History. What is history? What is history scientific definition

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History is one of the oldest varieties of human knowledge, which arose in ancient Greece as early as the 6th century BC. BC e. Initially, the Greeks extended the concept of "history" to the entire body of reliable knowledge about nature, and to the often fantastic stories of foreigners about a distant and unknown world. History was patronized by one of the six muses of the arts - Clio, since the past, as a rule, was presented in the form of theatrical poetic performances about the heroic deeds of ancestors. But already from the time of Herodotus (5th century), history was understood as a presentation of events, coming from the lips of an eyewitness or based on real evidence. In the IV century. BC e. Aristotle undertook the first surviving classification of human knowledge in which he singled out history as a valid study of the past, separating it from poetry.

However, throughout antiquity and the Middle Ages, the term "history" was not yet settled and was often used to refer to any cognitive activity. In the era of the European Middle Ages (V-XVI centuries), when Christian religious dogma dominated, the entire history of mankind was perceived as a derivative of the incomprehensible will of divine Providence. Renaissance
(XIV-XVI centuries) returned to the center of historical knowledge of Man, created in the image and likeness of God, but with free will. And only by the end of the XVIII century. the modern understanding of history as a science that studies the human past is affirmed, but some ambiguity of interpretation still persisted. What do we call history? First, history is the very past of mankind, as it was and irreversibly disappeared. Secondly, history is a story about this past reality, captured in oral or written tradition. This is where the main problem of historical knowledge is rooted: to what extent does past reality itself correspond to our story about it? How objectively can we learn the past and tell our contemporaries about it?

History experienced its “golden age” in the 19th century, when there was a conviction that historians were able to give a true picture of the past, and to obtain it, a careful study of the sources and an honest, unbiased attitude to the subject of study were sufficient. This confidence in the achievement of once and for all established, objective scientific results by the forces of the human mind was truly universal, distinguished not only history, but the entirety of the natural and human sciences of the 19th and early 20th centuries. and got the name principle of positivism. The scientific optimism of the era led to the emergence of a number of global (ie, explaining the social or natural evolution of the world at the highest level of generalization) concepts. In the natural sciences, the theory of the evolution of species by Ch. Darwin has become the most popular, in the humanities - historical materialism(or formational approach) K. Marx and theories of civilizations(or civilizational approach, the ancestor - N.Ya. Danilevsky).

The key concept of historical materialism is formation - a special type of socio-economic organization of society, taking shape at a certain stage in the development of mankind. Based on the concept of Marx, five socio-economic formations were identified: primitive communal, slave-owning, feudal, capitalist and communist. The basis of human existence, according to Marx, is the "reproduction of material life", that is, the relationship of production and consumption of material goods. Consequently, a certain type of formation is distinguished on the basis of the mode of production existing in it and the antagonistic classes in each of the formations, one of which is the class of exploiters who own the means of production (slave owners, feudal lords, capitalists), the other is the exploited (slaves, dependent peasants, workers) . The production method forms economic basis society on which to develop superstructure- the whole complex of social, political, cultural and spiritual characteristics of a particular formation. The transition from one formation to another occurs inevitably, as a result of the gradual maturation of a new mode of production, through the revolutionary seizure of power by the more "progressive" owners of the new means of production.

Marxism, which was the most influential sociological theory of the 19th century, has its weaknesses: economic determinism, that is, the reduction of all motivations for human development to an economic background; the absolutization of violence, clearly expressed in the thesis about the progressive nature of the revolutionary victory of one of the opposing classes; ideologization of history and the impossibility of social compromise. And yet it was Marxism that became in the 19th century. the most consistent conductor of the principle of historicism, i.e., the understanding that any historical phenomenon can only be understood in a historical context, in a state of continuous development and change.

The first theorist civilizational approach, or the method of cultural-historical typology of the past, was the Russian historian N.Ya. Danilevsky, who marked the beginning of a break in the European historical and philosophical tradition with the ideology of progress. In the book "Russia and Europe" he substantiated the originality of the development of many world cultures, presenting history in the form of a change of various cultural and historical types. Egyptian, Chinese, Indian, Greek, Roman, Romano-Germanic and other cultures successively replaced each other, either in contact or not knowing about the existence of others, the life of which, like any organism, is valuable in itself and goes through the phases of birth, formation, maturity, decline and death. Such a picture of the world cannot be measured by the European values of progress, which presupposes a unilinear and equal development for all; there are no “barbarians” and “civilized” peoples in it. Each nation forms its own system of values and develops its own forms of state and politics, economics and philosophy, religion and art. Necessary for a better understanding of individual historical types is, according to N.Ya. Danilevsky, their comparison and understanding in the context of world history.

The ideas of the identity of individual cultures were continued by the German philosopher O. Spengler, who published the sensational monograph “The Decline of Europe” shortly before the First World War. “'Humanity' is a zoological concept or an empty phrase,” Spengler wrote, paraphrasing Goethe. “It is enough to remove this phantom from the range of problems of historical forms, and an amazing wealth of real forms will immediately appear to the eye ... Instead of a bleak picture of a linear world history ... I see a real spectacle of a multitude of powerful cultures, blossoming with primordial force from the bosom of the mother landscape .. Like plants and animals, they belong to the living nature of Goethe, and not to the dead nature of Newton. I see in world history a picture of the eternal formation and transformation, the miraculous becoming and passing of organic forms. (Spengler O. Decline of Europe. T. 2. Minsk, 1999. P. 36). The author of these lines sought to prove the uniqueness of each type of historical development, while not denying the presence of typical features and similar periods in world history. He limited the duration of the existence of a single culture to about a thousand years. The transition from the stage of growth and creativity to the stage of "civilization", a period when culture, having realized its limit of development, "cools down", inevitably moving towards death, was especially highlighted in "The Decline of Europe". It was this situation, in Spengler's view, that contemporary Europe was going through. And although the gloomy forecasts of the philosopher were not fully justified, he sensitively caught many of the crisis trends in Europe in the 20th century.

The famous English historian A.J. Toynbee continued to develop the problems of cultural and historical typology, identifying more than twenty civilizations along with "primitive" and "arrested" societies. By "civilizations" he meant the same communities that N.Ya. Danilevsky called "cultural-historical types", and O. Spengler - "cultures". Toynbee shared the ideas of his predecessors about the algorithm for the existence of a separate civilization: the emergence, formation, growth, breakdown and decomposition, but offered a more detailed description of the features of individual phases. In addition, he was interested in the causes and driving forces of the historical process. He saw the reasons for the emergence of local cultures in the "challenges" of the environment - difficult natural conditions or warlike neighbors, prompting a certain people to "respond", making extraordinary efforts to create their own civilization. The main catalyst for the creation and development of civilization, according to Toynbee, is the "creative minority". Where the conditions of existence were favorable, civilization either turned out to be “delayed” or did not develop at all.

Russian historian L.N. Gumilyov (1912–1992) developed the ideas of local civilizations in his concept of ethnic groups. He translated the problems of historical typology into the plane of ethnology - a science that studies the life of individual peoples - ethnic groups. He analyzed all phases of the existence of an ethnos, adhering to the previous scheme of "civilization-organism", especially highlighting the phase of the breakdown, when creative energy is transformed into the inertia of cultural stereotypes already created by the ethnos. L.N. Gumilyov strictly regulated the course of ethnogenesis: in general, the life of an ethnic group lasts 1200-1500 years, and the terms of a separate phase range from 200 to 350 years. In a peculiar way, the historian solved the problem of the root causes of historical movement. Based on the teachings of V.I. Vernadsky about the "living matter of the biosphere", he puts forward an assumption about the impact on the biosphere, including humanity, of cosmic radiation. According to the concept of ethnic groups, the flow of extraterrestrial energy periodically produces "passionate shocks" (from lat. passio- passion), as a result of which passionaries appear in certain territories - people with excess energy, with increased social activity and creating new ideological theories. “Passionarians strive to change the environment and are capable of doing so. It is they who organize distant campaigns, from which few return. It is they who are fighting for the subjugation of the peoples surrounding their own ethnic group, or, conversely, they are fighting against the invaders. Such activity requires an increased capacity for tension, and any efforts of a living organism are associated with the expenditure of a certain type of energy... By investing their excess energy in organizing and managing fellow tribesmen at all levels of the social hierarchy, they... develop new stereotypes of behavior, impose them on everyone to the rest and thus create a new ethnic system, a new ethnic group visible to history” (Gumilyov L.N. Ot Rusi do Rossii. M., 1995, pp. 29–30). Thus, according to the author, it is the passionaries who break the old tradition and create new ethnic groups, and the entire course of ethnogenesis is the process of attenuation of the received passionary impulse, the natural end of which is the state of complete harmonic balance with the environment. On the territory of Eurasia L.N. Gumilyov singles out nine passionary impulses in the historical period that brought to life a whole inflorescence of cultures - “superethnoses”, one of which was Russia, which, according to the historian, is entering a stable phase of civilization in the 21st century.

