RUDN Journal of Russian History (Dec 2016)
CLASSIFICATION AND MULTIFUNCTIONALITY OF HISTORICAL SOURCES
Abstract
The article is oneof the researches, related to the study of the scientific problem of thehistorical sources classification. The purpose of this article is the analysis of the process of achieving the solution to the problem of the classification at the present stage of the domestic source studydevelopment. The object of the study is not only the sources but different proposals of historians solving the problem of the classification. This study focuses on the methodological proposals of a number of prominent Russian historians such as L.N. Pushkarev, I.D. Kovalchenko, O.M. Medushevskaya, A.G. Tartakovsky, etc. They developed fundamental approaches to the science-based solution to the problem of historical sources classification and created a new classification scheme. Rejecting the division of historical sources into documentaries (“residues”) and narrative (“tradition”) popular from the mid XIXth century, the author of the article supports the idea of Russian historians of the 1970-1980s of dividing all sources at two levels. On the first level-typology -there is taken into account the syntactic (signed) aspect of information historical sources that define the playback of certain groups (real, visual, phonic and written). The second level of the division of historical written sources into the “species” was based on the recognition of the leading role of their social functionality in the period of their existence in the past and, in general, on the pragmatic aspect of their information. The author identifies five kinds of historical written sources, stressing that each of them is created for one (basic) function, but may in some cases perform other (side) functions. Defining multifunctional sources as their immanent quality, the author stresses that, in addition to the social function, all of them implement an epistemological function, being the basis of historical knowledge.
