Vasily Klyuchevsky complete course of lectures on the history of Russia. Literary and historical notes of a young technician

IN. Klyuchevsky

“In the life of a scientist and writer, the main biographical facts are books, the most important events are thoughts.” (V.O. Klyuchevsky)

Vasily Osipovich Klyuchevsky was born in the village of Voskresensky near Penza into the family of a poor parish priest, who was the boy’s first teacher, but who died tragically when Vasily was only 9 years old. The family moved to Penza, where they settled in a small house given by one of the priest’s friends.

He graduated first from the Penza Theological School and then from the Theological Seminary.

In 1861 he entered the Faculty of History and Philology of Moscow University. His teachers were N.M. Leontyev, F.M. Buslaev, K.N. Pobedonostsev, B.N. Chicherin, S.M. Soloviev, whose lectures had a great influence on the young historian. “Soloviev gave the listener an amazingly integral view of the course of Russian history, drawn through a chain of generalized facts through a harmonious thread, and we know what a pleasure it is for a young mind beginning scientific study to feel in possession of a complete view of a scientific subject,” Klyuchevsky later wrote.

Klyuchevsky Museum in Penza

Career

After graduating from the university, Klyuchevsky remained to teach here and began work on ancient Russian saints, which became his master's thesis. Along the way, he writes several works on the history of the church and Russian religious thought: “Economic activities of the Solovetsky Monastery”, “Pskov disputes”, “Promotion of the church to the successes of Russian civil order and law”, “The significance of St. Sergius of Radonezh for the Russian people and state”, “Western influence and church schism in Russia in the 17th century”, etc.

Klyuchevsky devotes a lot of energy to teaching: in 1871 he was elected to the department of Russian history at the Moscow Theological Academy, where he worked until 1906; then he began teaching at the Alexander Military School, as well as at higher women's courses. His scientific and teaching career is rapidly growing: in September 1879 he was elected associate professor at Moscow University, in 1882 - extraordinary, in 1885 - ordinary professor.

IN. Klyuchevsky

In 1893 - 1895 he taught a course in Russian history to Grand Duke Georgy Alexandrovich (son of Alexander III); taught at the school of painting, sculpture and architecture; in 1893 - 1905 he was chairman of the Society of History and Antiquities at Moscow University.

He was an academician and honorary academician of a number of scientific societies.

Klyuchevsky gained the reputation of a brilliant lecturer who knew how to capture the attention of the audience with the power of analysis, gift of image, and deep erudition. He shone with wit, aphorisms, and epigrams that are still in demand today. His works always caused controversy, in which he tried not to interfere. The topics of his works are extremely diverse: the situation of the peasantry, zemstvo councils of Ancient Rus', the reforms of Ivan the Terrible...

He was concerned about the history of the spiritual life of Russian society and its outstanding representatives. A number of articles and speeches by Klyuchevsky about S.M. relate to this topic. Solovyov, Pushkin, Lermontov, N.I. Novikov, Fonvizin, Catherine II, Peter the Great. He published a “Brief Guide to Russian History,” and in 1904 began publishing the full course. A total of 4 volumes were published, up to the time of Catherine II.

V. Klyuchevsky sets out a strictly subjective understanding of Russian history, eliminating review and criticism and without entering into polemics with anyone. He bases the course on facts not according to their actual significance in history, but according to their methodological significance.

"Russian history course"

Klyuchevsky’s most famous scientific work is “Course of Russian History” in 5 parts. He worked on it for more than 30 years, but only decided to publish it in the early 1900s. Klyuchevsky considers the colonization of Russia to be the main factor in Russian history, and the main events unfold around colonization: “The history of Russia is the history of a country that is being colonized. The area of ​​colonization in it expanded along with its state territory. Sometimes falling, sometimes rising, this age-old movement continues to this day.”

Klyuchevsky divided Russian history into four periods:

I period - approximately from the 8th to the 13th centuries, when the Russian population was concentrated mainly on the middle and upper Dnieper with its tributaries. Rus' was then politically divided into separate cities, and the economy was dominated by foreign trade.

II period - XIII - mid-XV century, when the main mass of the people moved to the area between the upper Volga and Oka rivers. It is still a fragmented country, but into princely appanages. The basis of the economy was free peasant agricultural labor.

Monument to Klyuchevsky in Penza

III period - from the half of the 15th century. until the second decade of the 17th century, when the Russian population colonized the Don and Middle Volga black soils; the state unification of Great Russia took place; The process of enslavement of the peasantry began in the economy.

IV period - until the middle of the 19th century. (the Course did not cover later times) - the time when “the Russian people spread across the entire plain from the seas

Baltic and White to Black, to the Caucasus ridge, the Caspian and the Urals." The Russian Empire is formed, the autocracy is based on the military service class - the nobility. The manufacturing factory industry joins serf agricultural labor.

“In the life of a scientist and writer, the main biographical facts are books, the most important events are thoughts,” wrote Klyuchevsky. The life of Klyuchevsky himself rarely goes beyond these events and facts. By conviction he was moderate conservative, his political speeches are extremely few. But if they were, they were always distinguished by their originality of thinking and were never to please anyone. He only had his own position. For example, in 1894 he delivered a “Laudatory speech” to Alexander III, which caused indignation among the revolutionary students, and he was wary of the 1905 revolution.

"Historical portraits" by V. Klyuchevsky

His "Historical Portraits" include a number of biographies of famous people:

The first Kiev princes, Andrei Bogolyubsky, Ivan III, Ivan Nikitich Bersen-Beklemishev and Maxim the Greek, Ivan the Terrible, Tsar Fedor, Boris Godunov, False Dmitry I, Vasily Shuisky, False Dmitry II, Tsar Mikhail Romanov, Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, Peter the Great, Catherine I , Peter II, Anna Ioannovna, Elizabeth I, Peter III, Catherine II, Paul I, Alexander I, Nicholas I, Alexander II.
Creators of the Russian land
Good people of Ancient Rus', Nestor and Sylvester, Sergius of Radonezh, Ivan Nikitich Bersen-Beklemishev and Maxim the Greek, Nil Sorsky and Joseph Volotsky, K. Minin and D.M. Pozharsky, Patriarch Nikon, Simeon of Polotsk, A.L. Ordin-Nashchokin, Prince V.V. Golitsyn, Prince D.M. Golitsyn, N.I. Novikov,
MM. Speransky, A.S. Pushkin, Decembrists, H.M. Karamzin, K.N. Bestuzhev-Ryumin, S.M. Soloviev,
T.N. Granovsky.

Klyuchevsky's grave in the Donskoy Monastery

Aphorisms by V. Klyuchevsky

• To be happy means not wanting what you cannot get.
• A great idea in a bad environment is distorted into a series of absurdities.
• In science, you need to repeat lessons in order to remember them well; In morality, one must remember mistakes well so as not to repeat them.
• It is much easier to become a father than to remain one.
• An evil fool is angry at others for his own stupidity.
• Life teaches only those who study it.
• He who loves himself very much is not loved by others, because out of delicacy they do not want to be his rivals.
• He who laughs is not angry, because to laugh means to forgive.
• People live in idolatry of ideals, and when ideals are lacking, they idealize idols.
• People look for themselves everywhere, but not in themselves.
• There are people who know how to speak, but do not know how to say anything. These are windmills that always flap their wings, but never fly.
• Thought without morality is thoughtlessness, morality without thought is fanaticism.
• We should not complain that there are few smart people, but thank God for the fact that they exist.
• A man usually loves women whom he respects; a woman usually respects only men whom she loves. Therefore, a man often loves women who are not worth loving, and a woman often respects men who are not worth respecting.
• Science is often confused with knowledge. This is a gross misunderstanding. Science is not only knowledge, but also consciousness, that is, the ability to use knowledge properly.
• Young people are like butterflies: they fly into the light and end up in the fire.
• You need to know the past not because it has passed, but because, when leaving, you did not know how to remove your consequences.
• A reflective person should fear only himself, because he must be the only and merciless judge of himself.
• The smartest thing in life is still death, for only it corrects all the mistakes and stupidities of life.
• A proud person is one who values ​​the opinions of others about himself more than his own. So, to be self-loving means to love yourself more than others, and to respect others more than yourself.
• The surest and perhaps the only way to become happy is to imagine yourself like that.
• By freedom of conscience we usually mean freedom from conscience.
• Beneath strong passions there is often only a weak will hidden.
• Proud people love power, ambitious people love influence, arrogant people seek both, reflective people despise both.
• A good person is not one who knows how to do good, but one who does not know how to do evil.
• Friendship can do without love; love without friendship is not.
• The mind perishes from contradictions, but the heart feeds on them.
• Character is power over oneself, talent is power over others.
• Christs rarely appear like comets, but Judases are not translated like mosquitoes.
• Man is the greatest beast in the world.
• In Russia there are no average talents, simple masters, but there are lonely geniuses and millions of worthless people. Geniuses can do nothing because they have no apprentices, and nothing can be done with millions because they have no masters. The first are useless because there are too few of them; the latter are helpless because there are too many of them.

Vasily Osipovich Klyuchevsky is probably the most popular Russian historian. Few people have read it, but many quote the sacramental: “History teaches nothing, but only punishes for ignorance of the lessons.” A large part of Klyuchevsky’s greatness lies in his ability to distill the most complex ideas into short and punchy aphorisms. If Karamzin was the Pushkin of Russian historiography, unattainable in his beauty; Solovyov - her Tolstoy, thorough and monumental; then Klyuchevsky was Chekhov - accurate, paradoxical, often bilious, able to say everything with one tiny detail.

It is all the more offensive that Klyuchevsky never wrote his own “History of Russia” - with his talents it would have been a book outstanding not only scientifically, but also in literary terms, a kind of pandan to Karamzin. But Klyuchevsky’s generalizing work was the publication of his course of lectures on Russian history, prepared according to his own plans and notes, as well as student notes. It has been published since 1904, during the era of the wild flowering of Russian science and culture, amid political turmoil and a general rethinking of values.

Like his teacher Sergei Solovyov, Klyuchevsky was a commoner who achieved a high position and enormous authority in society through his scientific studies. The similarity with Chekhov was aggravated by his common provincial origin and the self-perception of a man who achieved everything himself. Klyuchevsky did not get anything in life for nothing, he knew the value of work, money, fame, and those who took these things too lightly annoyed him. In later years, already in the 20th century, he was a living legend, a stronghold of sanity characteristic of the previous century; Full auditoriums were packed to listen to him - a lean, cheerful, sarcastic old man. Until the end of his days, he was keenly interested not only in history, but also in current politics, insisting that politics is “applied history.” In short, he was a real old-regime Russian intellectual, although he himself would probably have been offended by such a definition - he despised the Russian intelligentsia, who considered themselves the salt of the earth.

Klyuchevsky’s father, Joseph (Osip) Vasilyevich, was a priest in the village of Voskresenovka, Penza province. It was in his parish school that the future historian began his education. In 1850, the father died. The impoverished family moved to Penza. There, Klyuchevsky in 1856 (fifteen years old) entered the theological seminary - people from priestly families were also supposed to become priests. He was one of the best students. He made a living by tutoring. Finally, he decided to connect his life not with the church, but with science, dropped out of the seminary - and in 1861, taking money from his uncle, he went to Moscow to enter the university at the Faculty of History and Philology.

It was an exciting time. Moscow University, and the Faculty of History and Philology in particular, was flourishing. Klyuchevsky listened to lectures by Sergei Solovyov (dean of the faculty) on Russian history, Fyodor Buslaev on ancient Russian literature, Nikolai Tikhonravov on the history of Russian literature, Pamfil Yurkevich on the history of philosophy, Boris Chicherin on the history of Russian law. All of these were the greatest experts in their fields, the founders of their own scientific schools and, in general, real stars. In addition, in the same year of 1861, when Klyuchevsky’s Moscow student life began, the long-awaited “peasant reform” took place - serfdom was abolished.

The Moscow mixed student body, to which Klyuchevsky belonged, was perhaps the main breeding ground for radical political ideas. Klyuchevsky personally knew Dmitry Karakozov, one of the first Russian revolutionary terrorists (who tried to shoot Tsar Alexander II in 1866), from Penza - he was his brother’s tutor. However, Klyuchevsky himself did not join the political movement, preferring study to free students. His idols were not revolutionary tribunes like Nikolai Chernyshevsky, extremely popular among the youth of the 1860s, but university professors. Klyuchevsky remained a moderate liberal throughout his life: sympathizing with many new political trends, believing in the beneficence of capitalism advancing in Russia, emphasizing in every possible way the connection between studying national history and citizenship, he was a categorical opponent of any radicalism and any upheavals.

At first, Klyuchevsky considered himself more of a philologist than a historian, and was greatly influenced by Professor Fyodor Buslaev (by the way, also a native of Penza). This scientist in 1858 published the first “Historical Grammar of the Russian Language”, and in 1861 - “Historical Sketches of Russian Folk Literature and Art”, in which he sought the primary sources of the “wandering” myths of the Indo-European peoples (primarily the Germans and Slavs). However, Klyuchevsky ultimately switched to history, and in 1865 he wrote his diploma work on a completely historical topic, “Tales of Foreigners about the Moscow State.” After defending his diploma, 24-year-old Klyuchevsky, at the suggestion of Solovyov, remained at the Department of Russian History to prepare for a professorship. And the thesis was published by the university printing house the following year and became the first printed work of the young scientist.

Soloviev, who was in the midst of work on “The History of Russia from Ancient Times,” entrusted his most capable students with special research, the materials of which he later used in his major work. In particular, Klyuchevsky began to develop for him the theme of monastic land use. It sounds terribly boring, but the plot is actually extremely interesting. The most important Russian monasteries, such as Kirillo-Belozersky or Solovetsky, arose on the wild outskirts of the inhabited world as refuges for hermits, but over time they became economic centers and outposts of civilization. This “monastic colonization” played an important role in the expansion of the Russian cultural and economic area. Klyuchevsky dedicated his next published work to this under the unpromising title “Economic Activities of the Solovetsky Monastery in the White Sea Territory” (1867).

Studies in the history of monasteries led Klyuchevsky to a close study of the lives of saints - the founders and inhabitants of the monasteries. His master's thesis, defended in 1871, was devoted to the study of them as a historical source. Klyuchevsky hoped to find in the lives what was missing in the chronicles - everyday details, information about the economy, morals and customs. Having examined several thousand of them, he came to the conclusion that they are not biographies, just as icons are not portraits; they are written not to tell something about a specific person, but then to give an example of a righteous life; all lives are, in fact, variations of the same text, contain almost no specific historical details and therefore cannot serve as a historical source. As a source study, this work was impeccable, and Klyuchevsky received the title of Master of History, but he was disappointed with the actual historical results of his work on the lives.