Summing up, it should be noted that all the "global" concepts of history have one essential drawback: they ignore the specifics of historical events and cause-and-effect relationships that actually fill both real human life and historical research, which is always based on concrete factology.

The first doubts that it was the global level of generalization that gave the “correct” understanding of history arose at the same time, in the second half of the 19th century, and were expressed in studies of the philosophy of “neo-Kantianism” (an idealistic trend that arose in Germany under the slogan “Back to Kant!"). Neo-Kantians - G. Cohen, W. Windelband, G. Rickert, E. Cassirer - introduced the division of existing branches of knowledge into the sciences of "nature", which are based on the study and identification of laws in the world of regularly repeated, and the science of "spirit", which study the world of single, unique events that depend only on the will and actions of a person.

It is also necessary to remember the impact on the whole complex of sciences, including history, of the revolutionary discoveries of theoretical physics in the 1910s–1920s. The theory of relativity and quantum theory have called into question the idea of causality, beloved by historians, and all variations of determinism (simplified explanations of complex multifactorial phenomena through one cause - the determinant, which is considered the main one). Gradually, in the general scientific consciousness, it was affirmed principle of relativism- the idea that all systems of knowledge are relative, that is, they do not have absolute scientific value. All theories that have ever been known to science, with the development of scientific and technological progress, either entered as a special case into a more complex picture of the world, or were completely refuted.

20th century brought to historical science decisive and tragic changes associated with events of a socio-political nature. History almost overnight lost its high status as a "teacher of life", because it could not foresee and then properly comprehend the coming world wars and revolutions, did not warn of the growing conflict and hitherto unseen cruelty of the near future. In the last century of the second millennium, even "self-liquidating" sentiments appeared in historical science, expressed by a simple question: "Why study history if it has not taught anyone anything?"

However, the first answers to this question appeared already in the 1920s. By this time, cardinal changes had taken place in the European community: the once rural majority of the population moved to cities, the basis of the industrial economy and mass public education was created, and traditional landmarks were collapsing. Feeling the collapse of the usual connection of times, a person turned to history, trying again to understand his place and purpose in it. Thus, the discredited “teacher of life” was again called upon to help, not with ready-made recipes, but by defining the unchanging foundations of human existence, to solve the fundamental issues of the new urbanized society.

1.2. Modern understanding of the subject of history
and the main directions of development of historical science in the twentieth century.

The modern understanding of the subject of history includes several new features. In the twentieth century not ideologies, not abstract schemes of world development, but the person himself becomes the center around which the entire system of modern humanitarian knowledge is grouped. People really do not learn from the mistakes of their ancestors, because their social, physiological and psychological nature, despite the innovations introduced by individual epochs, remains almost unchanged in its basic foundations. This means that only history - the only way to recognize people of the past - gives a person the necessary perspective of self-knowledge.

An important role in such a “humanization” of historical science was played by representatives of several generations of the French historical school “Annals” (from the name of the journal “Annals of Economic and Social History”, founded in 1929), at the origins of which stood L. Febvre (1878–1956 ) and M. Blok (1886–1944). “History,” wrote M. Blok, “is the science of people in time. We must link the study of the dead with the study of the living.”

Blok and Febvre sharply criticized the traditional positivist "event" historiography, which, in the words of Blok, vegetated "in the embryonic form of narration." They argued that history is intended not just to describe events, but to put forward hypotheses, to pose and solve problems. Blok and Febvre saw the main task of historical science in creating such a “global” history that could cover all aspects of human life, “a history that would become ... the focus of all sciences that study society from various points of view - social, psychological, moral, religious and aesthetic, and finally, political, economic and cultural. The solution of such a problem presupposed a wide contact and interaction of history with other sciences, primarily with the sciences of man. Febvre persistently substantiated the idea of the existence of "an internal unity that binds together ... all scientific disciplines." He said in 1941, addressing students: “Historians, be geographers! Be lawyers, sociologists, psychologists; do not close your eyes to that great current which is renovating the sciences of the physical world at breakneck speed.”

In striving to create a comprehensive, "global" history, Blok and Febvre did not adhere to homogeneous explanations of the historical process. At the forefront in their explanation were the geographical environment and population growth, the development of technology and economics, collective consciousness - mentality. Arguing with historians of the previous generation, the founders of the Annals argued that the material of the sources and the facts certified by them are always the result of the creative activity of the scientist, the selection he made, which depends on the problem he posed, on the hypothesis put forward. “All history is a choice,” Febvre wrote. The historian "himself creates material for his work", constantly "constructs" his object of study, selecting and grouping the sources and facts he needs. Hence Blok and especially Febvre drew "relativistic" conclusions, arguing that historical facts do not exist without a historian, they are created or "invented" by historians.

Among the followers of Blok and Fevre, there are already four generations associated with the 80-year activity of the Annals magazine. This current of historical thought is also called "nouvelle histoire" - new history. Today it is represented by a whole range of historiographical currents, such as the new economic history, the new social history, historical demography, the history of mentalities, the history of everyday life, microhistory, as well as a number of narrower areas of research - the history of women, childhood, old age, the body, nutrition, disease, death, sleep, gestures, etc.

The next feature of the modern understanding of history is the extraordinary expansion of the very subject of historical research. All the circumstances connected with the man of the past, all spheres of his conscious and unconscious activity have become the center of attraction for the research interest of historians. The very perception of the past has become more multifaceted and vivid: new historical disciplines are emerging, a circle historical sources. If earlier the main basis for studying history was written sources, now it is any object of the era that allows you to discover some new aspect of the past. The unlimited expansion of the subject of history causes the convergence of history with other sciences and the establishment of an interdisciplinary approach to a number of scientific problems. However, this trend also has negative properties: history loses its own "problem field", loses the integrity and stability of internal connections, it lacks clear standards for studying the past. There is a significant danger in this, and scientists are looking for ways to overcome it.

Let us characterize several main trends in world historiography of the 20th century.

In the 1950s–1970s one of the most sought-after areas of research has been quantitative, or quantitative(from the French word "quantitative" - quantitative) history. This approach was created on the basis of borrowing the methods of economics and demography, primarily due to the possibilities of statistical data processing.

The statistical approach presupposes a conscious removal from the unique characteristics of a historical source, the creation of a kind of "squeezing" of a homogeneous series of facts. This research program was based on the work of the French historian Ernest Labrousse, who brought up a galaxy of famous historians in a quarter of a century of teaching. His program singled out repeatable historical phenomena in order to find causal relationships in them: “The repeated has more human value here than the accidental. In economic history, unlike what is observed in other areas of history, everything that is important is repeatable,” wrote Labrousse in his thesis on history on the crisis of the French economy in the pre-revolutionary period (Labrousse E. La crise de l 'économie française à la fin de l'Ancien Régime et au début de la Révolution. P., 1944. P. 171-172).

This study made a significant contribution to the study of the causes of the French Revolution (1789–1794). Labrousse insisted that the revolutionary upheavals had become an uprising of the paupers. The main role in them was played by the economic crisis, exacerbated by crop failure, which caused an increase in grain prices. Based on the statistics of the 18th century, the historian developed digital series on price changes, crops, manufactured goods, and trade. In response to traditional accusations of the unreliability of these sources, Labrousse defended himself with references to the reliability of statistical methods, to the law of "error compensation", and to coincidence tests. In societies dominated by the rural economy, crop failures, extreme increases in the price of bread, can indeed provoke a crisis. Only as the economy develops, another, industrial type of crisis matures, such as the crisis of 1929, with a different set of causes and effects.

Completely different in its research characteristics was the direction history of mentalities(from the French "mentalité" - mindset). This concept did not receive a strict definition, since it characterized the mobile and elusive world of collective consciousness and the unconscious, the basic motives of human behavior that had not previously been the subject of historical research. This approach is opposite to the previously justified method hermeneutics, i.e. understanding, according to which it is necessary and sufficient for the historian to “get used to” the subject of research, to identify himself with a person of a certain era. The history of mentality is the study of a world alien to the historian, a world in which other people lived, having thoughts, feelings and beliefs alien to modern perception.

As an example, we can cite the study by F. Aries “A Man in the Face of Death”, in which the author analyzes how the perception of death has changed in a Western person at an unconscious level in different centuries. He identified five ideal "ages" in the perception of death:

1. Death in antiquity and at the dawn of the Middle Ages, perceived as a natural stage of collective destiny.

2. "Tame death", "death of oneself" of the middle and late Middle Ages, the end of the biography without tragic experiences, not causing fear.

3. "Death is long and close", characteristic of the New Age and regarded as savagery and an inevitable threat.

