peter the Great", consisting of 10 lectures (the last one is not fully preserved), was publicly read in a large audience of the Polytechnic Museum in 1890. It was not and could not have been published during Klyuchevsky's lifetime because of its strongly anti-court orientation. This is followed by historiographic studies, such as: "Sketches "on the Varangian question", characteristics of the scientific heritage and social significance of a number of representatives of Russian historiography (among them V. N. Tatishchev, N. M. Karamzin, M. P. Pogodin, K. N. Bestuzhev-Ryumin, I. E. Zabelin, N. I. Kostomarov). Abstract of the course "Modern History of Western Europe in connection with the history of Russia", taught by Klyuchevsky in 1893-1894, is published. The synopsis is large-it takes up almost 100 pages (198-291); it is very capacious. The author's anti-court orientation is also reflected in him. This is not a comparative history course. Its subject is the pan-European historical process of the XVIII - first half of the XIX century in its regional features with a primary focus on the history of Russia.
The section "Literary and historical sketches "contains" Characteristics of social types "- five sketches that are to a certain extent continued in the notes "On the Intelligentsia", "Belief and Thinking"," Art and Morality","Evening Readings in Abastuman". The idea of social types occupied Klyuchevsky. It is also evident in his historiographical sketches, sometimes appearing on the surface ("Tatishchev is doubly interesting, not only as the first collector of materials for a complete history of Russia, but also as a typical example of educated Russian people of the Petrovsky school", p.129). In the next section of the collection, in Klyuchevsky's thoughts on Russian writers (Lermontov, Gogol, I. S. Aksakov, Goncharov, Dostoevsky, Chekhov), the historian's interest in the social types created by them and in the writers themselves as public figures appears in close-up. This is a fruitful approach; Klyuchevsky realized its possibilities within the methodology of bourgeois historiography. However, this does not detract from the significance of the approach itself, the cognitive resources contained in it, and the possibilities of imaginative characteristics of the historical process.: "Personal exceptions to group and class types, of course, exist and always will. But social types remain. " 4
The collection ends with Klyuchevsky's artistic experiments in verse and prose. They are interesting for describing the creative personality of the historian, his literary gift, the organic nature of artistic elements that distinguish his research and unique lecturing style, when the image serves to deepen the material, reveal the essence of social processes, etc.-
3 Kislyagina L. G. Formirovanie obshchestvenno-politicheskikh vzglyad N. M. Karamzin (1785-1803) [Formation of social and political views of N. M. Karamzin (1785-1803)], Moscow, 1976; Illeritsky V. E. Sergey Mikhailovich Solov'ev, Moscow, 1980; Shiklo A. E. Istoricheskie vzglyad N. A. Polevoy, Moscow, 1981; Shansky D. N. Iz istorii russkoy istoricheskoi mysli, I. N. Boltin. Moscow, 1983; et al.
4 Lenin V. I. PSS. Vol. 36, p. 207. An example of the fruitfulness of addressing socio - typical characteristics in Soviet historiography is the book by B. A. Romanov "People and Customs of Ancient Russia" (l. 1947).
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genesis. Klyuchevsky's works, which are included in the collection, are followed by appendices that provide additional useful material - draft notes for the lecture course on "Western Influence in Russia after Peter the Great" and to his historiographical notes. The collection is completed with an "Archeographic afterword" and a commentary on published works. We must pay tribute to the publishers: their thoughtful, patient and loving work can serve as a model of archaeological culture.
What is the significance of the new collection? In that it significantly complements our understanding of the social essence of Klyuchevsky's work, his own social image. His thoughts, judgments, and generalizations become the property of historiography, which he did not finish, and could not fully express in the works published during his lifetime, but which formed their deep ideological plan. It would not be without reason to say about Klyuchevsky in the words of Nekrasov:"I am only guilty of the fact that I was not allowed to say much, much here." Klyuchevsky's works, which are now being published, put forward scientific positions (especially in cultural and historical excursions) that can serve as an impetus for fruitful reflections of Soviet historians. What Klyuchevsky said about the works of M. P. Pogodin: "He should be remembered, if not as a teacher, then as a lesson" (p. 151), is quite applicable to his own works, but with the difference that his lessons contain much more positive content and stimulating power than Pogodin's.
Finally, the reviewed collection, like the previous collection of Klyuchevsky's unpublished writings, provides an extremely important insight into what Mark Blok called "the craft of the historian." This is what our attention is drawn to in the introductory articles written by M. V. Nechkina both for the 1968 collection and for the current one. The historian's "craft" (and skill!) it has, like everyone else, its own "secrets". Talent cannot be learned, but all talent is first and foremost the talent of work, and the experience of labor, patient and exacting, is highly instructive.