The title of master gave Klyuchevsky the right to teach in higher educational institutions. The most prestigious department of Russian history - the university one - was still occupied by Solovyov. But he gave the student a place as a history teacher at the Alexander Military School. In addition, Klyuchevsky taught at such a conservative institution as the Moscow Theological Academy and such a liberal one as the Higher Courses for Women. The latter were a private venture of Vladimir Guerrier, a friend of Klyuchevsky, also a historian. Women were not accepted into universities at that time, except occasionally as volunteers, that is, they were allowed to study, but were not given diplomas. A characteristic example of the then intelligentsia liberalism: Buslaev, Tikhonravov and many other major professors at Moscow University simultaneously taught at the Women's Courses.

However, the breadth of Klyuchevsky’s views on the “women’s issue” had certain limits. His notebooks are full of very caustic remarks about women. For example: “The only way ladies discover the presence of mind in themselves is that they often leave it.”

In 1879, Solovyov died, and the 38-year-old Klyuchevsky became his successor at the Department of Russian History at Moscow University - in the absence of a court historiographer (the title was not awarded after Karamzin’s death), this was actually the main position in Russian historical science.

The time when Klyuchevsky assumed this honorable position is no longer the euphoric time of the “Great Reforms”. In 1881, “Narodnaya Volya” terrorists killed Emperor Alexander II. Alexander III, who replaced him, shocked by the terrible death of his father (his legs were blown off in an explosion), began to “tighten the screws.” Regarding the liberal ministers and tsarist advisers, the ideologists of the “Great Reforms” and their followers - Dmitry Milyutin, Mikhail Loris-Melikov, Dmitry Zamyatnin - were replaced by excellent obscurantists led by the Chief Prosecutor of the Holy Synod, Konstantin Pobedonostsev.

Among other “counter-reforms” of these figures was the new university statute of 1884, which introduced almost barracks-like discipline in universities; “Circular about cooks’ children” of 1887, which recommended not to admit into the gymnasium and pro-gymnasium “children of coachmen, footmen, cooks, laundresses, small shopkeepers and similar people, whose children, with the exception of those gifted with genius abilities, should not at all strive for the average and higher education"; and the closure of the Higher Women's Courses in 1888 (Klyuchevsky gave his farewell speech, and in it he proclaimed “faith in the mind and heart of the Russian woman”). Pobedonostsev said without mincing words that these and his other measures are designed to preserve the class structure of society and generally “freeze Russia.” They were afraid of revolution.

Klyuchevsky was the first of the professors of Russian history to abandon the chronological presentation of events, leaving students to master the general “plot outline” from textbooks or from the same 29 volumes of Solovyov. In his lectures he analyzed and built concepts.

As for the theoretical foundations, Klyuchevsky remained a faithful follower of his teachers Sergei Solovyov and Boris Chicherin all his life. In nineteenth-century cliches, he was a Hegelian, a Westerner, and a representative of the “state” or “legal” historiographic school. This means, strictly speaking, a fairly simple set of basic beliefs. Firstly, world history is a single process in which different peoples living at different times participate to varying degrees. The locomotive of world history is Europe. Russia is a part of Europe, but, due to its geographical features and the resulting peculiarities of historical development, it is very unique. Secondly, the leading force of historical development is the state: it unites the people, directs them towards a common goal and provides the means to achieve it, makes the people a participant in the world-historical process. The state is born from the “crystallization” of tribal relations in the vast ruling family.

The fundamental basis of these ideas is Hegelianism with its idea of ​​world history as a progressive process of development of world civilization (in the concepts of Hegel himself, the creation of a perfect state by the World Mind). In the second half of the 19th century, the German thinker Heinrich Rückert, and a little later the Russian Nikolai Danilevsky, contrasted this familiar historical philosophy with an approach that we now call civilizational. His initial postulate: there is no single world-historical process; separate “natural groups” of people each live their own, separate historical lives. Danilevsky calls these groups “cultural-historical types,” and we, following the British historian Arnold Toynbee (who worked already in the 20th century), call them civilizations. Danilevsky lists ten such “types,” and the West (“German-Roman type”) is only one of them, now temporarily dominant. Danilevsky classifies Russia as a new, still nascent - and, of course, the most perfect - Slavic cultural and historical type.

Danilevsky was not a professional historian. He was a botanist by education and a publicist by vocation. His concept, in contrast to the later and much more strict civilizationist constructions of the same Toynbee, was, strictly speaking, not historical, but rather political - it was a program of pan-Slavism, the unification under the auspices of Russia of all Slavic peoples in opposition to the West, which, of course, , degenerates and is about to die. This was a lot of resentment towards Europe after the humiliating defeat in the Crimean War, which began the second half of the 19th century for Russia. And by the way, Danilevsky’s ideas during his lifetime (he died in 1885) were not very popular - he was considered just another Slavophile. We mention it here only because the civilizational approach is quite popular in our time.

Be that as it may, the question of whether world history exists at all as a single progressive process was not idle in the second half of the 19th century. As already mentioned, Klyuchevsky, together with the entire Russian professional historical community of his time, believed that it existed.

Klyuchevsky's specialization was the social and economic history of Muscovite Rus' (mainly the 16th–17th centuries). His doctoral dissertation, defended in 1882, was devoted to the Boyar Duma as “the flywheel of the ancient Russian administration.” The scientist himself considered himself to be a member of the “sociological direction” of historical science - the doctrine of “diverse and changeable happy or unsuccessful combinations of external and internal conditions of development that develop in certain countries for one or another people for a more or less long time.” From this teaching, as Klyuchevsky hoped, over time, “a science about the general laws of the structure of human societies, applicable regardless of transient local conditions,” should be developed.

The fruits of Klyuchevsky’s studies in historical sociology are “The Origin of Serfdom in Russia” (1885), “Poll Tax and the Abolition of Serfdom in Russia” (1886), “Composition of Representation at the Zemstvo Councils of Ancient Rus'” (1890). In addition to the general course of Russian history, he taught special courses on the history of estates and the history of law, and annually conducted seminars on individual written monuments, mainly legal (in the 1880/1881 academic year - on “Russian Truth” and the Pskov Judicial Charter, in 1881/1882- m - according to the Code of Laws of Ivan the Terrible, in 1887/1888 - according to the treaties of Oleg and Igor with Byzantium, preserved as part of the Initial Chronicle).

Being an economic historian, Klyuchevsky paid attention to the relationships between people not only among themselves, but also with the environment. In this aspect, he considers the main factor of Russian history to be the development of land, constant expansion: “The history of Russia is the history of a country that is being colonized.” In the West, the Germanic tribe of Franks conquers the Roman province of Gaul - it turns out France; on the East European Plain, and then in Siberia and Asia, the Eastern Slavs settled widely, subjugating or assimilating small, scattered local tribes without large-scale conflicts.

The periods of Russian history according to Klyuchevsky are stages of colonization. Moreover, each stage is characterized by special forms of political and economic life, associated mainly with adaptation to the territory being developed: “Dnieper Rus' - city, trade” (Kievan Rus of the 8th–13th centuries), “Upper Volga Rus' - appanage princely, free agricultural” (XIII–XV centuries), “Moscow Rus' - royal-boyar, military-landowning” (XV–XVII centuries) and “Imperial-noble Russia, serfdom”.

At the same time that Klyuchevsky was lecturing to students at Moscow University on the decisive importance of colonization in Russian history, Frederick Jackson Turner was coming to similar conclusions about American history at the University of Wisconsin. In 1893, 32-year-old Professor Turner published a lengthy research article entitled “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” in which he argued that the peculiarities of American social, political and economic institutions were explained by the existence of the Wild West. Throughout the 19th century, Americans had no shortage of land: anyone who had no place in the civilized states in the east of the country could go west to the frontier. It had its own laws, the rule of the strong reigned there, there were no everyday amenities, but there was freedom and almost unlimited opportunities. More and more waves of colonialists, mastering the western forests and prairies, pushed the frontier further and further to the west, closer and closer to the Pacific Ocean.

It is clear that the hundred-year history of the American colonization of the Wild West and the thousand-year history of the Slavic colonization of the East European Plain and Siberia are phenomena of different orders, but the typological similarity is remarkable. And it is all the more remarkable what different consequences these processes had: in America, according to Turner, the development of the frontier forged an individualistic, independent, aggressive spirit among the people; whereas in Russia, according to Klyuchevsky, it was constant colonization that led to serfdom becoming the cornerstone of the state. Welcoming the peasant reform of 1861, Klyuchevsky hoped that now the development of Siberia would acquire the same entrepreneurial character as the development of the American Wild West. Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin imagined something similar when in 1906, during the agrarian reform, he began to lure peasants to Siberia with free land and freedom from the rural community.

Soloviev, tracing the formation of Russian statehood and considering Peter's transformations as the completion of this centuries-old process, experienced great difficulties in writing the history of Russia in the 18th century (starting from the 18th volume): his narrative lost its core, its organizing idea. Klyuchevsky’s “colonization” theory works for the 18th, 19th, and even 20th centuries: it fits perfectly, say, the development of virgin lands in the 1950s and the transformation of the West Siberian oil and gas province into the foundation of the Soviet and Russian economy, since the 1960s.

In 1887–1889, Klyuchevsky was dean of the Faculty of History and Philology and vice-rector of Moscow University. In 1893–1895, as a home teacher, he taught a course in general and national history to Grand Duke Georgy Alexandrovich, the son of Emperor Alexander III and the younger brother of the heir to the throne, Nikolai Alexandrovich (the future Nicholas II). It was common practice to involve leading professors in teaching the Tsar's children: Buslaev, Solovyov and other teachers of Klyuchevsky simultaneously taught Tsarevich Nikolai Alexandrovich (he died in 1864, after which Alexander Alexandrovich, the future Alexander III, became the heir to the throne). The situation with Georgy Alexandrovich was complicated by the fact that he suffered from consumption and, on the recommendation of doctors, lived in the Georgian resort of Abastumani, so Klyuchevsky had to spend two academic years there. His preparatory notes for lectures on the history of Europe after the French Revolution and on the history of Russia from Catherine II to Alexander II were published in 1983 under the title “Abastuman Readings.”

Klyuchevsky, like any Russian liberal intellectual, had a difficult relationship with the authorities. On the one hand, he was in the sovereign's service at the Imperial Moscow University, taught the royal children, and from 1893 he was also the chairman of the Moscow Society of Russian History and Antiquities, a respected scientific organization enjoying the patronage of the royal family. On the other hand, being a commoner, coming from the lower social classes, he could not sympathize with the extremely conservative, anti-democratic policies of Alexander III, his suspicion of the professors and students as peddlers of “dangerous freethinking.” On the third hand, the revolutionary terror of Narodnaya Volya and other similar radical organizations horrified Klyuchevsky.

In 1894, at a meeting of the Society of Russian History and Antiquities, Klyuchevsky delivered a speech “In memory of the late Emperor Alexander III in Bose.” A normal duty-loyal obituary, such ones were pronounced at almost every public meeting then. Even the genre of speech itself, not to mention its status, did not imply any serious discussion of the personality and legacy of the deceased emperor. However, at the lecture at the university immediately after the meeting, Klyuchevsky heard a whistle from the auditorium for the first time in his career.

Klyuchevsky did not give up. In 1904, he delivered a heartfelt speech on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the death of his teacher Sergei Solovyov, and in it, speaking about the importance of studying history, he casually remarked about the abolition of serfdom and the implementation of this decision: “Admiring how the reform transformed Russian antiquity, they did not notice how Russian antiquity transformed the reform.” He saw both in the “counter-reforms” and in the outright grassroots sabotage of the cause of liberation of the peasants not just sabotage by officials and former landowners deprived of their usual centuries-old privileges - he saw in this a continuation of the development of social forces that, after the Tsar’s manifesto of 1861, had not gone away. Whatever one may say, the vital interests of a powerful class of people are affected - no matter how you treat them, you cannot simply ignore them. The radicals saw this position as compromise.

Klyuchevsky reached the official pinnacle of his scientific career - the title of ordinary academician - in 1900, being 59 years old. In 1905, shortly after that very speech in memory of Solovyov with a discussion about how “old times transformed the reform,” the First Russian Revolution broke out. The seriously frightened government and Emperor Nicholas II hastened to proclaim the democratization of the political system and in February 1905 they promised to establish a parliament - the State Duma. Meetings began in Peterhof on how to do this more efficiently. Klyuchevsky was invited to them as an expert on popular representation - after all, among his greatest scientific achievements was a study of the social composition and functioning of the Boyar Duma and zemstvo councils (which, however, as Klyuchevsky established, were not bodies of popular representation, but accordingly class administrative structure and form of consultation between the supreme power and its local agents).

The project of the Duma as a legislative body, elections to which were neither direct, nor universal, nor equal, did not suit anyone. In October, an all-Russian strike began, which forced Nicholas II to make new concessions: with a manifesto of October 17, he proclaimed the granting of basic civil liberties to Russia (including freedom of speech, assembly and association in political parties), as well as the establishment of a Duma on the principles of general elections.

The State Council, from a virtually non-functional legislative body under the tsar, turned into the upper house of parliament. Half of its members were appointed by the emperor, the other half were elected from curiae: from the Orthodox clergy, from noble assemblies, from provincial zemstvo assemblies (local government bodies), from business public organizations. And there was also an “academic curia” that elected six members of the State Council “from the Academy of Sciences and Universities.” In April 1906, Klyuchevsky was one of these six, but immediately refused this honor because, due to the specific election procedure, he did not feel proper independence. Instead, he decided to run for the State Duma (where elections were direct) from the liberal Constitutional Democratic Party, led by his student Pavel Milyukov (we will tell you more about him next time). But Klyuchevsky failed the elections, and this ended his short and unsuccessful journey into politics.

Klyuchevsky died in 1911, being 70 years old. The historiographic school he created at Moscow University, which gave priority to the study of socio-economic relations, determined the mainstream of Russian historical science until the establishment of Marxist teaching as the “only true” one, and even after that, under the name of “bourgeois economism”, was the starting point for Soviet researchers: they started from Klyuchevsky, criticizing, arguing or clarifying him, just as historians of the 19th century started from Karamzin. Strictly speaking, Klyuchevsky had everything that Marxists required: the primacy of economics and the secondary nature of politics, the class structure of society, the consistent derivation of the causes of events and phenomena from the internal logic of the development of society, and not from external factors, the recognition of the insignificance of the “hype of state events” - only Klyuchevsky, as a non-Marxist, interpreted all this “wrongly”.