4. "The death of you" of the 19th - early 20th centuries - the tragic loss of a dear being in a culture oriented towards family values.

5. "Inverted death" of the second half of the 20th century, which is considered as a disturbing phenomenon, forced out of consciousness. For the first time in history, society almost "taboos" the topic of death.

Philippe Aries formed a model of the history of mentalities, which has become a classic, both in terms of the sources used - mainly monuments of literature and art - and in terms of the organization of the text of the study itself.

In the 1970s in parallel with the history of mentalities, a similar research approach developed - historical anthropology. The basis for it was the success of European ethnology, or anthropology, which studies “exotic”, compared to Western, cultures. The historians who proclaimed this program began to borrow the professional tools of a related discipline, sought to reveal in the minds of modern society the echoes of the distant past, stable stereotypes of behavior that are not subject to the influence of time. As a result, new interdisciplinary projects appeared, led by historians, to study folk memory, myths, which made it possible to reconstruct the deep structures of the collective life of people.

Another subject of historical anthropology was the study of a wide variety of rituals of the past - holidays, processions, political manifestations, analysis of the structures of historical texts.

It was historical anthropology that opened for the historian the facets of the social universe perceived by ethnologists: worldly wisdom and stable traditions of the people of the past, exoticism of various eras. The study focused on everyday life, both material and cultural, of an “ordinary” person who did not leave a noticeable trace in written sources.

A true masterpiece of the Annales tradition in the genre of historical anthropology is the book "Montailou" by E. Le Roy Ladurie (Le Roy Ladurie by E. Montailou, an Aquitaine village (1294–1324). - Yekaterinburg, 2001), who tried to hear the voice of the "great mute" medieval history - a common man living at the turn of the XIII-XIV centuries. in a remote region of the Pyrenees, in a specific mountain village, and to restore his daily practices. The author did not find in the life of the villagers not only the particularly important role of feudal structures or the church (as was customary to think about the Middle Ages), but even the elementary use of the wheel. Of interest is also the choice of the source from which the views of the villagers were reconstructed: these are the materials of interrogations of the church inquisition investigating the case of the spread of the Qatari heresy in the region.

The author resurrected the appearance of an Aquitanian village lost in the mountains during the life of one generation of peasants. The meticulousness of the interrogation protocols of the inquisitors allowed the historian to study the peasant world in detail. The first part of the book was devoted to the description of the geographical environment, systems of agriculture and pastoralism, power and social structures. Relations between family clans had a determining influence in this society.

Moving in the second part from "ecology" to "archeology" of Montaillou, the author analyzed the mental universe of the peasants, their ideas about life and death, fate and freedom of choice, love and jealousy, health and disease, acceptable and unacceptable norms of behavior. Le Roy Ladurie argued with Aries, who, studying the attitude towards children in different eras, argued that for a long time medieval people perceived their children as "little adults". The inhabitants of Montaillou had an idea of the age of childhood and were attached to their children. Forming, thus, the "total history" of a small rural community, the author was inspired by the work of an anthropologist, restoring the smallest aspects of folk culture, quite autonomous from the prescriptions of the central government and the dominant ideologies.

Regardless of the French historical school, in the twentieth century. American psychohistory, which used Freudianism as a basic method (the theory and practice of psychoanalysis created by Z. Freud and his followers, in which the main role was assigned to work with the unconscious of a person, which forms the main mental and behavioral reactions in early childhood). The founder of psychoanalysis himself took part in the formation of psychohistorical concepts, having published, in collaboration with W. Bullitt, the book “Woodrow Wilson. Twenty-eighth President of the United States. Psychological picture".

In the postwar years in the United States, the main directions of psychohistorical research were formed: the study of the national character by G. Gorer; study of the history of the revolutionary movement by G. Bykovsky; the study of childhood history by E. Erickson as an environment that shapes the role and place of subsequent generations in the historical process.

Psychohistory calls itself the science of "historical motivation", which is based on "... the philosophy of methodological individualism" and aims to explain the actions of "individuals in historical groups." Thus, the researchers of the American Revolution E. Burroughs, M. Wallacey, B. Mazlish made an attempt to show it as a revolution of a special type, which, unlike the European ones, was caused not so much by economic, social or political reasons, as by a change in the general mental situation in society. .

One of the founders of psychohistory, E. Erikson, reflecting on the history of Nazi Germany, tried to explain the phenomenon of fascism by the immaturity of German spiritual life, which led to psychological conflicts among the youth, which were expressed in the form of various fears. At the same time, Erickson pointed out the connection between fascism and the psychological state of a family person, since Hitler very often used vocabulary related to the family in his speeches. The historian also touched upon the psychological split in Germany, which, according to his concept, contributed to the establishment of the Nazi dictatorship.

In the 1980s–1990s, when all the existing theories of the historical process created in the 20th century showed their vulnerability to criticism, historians turned to “microhistorical” subjects without any pretense of generalization – about the life of a small town, village, community, family or individual biography. The model for imitation in this regard was the tradition Italian microhistory.

The term “microhistory” itself was used as early as the 1950s and 1960s, but had a pejorative or ironic connotation: it is history dealing with trifles. Only in the late 1970s. a group of Italian historians made the term microstoria the flag of a new scientific direction. The magazine became the tribune of Italian microhistory Quaderni storici, it published program articles of the leaders of this direction: K. Ginzburg, E. Grandy and J. Levy. Microhistory arose as a counterbalance to simplified ideas about the automatic nature of social processes and trends. Speaking of microhistory, which always addresses the unique features of historical reality, it is difficult to single out its general theoretical principles. Its distinctive feature is experimentalism in research methods and in the forms of presentation of its results. But the most noticeable part of the experiment, which gave its name to the whole direction, is the change in the “scale” of the study: researchers resort to microanalysis in order, as if under a magnifying glass, to discern the essential features of the phenomenon under study, which usually escape the attention of historians.

One of the leaders of microhistory, J. Levy, emphasized that the study of a problem at the microlevel by no means excludes the possibility of generalizing historical material; on the contrary, microanalysis makes it possible to see the refraction of general processes “at a certain point in real life”. Thus, the study of small objects - the biography of an individual, family, local community - allows us to capture the uniquely peculiar features of the historical era, to identify the limits of the social "norm" and "exception", to show the significance of individual events that were destined to become "landline" on the verge of two epochs.

Another popular trend in microhistory in the modern world has become German "history of everyday life", which was formed in the late 1980s, when a real “historical boom” gripped West Germany, associated primarily with the urgent need to figure out what happened to the country in the 20th century. There was a massive interest in studying the past of their city or village, in the history of their family. In fact, amateur enthusiasts have challenged professional historians. "Historical workshops" open to the participation of all comers have become widespread; "oral history" was widely practiced, based on records of older people's memories of their lives.

This interest in the experience and experiences of the "little man" living under the heel of immutable traditions, totalitarian ideology
and global tragic upheavals, was called the "history of everyday life" ( Alltagsgeschichte), or "history from below" ( Geschichte von unten). Later, the history of everyday life became part of a broader process of democratization of public life and, not coincidentally, coincided with the birth of the green movement and the feminist movement in Germany. Representatives of academic science initially criticized the "history of everyday life" as an unoriginal amateurish attempt to undermine the basic principles of the historical profession. However, professional scientists have finally created their own concept of this direction under the same name.

The greatest contribution to the development of the scientific "history of everyday life" was made by A. Ludtke, a member of the Max Planck Institute for History in Göttingen. The subject of his main attention was the history of German workers in the 19th–20th centuries, and the main issue was the problem of acceptance and / or resistance of the proletarians, the “rules of the game” imposed on them, factory orders, the ideas of National Socialism, etc. The key to his concept is a hard-to-translate concept Eugensinn("willfulness", "self-respect"); as A. Ludtke shows, the dependence of workers on the factory bosses was not absolute: they found niches in the factory discipline for self-assertion, using unauthorized work breaks, “fooling around”, etc.

Having become a world-famous and recognized area of research, the history of everyday life has retained its original subject of study. The main experimental field here remains the life and way of life of people in the history of the 20th century, which “historians of everyday life” seek to get rid of ideological interpretations that distort historical reality. Historians of this trend made a great contribution to the study of the phenomenon of Nazism, considering it from the inside from the point of view of those "ordinary people" who, wittingly or unwittingly, contributed to the establishment of the fascist dictatorship in Germany.

Thus, modern historical science is represented by a variety of research trends that allow each historian to choose the subject of research to his liking. However, many researchers assess the current situation in world historiography as a crisis. All concepts in history claiming the possibility of global generalizations and categorical conclusions were refuted by voluminous and often fair criticism that came from the horizons of various related disciplines - philosophy, anthropology, linguistics.

Offering many research models, modern history does not currently have criteria and concepts shared by the entire professional community.

