Space of state as political and religious worlds in interpretation of E. Gibbon and N.M. Karamzin

The article is devoted to thecomparative analysis of views of the historians of Late Enlightenment E. Gibbon and N.M. Karamzin on the problems of correlationbetween the space of empire, political liberty and the extension of religion. Now, when the idea of interdependence of the future ofdemocracy and the prospects of religion becomes wide-spread, their interpretation of this problems appears important and urgent.E. Gibbon writing The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire aspired to understand and to tell his readers how such avast political system was supported and how it collapsed after such a long life. He underlined that the public freedom was lost in extentconquests. Karamzin in The History of the Russian State appealed to the history of Rome in different contexts, too. Parallels with Romeallowed the historian to emphasize the interrelation between the space of his country and the form of government. As Pitirim Sorokinlater, Gibbon supposed that the political space cannot be measured mathematically. He compared the Roman Empire with the RussianEmpire, where the Sovereign of Russian steppes commands a larger portion of the globe. The creation of juridical and cultural space,religious tolerance, not only military power, as Gibbon wrote, allowed to unite such an enormous geographical space for so long. BothGibbon and Karamzin stated special significance of the language community. They reconstructed political history as the world oftheatre, with its heroes and evildoers, intrigues and random turns of the plot. The historians concentrated attention on the role of thereligious factor in the history of Rome, Europe, Russia. Gibbon wrote that the territorial expansion of the Roman Empire caused thevariety of the religious map of the Roman world. Religious tolerance of the political elite, as Gibbon thought, became an importantpower resource. The freedom of religion, thus, supported the regime of restriction of liberty. Gibbon analyzed in detail the process offormation of a Christian republic - an independent and developing state - in the heart of the Roman Empire. In his book' Karamzinrepresented numerous facts which allow to judge about the processes of development and reduction of a dialogue between the churchand the state from the end of the 10th to the beginning of the 17th centuries. Karamzin wrote a narrative about his native country, notabout a foreign civilization, which disappeared long ago, as Gibbon. Karamzin's conclusions were therefore more laconic and morecautious. Karamzin could not disturb the minds of the readers in the Russian Empire by assumptions about a probable reiteration of thefate of the Roman Empire. The history of Rome, which predetermined the historical works of E. Gibbon and N.M. Karamzin, continueto cast a long shadow on the reflections of contemporary researchers who try to interpret the perspectives of the postmodern civilization.

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