Solovyov was more favored by the Soviet authorities: the fact that he belonged entirely to the 19th century allowed him, a “bourgeois” historian, to be fearlessly proclaimed “progressive.” Klyuchevsky was already an older contemporary of Lenin, and he had to be considered “reactionary.”

Solovyov's thinking was entirely scientific, synthetic: he saw processes in all historical events and phenomena. It was not for nothing that Klyuchevsky wrote, in addition to historical research, stories and even poetry (both mainly in the satirical genre) - he had artistic thinking. If in Solovyov’s presentation individual historical figures appeared as nothing more than functions, “nodes” of those very processes; then Klyuchevsky, remaining on the same strictly scientific basis, revived the Karamzin tradition of living historical portraits. He returned psychologism to historical science - not in the sentimental Karamzin spirit, with the division into heroes and villains, but rather in the spirit of the literary “natural school”, for which individual characters were the product and reflection of their time and their social environment. For Solovyov, the oprichnina of Ivan the Terrible is nothing more than another stage in the struggle between state life and clan life, Petrine transformations are an inevitable result of the development of Russian society in the 17th century. Klyuchevsky, recognizing the same general historical significance behind these phenomena, pays special attention to the actions of the sovereigns, seeing in them both the manifestation of their personal temperaments and visual illustrations of the prevailing morals and concepts of the corresponding eras.

The clearest example of this “scientific-artistic,” “docudramatic” method of Klyuchevsky is the semi-comic study “Eugene Onegin and His Ancestors,” which he presented at the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature in 1887, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Pushkin’s death. A fictional “reconstruction” of the genealogy of a fictional character in the form of a gallery of historical portraits of his “ancestors”: “some Nelyub-Nezlobin, the son of such and such,” an illiterate provincial nobleman of the second half of the 17th century; the “melancholy commissar” of the Peter the Great era, a scholar of “Latin” and the head of the supply of boots to soldiers; a foreign-educated “navigator” who was tortured in dungeons under Anna Ioannovna for “a careless word about Biron”; a brave Catherine's guard, superficially carried away by the ideals of the Enlightenment and who ended his life in the Russian wilderness as an “eternally cloudy grouch” with Parisian manners - this “reconstruction” of Klyuchevsky is, in fact, a brief sketch of the history of a certain social stratum and those “childhood traumas” that made this layer as it became. This is a feuilleton in the spirit of the early Chekhov (he was just blossoming in 1887), and a worthy bow to the majestic shadow of Pushkin, and a brilliant popular science work.

Russian historiography, like Russian literature, had its own “Silver Age”. Klyuchevsky was not an active figure in it, but played a huge role in it: many of the largest scientists of the Silver Age, including Pavel Milyukov and Alexey Shakhmatov, were his students.

Artem Efimov

). Klyuchevsky's father was a priest. Since he served in the Penza diocese, the fate of his son was determined from early childhood: Vasily, obedient to the will of his parents, graduated from the Penza Theological School and the Penza Theological Seminary.

Life was very difficult for the family, so the parents did not support the son’s repeatedly voiced idea of ​​becoming a historian. Meanwhile, Klyuchevsky was fond of history and, in between taking seminar exams, voraciously read various historical works, books and studies. By the end of the seminary, Vasily Osipovich no longer imagined himself as anyone else, connecting his life only with historical science. We must pay tribute to Klyuchevsky’s parents, who, realizing that their son was not enthusiastic about the idea of ​​becoming a priest, showed themselves to be very understanding people. Realizing that their son was not going to follow in his father’s footsteps, they allowed him to take the entrance exams for the University of History and Philology at Moscow University, allowing him to leave the seminary. It was very difficult to overcome poverty: the Klyuchevsky family was going through difficult times. Subsequently, Klyuchevsky throughout his life remembered with gratitude his parents and the opportunity given to him to do what he loved.

At the university, he listened to lectures by such outstanding researchers of his time as Leontyev, Buslaev, Chicherin, Solovyov, and even the Chief Prosecutor of the Holy Synod, Konstantin Pobedonostsev. Klyuchevsky’s scientific interests were largely formed under their influence. Most of all, he was impressed by the lectures of Chicherin and Solovyov: excellent speakers, they, like no one else, knew how to inspire young listeners and had an almost hypnotic effect on the audience.

First works

Klyuchevsky spoke several foreign languages, which helped him not to limit himself to Russian sources when writing his works. His candidate's dissertation was called "Tales of Foreigners about the Moscow State." After graduating from the faculty, Klyuchevsky received a place at the university and began to study the lives of saints. He pursued the goal of finding a fresh source to study the issue of the participation of ancient Russian monasteries in the colonization of North-Eastern Rus'. Klyuchevsky devoted the next few years of his life to further study of the lives of the saints. He spared no time and effort, researching and analyzing the most inaccessible sources scattered across various book depositories. But after the expiration of the two-year term, Klyuchevsky, to his disappointment, was forced to admit that the result he obtained did not at all live up to his expectations. As a result, Klyuchevsky wrote a master’s thesis on the topic “Ancient Russian Lives of Saints as a Historical Source.” The work was devoted to hagiographic literature in many of its aspects - the source base, samples, techniques and forms.

Klyuchevsky as a researcher was generally characterized by self-criticism. He was very rarely satisfied with the results of his work and research. Most of Klyuchevsky's successors spoke of his work on the Lives in the warmest terms. But for its time, the study was almost provocative. The fact is that for the middle of the 20th century, the strictly critical direction in which Klyuchevsky’s works were carried out was something completely new for church historical science, where such methods had not yet dominated.

After writing his master's thesis, Klyuchevsky continued his close study of the history of the church and socio-religious thought. The result was the writing of a number of articles and reviews that played a huge role both for Klyuchevsky’s contemporary time and for the entire historical science as a whole. The largest of them were: “Pskov disputes”, “Economic activity”, “Western influence and church schism in the 17th century”. Vasily Osipovich's inspiration was inexhaustible.

Professorial activity

When one of the teachers at Moscow University, Soloviev, died in 1979, Klyuchevsky took his place and began teaching a course on Russian history there. He became a professor at the same university in 1882 and continued to lecture for many years. Klyuchevsky was extremely self-disciplined: at the same time, he managed to teach at the Moscow Theological Seminary. His friend Guerrier soon organized the famous Moscow Women's Courses, where he also invited Klyuchevsky to teach.

In the period from 1887 to 1889, Klyuchevsky was vice-rector of the Moscow Faculty of History and Philology. Thanks to his activities, the scientist received recognition not only among his colleagues, but also at the top. The Emperor, impressed by Vasily Osipovich's knowledge, invited him to teach a course in Russian history to Grand Duke Georgy Alexandrovich.

Klyuchevsky truly made an amazing career for his time. Starting as an ordinary teacher, he climbed to the top in just a decade: such a leap was not just the result of Klyuchevsky’s innate talent, but also his amazing hard work. In 1905, the scientist took part in the work of the State Commission for the Review of the Press. He played an important role in the establishment of the first State Duma.

Klyuchevsky's main works

Despite the fact that Vasily Osipovich Klyuchevsky was an extremely versatile personality both as a researcher and as a person, his interests were still more related to the history of the spiritual life of Russian society. The vast majority of his works (monographs, articles and books) were devoted to this topic. Several collections of Klyuchevsky's articles included unknown data and interesting facts from the biographies of Sergei Mikhailovich Solovyov, and many other prominent figures of his era.

In 1899, Vasily Osipovich published “A Brief Guide to Russian History,” which became the prologue to a voluminous work on a similar topic. Just a few years later, four volumes of Russian history appeared in print. Klyuchevsky brought his story up to the reign of Catherine II.

Klyuchevsky’s research, covering many years of Russian history, was not similar to the manuals that researchers were accustomed to using when writing their own works and which they were mainly guided by. From the very beginning, Klyuchevsky refused to criticize other authors, did not raise acute and controversial issues in his research, and did not want to argue with other historians of both his era and the previous one.

Klyuchevsky was the first researcher in Russia to teach a course on Russian historiography.

Among Vasily Osipovich’s works devoted to highly specialized topics, it is worth highlighting “The History of Estates in Russia,” printed on the basis of his special course, which the scientist taught while a professor at Moscow University. “Terminology of Russian History” was also quite popular. Many of Klyuchevsky’s works were constantly published by the Literary Thought magazine. After the death of Vasily Osipovich, many of his students took part in compiling the collection “Klyuchevsky, Characteristics and Memoirs.” Among the most prominent students and followers of Klyuchevsky were the historians Milyukov, Bakhrushin, Barskov, Bogoslovsky and many others. Klyuchevsky's research activities made him an outstanding representative of the Moscow historical school.

Vasily Osipovich Klyuchevsky died on May 25, 1911 in Moscow and was buried at the Donskoye Cemetery.

Lectures on Russian history:

1. The scientific challenge of studying local history. Historical process. History of Culture or Civilization. Historical sociology. Two points of view in Historical study are cultural-historical and sociological. Methodological convenience and didactic expediency of the second of them in the Study of local history. Scheme of the socio-historical process. The significance of local and temporary combinations of social elements in historical study. Methodological conveniences of studying Russian history from this point of view.

2. Course plan. Colonization of the country as the main fact of Russian history. Periods of Russian history as the main moments of colonization. The dominant facts of each period. Visible incompleteness of the plan. Historical Facts and so-called ideas. Different origins and interactions of both. When does an idea become a historical fact? The essence and methodological significance of political and economic facts. The practical purpose of studying Russian history.

3. Surface shape of European Russia. Climate. Geological origin of the Plain. The soil. Botanical belts. Relief of the plain. Soil water and atmospheric precipitation. River basins.

4. The influence of the nature of a country on the history of its people. Scheme of man's relationship to Nature. The significance of soil and botanical strips and the river network of the Russian Plain. The significance of the Oka-Volga interfluve as a colonization, economic and political node. Forest, steppe and rivers: their meaning in Russian History and the attitude of Russian people towards them. Is it possible to judge from modern impressions the effect of the country’s nature on the mood of ancient man? Some threatening phenomena in the nature of the plain.

5. The initial chronicle as the main source for studying the first period of our History. Chronicle writing in ancient Rus'; primary chronicles and chronicle collections. The most ancient lists of the initial chronicle. Traces of the ancient Kyiv chronicler in the Primary Chronicle. Who is this chronicler? The main components of the Initial Chronicle. How they are connected into a solid vault. Chronological plan of the Code. Nestor and Sylvester.

6. Historical and critical analysis of the initial chronicle. Its significance for further Russian chronicles, the fallacy of the chronological basis of the code and the origin of the Error. Processing of the components of the arch by its compiler. Incompleteness of the most ancient Lists of the initial chronicle. The idea of ​​Slavic unity, which is its basis. Attitude to the chronicle of the student. Chronicles of the 12th century. Historical views of the Chronicler.

7. The main facts of the first period of Russian history. Two looks at its beginning. Peoples who lived in southern Russia before the Eastern Slavs, and their relationship to Russian history. What facts can be recognized as initial in the history of the people? The legend of the initial Chronicle about the settlement of the Slavs from the Danube. Jordan on the placement of the Slavs in the 6th century. Military alliance of the Eastern Slavs in the Carpathians. The settlement of the Eastern Slavs across the Russian Plain, its time and signs. Separation of the Eastern Slavs as a Consequence of Settlement.

9. Political consequences of the settlement of the Eastern Slavs across the Russian plain. Pechenegs in the southern Russian steppes. Russian trading cities are arming themselves. Varangians; The question is about their origin and time of appearance in Rus'. Formation of urban Regions and their relationship to tribes. Varangian principalities. The Legend of the Calling of Princes; its historical basis. Behavior of the Scandinavian Vikings in the 9th century. In Western Europe. Formation of the Grand Duchy of Kyiv as the first form of the Russian state. The importance of Kyiv in the formation of the state. Review of what has been learned.

10. Activities of the first Kyiv princes. Unification of the Eastern Slavic tribes under the rule of the Kyiv prince. Control device. Taxes; carts and polyudya. Relationship between management and trade turnover. External activities of the Kyiv princes. Treaties and trade relations between Rus' and Byzantium. The significance of these agreements and relations in the history of Russian law. External difficulties and dangers of Russian Trade. Defense of the steppe borders. Russian land in the half of the 11th century. Population and Limits. The meaning of the Grand Duke of Kyiv. The princely squad: its political and economic proximity to the merchants of large cities. The Varangian element within this merchant class. Slavery as the original basis of class division. Varangian element in the squad. Different meanings of the word Rus. Transformation of tribes into estates.

11. The order of princely possession of Russian land after Yaroslav. Uncertainty of the order before Yaroslav. Division of land between the sons of Yaroslav and its foundation. Further Changes in the allocation of allotments. The order of seniority in possession as the basis of Order. His diagram. The origin of the next order. Its practical action. The conditions that upset him: the ranks and strife of the princes; the thought of fatherhood; singling out the rogue Princes; personal virtues of princes; intervention of volost cities. Meaning of the Next Order.

12. A consequence of the next order and conditions that counteracted it. Political fragmentation of the Russian land in the 12th century. Strengthening the older volost Cities; their meeting and rows with the princes. Elements of zemstvo unity of Rus' in the 12th century. The effect of princely relations on public mood and consciousness; general zemstvo Meaning of princely squads; the importance of Kyiv for princes and people; generalization of everyday Forms and interests, the political system of the Russian land in the 12th century. The awakening of a sense of national unity is the final fact of the period.

13. Russian civil society of the 11th and 12th centuries. Russian truth as its reflection. Two views of this monument. Features of Russian truth, indicating its Origin. The need for a revised code of local legal customs For the ecclesiastical judge of the 11th and 12th centuries. The meaning of codification among the main forms of Law. Byzantine codification and its influence on Russian. Church-judicial Origin of truth. The monetary account of the truth and the time of its compilation. Sources of Truth. Russian law. Princely legislation. Judicial verdicts of princes. Legislative projects of the clergy. Benefits. Which they used.

14. Upcoming questions about the composition of Russian truth. Traces of partial codification in Old Russian legal writing. Compilation and processing of partially compiled articles. Compilation and composition of Russian truth; mutual relationship of its main editions. The relationship of truth to existing law. Civil Order according to Russian truth. A preliminary note on the significance of legal monuments for the historical study of civil society. The dividing line between Criminal and civil law according to Russian truth. Punishment system. The Ancient Foundation of Truth and Later Layers. Comparative assessment of a Person's property and personality. Double division of society. Property transactions and obligations. Russian truth is the code of capital.

15. Church statutes of the first Christian princes of Rus'. Church department according to the Charter of Saint Vladimir. The space of the church court and the joint church-secular court according to the charter of Yaroslav. Changes in the concept of crime, in the area of ​​imputation and in the system of punishment. Cash account of the Yaroslav Charter: the time of its compilation. The original basis of the charter. Legislative powers of the Church. The progress of church codification. Traces of her techniques are in Yaroslav's charter. The attitude of the Charter to Russian truth. The influence of the church on the political order. Public Warehouse and civil life. The structure of the Christian family.