1.1 Concept, object and subject of history.

1.2 Historical sources and facts.

1.3 Methods and principles of historical research.

1.4 History functions.

1.5 Approaches to the study of history.

1.1 Concept, object and subject of history

Translated from ancient Greek, “history” is a story about the past, about what has been learned. There are several meanings of the concept history . The main ones are the following: 1) history - story, narration; 2) history is the process of development of nature and society in time; 3) history is a science that studies the past of mankind in all its concreteness and diversity.

The object of historical science (that is, what it studies) is the totality of facts, events, and phenomena that characterize the life of society in the past. Since the past of mankind is very diverse, it is studied not only by historians. To define the boundaries of research for the various social sciences, there is the subject of science. The subject of historical science is the patterns of development of human society. Thus, the main goal of history becomes the knowledge of the laws of social development in the past in order to explain the present.

History includes the history of the world as a whole (general history), the history of any continent, region (history of Europe, African studies, Balkan studies, etc.) and the history of individual countries, peoples, civilizations (domestic history, Slavic studies, etc.) .

Historical science chronologically divides the past into the history of primitive society, ancient history, medieval history, modern history and modern history.

Historical science has many branches: economic, political, social, military history, religion, culture, historical geography, historiography, etc.

History is a complex of sciences, which includes the special historical sciences of archeology (studies the history of the origin of man and society from the material sources of antiquity) and ethnography (studies the life and customs of peoples).

1.2 Historical sources and facts

To establish the patterns of historical development, it is necessary to investigate many facts, events and processes based on a comprehensive study of historical sources. historical source - this is evidence of the past that has fallen into the scope of the researcher's attention, which is used as the basis for any statement about the past.

There are the following types of sources:

a) written (chronicles, laws, decrees, etc.);

b) material (tools, clothes, dwellings, etc.);

c) ethnographic (traditions of various peoples of the world);

d) linguistic;

e) oral;

f) audiovisual (photo, film, video documents, sound recordings).

The study of various kinds of sources is carried out by source studies (a separate branch of historical science) and a number of auxiliary historical disciplines, the subject of which is a comprehensive study of any one source or its individual aspects, for example:

Numismatics (the science of coins).

Genealogy (the science of the origin and family ties of people).

Heraldry (the science of coats of arms).

Historical metrology (the science that studies the systems of measures and weights used in the past).

Palaeography (a science that studies various writing systems in their development).

Sphragistics (the science of seals).

Chronology (a science that studies the systems of chronology and calendars of different peoples), etc.

Extracted from historical sources historical facts - statements about the past that are introduced into scientific circulation.

The following types of facts are distinguished:

a) absolute, i.e. statements about actual events. For example: "On June 22, 1941, the Great Patriotic War began."

b) probabilistic, i.e. statements about alleged events, the reality of which has not been established, but the very possibility of them has not been completely refuted. For example: "Alexander I ended his life in Siberia under the name of Elder Fyodor Kuzmich in 1846."

c) false, i.e. statements about events that never happened. Similar examples can be easily found in the popular press. For example: “When I.V. Stalin, 40 million people were repressed.”

From the facts it is necessary to distinguish the interpretation (i.e. interpretation) of the facts. Even professional historians can evaluate the same facts differently. One can imagine and evaluate the historical situation in different ways, but this will not cancel the events that have happened.

ἱστορία - questioning, research) - a field of knowledge, as well as the humanities, which studies a person (his activities, condition, worldview, social relations and organizations, and so on) in the past.

In a narrower sense, history is a science that studies all kinds of sources about the past in order to establish the sequence of events, the historical process, the objectivity of the facts described and draw conclusions about the causes of events.

The original meaning, etymology and meaning of the term

The original meaning of the word "history" goes back to the ancient Greek term meaning "investigation, recognition, establishment." History was identified with the establishment of authenticity, the truth of events and facts. In ancient Roman historiography (historiography in the modern sense is a branch of historical science that studies its history), this word began to mean not a way of recognizing, but a story about the events of the past. Soon, “history” began to be called in general any story about any case, incident, real or fictional.

Stories that are popular in a particular culture but not corroborated by third-party sources, such as the Arthurian legends, are generally considered part of the cultural heritage, rather than the "unbiased study" that any part of history as a scientific discipline should be.

Word history came from Greek ἱστορία , history), and comes from the Proto-Indo-European word wid-tor-, where is the root weid-, "know, see" . In Russian it is represented by the words "see" and "know".

In the same ancient Greek sense, the word "history" was used by Francis Bacon in the widely used term natural history. For Bacon, history is "knowledge of objects whose place is determined in space and time," and whose source is memory (just as science is a product of reflection, and poetry is a product of fantasy). In medieval England, the word "story" was more often used in the sense of a story in general ( story). Special term history ( history) as a sequence of past events appeared in English at the end of the 15th century, and the word "historical" ( historical, historic) - in the XVII century. In Germany, France and Russia, the same word "history" is still used in both senses.

Since historians are both observers and participants in events, their historical writings are written from the point of view of their time and are usually not only politically biased, but also share all the delusions of their era. In the words of Benedetto Croce, "All history is modern history." Historical science provides a true account of the course of history through stories about events and their impartial analysis. In our time, history is created by the efforts of scientific institutions.

All the events that remain in the memory of generations, in one authentic form or another, constitute the content of the historical chronicle. This is necessary to identify the sources that are most important for recreating the past. The composition of each historical archive depends on the content of a more general archive in which certain texts and documents are found; although each of them claims "the whole truth", some of these statements are usually refuted. In addition to archival sources, historians can use inscriptions and images on monuments, oral traditions and other sources, such as archaeological ones. By providing sources independent of historical sources, archeology is especially useful for historical research, not only confirming or refuting the testimony of eyewitnesses of events, but also allowing information to be filled in time gaps about which there is no evidence of contemporaries.

History belongs to the humanities by some authors, to the social sciences by others, and may be considered as an area between the humanities and the social sciences. The study of history is often associated with certain practical or theoretical goals, but it can also be a manifestation of ordinary human curiosity.

Historiography

Term historiography has several meanings. First, it is the science of how history is written, how correctly the historical method is applied, and how it develops. Secondly, the same term refers to a body of historical works, often thematically or otherwise selected from the general body (for example, historiography of the 1960s about the Middle Ages). Thirdly, the term historiography indicate the reasons for the creation of historical works, revealed in the course of their analysis, by the choice of subjects, the way events are interpreted, the personal convictions of the author and the audience to which he addresses, by the use of evidence or the method of referring to other historians. Professional historians also discuss the possibility of creating a single story about the history of mankind, or a series of such stories, competing for an audience.

Philosophy of history

The main approaches to the development of the philosophy of history include the following:

formational (K. Marx, F. Engels, V. I. Lenin, I. M. Dyakonov, etc.)
civilizational (N. Ya. Danilevsky, O. Spengler, A. Toynbee, Sh. Aizenshtadt, B. S. Erasov, D. M. Bondarenko, I. V. Sledzevsky, S. A. Nefyodov, G. V. Aleksushin and etc.)
world-system (A. G. Frank , I. Wallerstein , S. Amin , J. Arrighi , M. A. Cheshkov , A. I. Fursov , A. V. Korotaev , K. Chase-Dunn, L. E. Grinin, etc.)
Annales School: M. Blok, L. Febvre, F. Braudel, A. Ya. Gurevich.
Relay-stage (Yu. I. Semyonov) (in fact, nothing more than a modified Marxist-formational approach, where the main driving force of social development is the same class struggle, and communism is the ultimate goal.)

History Methods

The historical method consists in following the principles and rules of working with primary sources and other evidence found during the study and then used in writing a historical work.

However, the beginning of the use of scientific methods in history is associated with another of his contemporary, Thucydides, and his book "History of the Peloponnesian War". Unlike Herodotus and his religious colleagues, Thucydides viewed history as a product of the choice and actions of not gods, but people in whom he looked for all causes and effects.

Their own traditions and developed methods of historical research existed in ancient and medieval China. The foundations of professional historiography were laid there by Sima Qian (145-90 BC), the author of the Historical Notes. His followers used this work as a model for historical and biographical writings.

Among other historians who influenced the formation of the methodology of historical research, we can mention Ranke, Trevelyan, Braudel, Blok, Febvre, Vogel. The use of scientific methodology in history was opposed by such authors as H. Trevor-Roper. They stated that understanding history requires imagination, so history should be considered not a science but an art. An equally controversial author, Ernst Nolte, following the classical German philosophical tradition, viewed history as a movement of ideas. Marxist historiography, represented in the West by the work of Hobsbawm and Deutscher in particular, aims to confirm the philosophical ideas of Karl Marx. Their opponents from anti-communist historiography, such as Pipes and Conquest, offer an opposite Marxist interpretation of history. There is also an extensive historiography from a feminist perspective. A number of postmodern philosophers generally deny the possibility of an unbiased interpretation of history and the existence of scientific methodology in it. Recently, cliodynamics, the mathematical modeling of historical processes, has begun to gain more and more strength.

