Approaches to the study of the Russian model of urbanization in the view of modern historical science

The article discusses the main directions of the development of historical urbanism in Russia in the modern period. A problem of evaluation of the Russian model of urbanization as an integral part of these kinds of researches is still a debatable question. The purpose of the article is to identify main approaches to the study of the Russian model of urbanization in historical science in the Post-Soviet period. Despite the presence of theoretical and methodological pluralism and the increase of the number of publications on the problem of urbanization, historians still do not have a common problem research field. It is mainly due to a large amount of papers with factographic contents and a small amount of papers aimed at theoretical understanding of urbanization. Today we can distinguish some amount of basic vectors in researches development process in the field of Russian historical urbanization. One of these vectors is the use of cross-disciplinary approach in urban researches. The works based on combinations of historical and sociological methods are becoming very popular. That is because only socialists were the first who appealed to a city as an independent research subject within the scope of social-humanitarian science. At the same time historical research based on the use of sociological principles and methods of urban study starts developing from socio-cultural and anthropological theoretical and methodological positions. In authors’opinion, the use of cross-disciplinary approach in research of the Russian urbanization model seems very prospective. First of all, historical urbanization can successfully interact with different socio-humanitarian disciplines (sociology, ecology and economy) and also uses accumulated experience in studying urbanization in other sciences (e.g. geography) on interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary basis. Secondly, if the existent trend of cross-disciplinary urban history researches development will continue, the attention of Russian historians necessarily will be attracted by modern sociological theories of urban development. Adherents of socio-cultural and anthropological urban theories mainly tend to critical evaluation of Russian urbanization model in contrast to supporters of the modernization and macro-historical approaches. This phenomenon can be explained by the content of modernization concept and in general by the Russian historiographical tradition to highlight the specific features of the development of Russia/USSR, based on the identification of “echelons” of modernization, its different stages and characteristics of the process. At present time researchers with rare exceptions bypass problems, related to the history of Post-soviet Russian urbanization. However, the need for this kind of research is already ripe. In general, the range of the problems that historical urbanization faces now can be solved only by using the integrated approach with the support of urban sociology and geourbanistcs classics.

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