16. The main phenomena of the 2nd period of Russian history. Conditions upset the public order and welfare of Kievan Rus. Life of high society. Advances in citizenship and education. The position of the lower classes; successes of Slavery and enslavement. Polovtsian attacks. Signs of desolation of Dnieper Rus'. There is a two-way outflow of population from there. Signs of low tide to the west. A look at the future fate of southwestern Rus' and the question of the origin of the Little Russian tribe. Signs of population flow to the northeast. The meaning of this Ebb and the fundamental fact of the period.

17. Ethnographic consequences of Russian colonization of the upper Volga region. Question about the Origin of the Great Russian tribe. Disappeared foreigners of the Oka-Volga Mesopotamia and their traces. The attitude of Russian settlers towards Finnish natives shows traces of Finnish influence on the anthropological type of Great Russian. On the formation of the dialects of the Great Russian dialect, on the popular beliefs of Great Russia and on the composition of the Great Russian society. The influence of the nature of the upper Volga region on the national economy of Great Russia and on the tribal character of the Great Russians.

18. Political consequences of Russian colonization of the upper Volga region. Prince Andrei Bogolyubsky and his attitude towards Kievan Rus: an attempt to transform the patriarchal Power of the Grand Duke into state power. Andrei's mode of action in the Rostov Land: his relationship to his closest relatives. To the older cities and the older squad. Princely and social strife in Rostov land after the death of Prince Andrei. The judgment of the Vladimir chronicler about this strife. The predominance of Upper Volga Rus' over the Dnieper under Vsevolod 3. The effect of the political successes of princes Andrei and Vsevolod on the mood of Suzdal society. List of studied Facts.

19. A look at the situation of the Russian land in the 13th and 14th centuries. Specific order of the Princely possession in the descendants of Vsevolod III. Princely inheritance. The main features of the Specific order. Its origin. The idea of ​​separate hereditary ownership among the southern princes. Transformation of Russian regional princes into service princes under Lithuanian rule. The power of family tradition among the Yaroslavich senior lines: Relations between the Verkhneoksky and Ryazan princes at the end of the 15th century. The main features of the Specific Order, the reasons for its successful development in the offspring of Vsevolod III. There are no obstacles to this order in the Suzdal region.

20 . A note on the significance of specific centuries in Russian history. Consequences of the appanage Order of princely possession. Questions to come when studying them. Progress of specific crushing. Impoverishment of appanage princes. Their mutual alienation. The meaning of the appanage Prince. His legal attitude towards private fiefdoms is his destiny. Comparison of appanage relations with feudal ones. The composition of society in the appanage Principality. Decline of zemstvo consciousness and civic feeling among appanage Princes. Conclusions.

21 . Moscow begins to collect appanage Rus'. The first news about the city of Moscow. The original space of the Moscow Kremlin. Economic benefits of the geographical location of the city of Moscow. The city of Moscow is a junction point of diverse routes. Traces of the early population of the Moscow region. Moscow is the ethnographic center of Great Russia. The Moscow River is a transit route. Political consequences of the geographical position of the city of Moscow. Moscow is the youngest destiny. The influence of this on the external relations and internal activities of the Moscow princes, the political and national successes of the Moscow princes until the half of the 15th century. I. Expansion of the territory of the principality. II. Purchase of the Grand Duke's table. III. The consequences of this success: the suspension of the Tatar invasions; Moscow Union of Princes. IV. The transfer of the metropolitan see to Moscow is the significance of this change for the Moscow princes. Conclusions.

22 . Mutual relations of Moscow princes. - Order of inheritance. - Apparent legal indifference of movable property and appanages. The relationship of the Moscow princely order of inheritance to the legal custom of ancient Rus'. - Attitude of the Moscow princes according to kinship and possession. - Strengthening the eldest heir. - Form of subordination of junior appanage princes to him. - The influence of the Tatar yoke on princely relations. - Establishment of the succession of Moscow grand-ducal power in a direct descending line. - A meeting of the family aspirations of the Moscow princes with the people's needs of Great Russia. - The significance of the Moscow strife under Vasily the Dark. - The character of the Moscow princes

23 . Free urban communities. - Novgorod the Great. - Its location; sides and ends. Novgorod region; Pyatina and volosts. - Conditions and development of Novgorod liberty. - Contractual relations between Novgorod and the princes. - Management. - The Veche and its attitude towards the princes. - Posadnik and thousand. - Court. - Council of gentlemen. - Regional administration. - Suburbs and their relationship to the main city. - Conclusion.

24 . Classes of Novgorod society. - Novgorod boyars and its origin. - Living people. - Merchants and black people. - Serfs, smerds and ladles. - Zemtsy; origin and significance of this class. - The foundation of the class division of Novgorod society. - Political life of Novgorod. - The origin and struggle of the princely and social parties. The nature and significance of the Novgorod strife. - Features of the Pskov political system and life. - The different nature of the Pskov and Novgorod political order. - Disadvantages of Novgorod political life. - The general reason for the decline of freedom in Novgorod. - Predictions

25 . The main phenomena of the third period of Russian history. - The situation of the Russian land in the half of the 15th century. - Borders of the Moscow Principality. A change in the further course of the gathering of Rus' by Moscow. - Territorial acquisitions of Ivan III and his successor. - The political unification of Great Russia is the main fact of the III period. - The immediate consequences of this fact. - Changes in the external position of the Moscow Principality and in the foreign policy of its grand dukes. The idea of ​​a Russian people's state and its expression in the foreign policy of Ivan III

26 . Internal consequences of the main fact of the III period. - The growth of the political self-awareness of the Moscow sovereign. - Sofia Paleolog and her significance in Moscow. - New titles. - New genealogy and legend about the coronation of Vladimir Monomakh. - Patrimony and state. - Fluctuations between both forms of government. - Order of succession to the throne. - Expansion of the power of the Grand Duke. - Belatedness and harm of appanage ownership. - The hesitant attitude towards him of Ivan III and his successors. - Composition of the supreme power of the Moscow sovereign. - A change in the view of Moscow society towards its sovereign. - Conclusions

27 . Moscow boyars. - Changes in its composition since the middle of the 15th century. - Conditions and rules for the order of boyar families. - The political mood of the boyars in its new composition. - Definition of the Moscow boyars as a class. - Localism. - Local fatherland. - The local account is simple and complex. - Legislative restrictions on localism. - The idea of ​​localism. -When it formed into a system. Its significance as a political guarantee for the boyars. - Its disadvantages in this regard

28 . The attitude of the boyars in their new composition to their sovereign. - The attitude of Moscow boyars to the Grand Duke in the appanage centuries. - Change in these relations with Ivan III. - Collisions. - Uncertainty of the cause of the discord. - Conversations between Bersen and Maxim the Greek. - Boyar rule. - Correspondence between Tsar Ivan and Prince Kurbsky. Judgments of Prince Kurbsky. - The king's objections. - Nature of correspondence. - Dynastic origin of discord.

29 . Circumstances that prepared the establishment of the oprichnina. - The unusual departure of the Tsar from Moscow and his message to the capital. - Return of the king. - Decree on oprichnina. - The life of the Tsar in Alexandrovskaya Sloboda. - The attitude of the oprichnina to the zemshchina. - Purpose of the oprichnina. - Contradictions in the structure of the Moscow state. - The idea of ​​replacing the boyars with the nobility. - The aimlessness of the oprichnina. - Judgment of her contemporaries

30 . Characteristics of Tsar Ivan the Terrible

31 . The composition of the appanage society. - Composition of the Moscow service class. - Service elements. - Non-service elements; townspeople-landowners, clerks, civil servants. - Foreigners. - Quantitative ratio of constituent elements by tribal origin. - Ladder of ranks. The size of the military service class. - External situation of the state. - Wars in the northwest. - The fight against Crimea and Nogai. - Defense of the northeastern borders. - Coastal service. - Lines of defensive fortifications. - Guard and village service. - The severity of the struggle. - The question of the economic and military structure of the service class and the local system

32 . Local farming. - Opinions on the origin of local law. - The origin of local land tenure. - Local system. - Her rules. - Local and cash salaries. - Local layout. - Belongings.

33 . The immediate consequences of the local system. - I. The influence of the local principle on patrimonial land ownership. Mobilization of estates in the 16th century. - II. The local system as a means of artificial development of private land ownership. - III. Formation of district noble societies. - IV. The emergence of the service agricultural proletariat. - V. Unfavorable influence of local land ownership on cities. - VI. The influence of the local system on the fate of peasants.

34 . Question about monastic estates. - Spread of monasteries. - Monasteries in northeastern Russia. - Desert monasteries. - Colonial monasteries. - Colonization activities of the Trinity Sergius Monastery. - The meaning of desert monasteries. - Old Russian month book. - Old Russian hagiography. - Composition and character of ancient Russian life. - Mir monasteries. - Founders of desert monasteries. - Wandering and settlement of a hermit in the desert. - Deserted monastery

35 . Methods of land enrichment for monasteries. - Granted lands. - Contributions to your liking and for tonsure. - Purchases and other transactions. - Harmful consequences of monastic land ownership for monasticism itself. - Monastery feed. - Decline of monastic discipline. - Inconveniences of monastic land ownership for service people and the state. - Question about monastery estates. - Nil Sorsky and Joseph Volotsky. - Council of 1503 - Literary controversy on the issue. - Legislative attempts to curb the land enrichment of monasteries

36 . The connection between monastic land ownership and serfdom. - Peasants in the 15th and 16th centuries. - Types of rural settlements. The ratio of residential arable land to emptiness. Classes of landowners. - Relations of peasants: 1) to landowners, 2) to the state. - Social structure of peasants. - Question about the rural community. - A peasant in his agricultural holding. - Help, loans, benefits. - Peasant plots. - Duties. - Conclusion.

37 . Opinion about the attachment of peasants at the end of the 16th century. - Law of 1597 on fugitive peasants and the proposed decree on the general attachment of peasants. - Orders of the late 16th and early 17th centuries. - Economic conditions that prepared the serfdom of the peasants. - Land assignment of black and palace peasants. - Increasing loans and increasing personal dependence of landowner peasants. - Peasant transports and escapes and legislative measures against them. - The situation of the landowner peasantry at the beginning of the 17th century. - Conclusions

38 . Review of what has been covered. - Administration in the Moscow state of the XV-XVI centuries. - Unfavorable conditions for its construction. A general look at its structure and character. - Administration of the appanage principality. - The led boyars and the boyar duma. - Governors and volostels. - The meaning of feedings. - Changes in the central administration of the Moscow state from the half of the 15th century. - Orders and the Boyar Duma. - The nature of their activities

39 . Changes in regional government. - Rationing of feedings. - Report and men of judgment. - Lip control. - Its composition. - Department and process. - Character and meaning. - Two questions. - The attitude of the lip administration to the feeders. - Zemstvo reform. - Her reasons. - Introduction of zemstvo institutions. - Department and responsibility of earthly authorities. Correct management. - The nature and significance of the reform

40 . Management and society. - Fragmentation and class character of local self-government. Failure of the all-class beginning. - The need to unite local institutions. - Zemsky Sobors. - The legend of the cathedral of 1550 - Analysis of the legend. Composition of the cathedrals of 1566 and 1598 - Service and commercial and industrial people in their composition. - Zemsky Sobor and land. The meaning of a conciliar representative. - The order of council meetings. - The meaning of the kiss of the cross. - Connection of cathedrals with local worlds. - The origin and significance of zemstvo cathedrals. - Thought about the All-Earth Council. - Moscow state at the end of the 16th century

41 . A look at the IV period of Russian history. - Main facts of the period. - Mutual contradictions in the relationship between these facts. - The influence of foreign policy on the internal life of the state. - The course of affairs in the IV period in connection with this influence. - State and political consciousness of society. - The beginning of the Troubles. - End of the dynasty. Tsar Feodor and Boris Godunov. - Reasons for the Troubles. Imposture

42 . Consistent entry into the Troubles of all classes of society. - Tsar Boris and the boyars. - False Dmitry I and the boyars. - Tsar Vasily and the great boyars. - Tsar Vasily’s cross-record and its meaning. - Middle boyars and metropolitan nobility. - Treaty of February 4, 1610 and Moscow Treaty of August 17, 1610 - Comparison of them. - Provincial nobility and the zemstvo verdict on June 30, 1611 - Participation of the lower classes in the Time of Troubles

43 . Causes of the Troubles. - Its dynastic reason: patrimonial-dynastic view of the state. - A look at the elected king. - The reason is socio-political: the tax system of the state. - Social discord. - The meaning of imposture during the Time of Troubles. - Conclusions. - The second militia and the cleansing of Moscow from the Poles. - Election of Michael. - Reasons for his success

44 . The immediate consequences of the Troubles. - New political concepts. - Their manifestations in the Time of Troubles. - Change in the composition of the government class. - Disorder of localism. - New arrangement of supreme power. - The Tsar and the Boyars. - Boyar Duma and Zemsky Sobor. - Simplification of supreme power. - Boyar attempt in 1681. Change in the composition and significance of the Zemsky Sobor. - Ruin. - The mood of society after the turmoil.

