Rethinking History: The 1964 Interdisciplinary Conference «On Methodological Questions of Historical Science»

Journal title RIVISTA DI STORIA DELLA FILOSOFIA
Author/s Frances Nethercott
Publishing Year 2018 Issue 2018/2 Language English
Pages 14 P. 251-264 File size 625 KB
DOI 10.3280/SF2018-002004
DOI is like a bar code for intellectual property: to have more infomation click here

Below, you can see the article first page

If you want to buy this article in PDF format, you can do it, following the instructions to buy download credits

Article preview

FrancoAngeli is member of Publishers International Linking Association, Inc (PILA), a not-for-profit association which run the CrossRef service enabling links to and from online scholarly content.

The focus of this article is an officially authorized symposium in which historians and philosophers took up the task of devising a new Marxist-based theory and methodology of history in accordance with party instructions. The author considers the materials of the conference in two complementary ways: first, as a direct response to the paradigm shift in historical pedagogy and research announced by party officials; second, as a vehicle for examining some of the more creative readings of Marx and ways of engaging with intellectual currents abroad. Albeit representing the voice of the few, these bolder arguments attest to initiatives undertaken by members of the academic community themselves to rethink the terms of historical enquiry and the meaning of history. They also point to some potentially rewarding parallels between Thaw-era Soviet historiography and the turn to social and cultural history in the West, which would eventually benefit from analysis in a comparative perspective.

Keywords: Zakonomernost´; historical facts; Marxism; revisionism

  1. - Fedoseev 1964: Petr Fedoseev et al., Istorija i sociologija, Nauka, Moskva 1964.
  2. - Fedoseev, Francev 1964: Petr Fedoseev, Jurij Francev, O razrabotke metodologiˇceskix voprosov istorii, «Voprosy filosofii», 18 (1964), 3, pp. 4-23.
  3. - Gulyga 1962: Arsenij Gulyga, O xaraktere istoriˇceskogo znanija, «Voprosy filosofii», 16 (1962), 9, pp. 28-38.
  4. - Gureviˇc 1965: Aron Gureviˇc, Obˇsˇcij zakon i konkretnaja zakonomernost´ v istorii, «Voprosy istorii», 21 (1965), 8, pp. 14-30.
  5. - Konrad 1962: Nikolaj Konrad, Zametki o smysle istorii, «Vestnik istorii mirovoj kul´tury», 6 (1962), 2, pp. 3-33.
  6. - Markwick 1994: Roger Markwick, Catalyst of historiography, Marxism and dissidence: The Sector of Methodology of the Institute of History, Soviet Academy of Sciences, 1964-68, «Europe-Asia Studies», 46 (1994), 6, pp. 579-596.
  7. - Ponomarev 1964: Boris Ponomarev, The Tasks Facing Historical Scholarship and the Training of History Teachers and Researchers, in All-Union Conference of Historians [18 December, 1962], «Soviet Studies in History», 2 (1964), 1, pp. 3-26 (English transl.; the original version in Russian had appeared in the first issue of «Voprosy istorii» for 1963).

Frances Nethercott, Rethinking History: The 1964 Interdisciplinary Conference «On Methodological Questions of Historical Science» in "RIVISTA DI STORIA DELLA FILOSOFIA" 2/2018, pp 251-264, DOI: 10.3280/SF2018-002004