Comprehension of the patterns of historical processes

The question of the spread of various social systems was largely reduced to the problem of the spread of technical innovations, cultural diffusion. The ideas of diffusionism were most clearly formulated in the so-called theory of cultural circles. Its authors Friedrich Ratzel, Leo Frobenius and Fritz Gröbner believed that similar phenomena in the culture of different peoples are explained by the origin of these phenomena from one center, that the most important elements of human culture appear only once and only in one place. They give the discoverer people a decisive advantage over other peoples.

In the 50s and 60s of the 20th century, the Malthusian theory of cycles found a detailed reflection in the generalizing works of Slicher van Bath, Carlo Chippol and a number of other authors. An important role in the development of this theory was played by the French Annales school, in particular the works of Jean Mevre, Pierre Hubert, Ernest Labrousse, Fernand Braudel, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie. In 1958, summing up the achievements of the previous period, the editor of the Annales, Fernand Braudel, announced the birth of a "new historical science", La Nouvelle Histoire. He wrote: “The new economic and social history brings the problem of cyclic change to the fore in its research. She is fascinated by the phantom but also by the reality of the cyclical rise and fall of prices.” Soon the existence of a "new historical science" was recognized throughout the Western world. In England, it became known as the new scientific history, and in the United States as the new economic history, or cliometry. The historical process was described by cliometrists with the help of huge numerical arrays, databases stored in the memory of computers.

In 1974, the first volume of The Modern World System by Immanuel Wallerstein came out. Developing the ideas of Fernand Braudel, Wallerstein showed that the formation of the world market is associated with uneven economic development. The countries of the “world center”, where new technologies appear and where the diffusion (and sometimes aggressive) wave of innovations comes from, thanks to this they exploit the countries of the “world periphery”.

In 1991, the demographic-structural theory of Jack Goldstone appeared. She drew on neo-Malthusian theory, but offered a more detailed approach, in particular, she considered the impact of the overpopulation crisis not only on the common people, but also on the elite and on the state.

In The Pursuit of Power, William McNeil, describing the diffusion waves generated by the technical discoveries of the Modern Age, supplements his model with a description of the Malthusian demographic cycles. Thus, we can speak of a new concept of the development of human society, in which the internal development of society is described using neo-Malthusian theory, but demographic cycles are sometimes superimposed by waves of conquests generated by discoveries made in other societies. These conquests are followed by demographic catastrophes and social synthesis, during which a new society and a new state are born.

Historical periods

The division of history into certain periods is used for classification in terms of certain general ideas. The names and boundaries of individual periods may depend on the geographic region and the dating system. In most cases, the names are given retrospectively, that is, they reflect the system of assessments of the past from the point of view of subsequent eras, which may affect the researcher, and therefore periodization should be treated with due caution.

History ( historical period) in the classical sense begins with the advent of writing. The period before its appearance is called prehistoric period. In Russian historiography, the following major periods of world history are distinguished:

Primitive society: in the Middle East - until c. 3000 BC e. (unification of Upper and Lower Egypt);
Ancient world: in Europe - until 476 AD. e. (fall of the Roman Empire);
Middle Ages: 476 - the end of the 15th century (the beginning of the era of the Great Geographical Discoveries);
New time: the end of the XV century. - 1918 (end of World War I);
Modern times: 1918 - our days.

There are also alternative periodizations of world history. For example, in Western historiography, the ending middle ages associated with the 16th century, after which a single period begins modern history.

Historical disciplines

Archeography is the theory and practice of publishing written sources.
Archeology - the study of the material sources of the historical past of mankind.
Archiving - the study of the acquisition of archives, as well as the storage and use of archival documents.
Archontology is the study of the history of positions in state, international, political, religious and other public structures.
Bonistics - the study of the history of printing and circulation of paper money.
Vexillology (flag science) - the study of flags, banners, standards, pennants and other items of this kind.
Genealogy is the study of family relationships among people.
Genetic genealogy - the study of human relationships through the use of genetics.
Heraldry (coat of arms) - the study of coats of arms, as well as the tradition and practice of their use.
Diplomatics is the study of historical acts (legal documents).
Document science is a complex science of the document and document-communication activity, which studies the processes of creation, distribution and use of documentary sources of information in society in historical, modern and prognostic terms.
Historiography is the study of the history and methodology of historical knowledge, as well as the study of the views and works of various historians.
Historical geography is a science at the intersection of history and geography.
Historical demography is the science of the demographic history of mankind.
Historical metrology - the study of measures used in the past - length, area, volume, weight - in their historical development.
- study of .
Methodology of history - the study of various systems of methods that can be used in the process of historical research and the specifics of various historical scientific schools.
Numismatics - the study of the history of coinage and money circulation in coins.
Palaeography is the study of the history of writing, the patterns of development of its graphic forms, as well as monuments of ancient writing.
Papyrology is the study of texts on papyri found primarily in Egypt.
Sphragistics is the study of seals (matrices) and their impressions on various materials.
Faleristics - the study of award insignia.
Chronology - the study of the sequence of historical events in time, or the science of measuring time.
Eortology - the study of church holidays.
Epigraphy - the study of inscriptions on solid materials (stone, ceramics, metal, etc.)

Disciplines related to history

Anthropology is the study of man and his interaction with the world.
Gender history - the history of the interaction of male and female experience as one of the most important aspects of social organization.
Sociocultural anthropology is the science of culture as a set of material objects, ideas, values, ideas and patterns of behavior in all forms of its manifestation and at all historical stages of its development.
Culturology is a science that studies culture, the most general patterns of its development.
Local history - the study of architecture, biology, geography, history, culture, literature, medicine, religious cults, self-government, agriculture, sports, toponymy, fortification, ecology of a particular region.
Psychohistory is the study of the psychological motivation of people's actions in the past.
Ethnology and ethnography - the study of peoples and ethnic groups, their origins, culture and behavior (the definition of the subject matter of both disciplines, as well as their connection with sociocultural anthropology, remain debatable).

Related disciplines

Military history is the science of the origin, construction and actions of the armed forces, an integral part of military science.
Historical psychology is a science at the intersection of history and psychology.
The history of culture is the science of the value world of historical epochs, peoples, individuals and other carriers of the historical process.
History of science - the history of scientific knowledge, political and legal doctrines, the history of philosophy, etc.
The history of state and law - studies the patterns of development of the state and law among various peoples of the world in different historical periods.
The history of political and legal doctrines - studies the features of views on the issues of the essence, origin and existence of the state and law of various thinkers in various historical periods.
The history of religion is the study of the emergence and development of religious beliefs and sacred cults, the relationships and characteristics of local and world confessions.
The history of economics is the study of phenomena and processes associated with evolutionary development and the interaction of human economic activity.

Notes

Professor Richard J. Evans The Two Faces of E.H. Carr (English) . Archived
Professor Alun Munslow What History Is. History in Focus, Issue 2: What is History?. University of London (2001). Archived from the original on August 21, 2011. Retrieved November 10, 2008.
Introduction // Knowing Teaching and Learning History, National and International Perspectives / Peter N. Stearns, Peters Seixas, Sam Wineburg (eds.). - New York & London: New York University Press, 2000. - P. 6. - ISBN 0-8147-8141-1
Nash Gary B. The "Convergence" Paradigm in Studying Early American History in Schools // Knowing Teaching and Learning History, National and International Perspectives / Peter N. Stearns, Peters Seixas, Sam Wineburg (eds.). - New York & London: New York University Press, 2000. - P. 102–115. - ISBN 0-8147-8141-1
Seixas Peter Schweigen! die Kinder! // Knowing Teaching and Learning History, National and International Perspectives / Peter N. Stearns, Peters Seixas, Sam Wineburg (eds.). - New York & London: New York University Press, 2000. - P. 24. - ISBN 0-8147-8141-1
Lowenthal David Dilemmas and Delights of Learning History // Knowing Teaching and Learning History, National and International Perspectives / Peter N. Stearns, Peters Seixas, Sam Wineburg (eds.). - New York & London: New York University Press, 2000. - P. 63. - ISBN 0-8147-8141-1
Joseph, Brian (Ed.) & Janda, Richard (Ed.) (2008), "The Handbook of Historical Linguistics", Blackwell Publishing (published 30 December 2004), p. 163, ISBN 978-1405127479
Muller M. On the strength of roots // Science of language. Philological Notes, Voronezh, 1866.
Online Etymology Dictionary, http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=history&searchmode=none
Ferrater-Mora, José. Diccionario de Filosofia. Barcelona: Editorial Ariel, 1994.
Whitney, W.D. . New York: The Century Co., 1889.
Whitney, W. D. (1889). The Century dictionary; an encyclopedic lexicon of the English language. New York: The Century Co. Page .
WordNet Search - 3.0, "History".
Michael C. Lemon (1995). The Discipline of History and the History of Thought. Routledge. Page 201. ISBN 0-415-12346-1
Scott Gordon and James Gordon Irving, The History and Philosophy of Social Science. Routledge 1991. Page 1. ISBN 0-415-05682-9
Ritter, H. (1986). Dictionary of concepts in history. Reference sources for the social sciences and humanities, no. 3. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press. Page 416.
Graham, Gordon Chapter 1 // The Shape of the Past. - Oxford University, 1997.
Elizabeth Harris, In Defense of the Liberal-Arts Approach to Technical Writing. College English, Vol. 44, no. 6 (Oct., 1982), pp. 628-636

Among the disciplines, acquaintance with which begins in high school, one should name history, which allows schoolchildren to understand how people of past eras lived, what events happened centuries ago, and what consequences they led to. Consider what history studies, why do we need to know about long-past events.