45 . The external situation of the Moscow state after the Time of Troubles. - Objectives of foreign policy under the new dynasty. - Western Rus' since the union of Lithuania with Poland. - Changes in management and class relations. - Cities and Magdeburg law. - Union of Lublin. - Its consequences. - Settlement of steppe Ukraine. - Origin of the Cossacks. - Little Russian Cossacks. - Zaporozhye

46 . The moral character of the Little Russian Cossacks. - Cossacks stand for faith and nationality. - Discord among the Cossacks. - Little Russian question. - Baltic and Eastern issues. - European relations of the Moscow state. - The importance of Moscow’s foreign policy in the 17th century

47 . Fluctuations in the internal life of the Moscow state in the 17th century. - Two series of innovations. - Direction of legislation and the need for a new set of laws. - Moscow rebellion of 1648 and its relation to the Code. - The verdict on July 16, 1648 on the drawing up of the Code and the execution of the sentence. - Written sources of the Code. - Participation of council electors in its preparation. - Composition techniques. The meaning of the Code. - New ideas. - Newly listed articles

48 . Government difficulties. - Centralization of local government; governors and provincial elders. - The fate of zemstvo institutions. - District ranks. Concentration of central control. District ranks. - Concentration of central control. - Orders of Accounting and Secret Affairs. - Community focus. - Basic and transitional classes. - Formation of classes. - Service people. - Posad population; return of pawnbrokers to the townsman's tax

49 . Peasants on the lands of private owners. - Conditions of their position. - Serfdom in ancient Rus'. - The origin of indentured servitude. - April Decree 1597 - Backyard people. - The emergence of serf peasant records. - Her origin. - Her conditions. - Serfs according to the Code of 1649 - Peasant bellies. - Tax liability for serfs. - The difference between the serf peasantry and servitude in the era of the Code

50 . Lords and serfs. - Serfdom and the Zemsky Sobor. - Social composition of the Zemsky Sobor in the 17th century. - Its numerical composition. - Elections. - Progress of affairs at the councils. - The political nature of councils. - Conditions for their fragility. - The thought of the Zemsky Sobor in the trading classes. - Disintegration of the cathedral representation. What did the Zemsky Sobor of the 17th century do? - Review of what was said

51 . Connection of phenomena. - Troops and finances. - Salary taxes: indirect; direct - money data and frivolous, yamsky, polonyanichny, streltsy. - Scribe books. - Non-salary fees. - Experiments and reforms. - Salt duty and tobacco monopoly. - Copper credit notes and the Moscow riot of 1662 - Living quarter. - Underwater tax and census books. - Class allocation of direct taxes. - Finance and zemstvo. - Extension of taxes to people living in the backyard. Distribution of people's labor between state forces. - Extraordinary taxes. - List of income and expenses 1680

52 . Dissatisfaction with the state of affairs in the state. - His reasons. - Its manifestations. Popular uprisings. - Reflection of discontent in written monuments. - Book I.A. Khvorostinin. - Patriarch Nikon. - Grig. Kotoshikhin. - Yuri Krizhanich.

53 . Western influence. - Its beginning. - Why did it start in the 17th century? - The meeting of two foreign influences and their differences. - Two directions in the mental life of Russian society. - Graduality of Western influence. - Regiments of foreign formation. - Factories. - Thoughts about the fleet. - Thought about the national economy. - New German settlement. - European comfort. - Theater. - Thought about scientific knowledge. - His first guides. - Scientific works of Kyiv scientists in Moscow. The beginnings of school education. - S. Polotsky

54 . The beginning of a reaction to Western influence. - Protest against new science. - Church schism. - The story of its beginning. - How both sides explain its origin. - The power of religious rituals and texts. - Its psychological basis. - Rus' and Byzantium. - Eclipse of the idea of ​​the universal church. - Tradition and science. National-church conceit. - State innovations. - Patriarch Nikon

55 . The position of the Russian Church upon Nikon’s accession to the patriarchal throne. - His idea of ​​a universal church. - His innovations. - How did Nikon contribute to the church schism? - Latinophobia. - Confessions of the first Old Believers. - Review of what was said. - Folk psychological composition of the Old Believers. - Schism and enlightenment. - Promoting division to Western influence

56 . Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. - F.M. Rtishchev

57 . A.L. Ordin-Nashchokin

58 . Prince V.V. Golitsyn. - Preparation and reform program

59 . The life of Peter the Great before the start of the Northern War. - Infancy. - Court teacher. - Teaching. - Events of 1682 - Peter in Preobrazhenskoye. - Funny. - Secondary school. - Moral growth of Peter. - The reign of Queen Natalia. - Peter's company. - The meaning of fun. Trip abroad. - Return

60 . Peter the Great, his appearance, habits, way of life and thoughts, character

61 . Foreign policy and reform of Peter the Great. - Foreign policy objectives. - International relations in Europe. - Beginning of the Northern War. - Progress of the war. - Its influence on the reform. - Progress and connection of reforms. - Study order. - Military reform. - Formation of a regular army. - Baltic Fleet. - Military budget

62 . The importance of military reform. - The position of the nobility. - The nobility of the capital. - The triple meaning of the nobility before the reform. - Noble reviews and analyses. - The lack of success of these measures. - Compulsory training for the nobility. - Procedure for serving. - Service division. - Changes in the genealogical composition of the nobility. - The significance of the changes outlined above. The rapprochement of estates and estates. - Decree on unified inheritance. - Effect of the decree

63 . Peasants and the first revision. - Composition of the company according to the Code. Recruitment and recruitment. - Capitation census. - Quartering of regiments. - Simplification of social composition. - Capitation census and serfdom. - National economic significance of the capitation census

64 . Industry and trade. - Plan and methods of Peter’s activities in this area. - I. Calling foreign craftsmen and manufacturers. - II. Sending Russian people abroad. - III. Legislative propaganda. - IV. Industrial companies, benefits, loans and subsidies. - Hobbies, failures and successes. - Trade and communications

65 . Finance. - Difficulties. - Measures to eliminate them. - New taxes; informers and profit-makers. - Arrived. - Monastic order. - Monopolies. Capitation tax. - Its meaning. Budget 1724 - Results of financial reform. Obstacles to reform.

66 . Transformation of management. - Study order. - Boyar Duma and orders. - Reform of 1699 - Voivodship comrades. - Moscow City Hall and Kurbatov. - Preparation of provincial reform. - Provincial division of 1708 - Governance of the province. - Failure of provincial reform. - Establishment of the Senate. - Origin and significance of the Senate. - Fiscals. - Collegiums

67 . Transformation of the Senate. - Senate and Prosecutor General. - New changes in local government. - Commissioners from the land. - Magistrates. - Start of new institutions. - The difference between the foundations of central and regional management. - Regulations. New management in action. - Robberies

69 . Russian society at the moment of the death of Peter the Great. - International position of Russia. - The impression of Peter’s death among the people. - The attitude of the people towards Peter. - The legend of the impostor king. - The legend of the Antichrist king. - The significance of both legends for the reform. - Change in the composition of the upper classes. - Their educational means. Study abroad. - Newspaper. - Theater. - Public education. - Schools and teaching. - Gluck Gymnasium. - Primary schools. - Books; assemblies; textbook of secular manners. - The ruling class and its attitude to reform

70 . Era 1725-1762 - Succession to the throne after Peter I. - Accession of Catherine I. - Accession of Peter II. - Further changes on the throne. - Guard and nobility. - Political mood of the upper class - the Supreme Privy Council. - Prince D.M. Golitsyn. - Supreme Commanders 1730

71 . Unrest among the nobility caused by the election of Duchess Anne to the throne. - Gentry projects. - New plan of Prince D. Golitsyn. - Crash. - His reasons. - Case connection. 1730 with the past. - Empress Anna and her court. - Foreign policy. - Movement against the Germans

72 . The significance of the era of palace coups. - The attitude of governments after Peter I to his reform. - The powerlessness of these governments. - Peasant question. - Chief Prosecutor Anisim Maslov. - Nobility and serfdom. - Service benefits of the nobility: educational qualifications and service life. - Strengthening noble land ownership: abolition of single inheritance; noble loan bank; decree on fugitives; expansion of serfdom; class cleansing of noble land ownership. - Abolition of compulsory service for the nobility. - The third formation of serfdom. - Practice of law

75 . Basic fact of the era. - Empress Catherine the Second. - Her origin. - Elizabeth's courtyard. - Catherine's position at court. - Catherine's course of action. - Her classes. - Trials and successes. - Count A.P. Bestuzhev-Ryumin. - Catherine under Emperor Peter III the Third. - Character

79 . The fate of the central administration after the death of Peter 1. - Transformation of regional administration. - Provinces. - Provincial institutions, administrative and financial. - Provincial judicial institutions. - Contradictions in the structure of provincial institutions. - Letters granted to the nobility and cities. - The importance of provincial institutions in 1775

81 . The influence of serfdom on the mental and moral life of Russian society. - Cultural needs of noble society. - Noble education program. - Academy of Sciences and University. - State and private educational institutions. - Home education. - Morals of noble society. - Influence of French literature. - Guides to French literature. - Results of the influence of educational literature. - Typical representatives of an educated noble society. - The significance of the reign of Empress Catherine II. - Increase in material resources. Increasing social discord. - Nobility and society

85 . Reign of Nicholas 1. Objectives. - The beginning of the reign of Nicholas 1 the First. - Codification. - Own office. - Provincial Department. - Growth of bureaucracy. Peasant question. - The structure of state peasants. - Legislation on peasants. - Its meaning

86 . Essay on the most important reforms of Alexander 2 the Second. - Serf population. - Landowner farming. - The mood of the peasants. - Accession to the throne of Alexander 2. - Preparation of peasant reform. - Secret Committee on Peasant Affairs. - Provincial committees. - Reform projects. - Editorial commissions. - Main features of the Regulations of February 19, 1861. - Land structure of peasants. - Peasant duties and land redemption. - Loan. - Redemption payments. - Zemstvo reform. - Conclusion

January 28, 1841 (Voskresenovka village, Penza province, Russian Empire) - May 25, 1911 (Moscow, Russian Empire)

Vasily Osipovich Klyuchevsky is the most prominent Russian liberal historian, a “legend” of Russian historical science, an ordinary professor at Moscow University, an ordinary academician of the Imperial St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (extra staff) in Russian history and antiquities (1900), chairman of the Imperial Society of Russian History and Antiquities at Moscow University, Privy Councilor.

IN. Klyuchevsky

So much has been written about V.O. Klyuchevsky that it seems completely impossible to insert even a word into the grandiose memorial erected to the legendary historian in the memoirs of his contemporaries, scientific monographs of fellow historians, popular articles in encyclopedias and reference books. For almost every anniversary of Klyuchevsky, entire collections of biographical, analytical, historical and journalistic materials were published, devoted to the analysis of one or another aspect of his work, scientific concepts, pedagogical and administrative activities within the walls of Moscow University. Indeed, largely thanks to his efforts, Russian historical science already in the second half of the 19th century reached a completely new qualitative level, which subsequently ensured the appearance of works that laid the foundations of modern philosophy and methodology of historical knowledge.

Meanwhile, in the popular scientific literature about V.O. Klyuchevsky, and especially in modern publications on Internet resources, only general information about the biography of the famous historian is given. The characteristics of the personality of V.O. Klyuchevsky, who, of course, was one of the most outstanding, extraordinary and remarkable people of his era, the idol of more than one generation of students and teachers at Moscow University, are also presented very differently.

This inattention can be partly explained by the fact that the main biographical works on Klyuchevsky (M.V. Nechkina, R.A. Kireeva, L.V. Cherepnin) were created in the 70s of the 20th century, when in classical Soviet historiography “the path of the historian” was understood primarily as the process of preparing his scientific works and creative achievements. Moreover, under the conditions of the dominance of Marxist-Leninist ideology and the propaganda of the advantages of the Soviet way of life, it was impossible to openly say that even under the “damned tsarism” a person from the lower classes had the opportunity to become a great scientist, a privy councilor, to enjoy the personal favor and deep respect of the emperor and members of the tsarist government. families. This to some extent neutralized the gains of the October Revolution, among which, as is known, the people declared that they had gained those same “equal” opportunities. In addition, V.O. Klyuchevsky in all Soviet textbooks and reference literature was unambiguously ranked among the representatives of “liberal-bourgeois” historiography - i.e. to class alien elements. It would never have occurred to any Marxist historian to study the private life and reconstruct little-known facets of the biography of such a “hero.”

In post-Soviet times, it was believed that the factual side of Klyuchevsky’s biography had been sufficiently studied, and therefore there was no point in returning to it. Of course: in the life of a historian there are no scandalous love affairs, career intrigues, acute conflicts with colleagues, i.e. there is no “strawberry” that could interest the average reader of the Caravan of Stories magazine. This is partly true, but as a result, today the general public knows only historical anecdotes about the “secrecy” and “excessive modesty” of Professor Klyuchevsky, his maliciously ironic aphorisms, and contradictory statements “pulled up” by the authors of various pseudo-scientific publications from personal letters and memoirs of contemporaries.

However, a modern view of the personality, private life and communications of a historian, the process of his scientific and extra-scientific creativity implies the intrinsic value of these objects of research as part of the “historiographic life” and the world of Russian culture as a whole. Ultimately, the life of each person consists of relationships in the family, friendships and love affairs, home, habits, and everyday trifles. And the fact that one of us ends up or doesn’t end up in history as a historian, writer or politician is an accident against the backdrop of the same “everyday little things”...

In this article we would like to outline the main milestones of not only the creative, but also the personal biography of V.O. Klyuchevsky, to talk about him as a person who has made a very difficult and thorny path from the son of a provincial clergyman, a poor orphan to the heights of glory as the first historian of Russia.

V.O. Klyuchevsky: triumph and tragedy of the “commoner”

Childhood and adolescence

IN. Klyuchevsky

IN. Klyuchevsky was born on January 16 (28), 1841 in the village of Voskresensky (Voskresenovka) near Penza, into a poor family of a parish priest. The life of the future historian began with great misfortune - in August 1850, when Vasily was not yet ten years old, his father died tragically. He went to the market to do some shopping, and on the way back he was caught in a severe thunderstorm. The horses got scared and bolted. Father Osip, having lost control of the car, apparently fell from the cart, lost consciousness from hitting the ground and choked on the streams of water. Without waiting for his return, the family organized a search. Nine-year-old Vasily was the first to see his dead father lying in the mud on the road. From the strong shock the boy began to stutter.

After the death of their breadwinner, the Klyuchevsky family moved to Penza, where they entered the Penza diocese. Out of compassion for the poor widow, who was left with three children, one of her husband’s friends gave her a small house to live in. “Was there anyone poorer than you and me at the time when we were left orphans in the arms of our mother,” Klyuchevsky later wrote to his sister, recalling the hungry years of his childhood and adolescence.

At the theological school where he was sent to study, Klyuchevsky stuttered so much that he was a burden to the teachers and did not do well in many basic subjects. As an orphan, he was kept in an educational institution only out of pity. Any day now the question of expelling a student due to professional incompetence could arise: the school trained clergy, and the stutterer was not fit to be either a priest or a sexton. Under the current conditions, Klyuchevsky might not have received any education at all - his mother did not have the funds to study at the gymnasium or invite tutors. Then the priest's widow tearfully begged one of the students from the senior department to take care of the boy. History has not preserved the name of this gifted young man, who managed to turn a timid stutterer into a brilliant speaker, who later attracted thousands of student audiences to his lectures. According to the assumptions of the most famous biographer of V.O. Klyuchevsky, M.V. Nechkina, he could be seminarian Vasily Pokrovsky, the older brother of Klyuchevsky’s classmate Stepan Pokrovsky. Not being a professional speech therapist, he intuitively found ways to combat stuttering, so that it almost disappeared. Among the techniques for overcoming the shortcoming was this: slowly and clearly pronounce the ends of words, even if the emphasis did not fall on them. Klyuchevsky did not completely overcome his stuttering, but he performed a miracle - he managed to give the small pauses that appeared involuntarily in his speech the appearance of semantic artistic pauses, which gave his words a unique and charming flavor. Subsequently, the flaw turned into a characteristic individual trait, which gave a special appeal to the historian’s speech. Modern psychologists and image makers deliberately use such techniques to attract the attention of listeners and add “charisma” to the image of a speaker, politician, or public figure.

