From the Editors: “Big Data” and “Small Stories” for the Future

The concluding parts of The History Manifesto by Jo Guldi and David Armitage published in Russian translation in the “Methodology and Theory” section of this issue vividly illustrate the problems in the field of history that encouraged them to write their Manifesto in the first place. The most immediate problem is the decline of public demand for historical expertise, which has been translated over the past decade into increasing discrimination against the humanities disciplines (including history) by university administrations in America and Western Europe. The futuristic announcement of the “end of history” by Francis Fukuyama with the collapse of the Second World (in 1989−1991) seems to become common knowledge a generation later – just at the time when the rising demand for a politics of the future amid the global economic, social, political, and ecological crises has proved that the report of the death of history “was an exaggeration.” Many in the field of history felt the need for a new program for the humanities that would outline the role of historians in the postindustrial, information-era society, and explain their importance both to neoliberal university administrators who were cutting “redundant” programs and to students frustrated by the soaring costs of education and seeking more practical specialties. It is in this atmosphere of anxiety and anticipation that Guldi and Armitage launched their Manifesto.

In scholarship, a failure is almost as important as a success, allowing a rhetorical and conceptual experiment to be staged and then analyzing the reasons for an outcome that did not live up to initial expectations. In previous issues of Ab Imperio we have discussed methodological flaws, as we see them, in the assumptions of the authors of The History Manifesto. Chapter 4 and the Conclusion, which are published in this issue of the journal, contain practical recommendations for historians and universities that want to “win the world” “before it is too late.” The recipe is simple: historians should develop the skills of administrators of “big data sets” and interpret them to anyone interested in their presumably unique expertise over long time spans. They should also strive to balance the official data with “silenced voices” and sensitively account for specific contexts of the data’s origin. The beneficiaries and addressees of such longue duree historical interpretations of mass data will be politicians, businesspeople, administrators, and the general public.

A typical irony of history is, of course, that this ideal future is someone else’s past – specifically, that of the post-Soviet societies. Already a quartercentury ago they stumbled upon the famous question raised by a desperate French officer in 1940, as cited by Marc Bloch, “Are we to believe that history has betrayed us?” In the 1990s, historians attempted to prove their importance to the new society by trying to serve new ideological causes through applying their specific interpretative expertise and knowledge to solving the most pressing political and social issues at the time, as well as by developing practical skills they thought to be marketable – just as Guldi and Armitage recommend. In fanciless transitional societies of Russia, Ukraine, or Kazakhstan, the grand new ideological and public service causes were found not in environmentalism but in nationalism and statism, and the useful skills – during the pre-Internet era – were identified as record-keeping and office management (first of all, in historical and corporate archives). This turn to record-keeping and big data in general was also inspired by the opening of previously inaccessible state and secret service archives. Retrieval and publication of data in their totality (in fact, comparable to today’s belief in exhaustive databases) and their historical interpretation became a recipe for making history relevant for the future. History departments rushed to open “commercial” specializations for those wishing to study record-keeping and archival management, while history graduates began pursuing careers in the security forces and political party machines, joining nationalist movements, public commemorative projects, and the like. Many of those who remained in the profession turned to producing barely concealed celebrations of power-holders by writing biographical studies of great administrators of the empire and the USSR. [End Page 10...