Description of the discipline

Historical science allows you to learn about past eras, specific events, monarchs, inventions. However, such an understanding of what history studies would be simplistic. This discipline works not only with facts, but also makes it possible to identify patterns in the development of life, identify periods, analyze the mistakes of the past in order to try not to repeat them. In general, the science of "history of the world" comprehends the process of development of human society.

This area of knowledge belongs to the humanities. Being one of the most ancient sciences (Herodotus is considered its founder), it continues to develop actively.

Subject of study

What does history study? First of all, the main subject of this science is the past, that is, the totality of events that took place in a particular state, society as a whole. This discipline explores wars, reforms, uprisings and rebellions, the relationship between different states, the activities of historical figures. To better understand what history studies, let's make a table.

Historical periodization

	What is being studied
Primitive	Features of the appearance and life of the most ancient and ancient hunters and gatherers, the emergence of social relations, the emergence of art, the structure of an ancient society, the emergence of crafts, the specifics of community life
ancient world, antiquity	Features of the first states, the specifics of the foreign and domestic policies of the first monarchs, the social structures of the most ancient societies, the first laws and their significance, the conduct of economic activity
Middle Ages	The specifics of the early European kingdoms, the relationship between statehood and the church, the classes distinguished in society and the characteristics of the life of each of them, reforms, the specifics of foreign policy, chivalry, Viking raids, knightly orders, crusades, the Inquisition, the Hundred Years War
new time	Technical discoveries, development of the world economy, colonization, formation and diversity of political parties, bourgeois revolutions, industrial revolutions
The newest	World War II, relations between Russia and the world community, features of life, war in Afghanistan, Chechen campaign, coup in Spain

The table shows that in the study of historical science there is a huge number of facts, trends, features, and events. This discipline helps people to realize the past of their country or the world community as a whole, not to forget this invaluable knowledge, but to keep it, analyze it, realize it.

Term evolution

The word "history" has not always been used in its modern meaning.

Initially, this word was translated from Greek as “recognition”, “investigation”. Therefore, the term meant a way to identify a certain fact or event.
In the days of ancient Rome, the word began to be used in the sense of "retelling the events of the past."
In the Renaissance, the term began to be understood as a generalized meaning - not only the establishment of truth, but also its written fixation. This understanding absorbed the first and second.

Only in the 17th century did historical science become an independent branch of knowledge and acquired the significance known to us.

Klyuchevsky's position

The famous Russian historian Vasily Osipovich Klyuchevsky spoke very interestingly about the subject of historical science, emphasizing the dual nature of the term:

It is the process of moving forward.
study of this process.

Thus, everything that happens in the world is its history. At the same time, science comprehends the features of the historical process, that is, events, conditions, results.

Klyuchevsky spoke about the role of this science very briefly, but succinctly: "History does not teach anything, but only punishes for ignorance of the lessons."

Auxiliary disciplines

History is a diversified, complex science that has to deal with a large number of facts and events. That is why a number of auxiliary disciplines appeared, information about which is presented in the table.

Each of these subsidiary disciplines is very important for understanding the historical process as a whole.

Industries

The development of a person and society is a complex, multifaceted process, which includes the activities of individuals, the development of social and cultural spheres, and the domestic and foreign policies of states.

Because of this, in science itself it is customary to single out a number of main areas of history:

Military.
State.
Political.
History of religion.
The rights.
Economic.
Social.

All these directions in their totality constitute history. However, within the framework of the school course, only the most general information from the discipline is studied; another unit is used in history textbooks:

Ancient world history.
Medieval.
New.
The latest.

Separately allocated world and domestic history. The school course also includes local history, in which students get acquainted with the peculiarities of the development of their native land.

Basic Methods

Before understanding the question of why to study history, we should consider the set of methods that this fascinating science uses:

Chronological - the study of science by periods and dates. For example, when studying modern history, it is very important to understand the chronology of the Great Geographical Discoveries.
Synchronic - an attempt to identify the relationship between processes and phenomena.
Historical-genetic - analysis of a historical event, determination of its causes, significance, connection with other events. For example, the Boston Tea Party and the First Continental Congress led to the American Revolutionary War.
Comparative-historical - comparison of this phenomenon with others. For example, comparing the features of the Renaissance period in various European countries when studying the history of the world.
Statistical - collection of specific numerical data for analysis. History is an exact science, therefore such information is necessary: how many victims this or that uprising, clash, war claimed.
Historical-typological - the distribution of events and phenomena based on commonality. For example, the features of the industrial revolution in modern history in various states.

All these methods are used by scientists to comprehend the features and patterns of the development of society.

Role

Consider why you need to study history. This science allows us to understand the laws of the historical development of mankind and society, on the basis of this information it becomes possible to understand what awaits us in the future.

The historical path is complex and contradictory, even the most intelligent and far-sighted individuals made mistakes that led to horrific consequences: riots, civil wars, the death of hundreds of thousands of ordinary people, coups. We can only avoid these mistakes if we are aware of them.

Without knowledge of world and native history, it is impossible to be an educated, literate person, a patriot, to understand one's place in the world. That is why from childhood it is necessary to study this fascinating science.

How to comprehend science

To understand the peculiarities of the development of society, you should choose a good history textbook and workbook. In secondary school, contour maps are also necessary for work, the filling of which allows you to visually present the features of the course of a particular process.

An additional advantage will be reading literature on the subject, through which you can significantly expand your knowledge and get acquainted with interesting facts.

Difficulties

Having considered what history studies, let's look at the question of what difficulties one has to face in comprehending this humanitarian discipline:

Many events of the historical path have a contradictory and often subjective assessment of researchers.
The new history is being rethought, so the knowledge that teachers of the “old school” taught in their lessons all their lives turned out to be irrelevant.
When studying ancient periods, many facts are in the nature of hypotheses, albeit supported by evidence.
Science strives for precision, which is not always possible.
The need to keep in mind a huge number of dates, names, reforms.

That is why acquaintance with the science of history often does not arouse enthusiasm among modern schoolchildren. Most often, they simply do not understand the great importance of this discipline, they do not see interest in it, perceiving the subject as boring and requiring memorization of a large amount of information.

The teacher is required to convey to his students the role of this fascinating science, to help students realize its value. Only in this case, the work in the classroom will be useful and productive.

Definition of history.

History is the science of the past of human society and its present, of the patterns of development of social life in specific forms, in spatio-temporal dimensions. The content of history in general is the historical process, which reveals itself in the phenomena of human life, information about which has been preserved in historical monuments and sources. These phenomena are extremely diverse, they concern the development of the economy, the external and internal social life of the country, international relations, and the activities of historical figures. Accordingly, history is a diversified science, it is composed of a number of independent branches of historical knowledge, namely: the history of economic, political, social, civil, military, state and law, religion, and others.

Methodology of history.

The methodology of history is a system of principles and methods of historical knowledge. Until recently, the most common were the positivist and Marxist orientations in historical knowledge. The first is based on positive (positive) knowledge based on experience. The second is based on materialistic dialectics.

Theories of historical process.

Theory is a logical scheme explaining historical facts. Theories of the historical process are determined by the subject matter of history. A theory is a logical scheme that explains historical facts. One theory of the historical process differs from another in the subject of study and in the system of views on the historical process. Each of the theories offers its own version of the vision of the historical process. According to the subjects of study, three theories of the historical process are distinguished:

Religious and historical;

World-historical;

Local-historical.

The subject of study of religious-historical theory is the relationship of man with God. From the point of view of this theory, the meaning of history lies in the movement of man to God as to the Higher Mind, the Creator, in the process of which the formation of a free personality takes place.

