“The Time of the Historian”: On the Book by V.A. Kitaev “Social Thought and Historical Science in Russia in 18-20th Centuries (Problems of Historiography)” (Nizhny Novgorod: Izd-vo NNGU, 2016. – 271 p.)

Abstract

The book of V.A. Kitaev includes reviews of monographs and textbook, collective publications, including encyclopedias, publications of sources, historiographical articles, some of which were published in leading scientific journals in 1980-2015, and some were published for the first time. This publication is not exactly a review to V.A. Kitaev’s book, but an attempt to provide the reader with reflections on some of the problems of public thoughts and historiography highlighted by the author: the features of the professional study of history, historiographical analysis as a genre of research, methodology and terminology in modern studies on the history of social thought and historical science, the ratio of professional approach and political convictions, attitude to scientific traditions, etc. The present paper highlights the highest scientific professionalism of V.A. Kitaev, his ability and willingness to be critical not only to other people’s research, but also to his own. Despite the well-known assertion that “we do not choose the times”, we can safely say that V.A. Kitaev consciously chose the “time of the historian” and found himself in this time.

Keywords

• history of Russian social thought
• historical studies in Russia
• methodology and methods of historical research
• historical terminology
• 18th century
• 19th century
• 20th century