Istoriia istorika [The History of a Historian] (review)

The author of this book, Aron Iakovlevich Gurevich, passed away on 5 August 2006 at the age of 82. At the time of his death his name was known to all medievalists. In today's Russia, his works, which opened up new perspectives in the study of the Western Middle Ages, are well known to philologists, art historians, psychologists, sociologists, and philosophers. Without exaggeration, it can be said that these works reared at least two generations of Russian humanities scholars. Gurevich's eminence extends far beyond his homeland: his books have been translated into all European (and several non-European) languages, and his contributions to the study of history have been noted by way of numerous international honorary titles and awards. Unquestionably, the recollections of this outstanding scholar, a witness and a participant in the historiographical (and historical) process for more than 50 years, cannot but attract special interest.

The contents of the book are varied. The author in general proceeds chronologically but often strays from this principle and allows for lengthy digressions, speaking about medieval studies at Moscow State University in the mid-1940s and the atmosphere in which historical scholarship functioned in that period as well as in the following decades. He paints portraits of his teachers Evgenii Kosminskii, Aleksandr Neusykhin, and other well-known Soviet historians, primarily of the older generation—Sergei Skazkin, Boris Porshnev, Robert Vipper, Mikhail Barg, Aleksandr Chistozvonov, Aleksandr Danilov, Nina Sidorova, and Isaak Mints. He also talks about the philosopher Vladimir Bibler and the historian of literature Mikhail Steblin-Kamenskii. It is noteworthy that in this portrait gallery of his contemporaries, Gurevich leaves significantly more space for his opponents and critics than he gives to his friends and supporters. In his own words, because of the special circumstances of his professional life, his memoirs contain "some displacement of light and shadow in favor of the latter" (276). Gurevich's memoirs, however, are not limited to a narrow description of professional life in the "historian's craft." Gurevich constantly underscores that his intellectual life was intimately tied to the social reality of his time, and in lively fashion he recaptures various parts of this reality (see the chapters entitled "The Raging of State Antisemitism in the Last Years of Stalin," "Humor and Anecdotes at the Height of Repression," "War and Its Consequences," "Historians and Marxism," "The Beginning and Freezing of 'the Thaw,'" "The General Atmosphere of the 1970s," "Perestroika," and others).

Gurevich notes on numerous occasions that Istoriia istorika is an account not so much about himself as about his time, his field, the people who created it, and—he emphasizes this in particular—the changes that occurred in the discipline in the course of the 20th century (10, 146, and passim). But if one were to attempt to somehow pinpoint the genre of the work, it would be best to identify it as an "autobiography" rather than a "memoir." Ultimately, the central topics in this "historian's history" are the works of the author, his books and their reception, new research topics, changes in his understanding of historical science, the overcoming of obstacles of various types, and an insistence on the correctness of his own professional positions. Aside from these themes, the author pauses in some detail on the twists and turns of his career—his 16-year "exile" to Tver´ (as he calls his teaching position at the Kalinin Pedagogical Institute); the difficulties of obtaining employment first at the Institute of Philosophy, then at the Institute of World History, of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR; the discussion of his book Problemy genezisa feodalizma v Zapadnoi Evrope [Problems of the Genesis of Feudalism in Western Europe]¹ at Moscow State University, which turned into a denunciation; his "discovery of the world" during perestroika; and his recognition as a full-fledged "citizen" of the global res publica scholaram.

The figure of the author himself, moreover, is unquestionably the most interesting part of these recollections. It is impossible not to ask: how...