The historical and critical musings of D.I. Ilovaisky in pre-revolutionary Russian historical j ournals

Dmitry Ivanovich Ilovaisky, being a competent and a well-known scholar in the field of ancient and medieval Russian studies, a careful and a meticulous researcher, closely followed the relevant scientific publications, not hesitating to express his opinion on their quality. Most of his reviews were written during the same period as "The History of Russia". Excellent knowledge of sources and historiography made it possible for Ilovaisky to identify in the works of his contemporaries all the weak points, as well as any infidelity, artificiality and attempts to mythologize certain conclusions. His special concerns were the problems of Slavic antiquity, the origins of the Russian statehood, and the questions of attribution and interpretation of chronicles. The article aims at the analysis of the historical and critical articles of D.I. Ilovaisky, published in the second half of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries, which helps to identify the role of D.I. Ilovaisky in the Russian historical and critical thought of the period. The article deals with D.I. Ilovaisky's critical reviews on the researches of E.A. Belov, S.F. Platonov, I.P. Filevich, N.P. Lambin, V.O. Klyuchevsky and others. The reviews were published mainly in two leading pre-revolutionary historical journals Dmitry Ivanovich closely and productively cooperated with throughout his scientific activities, "The Russian Archive" and "The Russian Antiquity". It is noted that the historical and critical assessments of D.I. Ilovaisky were strict and fastidious; they marked his uncompromising struggle against the Norman theory and its adherents in the Russian historical studies. This sometimes led to the resentment and irritation of the opponents, accusing D.I. Ilovaisky of snobbery and arrogance. However, taking the example of his criticism of V.O. Klyuchevsky's theory, it becomes clear that D.I. Ilovaysky mainly evaluated scientific scrupulousness, professionalism and fundamentality of historical studies. He could give a general positive assessment of the work, basically disagreeing at the same time with many of its methodological points. In his historical and critical reviews D.I. Ilovaisky drew attention to an important tendency in the development of the Russian historical studies in the second half of the 19th century. The researchers concentrated mainly on narrow-focused topics and seldom wrote multi-volume works. In his opinion, due to the enormous amount of material and literature on the subject only collective work will be possible in the future to highlight the history of the country at large. Further development of the Russian historical thought fully proved his point. In conclusion, the article states that the historical and critical works of D.I. Ilovaisky can help to trace the struggle of various trends and point out the most controversial topics in the studies of ancient and medieval Russia in the second half of the 19th - the beginning of the 20th centuries.

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