On June 30, 1867, Klyuchevsky wrote in his diary: "We are not used to paying proper attention to many phenomena that make up the inner history of a person - and precisely to those phenomena that, arising from ordinary, most simple causes, produce imperceptible, intangible work in us and only give results to our consciousness. Is it any wonder that we sometimes discover so much that is incomprehensible to us, unexpected, wonderful? Every thought, sensation, and scene that passes before the eyes leaves a trace in the soul that is not always conscious; and from the sum of such traces a certain mood, even a glance, is composed" (sbornik 1968, p. 233). Here the problems of the psychology of creativity are outlined; what Klyuchevsky expressed is true to the smallest detail. When in the course "Western Influence in Russia after Peter the Great" he draws a parallel between a cart and a railway train, he reproduces, of course, unnoticed by himself, the impressions of a trip by rail, which he vividly shared in a letter to P. I. Evropeytsev 30 years before the course.
So, "thoughts", "sensations", "scenes" are "components of a person's inner history". How many of them were deposited in the feelings and thoughts of Klyuchevsky and in addition to his studies in historiography, sources, lecturing, research works! This is a deep knowledge of the history of philosophy, mainly based on primary sources. Feuerbach's materialism with its atheism, which aroused Klyuchevsky's wariness and at the same time tempted his mind. The idealistic system of Hegel, which is noted not without reverence, but also critically: "In a word, he wanted to draw history into an even philosophical chord... With this view, you have to put up with everything, justify everything, and not act against anything." About Spinoza: "An extraordinary man and a great philosopher", who combined an elevated system of thought with democracy, an appeal "to the poor world of people" (1968, p. 76, 109). And the damning critique of V. Solovyov's theological philosophies, which it is not useless to recall: "Don Quixote of Christianity". And how many subtle observations on the philosophical systems of the French Enlightenment! And Klyuchevsky's interest in the achievements of modern natural science!
Music played an important role in Klyuchevsky's life. "I'm passionate about listening to music," he wrote. He was captured by Beethoven, Mendelssohn. He delved into the "cherished sounds" performed by amateur violinists and pianists. Attended concerts of Anton Rubinstein. He was able to appreciate even the "awkward screeching of the violin" with gratitude.
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in the hands of a half-trained artist", but suffered when "in another piece of music you hear calculated musical notes, but do not feel the music". He experienced the feeling when sounds "awaken all living strings" and make "forget everything except the present moment "(ibid., pp. 55, 167, 221). This was part of his "inner history" and was reflected in his scientific work. M. V. Nechkina notes that he had "some kind of internal musical rhythm in the construction of phrases", that his works "abound in the rhythmic structure of sentences" 5 .
Klyuchevsky revealed his whole soul to fiction. He read and reread throughout his life Pushkin, Lermontov, Nekrasov, Turgenev, Goncharov, Ostrovsky, Gogol, Saltykov-Shchedrin, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Chernyshevsky, Dobrolyubov. There are also foreign writers: "I reread Shakespeare with never-before-experienced pleasure." Or: "It's hard to understand why Heine went out of fashion here. If the greatness of a poet is measured by the strength and completeness with which he reproduced the hidden feelings and moral image of the age, Heine is the greatest poet of our time" (ibid., pp. 162, 245). He perceived literature as an artist and responded to it as a historian and social scientist. His characteristics of the work of poets, to whom he devoted special studies (Pushkin, Lermontov) or only sketches, are insightful. They are imbued with anti-court pathos. About "Oblomov": "tombstone to the serf nobility "(1983, p. 319). Leo Tolstoy is"a bright star in the world cultural sky", but also "the dying artistic grimace of the nobility" and even "a late parody of the Old Russian fool (1968, p.371, 386, 388). And Klyuchevsky's notes on Gogol! We know a few years ago published a biography of Gogol, the author of which is trying to rehabilitate " Selected places from correspondence with friends." But for Klyuchevsky, this correspondence is "mawkish and tearful", and he writes: "It is dangerous to judge Gogol without reading the Confession, and even more dangerous to judge him by it" (1983, pp. 312, 315).
It would be interesting to trace the line of Klyuchevsky's interests in the field of fine arts. The paintings of Borovikovsky, Ge, Aivazovsky, and the sculptures of Antokolsky told him a lot, and he was familiar with the Dutch artist of the XVII century, Adrian Van Ostade, who became famous for genre scenes from folk life. He did not pass by the history of the Russian theater and left deep judgments about the art of drama (ibid., pp. 87, 95-97, 309-310, etc.).
Klyuchevsky had a broad philological background. In addition to Latin, French and German (which he knew well), Klyuchevsky studied ancient Greek, Hebrew, Sanskrit, and among the new languages - English, Polish and Bulgarian. These were, of course, only the largest "components" of Klyuchevsky's spiritual outlook, the "minimum" that he considered necessary for a scientist who chose history, as he himself wrote about himself, as "the work of his life" (1968, p.137). And perhaps most of all, Klyuchevsky's general cultural and historical erudition is a living example and lesson.
In the scientific work of Klyuchevsky, the possibilities of historical science of his time were best realized. Thus, breakthroughs in the future of historical science were planned, but this has already become the "work of life" of new generations of historians, among whom were his direct students. The scientific and social significance of the book under review is very high. It remains to be recalled that the fund of Klyuchevsky's unpublished works has not yet been exhausted.
5 Nechkina M. V. UK. soch., p. 307.
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