TWO NEWEST CONCEPTS OF ORIENTAL AND WORLD HISTORY (O.E. NEPOMNIN VERSUS L.S. VASILIEV)

Abstract

Abstract: The article gives a critical review and comparison of the concepts of history in two recently published books by sinologists L.S.Vasiliev and O.E.Nepomnin. The concept of L.S.Vasiliev is built upon the rejection of Marxism, especially historic Marxism, though Marx’s idea on the Asian type of production is still used. The main idea of Nepomnin’s book is to distinguish a few oriental models of societal relations, different not only from the West but from each other. Unlike Vasiliev who wants to generalize the East in one scheme, Nepomnin wants to stress the differences between Asian civilizations, though without determining the peculiarities of the models with the help of objective methods and not offering any convincing parameters of comparison. The article shows that now there is a mix of pieces of various concepts, which are outdated and not linked to each other. The author suggests to tackle the methodological issues of history ic process, to apply new approaches in periodization, based not on one factor (like type of production) but on multifactor paradigms and to make new research of the development of the West.

Keywords

• история востока
• исторический марксизм
• азиатский способ производства