«Deliberate omission» as historiographical reception (revolts and rebels in The Course of the Russian History by V.O. Klyuchevsky)

This article analyzes some of the features of the scientific methodology of the outstanding Russian historian Vasily Osipovich Klyuchevsky. On the example of the last general work of the scientist - The Course of the Russian History - his views are discussed on the problems of riots and rebels in the national past. This refers to those that not so long ago were stereotypically attributed to the category of "peasant wars". It is shown that the historian paid very little attention to these subjects, often without even mentioning them in his works, or giving only few indirect references. Such informative gaps can hardly be called a coincidence. In our view, we face the phenomenon of "deliberate omission" as a special historiographical reception. We believe that they may be due to, firstly, the oppressive atmosphere of the era in which he had to live and work, with its limited free speech; second, censorship, and the situation on the eve of the outbreak of the Russian Revolution is closely intertwined with the "censorship" of the scholar. His own "veto" imposed on the study of the history of the so-called "peasant wars" can be explained by political partisanship of rebellious subjects in growing protest actions in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century. Not wishing his texts to more "revolutionize" the consciousness of the contemporaries, he limited the range of his research priorities. At the same time, we cannot say that V.O. Klyuchevsky totally ignored this story. On the example of Moscow Time of Troubles, Lzhedmitry story, socio-religious protest of Old Believers and others he indicated his view on the problem and preferred not to discuss it further on believing that a thoughtful reader would be able to read the rest between the lines. We believe, however, that "deliberate omission" of the historian give fairly extensive information about his views on Razin, Pugachev and other major riots in the history of Rus / Russia. "Deliberate omissions" of V.O. Klyuchevsky can create the image of the Russian riot, which the scholar formed when referring to the previous page of the heroic struggle of the people for their emancipation, but which he preferred not to discuss on the pages of The Course of the Russian History.

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