The subject of study of world-historical theory is the global progress of mankind. All peoples go through the same stages, only for some it happens earlier, for others - later. There are several directions in this theory:

Materialistic (the development of society is driven by the struggle between different classes, which ultimately leads to the construction of a classless society);

Liberal (in history there is always a choice of the path of development, which depends on a strong person);

Technological (changes in society occur as a result of technological development).

Local-historical theory studies local civilizations: their origin, formation, flourishing, decline and death.

The subject of history.

The history of Russia is a scientific discipline that studies the development of our Fatherland, its multinational people, the formation of the main state and public institutions. Domestic history is an integral part of world history. This approach is based on the philosophical categories of general and particular. The use of these categories allows us to show the features of the development of Russia as a multinational, multi-confessional state, which has traditions that have developed over many centuries, and its own way of life. Scientific disputes about its belonging to any type of civilization do not stop today. It is easy to see that in the past and present of Russia, the features of various civilizations are intricately intertwined. Not without reason, a number of scientists declare the existence of a special type of civilization - the Eurasian one, to which our country belongs.

Therefore, when studying the course, it is necessary to combine a civilizational approach with formational characteristics. Russia is a civilizational region, the original development of which is determined by natural and climatic, geopolitical, confessional (religious), sociopolitical and other factors. The uniqueness of Russia and its role in the world cultural and historical process were significantly influenced by its border position between Europe and Asia, which caused the contradictory impact on Russia of the West and East. At the same time, the recognition of originality does not mean the isolation of Russia from the general historical development; the history of Russia is considered within the framework of the formation of world civilization.

The past of each nation is unique and unrepeatable. In the historical development of the Russian state, a number of determining factors should be singled out, which include geographical location, the influence of natural and climatic conditions, the geopolitical factor, the specifics of the spread of religious teachings (multi-confessionalism), religious tolerance, the multinational composition of the population, which has absorbed various traditions, both of the East and and the West. Finally, a significant role in the history of Russia is played by the peculiarities of the national consciousness of Russians and the specificity of their mentality (worldview), as well as the traditions of social organization - the absence of a rigidly structured society and the undividedness, unlike the West, of the interests of society, the state and the individual - catholicity. At the same time, this does not mean the absence of corporate interests of certain groups and strata of the population, especially those closely associated with servicing the institutions of state power and administration. On the other hand, the vast expanses of the Russian state, sparsely populated by tribes of different languages and customs, poorly connected with each other, could only be controlled with the help of a strong centralized authority. Without this, the collapse of a unique ethno-cultural community would have been a foregone conclusion.

historical schools.

Historical research includes historiographical analysis. Historiography is the analysis of concepts already existing in scientific and autobiographical literature. The study of the works of historians allows you to determine your own topic of research, not to repeat the paths already traveled, not to waste time developing refuted hypotheses.

Historical research can only be recognized as scientific when it has a clearly defined subject, poses a problem, puts forward a hypothesis, uses appropriate scientific methods, checks the reliability of sources, relies on the historiography of the issue, and, finally, argues the author's concept. Historical knowledge exists in the form of facts and concepts.

The historical school is a concept of the 18th - 19th centuries, since from that time scientists began to create scientifically based theories. Ancient historians explained the events by the personal qualities of prominent rulers and commanders, the customs and traditions of the country, irresistible fate, fate, fate. Medieval historians looked for the causes of events in God's permission, drew analogies with biblical stories. Under the influence of the ideas of the French Enlightenment, history began to be viewed from the point of view of the moral improvement of mankind, the ascent from barbarian customs to civilization. Since the 19th century social, economic, biological and other theories are used to interpret facts.

Public School. The greatest contribution to Russian historical science of the 19th century was made by N.M. Karamzin, SM. Solovyov, V.O. Klyuchevsky.

The main work of N.M. Karamzin - "History of the Russian State". The main idea of the author is that Russia perished from anarchy and was saved by wise autocracy. The highest value was declared the state, and the ideal form of government was an enlightened noble monarchy with a patriarchal pre-Petrine way of life. The historian preferred Ivan III and Alexei Mikhailovich, who strengthened the state through gradual transformations, rather than the bloody reigns of Ivan the Terrible and Peter.

The most prominent representative of the state historical school was S.M. Solovyov, who wrote "The History of Russia from Ancient Times" in 29 books. He considered the nature of the country, the character of the people and the course of external events to be the main factors of history. The state is the highest form of historical development, since only in the state does the people acquire the possibility of progressive development.

IN. Klyuchevsky, who was formed as a scientist in the state historical school, believed that various factors influence history: natural, economic, ethnic, personal. He noted the important role of the process of colonization of new lands in Russian history, which led to an extensive path of economic development. From the point of view of the historian, the temperate continental climate and the forest-steppe landscape had a significant influence on the character of the Russian people, adaptation to which developed the habit of intense but short-term work, patience, craving for change of place, everyday unpretentiousness. Considerable attention of V.O. Klyuchevsky paid attention to the psychology of the behavior of rulers and social groups.

In modern Russian historical science, there are several influential scientific schools that base their analysis of the past on various factors. None of the schools can claim to possess absolute truth, each has strengths and weaknesses, successes and failures.

Marxist direction. Representatives of the direction are based on the position that the material conditions of people's lives determine their conscious activity. Social structure, politics, law, morality, ideology, and partly art and science depend on the way goods are produced. K. Marx called the dominant mode of production in conjunction with its characteristic superstructure a socio-economic formation. Mankind is progressing from lower to higher formations: from primitive, slave-owning, feudal, capitalist to communist. For the countries of the East, Marxism proposed a parallel formation - the Asian mode of production, which is based on the community, collective and state ownership of the land.

In slave, feudal, capitalist formations, society is divided into classes. Class - a large group of people occupying a certain place in the production and distribution of goods, and this place depends on the ownership of the means of production. In the formation there are classes of exploiters (property owners) and exploited. The transition from one formation to another is connected with the improvement of technology, which creates new sources of wealth appropriated by new classes. Having become economically dominant, the new class seizes political dominance. K. Marx illustrated this scheme with examples of bourgeois revolutions in Europe.

Domestic historians of the Soviet period made a significant contribution to the development of Russian historical science. Their works, created within the framework of the Marxist trend, have largely not lost their significance in our time.

The strength of the Marxist historical school is in the materialistic explanation of the past, the priority study of economic relations, social structure, and state policy. The weak side is Eurocentrism (transferring the experience of the development of Western European countries to the whole world). The forecast about the inevitable transition of the most developed bourgeois countries to communism, which was considered as the pinnacle of technical, scientific progress, the liberation of the individual from exploitation, turned out to be erroneous.

Civilization School. The founders of this school were N.Ya. Danilevsky and A. Toynbee. The history of the world is considered as a process of development of local civilizations. A. Toynbee considered the place of origin and religion to be permanent criteria of civilization. Civilization goes through several stages: birth, growth, flourishing, breakdown, decay, death. It develops due to the work of the "Challenge - Response" system. Any life problem can be considered as a Challenge - an attack by an enemy, unfavorable nature and climate, fear of death. There is a solution to the problem. The answer is a reflection of aggression, forms of housekeeping, religion. The progress of civilization is associated with the development of spiritual and material culture, which is carried out by creative individuals. The masses imitate the creative minority and are unable to create something new. The breakdown of civilization is characterized by the emergence of hostile factions within the elite. The collapse of civilization is associated with the degradation of the ruling class, which ceases to be interested in state affairs, and is engaged in personal enrichment and intrigues. In place of the old elite comes a new elite, formed from the unprivileged strata. In the phase of the collapse of civilization, great empires are created, which take as a model either their past (archaism) or the utopian idea of a new order (futurism). The death of a civilization is connected with its conquest by another civilization and the spread of another culture.

The strength of the civilizational school is that it explains the development of all regions of the world, and history is recognized as a multifactorial process, so that various factors can dominate at different stages: economic, political, religious. The weakness of the civilizational approach lies in the vagueness of the "Challenge - Response" criterion, which more states than explains. In addition, this approach practically does not take into account the role of the masses in history.

Theory of ethnogenesis. Developed in detail in the works of L.N. Gumilyov. The history of mankind is represented by the history of ethnic groups. An ethnos is a group of people with their own stereotype of behavior, which is assimilated by offspring through a conditioned imitation reflex. The ethnos has existed for no more than 1500 years, going through the following stages in its development: passionary impulse, akmatic phase, breakdown, inertial phase, obscuration, homeostasis, memorial phase, degeneration.

Each stage has its own stereotype of behavior - with a passionary push and in the akmatic phase, the ideals of sacrifice and victory prevail. Breakdown is characterized by the desire for success, knowledge, beauty. In the inertial phase, the desire for improvement without risk to life dominates. Obscuration is marked by the predominance of the ideal of a quiet philistine life adapted to the landscape. In the last phases, the ethnos is unable to conduct a productive economy, create a culture, and gradually degrades.

