The estimates of the scientific concept of D. I. Ilovaisky in pre-revolutionary Russian historical journals

Dmitry Ivanovich Ilovaisky was a famous scholar, historian and educationalist of Pre-Revolutionary Russia. A bright and profound polemist, a talented scholar, an anti-Normanist, a committed royalist, an author of many textbooks in Russian and world history for high schools. Surely, such an extraordinary person attracted attention of other historians. D.I. Ilovaisky's scientific outlooks were often evaluated and discussed. This was particularly evident in the reviews of his historical works, especially of the issues of “The History of Russia” published in the second half of the XIX - early XX centuries. The aim of the present paper is to analyze the assessments given to the historical outlooks of D.I. Ilovaisky in Pre-Revolutionary Russian historical periodicals, and show D.I. Ilovaisky's contribution to the Russian historical thought of the second half of the XIX - early XX centuries. The author studied the reviews of D.I. Ilovaisky's works written by such prominent scholars as M.P. Pogodin, V.I. Ikonnikov, N.I. Kostomarov, K.N. Bestuzhev-Ryumin, P.V. Golubovsky, E.V. Karnovich and others. The reviews were published in all the leading historical periodicals of those days (“The Russian Archive”, “The Russian Antiquity”, “The Historical Journal”, “The Kievan Antiquity”). Quite symbolic was a brief dispute between the two scholars of the opposite views - a Normanist M.P. Pogodin and an anti-Normanist D.I. Ilovaisky. The dispute revealed the historical implacability of these diametrically opposed points of view. The reviewers repeatedly pointed one particular feature of D.I. Ilovaisky's works and of “The History of Russia” in particular, that is the abundance of notes consisting of links to literature cited, and of fundamental historiographic analysis. Another interesting feature of D.I. Ilovaisky's methodology pointed out in the reviews is the desire to see with his own eyes the historic area and the monuments of the past described. This, according to D.I. Ilovaisky, helped better understanding of the material and the studied period of Russian history. The author makes a conclusion that main attention was paid to D.I. Ilovaisky's anti-Normanist views, his views on various events in Russian history, representativeness of his reference sources, argumentativeness and fundamentality of conclusions made. The reviews were mainly positive, with some private criticism. On the whole, these reviews clearly outline the role and place of D.I. Ilovaisky in Russian historical studies of the second half of the XIX -early XX centuries.

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