Longworth professzor valamennyi korábbi konferenciánkat is megtisztelte részvételével. Idei, ötödik konferenciánkon arra vállakozik, hogy röviden összefoglalja mintegy 8 éve tartó nemzetközi szakmai együttműködésünk legfontosabb eredményeit.

Az előadás orosz nyelven hangzott el, rezüméje az orosz oldalunkon olvasható.

(Az előadás angol nyelven hangzott el.)

The Scottish School of Russian Historiography

In a mostly positive review of a book on Scotland and the Slavs in 1994, Dale E. Peterson regretted the absence of any mention of ‘the timely issue of whether the Scottish enlightenment of Dugald Stewart, Adam Smith and Adam Ferguson succeeded in creating an intellectual tradition strong enough to support the current experiment in political and cultural liberalism in the post-communist Slavic nations.’ More than a decade on, this essay takes Peterson’s observation as an epigraph, adopting as its sources the major works of Smith and Ferguson. Concentrating on the study of Russian history, it will address aspects of three questions: what is the intellectual tradition of the Scottish enlightenment? how has it evolved from the eighteenth century? and what is its relevance to post-Soviet Russia?
Here are three preliminary answers:
1) Arthur Herman writes of the two themes shared by the dominant works of Scottish savants in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, ‘history’ and ‘human nature’, first linked together by them as they presented man as the product of history:
Our most fundamental character as human beings, they argued, even our moral character, is constantly evolving and developing, shaped by a variety of forces over which we as individuals have little or no control. We are ultimately creatures of our environment: that was the great discovery that the ‘Scottish school’, as it came to be known, brought to the modern world.
Moreover, Herman points out, the Scottish writers ‘also insisted that these changes are not arbitrary or chaotic. They rest on certain fundamental principles and discernible patterns. The study of man is ultimately a scientific study.’

2) To simplify somewhat the complex subject of the evolution of the ideas of the Scottish enlightenment, let us take the example of Marxism, beginning with what Marx himself listed as its distinctive features. In 1852, he wrote:
...no credit is due to me for discovering the existence of classes in modern society nor yet the struggle between them. Long before me bourgeois historians had described the historical development of this class struggle and bourgeois economists the economic anatomy of the classes. What I did that was new to prove: 1) that the existence of classes is only bound up with particular historic phases in the development of production 2) that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat 3) that this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society.
Among the ‘bourgeois historians’ and ‘bourgeois economists’ were several Scots.
Marx had more than 30 years to live after this observation, but it could be argued that the foundations of Marxism had already been laid in The Communist Manifesto of 1848. More certainly, later self-styled Marxists, notably Lenin, adapted the master’s thoughts for their own purposes in different times. Then, Stalin enunciated the principles of the hybrid ‘Marxism-Leninism’, aka ‘Stalinism’. The ideas of the Scottish enlightenment were still there, if very much in the background, and without explicit acknowledgement from either Lenin or Stalin. Arguably, too, these ideas were still alive in Scotland itself.

3) Marxism in whatever form was disestablished with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Yet it did not die, living on in the ‘formation’ versus ‘civilisation’ debate in Russia, and in other guises. Little mention was made in this debate of the Scottish Enlightenment. However, Adam Smith was almost elevated to the position previously occupied by Karl Marx while wide recognition was given to ‘civil society’, the concept first elaborated by Adam Ferguson. Yet An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations was much misunderstood, while An Essay on the History of Civil Society was for the most part neglected. Therefore, both these works deserve closer scrutiny, in their own right and in the context of the Scottish Enlightenment as a whole.

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          The paper does not intend be an all-embracing treatment of the Boyar Duma’s historiography in the period between 1613-1682; it aims to focus on some recent approaches instead which are thought to be fruitful in the understanding of the boyars’ role and the place of the duma in Muscovite ideology. The selection of authors from Russian and English language literature is admittedly highly subjective which reflects not only my interests but also the shortcomings of my knowledge on the topic. 
            Having given a cursory review of some approaches considered relevant, I move “back to the sources” and try to argue that besides the ecclesiastical conception, i.e. the idea of a religious harmony between the tsar and the boyars, there existed a prikaz view on their relation which was more secular in its perception. Besides Kotoshikhin, whose name the historian will certainly recall immediately, it is worth concentrating on other sources such as the oath of allegiance of 1626/1627. This oath, for instance, gives an idea how the advice-giving activity of the boyars was conceived and what the contemporary meaning of the duma was. References to gosudarstvo in the oath or by Kotosikhin underline the importance of sources connected with the chanceries in the study of the Boyar Duma.   

A történettudomány pártirányítási mechanizmusának kialakulása és működése a Szovjetunió régióinak vonatkozásában Burjátia példája alapján.