IN. Klyuchevsky

A long and persistent struggle with a natural deficiency also contributed to the excellent diction of lecturer Klyuchevsky. He “minted” every sentence and “especially the endings of the words he spoke so that for an attentive listener not a single sound, not a single intonation of a quiet but unusually clear sounding voice could be lost,” his student Professor A. I. Yakovlev wrote about the historian. .

After graduating from the district theological school in 1856, V.O. Klyuchevsky entered the seminary. He had to become a priest - this was the condition of the diocese, which took his family into support. But in 1860, having dropped out of seminary in his last year, the young man was preparing to enter Moscow University. The desperately bold decision of a nineteen-year-old boy determined his entire fate in the future. In our opinion, it testifies not so much to Klyuchevsky’s persistence or the integrity of his nature, but rather to the intuition inherent in him already at a young age, which many of his contemporaries later spoke about. Even then, Klyuchevsky intuitively understands (or guesses) his personal destiny, goes against fate in order to take exactly the place in life that will allow him to fully realize his aspirations and abilities.

One must think that the fateful decision to leave the Penza Seminary was not easy for the future historian. From the moment the application was submitted, the seminarian lost his scholarship. For Klyuchevsky, who was extremely strapped for funds, the loss of even this small amount of money was very noticeable, but circumstances forced him to be guided by the principle “either all or nothing.” Immediately after graduating from the seminary, he could not enter the university, because he would be obliged to accept a clergy title and remain in it for at least four years. Therefore, it was necessary to leave the seminary as soon as possible.

Klyuchevsky’s daring act exploded the measured seminary life. The spiritual authorities objected to the expulsion of a successful student who, in fact, had already received an education at the expense of the diocese. Klyuchevsky motivated his request for dismissal by cramped home circumstances and poor health, but it was obvious to everyone in the seminary, from the director to the stoker, that this was just a formal excuse. The seminary board wrote a report to the Penza bishop, His Eminence Varlaam, but he unexpectedly issued a positive resolution: “Klyuchevsky has not yet completed his course of study and, therefore, if he does not want to be in the clergy, then he can be dismissed without hindrance.” The loyalty of the official document did not quite correspond to the true opinion of the bishop. Klyuchevsky later recalled that during the December exam at the seminary, Varlaam called him a fool.

Uncle I.V. Evropeytsev (the husband of his mother’s sister) gave money for the trip to Moscow, who encouraged his nephew’s desire to study at the university. Knowing that the young man was experiencing great gratitude, but at the same time also spiritual discomfort from his uncle’s charity, Evropeytsev decided to cheat a little. He gave his nephew a prayer book “as a keepsake” with parting words to turn to this book in difficult moments of life. A large banknote was inserted between the pages, which Klyuchevsky found already in Moscow. In one of his first letters home, he wrote: “I left for Moscow, firmly relying on God, and then on you and on myself, not counting too much on someone else’s pocket, no matter what happened to me.”

According to some biographers, a complex of personal guilt towards his mother and younger sisters left in Penza haunted the famous historian for many years. As evidenced by the materials of Klyuchevsky’s personal correspondence, Vasily Osipovich maintained the warmest relations with his sisters: he always tried to help them, look after them, and participate in their fate. Thus, thanks to the help of her brother, her elder sister Elizaveta Osipovna (married Virganskaya) was able to raise and educate her seven children, and after the death of her younger sister, Klyuchevsky accepted her two children (E.P. and P.P. Kornev) into his family and raised them.

The beginning of the way

In 1861, V.O. Klyuchevsky entered the Faculty of History and Philology of Moscow University. He had a difficult time: almost revolutionary passions were in full swing in the capitals, caused by the manifesto of February 19, 1861 on the liberation of the peasants. The liberalization of literally all aspects of public life, Chernyshevsky’s fashionable ideas about the “people's revolution”, which were literally floating in the air, confused young minds.

During his studies, Klyuchevsky tried to stay away from political disputes among students. Most likely, he simply had neither the time nor the desire to engage in politics: he came to Moscow to study and, in addition, he needed to earn money by giving lessons in order to support himself and help his family.

According to Soviet biographers, Klyuchevsky at one time attended the historical and philosophical circle of N.A. Ishutin, but this version is not confirmed by the currently studied materials from the historian’s personal archive. They contain an indication of the fact that Klyuchevsky was a tutor of a certain high school student Ishutin. However, this “tutoring” could have taken place even before Klyuchevsky entered Moscow University. ON THE. Ishutin and D.V. Karakozov were natives of Serdobsk (Penza province); in the 1850s they studied at the 1st Penza Men's Gymnasium, and seminarian Klyuchevsky during the same period actively earned money by giving private lessons. It is possible that Klyuchevsky renewed acquaintance with his fellow countrymen in Moscow, but researchers did not find any reliable information about his participation in the Ishutinsky circle.

Moscow life obviously aroused interest, but at the same time it gave rise to wariness and mistrust in the soul of the young provincial. Before leaving Penza, he had never been anywhere else; he moved mainly in a spiritual environment, which, of course, made it difficult for Klyuchevsky to “adapt” to the capital’s reality. “Provincialism” and subconscious rejection of everyday excesses, considered the norm in a big city, remained with V.O. Klyuchevsky throughout his life.

The former seminarian, no doubt, had to endure a serious internal struggle when he moved from the religious traditions learned in the seminary and family to scientific positivism. Klyuchevsky followed this path by studying the works of the founders of positivism (Comte, Mile, Spencer), the materialist Ludwig Feuerbach, in whose concept he was most attracted by the philosopher’s predominant interest in ethics and religious problems.

As Klyuchevsky’s diaries and some personal notes testify, the result of the internal “rebirth” of the future historian was his constant desire to distance himself from the world around him, maintaining his personal space in it, inaccessible to prying eyes. Hence - Klyuchevsky’s ostentatious sarcasm, caustic skepticism, more than once noted by his contemporaries, his desire to act in public, convincing others of his own “complexity” and “closedness.”

In 1864-1865, Klyuchevsky completed his course at the university with the defense of his candidate’s essay “Tales of Foreigners about the Moscow State.” The problem was posed under the influence of Professor F.I. Buslaeva. The candidate's essay received a very high assessment, and Klyuchevsky was retained at the department as a scholarship holder to prepare for a professorship.

Work on his master's thesis “The Lives of Saints as a Historical Source” lasted for six years. Since Vasily Osipovich could not remain a scholarship holder, at the request of his teacher and mentor S.M. Solovyov, he received a position as a tutor at the Alexander Military School. Here he worked from 1867 for sixteen years. Since 1871, he replaced S.M. Solovyov in teaching the course of new general history at this school.

Family and personal life

In 1869, V.O. Klyuchevsky married Anisya Mikhailovna Borodina. This decision came as a real surprise, both for relatives and for the bride herself. Klyuchevsky initially courted the younger Borodin sisters, Anna and Nadezhda, but proposed to Anisya, who was three years older than him (she was already thirty-two at the time of the wedding). At that age, a girl was considered a “vekovushka” and practically could not count on marriage.

Boris and Anisya Mikhailovna Klyuchevsky, probably with their dogs, named V.O. Klyuchevsky Grosh and Kopeyka. Not earlier than 1909

It's no secret that among the creative intelligentsia, long-term marriages, as a rule, are based on relationships between like-minded people. The wife of a scientist, writer, or famous publicist usually acts as a permanent secretary, critic, or even a generator of ideas for her creative “half,” invisible to the public. Little is known about the relationship between the Klyuchevsky spouses, but most likely they were very far from a creative union.

In correspondence of 1864, Klyuchevsky affectionately called his bride “Nixochka,” “confidant of my soul.” But, what is noteworthy, no further correspondence between the spouses was recorded. Even during Vasily Osipovich’s departures from home, he, as a rule, asked his other recipients to convey information about himself to Anisya Mikhailovna. At the same time, for many years Klyuchevsky maintained a lively and friendly correspondence with his wife’s sister, Nadezhda Mikhailovna Borodina. And according to his son, Vasily Osipovich carefully kept and hid drafts of old letters to his other sister-in-law, Anna Mikhailovna, among the “Penza papers.”

Most likely, the relationship between the Klyuchevsky spouses was built exclusively on a personal, family and everyday level, remaining so throughout their lives.

V.O. Klyuchevsky’s home secretary, his interlocutor and assistant in his work was his only son Boris. For Anisya Mikhailovna, although she often attended her husband’s public lectures, the sphere of scientific interests of the famous historian remained alien and largely incomprehensible. As P.N. Milyukov recalled, during his visits to the Klyuchevskys’ house, Anisya Mikhailovna only performed the duties of a hospitable hostess: poured tea, treated guests, without participating in any way in the general conversation. Vasily Osipovich himself, who often attended various informal receptions and zhurfixes, never took his wife with him. Perhaps Anisia Mikhailovna had no inclination for social pastime, but, most likely, Vasily Osipovich and his wife did not want to cause themselves unnecessary worries and put each other in an uncomfortable situation. Mrs. Klyuchevskaya could not be imagined at an official banquet or in the company of her husband’s learned colleagues arguing in a smoky home office.

There are known cases when unfamiliar visitors mistook Anisya Mikhailovna for a servant in the professor's house: even in appearance she resembled an ordinary bourgeois housewife or priest. The historian’s wife was known as a homebody, she ran the house and household, solving all the practical issues of family life. Klyuchevsky himself, like any person passionate about his ideas, was more helpless than a child in everyday trifles.

All her life A.M. Klyuchevskaya remained a deeply religious person. In conversations with friends, Vasily Osipovich often sneered at his wife’s passion for “sports” trips to the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, which was located far from their home, although there was another small church nearby. During one of these “campaigns,” Anisiya Mikhailovna became ill, and when they brought her home, she died.

Nevertheless, in general, one gets the impression that during many years of marriage, the Klyuchevsky spouses maintained deep personal affection and almost dependence on each other. Vasily Osipovich took the death of his “half” very hard. Student of Klyuchevsky S.B. Veselovsky these days wrote in a letter to a friend that after the death of his wife, old Vasily Osipovich (he was already 69 years old) and his son Boris “were left orphaned, helpless, like little children.”

And when the long-awaited fourth volume of the “Course of Russian History” appeared in December 1909, there was an inscription before the text on a separate page: “In memory of Anisia Mikhailovna Klyuchevskaya († March 21, 1909).”

In addition to his son Boris (1879-1944), Vasily Osipovich’s niece, Elizaveta Korneva (? –01/09/1906), lived in the Klyuchevsky family as a pupil. When Lisa got a fiancé, V.O. Klyuchevsky did not like him, and the guardian began to interfere with their relationship. Despite the disapproval of the entire family, Lisa left home, hastily got married, and soon after the wedding died “of consumption.” Vasily Osipovich, who loved her as his own daughter, experienced the death of his niece especially hard.

Professor Klyuchevsky

In 1872 V.O. Klyuchevsky successfully defended his master's thesis. In the same year, he took the chair of history at the Moscow Theological Academy and held it for 36 years (until 1906). In those same years, Klyuchevsky began teaching at the Higher Women's Courses. Since 1879 - lectures at Moscow University. At the same time, he completed his doctoral dissertation “The Boyar Duma of Ancient Rus'” and in 1882 defended it at the university department. From that time on, Klyuchevsky became a professor at four educational institutions.

His lectures were extremely popular among students. Not only students of history and philology, for whom, in fact, the course of Russian history was taught, were his listeners. Mathematicians, physicists, chemists, doctors - everyone tried to break into Klyuchevsky’s lectures. According to contemporaries, they literally emptied classrooms at other faculties; many students came to the university early in the morning to take a seat and wait for the “desired hour.” The listeners were attracted not so much by the content of the lectures as by the aphorism and liveliness of Klyuchevsky’s presentation of even already known material. The democratic image of the professor himself, so atypical for the university environment, also could not but arouse the sympathy of young students: everyone wanted to listen to “their” historian.

Soviet biographers tried to explain the extraordinary success of V.O. Klyuchevsky’s lecture course in the 1880s with his desire to “please” the revolutionary-minded student audience. According to M.V. Nechkina, in his first lecture, given on December 5, 1879, Klyuchevsky put forward the slogan of freedom:

“Unfortunately, the text of this particular lecture has not reached us, but the memories of the listeners have been preserved. Klyuchevsky, writes one of them, “believed that Peter’s reforms did not produce the desired results; In order for Russia to become rich and powerful, freedom was needed. Russia of the 18th century did not see it. Hence, Vasily Osipovich concluded, and its weakness as a state.”

Nechkina M.V. “Lecture skills of V.O. Klyuchevsky"

In other lectures, Klyuchevsky spoke ironically about Empresses Elizaveta Petrovna, Catherine II, and colorfully characterized the era of palace coups:

“For reasons known to us...,” Klyuchevsky’s university student recorded a lecture in 1882, “after Peter, the Russian throne became a toy for adventurers, for random people who often unexpectedly stepped on it... Many miracles happened on the Russian throne from death of Peter the Great - there were childless widows and unmarried mothers of families there, but there was no buffoon yet; Probably, the game of chance was aimed at filling this gap in our history. The buffoon has appeared."

It was about Peter III. No one from a university department has ever spoken about the House of Romanov like this.

From all this, Soviet historians drew a conclusion about the anti-monarchist and anti-noble position of the historian, which almost made him similar to the regicide revolutionaries S. Perovskaya, Zhelyabov and other radicals who wanted to change the existing order at any cost. However, the historian V.O. Klyuchevsky did not even think about anything like that. His “liberalism” clearly fit into the framework of what was permitted in the era of government reforms of the 1860-70s. “Historical portraits” of kings, emperors and other outstanding rulers of antiquity, created by V.O. Klyuchevsky, are only a tribute to historical authenticity, an attempt to objectively present monarchs as ordinary people who are not alien to any human weaknesses.

The venerable scientist V.O. Klyuchevsky was elected dean of the Faculty of History and Philology of Moscow University, vice-rector, chairman of the Society of Russian History and Antiquities. He was appointed teacher of the son of Alexander III, Grand Duke George, was more than once invited to walks with the royal family, and had conversations with the sovereign and empress Maria Feodorovna. However, in 1893-1894, Klyuchevsky, despite the emperor’s personal favor towards him, categorically refused to write a book about Alexander III. Most likely, this was neither the historian’s whim nor a manifestation of his opposition to the authorities. Klyuchevsky did not see his talent as a flattering publicist, and for a historian to write about the “next” emperor who is still living or who has just died is simply not interesting.

