The historical and critical reviews and reflections of V.O. Klyuchevsky in pre-revolutionary periodicals and publications

Vasily Osipovich Klyuchevsky is one of the most famous and popular pre-revolutionary Russian historians distinguished by exceptional dedication to his work, exactingness, scrupulousness, professionalism and fundamental nature. In addition to his own scientific research, V.O. Klyuchevsky closely followed the scientific publications on the topics of interest, not hesitating to express his opinion on their quality. Review work is an important but poorly covered part of V.O. Klyuchevsky’s work. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the historical and critical articles of V.O. Klyuchevsky published in the second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries. This will allow tracing the evolution of V.O. Klyuchevsky’s historical views, showing the process of his becoming a historian and a member of the professional community. Of significant help in identifying V.O. Klyuchevsky’s historical and critical works was a list of his publications, compiled by S.A. Belokurov in 1914. Primary sources of information mainly were used in preparing the article. If referring to them was impossible for one reason or another, we relied on “The Reviews and Answers”, the collection of critical works by V.O. Klyuchevsky publi shed in 1918. The article discusses V.O. Klyuchevsky’s critical reviews on the works by V.S. Ikonnikov, S.F. Platonov, N.D. Chechulin, N.A. Rozhkov, A.P. Shchapov, M.I. Gorchakov and others. The reviews were published in the journals “Pravoslavnoye Obozreniye”, “Russkaya Mysl”, in the reports on giving S.S. Uvarov’s Award and other publications. V.O. Klyuchevsky’s reviews clearly fall into two parts. The first one is a historical and ecclesiastical period of working on the master’s dissertation and teaching at the Moscow Theological Academy. The second is a historical and secular period of working on his Doctoral dissertation and teaching at the Moscow University. However, regardless of the topic, the criteria for the quality of the research were the same. They included extensive use of the unpublished (if possible) archival material, a clear and well-founded methodology, a critical approach, objectivity and scrupulousness. If the work, according to V.O. Klyuchevsky, did not meet these requirements it became an object of harsh and sarcastic censure. This was especially evident in the polemic debate with V.S. Ikonnikov and M.F. Vladimirsky-Budanov, the representatives of the Kiev University. In conclusion the author of the article states that the V.O. Klyuchevsky’s reviews cut out the image of a great scholar, a demanding votary of science, who sometimes made mistakes in assessing the conceptual ideas of the authors, but always placed the principle of scientific objectivity in the center of scholastic attainments.

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