The historical age of the ethnos depends on the amount of passionary - biochemical energy of living matter, which gives the ability to super-strain forces. Passionarity comes from space in the form of radiation, affects the genes of people and is inherited. At the first stages, energy is in abundance - ethnic groups are waging wars, colonization. Over time, the amount of energy decreases, and ethnic groups create culture. All great empires were created by passionate ethnic groups, but after a certain number of generations, the energy decreased, and the empires perished. The reason could be both the conquest from the outside and the collapse from the inside.

The strength of the school of ethnogenesis lies in explaining the events of world history on the basis of a measured value - passionarity. The theory makes it possible to predict the future of ethnic groups. The weak side of the school of ethnogenesis is the lack of evidence for the very concept of "passionarity". History takes on the features of biology, when all problems can be reduced to an excess or lack of energy.

The majority of modern Russian historians do not directly link their research with one school or another. However, when creating concepts, one can trace the influence of one of these schools. At present, researchers quite rarely rise to the level of generalizations within the framework of world history, preferring to study the history of individual regions and periods, to deepen existing ideas about Russia's past at a new qualitative level.

Principles of historical science.

What do we understand by the principles and methods of historical science, historical research?

It seems that the principles are the main, fundamental provisions of science. They proceed from the study of the objective laws of history, are the result of this study, and in this sense correspond to laws. However, there is a significant difference between laws and principles: laws act objectively, while principles are a logical category; they exist not in nature, but in the minds of people.

In modern historical science, the following basic principles of scientific historical research are applied: objectivity, historicism, a social approach to the study of history, and a comprehensive study of the problem.

The principle of objectivity is one of the principles that obliges us to consider historical reality as a whole, regardless of the desires, aspirations, attitudes and predilections of the subject. To consider history from the standpoint of this principle means that it is necessary, first of all, to study the objective laws that determine the processes of socio-political development; that it is necessary to rely on the facts in their true content; that it is necessary, finally, to consider each phenomenon in its many-sidedness and inconsistency, to study all the facts in their totality.

The principle of historicism is one of the most significant for any historical discipline, including the history of Russia. Any historical phenomenon should be studied from the point of view of where, when, due to what reasons (political, ideological) this phenomenon arose, how it was at the beginning, how it was evaluated then, how it then developed in connection with a change in the general situation and internal content, how it was replaced its role, what path has passed, what assessments were given to it at a particular stage of development, what it has become now, what can be said about the prospects for its development. The principle of historicism requires that any person who studies history should not fall into the role of a judge in assessing certain historical and political events. The principle of historicism obliges us to soberly take into account the real forces that certain political forces had at their disposal when implementing their ideas, programs and slogans in specific historical periods.

An important principle in the study of Russian history is the principle of the social approach. In this regard, the point of view of the outstanding Russian scientist and thinker G.V. Plekhanov is not without interest. But such subjectivism will not prevent him from being a completely objective historian, unless he begins to distort the real economic relations on the basis of which social forces have grown "(Plekhanov G.V. Selected Philosophical Works. T. 1. M., 1956. S. 671 ). In modern conditions, Russian historians began to call the principle of party membership the principle of a social approach, meaning by it the manifestation of certain social and class interests, the entire sum of social class relations: in the political struggle, in the economic field, in the contradictions of social and class psychology and traditions, in interclass and class conflicts. The principle of the social approach provides for the simultaneous observance of the principles of subjectivity and historicism. At the same time, it should be emphasized that the principle of a social approach to political history is especially necessary and essential in the study and evaluation of the programs and real political activities of political parties and movements, their leaders and activists. A few words should also be said on the principle of comprehensiveness.

The principle of a comprehensive study of history implies not only the need for completeness and reliability of information, but also the fact that it is necessary to keep in mind and take into account all aspects and all relationships that affect the political sphere of society.

Thus, the principles of objectivity, historicism, social approach, comprehensive study are based on the dialectical-materialistic methodology of studying historical processes.

historical knowledge.

Historical knowledge is a result of the process of historical knowledge of reality, proven by practice and justified by logic, its adequate reflection in the human mind in the form of ideas, concepts, judgments, theories.

Historical knowledge can conditionally be divided (according to the methods of cognition) into three levels.

1) reconstructive knowledge - the fixation of historical facts in chronological order - formed in the process of the historian's reconstructive activity. In the course of this activity (as a rule, with the use of special historical methods - textual, diplomatic, source study, historiographic, etc.), the historian establishes historical facts. Reconstructive knowledge, a reconstructive picture of the past is created in the form of a narrative (story, narration) or in the form of tables, diagrams.

2) empirical historical knowledge - knowledge about the regularities and relationships between various facts, phenomena, processes - is the result of reconstructive processing. Its purpose is to clarify the repetition in the process of historical development. In the course of such a study, the historian establishes facts of a higher level - empirical (open regularities - similar signs of processes, a typology of phenomena, etc.).

3) theoretical historical knowledge - knowledge about the typology and repetition, regularity of facts, phenomena, processes, structures - explains empirical facts in the course of theoretical knowledge. The task of theoretical knowledge is to formulate a theory, i.e. revealing the laws of historical development (but not functioning. For example, political science studies the laws of the functioning of state institutions, and history studies the laws of their development. Economics studies the laws of the functioning of economic systems, and history studies the laws of their development, etc.). The function of historical theory is to explain the regularities of the historical process, to model its development.

Sometimes the place of theory can be occupied by an ideological construction, but this has nothing to do with science.

Since historical knowledge and knowledge are forms of social consciousness, their functions (i.e., tasks, methods, and results) are socially conditioned. The functions of historical knowledge include:

The need for the formation of social consciousness,

Satisfying the need for social education,

The needs for political activity and the policy itself,

The need for explanation, foresight and prediction of the future.

Functions of historical knowledge.

Cognitive - identifying patterns of historical development.

Prognostic - predicting the future.

Educational - the formation of civil, moral values and qualities.

Social memory - a way of identifying and orienting society and the individual.

Requirements for graduating students.

According to the new State Standard, the Higher School should train highly qualified specialists who are able to solve professional problems at the level of the latest achievements of world science and technology and at the same time become cultural, spiritually rich people professionally engaged in creative mental work, development and dissemination of culture.

A 21st century specialist should:

1. have a good general scientific (general theoretical) training in the natural profile, which he receives in the course of studying mathematics, physics and other disciplines.

2. have deep theoretical and practical knowledge directly in their specialty - veterinary medicine.

3. have a good humanitarian, including historical, training, a high level of general culture, high qualities of a civic personality, a sense of patriotism, diligence, etc. The specialist should get a fairly complete picture of philosophy, economic theory, sociology, political science, psychology, cultural studies.

Historical consciousness and its levels.

Humanitarian training in Russian universities begins with the history of the Fatherland. In the course of studying history, historical consciousness is formed, which is one of the important aspects of social consciousness. Historical consciousness - a set of ideas of society as a whole and its social groups separately, about their past and the past of all mankind.

Like any other form of social consciousness, historical consciousness has a complex structure. Four levels can be distinguished.

The first (lower) level of historical consciousness is formed in the same way as the ordinary one, based on the accumulation of direct life experience, when a person observes some events throughout his life, or even participates in them. The broad masses of the population, as carriers of everyday consciousness at the lowest level of historical consciousness, are not able to bring it into a system, evaluate it from the point of view of the entire course of the historical process.

The second stage of historical consciousness can be formed under the influence of fiction, cinema, radio, television, theater, painting, under the influence of acquaintance with historical monuments. At this level, historical consciousness is also not yet transformed into systematic knowledge. The representations that form it are still fragmentary, chaotic, not ordered chronologically.

The third stage of historical consciousness is formed on the basis of historical knowledge itself, acquired in history lessons at school, where students for the first time receive an idea of the past in a systematic way.

At the fourth (highest) stage, the formation of historical consciousness takes place on the basis of a comprehensive theoretical understanding of the past, at the level of identifying trends in historical development. Based on the knowledge accumulated by history about the past, generalized historical experience, a scientific worldview is formed, attempts are made to get a more or less clear idea of the nature and driving forces of the development of human society, its periodization, the meaning of history, typology, models of social development.

Significance of the formation of historical consciousness:

1. It provides awareness by a certain community of people of the fact that they constitute a single people, united by a common historical destiny, traditions, culture, language, common psychological traits.

2. National-historical consciousness is a defensive factor that ensures the self-preservation of the people. If it is destroyed, then this nation will remain not only without a past, without its historical roots, but also without a future. This is a fact long established by historical experience.

3. It contributes to the selection and formation of socially significant norms, moral values, traditions and customs, the way of thinking and behavior inherent in this people are formed.

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