In 1894, he, as chairman of the Society of Russian History and Antiquities, had to give a speech “In memory of the late sovereign Emperor Alexander III.” In this speech, the liberal-minded historian sincerely regretted the death of the sovereign, with whom he often communicated during his lifetime. For this speech, Klyuchevsky was booed by students, who saw in the behavior of their beloved professor not grief for the deceased, but unforgivable conformism.

In the mid-1890s, Klyuchevsky continued his research work and published a “Brief Guide to New History”, the third edition of the “Boyar Duma of Ancient Rus'”. Six of his students are defending dissertations.

In 1900, Klyuchevsky was elected to the Imperial Academy of Sciences. Since 1901, according to the rules, he resigns, but remains to teach at the university and the Theological Academy.

In 1900-1910, he began to give a course of lectures at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, where his listeners were many outstanding artists. F.I. Chaliapin wrote in his memoirs that Klyuchevsky helped him understand the image of Boris Godunov before a benefit performance at the Bolshoi Theater in 1903. The memoirs of the famous singer about the famous historian also repeatedly speak about Klyuchevsky’s artistry, his extraordinary talent to attract the attention of the viewer and listener, his ability to “get used to the role” and fully reveal the character of the chosen character.

Since 1902, Vasily Osipovich has been preparing for publication the main brainchild of his life - “The Course of Russian History”. This work was interrupted only in 1905 by trips to St. Petersburg to participate in commissions on the law on the press and the status of the State Duma. Klyuchevsky’s liberal position complicated his relationship with the leadership of the Theological Academy. In 1906, Klyuchevsky resigned and was fired, despite student protests.

According to the assurances of cadet historians P.N. Milyukov and A. Kiesewetter, at the end of his life V.O. Klyuchevsky stood on the same liberal constitutional positions as the People's Freedom Party. In 1905, at a meeting in Peterhof, he did not support the idea of ​​a “noble” constitution for the future “Octobrists”, and agreed to run for the State Duma as a deputy from Sergiev Posad. In fact, despite all the curtseys from the leaders of the barely fledgling political parties, V.O. Klyuchevsky was not interested in politics at all.

Quite fierce disputes arose more than once among Soviet historians regarding Klyuchevsky’s “party affiliation”. M.V. Nechkina unequivocally (following Milyukov) considered Klyuchevsky an ideological and actual member of the People's Freedom Party (KD). However, Academician Yu.V. Gauthier, who personally knew the historian in those years, argued that his son Boris almost forcibly forced the “old man” to run for the Duma from this party, and “it is impossible to make Klyuchevsky a cadet figure.”

In the same polemic with Nechkina, the following phrase was heard by Yu.V. Gautier: “Klyuchevsky was a real “wet chicken” in terms of character and social activities. That's what I told him. He had a will only in his works, but in life he had no will... Klyuchevsky was always under someone’s shoe.”

The question of the actual participation or non-participation of the historian in the affairs of the Cadet Party has lost its relevance today. His deputy in the State Duma did not take place, but, unlike P.N. Milyukov and Co., this did not matter for Klyuchevsky: the scientist always had something to do and where to realize his oratorical talent.

“Course of Russian History” and the historical concept of V.O. Klyuchevsky

Along with the special course “History of Estates in Russia” (1887), research on social topics (“The Origin of Serfdom in Russia”, “Poll Tax and the Abolition of Serfdom in Russia”, “Composition of Representation at Zemstvo Councils of Ancient Rus'”), history culture of the 18th and 19th centuries. and others, Klyuchevsky created the main work of his life - “Course of Russian History” (1987-1989. T.I - 5). It is in it that the concept of the historical development of Russia according to V.O. Klyuchevsky is presented.

Most contemporary historians believed that V.O. Klyuchevsky, as a student of S.M. Solovyov, only continued to develop the concept of the state (legal) school in Russian historiography in new conditions. In addition to the influence of the state school, the influence of his other university teachers on Klyuchevsky’s views - F.I. Buslaeva, S.V. Eshevsky and figures of the 1860s. - A.P. Shchapova, N.A. Ishutin, etc.

At one time, Soviet historiography made a completely unfounded attempt to “divorce” the views of S.M. Solovyov as an “apologist of autocracy” and V.O. Klyuchevsky, who stood on liberal-democratic positions (M.V. Nechkin). A number of historians (V.I. Picheta, P.P. Smirnov) saw the main value of Klyuchevsky’s works in an attempt to give the history of society and people in its dependence on economic and political conditions.

In modern research, the prevailing view is that V.O. Klyuchevsky is not only a successor of the historical and methodological traditions of the state (legal) school (K.D. Kavelin, B.N. Chicherin, T.N. Granovsky, S.M. Soloviev) , but also the creator of a new, most promising direction, based on the “sociological” method.

Unlike the first generation of “statists,” Klyuchevsky considered it necessary to introduce social and economic factors as independent forces of historical development. The historical process in his view is the result of the continuous interaction of all factors (geographical, demographic, economic, political, social). The historian’s task in this process comes down not to constructing global historical schemes, but to constantly identifying the specific relationship of all of the above factors at each specific moment of development.

In practice, the “sociological method” meant for V.O. Klyuchevsky’s thorough study of the degree and nature of the country’s economic development, closely related to the natural-geographical environment, as well as a detailed analysis of the social stratification of society at each stage of development and the relationships that arise within individual social groups (he often called them classes). As a result, the historical process took over from V.O. Klyuchevsky’s forms are more voluminous and dynamic than those of his predecessors or contemporaries such as V.I. Sergeevich.

His understanding of the general course of Russian history V.O. Klyuchevsky presented the most concisely in periodization, in which he identified four qualitatively different stages:

VIII-XIII centuries - Rus' Dnieper, policeman, trade;

XIII - mid-XV centuries. - Upper Volga Rus', appanage-princely, free agricultural;

mid-15th - second decade of the 17th century. - Great Rus', Moscow, royal-boyar, military-landowning;

beginning of the 17th - mid-19th centuries. - the all-Russian period, the imperial-noble period, the period of serfdom, agricultural and factory farming.

Already in his doctoral dissertation “The Boyar Duma of Ancient Rus'”, which was, in fact, a detailed social portrait of the boyar class, the novelty that V.O. Klyuchevsky contributed to the traditions of the public school.

In the context of the divergence of interests of the autocratic state and society that sharply emerged at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, Klyuchevsky revised the views of his teacher Solovyov on the entire two-century period of the country’s new history, thereby crossing out the results of the last seventeen volumes of his “History of Russia” and the political program of the domestic pre-reform built on them liberalism. On these grounds, a number of researchers (in particular, A. Shakhanov) conclude that it is impossible to classify Klyuchevsky as a state school in Russian historiography.

But that's not true. Klyuchevsky only announces a “new history” and updates the sociological orientation of historical research. In fact, he did what most appealed to the needs of the younger generation of historians of the 1880s: he announced the rejection of schemes or goals proposed from outside, both Westernizing and Slavophile. Students wanted to study Russian history as a scientific problem, and Klyuchevsky’s “sociological method” gave them this opportunity. Klyuchevsky’s students and followers (P. Milyukov, Y. Gauthier, A. Kiesewetter, M. Bogoslovsky, N. A. Rozhkov, S. Bakhrushin, A. I. Yakovlev, Ya. L. Barskov) are often called “neo-statists”, i.e. .To. in their constructions they used the same multifactorial approach of the public school, expanding and supplementing it with cultural, sociological, psychological and other factors.

In the “Course of Russian History,” Klyuchevsky already gave a holistic presentation of Russian history based on his sociological method. Like no other public school historical work, “The Course” by V.O. Klyuchevsky went far beyond the scope of a purely educational publication, turning into a fact of not only scientific, but also social life of the country. An expanded understanding of the multifactorial nature of the historical process, combined with the traditional postulates of the state school, made it possible to bring to its logical limit the concept of the Russian historical process that was laid down by S.M. Solovyov. In this sense, the work of V.O. Klyuchevsky became a milestone for the development of all historical science in Russia: he completed the tradition of the 19th century and at the same time anticipated the innovative searches that the 20th century brought with it.

Assessment of the personality of V.O. Klyuchevsky in the memoirs of contemporaries

Figure V.O. Klyuchevsky, already during his lifetime, was surrounded by an aura of “myths,” various kinds of anecdotes and a priori judgments. And today the problem of clichéd perception of the historian’s personality persists, which, as a rule, is based on the subjective negative characteristics of P. N. Milyukov and the caustic aphorisms of Klyuchevsky himself, which are widely available to the reader.

P.N. Milyukov, as is known, quarreled with V.O. Klyuchevsky even in the process of preparing his master’s thesis on the reforms of Peter I. The dissertation was enthusiastically received by the scientific community, but V.O. Klyuchevsky, using his indisputable authority, persuaded the academic council the university will not award a doctorate for it. He advised Miliukov to write another dissertation, noting that “science will only benefit from this.” The future leader of the cadets was mortally offended and subsequently, without going into details and the true reasons for the teacher’s attitude towards his work, he reduced everything to the complexity of character, egoism and “mystery” of V.O. Klyuchevsky, or, more simply, to envy. For Klyuchevsky himself, everything in life was not easy, and he did not tolerate the quick success of others.

In a letter dated July 29, 1890, Milyukov writes that Klyuchevsky “It’s hard and boring to live in the world. He will not be able to achieve greater glory than he has achieved. He can hardly live with the love of science given his skepticism... Now he is recognized, secured; every word is caught with greed; but he is tired, and most importantly, he does not believe in science: there is no fire, no life, no passion for scientific work - and for this reason, there is no school and no students.”.

In the conflict with Miliukov, obviously, two remarkable egos collided in the scientific field. Only Klyuchevsky still loved science more than himself in science. His school and his students developed the ideas and multiplied the scientist’s merits many times over - this is an indisputable fact. The older generation of fellow historians, as is known, supported Klyuchevsky in this confrontation. And not only because at that time he already had name and fame. Without Klyuchevsky, there would have been no Miliukov as a historian, and what is especially sad to realize is that without the conflict with the all-powerful Klyuchevsky, Miliukov as a politician might not have happened. Of course, there would have been other people who wanted to shake the edifice of Russian statehood, but if Miliukov had not joined them, not only historical science, but also the history of Russia as a whole would have benefited from this.

Often, memories of Klyuchevsky as a scientist or lecturer smoothly flow into psychological analysis or characteristics of his personality. Apparently, his person was such a striking event in the life of his contemporaries that this topic could not be avoided. Many contemporaries noticed the scientist’s excessive causticism, closed character, and distance. But it is necessary to understand that different people could have been allowed by Klyuchevsky to come to him at different distances. Everyone who wrote about Klyuchevsky, one way or another, directly or in context, indicated their degree of closeness to the scientist’s personal space. This was the reason for the various, often directly opposite, interpretations of his behavior and character traits.

Klyuchevsky’s contemporaries (including S. B. Veselovsky, V. A. Maklakov, A. E. Presnyakov) in their memoirs decisively refute the myth of his “complexity and mystery,” “selfishness,” “buffoonery,” and constant desire to “play.” to the public,” they try to protect the historian from quick and superficial characterizations.

Vasily Osipovich was a man of subtle psychological makeup, who endowed all phenomena of life, his attitude towards people, and even his lectures with a personal emotional coloring. P. N. Milyukov compares his psyche to a very sensitive measuring apparatus, in constant oscillation. According to Miliukov, it was quite difficult for a person like his teacher to establish even ordinary everyday relationships.

If we turn to the historian’s diaries from different years, then, first of all, the researcher is struck by deep self-reflection, the desire to elevate one’s inner experiences above the bustle of everyday life. There are often records that indicate a lack of understanding by contemporaries, as it seemed to Klyuchevsky himself, of his inner world. He withdraws, seeks revelations in himself, in nature, away from the bustle of modern society, the values ​​and way of life of which he, by and large, does not fully understand and does not accept.

It is impossible not to admit that generations of rural clergy, having absorbed the habits of a simple and unassuming, low-income life, left a special stamp on Klyuchevsky’s appearance and his way of life. As M.V. writes Nechkina:

“...For a long time now he could have proudly carried his fame, felt famous, loved, irreplaceable, but there is not a shadow of high self-esteem in his behavior, even on the contrary - a pointed disregard for fame. He “gloomily and annoyedly waved away” the applause.

In the Moscow house of the Klyuchevskys, the atmosphere traditional for the old capital reigned: the visitor was struck by old-fashioned “homespun rugs” and similar “philistine elements”. Vasily Osipovich agreed extremely reluctantly to numerous requests from his wife and son to improve their life, such as buying new furniture.

Klyuchevsky, as a rule, received visitors who came to him in the dining room. Only when he was in a complacent mood did he invite him to the table. Sometimes his colleagues and professors came to visit Vasily Osipovich. In such cases, “he ordered a small decanter of pure vodka, herring, cucumbers, then a beluga appeared,” although in general Klyuchevsky was very thrifty. (Bogoslovsky, M. M. “From the memories of V. O. Klyuchevsky”).

To lectures at the university, Klyuchevsky traveled only in cheap cabs (“vankas”), fundamentally avoiding the dandy cabs of the Moscow “reckless drivers”. On the way, the professor often had animated conversations with the “vankas” - yesterday’s village boys and men. Klyuchevsky went about his business on a “poor Moscow horse-drawn horse,” and “climbed onto the imperial.” The horse-drawn railway, as one of his students A.I. Yakovlev recalls, was then distinguished by endless downtime at almost every siding. Klyuchevsky traveled to the Trinity-Sergius Lavra to teach at the Theological Academy twice a week by rail, but always in third grade, in a crowd of pilgrims.

I. A. Artobolevsky said: “The famous rich woman Morozova, with whose son Klyuchevsky once worked, offered him “as a present” a stroller and “two drawbar horses.” “And yet I refused... For mercy’s sake, does this suit me?.. Wouldn’t I be ridiculous in such a stroller?! In borrowed plumes..."

Another famous anecdote about a professor’s fur coat, given in the monograph by M.V. Nechkina:

“The famous professor, no longer constrained by a lack of money, wore an old, worn fur coat. “Why don’t you get yourself a new fur coat, Vasily Osipovich? Look, she’s all worn out,” her friends noted. - “The face and the fur coat,” Klyuchevsky answered laconically.”

The professor's notorious "frugality" undoubtedly did not indicate his natural stinginess, low self-esteem or desire to shock others. On the contrary, she speaks only of his inner, spiritual freedom. Klyuchevsky was used to doing what was convenient for him, and was not going to change his habits for the sake of external conventions.

Having crossed the threshold of his fiftieth birthday, Klyuchevsky fully retained his incredible ability to work. She amazed his younger students. One of them recalls how, after working long hours with young people late in the evening and at night, Klyuchevsky appeared at the department in the morning fresh and full of strength, while the students could barely stand on their feet.

Of course, he was sometimes ill, complaining either of a sore throat or a cold, the drafts that blew through the lecture hall at Guerrier’s courses began to irritate him, and sometimes his teeth hurt. But he called his health iron-clad and he was right. Not really observing the rules of hygiene (he worked at night, not sparing his eyes), he created an original aphorism about her: “Hygiene teaches you how to be the watchdog of your own health.” There was another saying about work: “Whoever is not able to work 16 hours a day did not have the right to be born and should be eliminated from life as a usurper of existence.” (Both aphorisms date back to the 1890s.)

Klyuchevsky’s memory, like that of any failed clergyman, was amazing. One day, while going up to the pulpit to give a report at some public scientific celebration, he tripped over a step and dropped the sheets of his notes. They fanned out across the floor, their order was completely disrupted. The sheets of paper were once again mixed during collection by the students who rushed to help the professor. Everyone was worried about the fate of the report. Only Klyuchevsky’s wife Anisya Mikhailovna, sitting in the front rows, remained completely calm: “He will read, he will read, he remembers everything by heart,” she calmly reassured the neighbors. And so it happened.

The very distinct “beaded” handwriting, perhaps even smaller than beads, and notes made with a sharp pencil long testified to the historian’s good eyesight. What makes it difficult to read his archival manuscripts is not his handwriting - it is impeccable - but a pencil worn out by time. Only in the last years of his life did Klyuchevsky’s handwriting become larger, with a predominant use of pen and ink. “Being able to write legibly is the first rule of politeness,” says one of the historian’s aphorisms. On his desk he did not have some massive inkwell on a marble board, but there was a five-kopeck bottle of ink into which he dipped his pen, as he had once done in his seminary years.

In the memoirs dedicated to the historian, the question of whether he was happy in his marriage is not discussed at all. This piquant side of private life was either deliberately kept silent by his acquaintances, or was hidden from prying eyes. As a result, Klyuchevsky’s relationship with his wife, reflected only in correspondence with relatives or in the extremely rare memories of family friends, remains not entirely certain.

It is not without reason that the memoir theme characterizing Klyuchevsky’s attitude towards the fair sex stands out against this background. The respected professor, while maintaining the image of a trustworthy family man, managed to gain the reputation of a gallant gentleman and ladies' man.

Maria Golubtsova, the daughter of Klyuchevsky’s friend, teacher of the Theological Academy, A.P. Golubtsov, recalls such a “funny scene.” Vasily Osipovich, coming to Easter, was not averse to “sharing Christ” with her. But the little girl unceremoniously refused him. “The first woman who refused to kiss me!”- Vasily Osipovich said, laughing, to her father. Even on a walk in the mountains with Prince George and all his “brilliant company,” Klyuchevsky did not fail to attract female attention to his person. Distressed that he was given an old, old lady-in-waiting as his companion, he decided to take revenge: Klyuchevsky shocked the company by plucking an edelweiss tree that was growing right above the cliff and presenting it to his lady. “On the way back, everyone surrounded me, and even the youngest young ladies walked with me,” the professor reported, pleased with his outburst.

Klyuchevsky taught at the Higher Women's Courses, and here the elderly professor was pursued by a mass of enthusiastic fans who literally idolized him. At the university, even during the time of the ban on girls attending university lectures, its female audience was constantly growing. The hostesses of the most famous Moscow salons often competed with each other, wanting to see Klyuchevsky at all their evenings.

The historian’s attitude towards women was something chivalrous and at the same time detached - he was ready to serve them and admire them, but, most likely, disinterestedly: only as a gallant gentleman.

One of the few women with whom Klyuchevsky maintained trusting, even friendly relations for many years, was his wife’s sister, Nadezhda Mikhailovna, already mentioned by us. Vasily Osipovich willingly invited his sister-in-law to visit, corresponded with her, and became the godfather of her pupil. The different characters of these people were most likely united by a passion for witty humor and intellectual irony. V. O. Klyuchevsky gave Nadezhda Mikhailovna a priceless gift - he gave him his “black book” with a collection of aphorisms. Almost all aphorisms now attributed to the historian are known and remembered only thanks to this book. It contains many dedications to women and, perhaps, that’s why after Klyuchevsky’s death, memoirists involuntarily focused their attention on the topic of his “extra-family” relationships with the fair sex.

Speaking about Klyuchevsky’s appearance, many contemporaries noted that he “was unenviable in appearance... undignified.” From the famous photograph of 1890, a typical “commoner” looks at us: an elderly, tired, slightly ironic man who does not care too much about his appearance and looks like a parish priest or deacon. Klyuchevsky’s modest demands and habits, ascetic appearance, on the one hand, distinguished him from the environment of university professors, on the other hand, they were typical of ordinary Moscow inhabitants or visiting provincials. But as soon as Vasily Osipovich started a conversation with someone, “something incomprehensible immediately appeared in him.” magnetic force, forcing, somehow involuntarily, to fall in love with him.” He did not imitate anyone and was not like anyone, “it was created in every way original”. (Memoirs of priest A. Rozhdestvensky. Memories of V. O. Klyuchevsky // Vasily Osipovich Klyuchevsky. Biographical sketch... P. 423.)

Klyuchevsky’s personality was also interesting due to his extraordinary sense of humor: “He sparkled like fireworks with sparkles of wit”. As is known, the vivid images of Klyuchevsky’s lectures were prepared by him in advance and were even repeated from year to year, which was noted by his students and colleagues. But at the same time, they were always refreshed by the “fast and accurate as a shot” improvisation. At the same time, “the beauty of his witticisms was that in each of them, along with a completely unexpected comparison of concepts, there was always a very subtle thought hidden.” (Bogoslovsky, M. M. “From the memories of V. O. Klyuchevsky.”)

Klyuchevsky’s sharp tongue spared no one, hence his reputation as an “incorrigible skeptic who does not recognize any sacred things.” At first glance, he could easily seem selfish and evil. But this impression, of course, was incorrect - P.N. Milyukov and A.N. Savin justified it: “The Mask of Mephistopheles” was designed to prevent strangers from entering the holy of holies of his sensitive soul. Finding himself in a new and heterogeneous social environment, Klyuchevsky had to develop the habit of wearing this mask like a “protective shell,” perhaps thereby misleading many of his colleagues and contemporaries. Perhaps with the help of this “shell” the historian tried to win his right to internal freedom.

Klyuchevsky communicated with almost the entire scientific, creative and political elite of his time. He attended both official receptions and informal zhurfixes, and simply loved to visit his colleagues and acquaintances. He always left the impression of an interesting interlocutor, a pleasant guest, a gallant gentleman. But according to the recollections of relatives, Klyuchevsky’s most sincere friends remained ordinary people, mostly of the clergy. For example, one could often find him with the assistant librarian of the Theological Academy, Hieromonk Raphael. The hieromonk was a great original and a very kind person (nephews or seminarians constantly lived in his cell). Father Raphael knew scientific works only by the titles and color of the spines of the books; moreover, he was extremely ugly, but he loved to boast of his learning and former beauty. Klyuchevsky always joked about him and especially liked to ask why he didn’t get married. To which he received the answer: “You know, brother, when I graduated from the seminary, we have brides, brides, passion. And I used to run into the garden, lie down between the ridges, and lie there, but they were looking for me. I was beautiful then.” “Traces of the former beauty are still noticeable,” Klyuchevsky agreed with kind irony.

When he came to Sergiev Posad for holidays, the professor loved, along with the townspeople's boys and girls, to take part in folk festivals and ride the carousel.

Obviously, in such communication, the eminent historian was looking for the simplicity so familiar to him from childhood, which the prim academic environment and metropolitan society so lacked. Here Klyuchevsky could feel free, not wear “masks,” not play “scientific professor,” and be himself.

The significance of the personality of V.O. Klyuchevsky

The significance of V. O. Klyuchevsky’s personality for his contemporaries was enormous. He was highly regarded as a professional historian and valued as an extraordinary, talented person. Many students and followers saw in him a source of morality, instructiveness, kindness, and sparkling humor.

But those who communicated with V.O. Klyuchevsky in an informal setting were often repulsed by his excessive, (sometimes unjustified) economy, scrupulousness in detail, unpretentious, “philistine” home environment, sharp tongue and at the same time - wastefulness in emotions, restraint, isolation of character.

The extraordinary talent of a researcher and analyst, the courage in judgments and conclusions inherent in V.O. Klyuchevsky would hardly have been allowed to make a successful career as a clergyman. Having applied all these qualities in the scientific field, the provincial popovich actually caught the “bird of luck” by the tail, for which he came from Penza to Moscow. He became the most famous historian of Russia, a venerable scientist, academician, a “general” of science, a personality of all-Russian and even global scale. However, V.O. Klyuchevsky did not feel triumphant. Having lived almost his entire adult life in isolation from the environment that raised him, he still tried to remain true to his real self, at least in his family structure, everyday life, and habits. This caused bewilderment and ridicule of Professor Klyuchevsky’s “eccentricities” among some contemporaries, while others made them talk about his “inconsistency,” “complexity,” and “selfishness.”

In this global contradiction of mind and heart, in our opinion, lay the triumph and tragedy of many famous people of Russia, who emerged from among the “commoners” and entered a society where, by and large, the traditions of noble culture still prevailed. Klyuchevsky turned out to be a significant figure in this regard.

IN. Klyuchevsky

A nondescript-looking man in an old fur coat and with stains on his official uniform, looking like a sexton of a provincial church, at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries he was the “face” of Moscow University, an ordinary academician of the Imperial St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, and a teacher of the Tsar’s children.

This fact largely indicates a change in external priorities and democratization not only of Russian society, but also of domestic science as a whole.

As scientist V.O. Klyuchevsky did not make a global revolution in the theory or methodology of historical science. By and large, he only developed and brought to a new qualitative level the ideas of the “state” historical school of Moscow University. But the very image of Professor Klyuchevsky broke all the previously existing stereotypes of the appearance of a famous scientist, a successful lecturer and in general an “educated person”, as a bearer of noble culture. Intuitively not wanting to adapt, to adapt to external conventions, at least in everyday life and behavior, the historian Klyuchevsky contributed to introducing into the capital’s academic environment a fashion for democracy, freedom of personal expression and, most importantly, spiritual freedom, without which the formation of a social “stratum” called the intelligentsia is impossible.

Students loved Professor Klyuchevsky not at all for his shabby fur coat or his ability to artistically tell historical anecdotes. They saw before them a man who, before their eyes, turned the clock, who, with his example, destroyed the gap between the history of the Fatherland as an instrument for nurturing loyal patriotism and history as a subject of knowledge accessible to every researcher.

Over the course of forty years of inflamed public passions, the historian was able to “pick up the key” to any audience - spiritual, university, military -, captivating and captivating everywhere, never arousing the suspicion of the authorities and various authorities.

That is why, in our opinion, V.O. Klyuchevsky - a scientist, artist, painter, master - was elevated not only by his contemporaries, but also by his descendants to the high pedestal of the luminary of Russian historical science. Like N.M. Karamzin at the beginning of the 19th century, at the beginning of the 20th century he gave his compatriots the history that they wanted to know at that very moment, thereby drawing a line under all previous historiography and looking into the distant future.

V.O. Klyuchevsky died on May 12 (25), 1911 in Moscow, and was buried in the Donskoy Monastery cemetery.

Memory and descendants

The memorization of the cultural space in Moscow associated with the name of Klyuchevsky actively developed in the first years after his death. A few days after the death of V. O. Klyuchevsky, in May 1911, the Moscow City Duma received a statement from member N. A. Shamin about “the need to perpetuate the memory of the famous Russian historian V. O. Klyuchevsky.” Based on the results of the Duma meetings, it was decided to establish a scholarship at the Moscow Imperial University in 1912 “in memory of V. O. Klyuchevsky.” Klyuchevsky’s personal scholarship was also established by the Moscow Higher Women’s Courses, where the historian taught.

At the same time, Moscow University announced a competition for the provision of memoirs about V.O. Klyuchevsky.

Boris Klyuchevsky in childhood

In the house on Zhitnaya Street, where Vasily Osipovich lived in recent years, his son, Boris Klyuchevsky, planned to open a museum. The library and personal archive of V.O. remained here. Klyuchevsky, his personal belongings, a portrait by the artist V.O. Sherwood. The son oversaw the annual memorial services in memory of his father, gathering his students and everyone who cared about his memory. Thus, the house of V. O. Klyuchevsky continued to play the role of a center uniting Moscow historians even after his death.

In 1918, the historian’s Moscow house was searched, the main part of the archive was evacuated to Petrograd, to one of Klyuchevsky’s students, literary historian Ya.L. Barsky. Subsequently, Boris Klyuchevsky managed to obtain a “safe conduct letter” for his father’s library and, with great difficulty, return the bulk of the manuscripts from Barsky, but in the 1920s, the historian’s library and archive were confiscated and placed in state archives.

At the same time, among Klyuchevsky’s students who remained in Moscow, the problem of erecting a monument to the great historian acquired particular relevance. By that time there was not even a monument at his grave in the Donskoy Monastery. The reason for various conversations was partly the negative attitude of the students towards the only living descendant of Klyuchevsky.

Boris Vasilyevich Klyuchevsky, according to him, graduated from two faculties of Moscow University, but scientific activity did not attract him. For many years he played the role of his famous father's home secretary, and was fond of sports and improving his bicycle.

From the stories of B. Klyuchevsky himself, M.V. Nechkina knows this episode: in his youth, Boris invented some special “nut” for a bicycle and was very proud of it. Rolling it in the palm of your hand, V.O. Klyuchevsky, with his usual sarcasm, told the guests: “What a time has come! To invent such a nut, you need to graduate from two faculties - history and law...” (M.V. Nechkina, Decree. cit., p. 318).

Obviously, Vasily Osipovich spent much more time communicating with his students than with his own son. The son's hobbies did not evoke either understanding or approval from the historian. According to the recollections of eyewitnesses (in particular, this is indicated by Yu. V. Gauthier), in the last years of his life, Klyuchevsky’s relationship with Boris left much to be desired. Vasily Osipovich did not like his son’s passion for politics, as well as his open cohabitation with either a housekeeper or a maid who lived in their house. Friends and acquaintances of V.O. Klyuchevsky – V.A. Maklakov and A.N. Savin - they also believed that the young man was putting strong pressure on the elderly Vasily Osipovich, weakened by illness.

However, during the life of V.O. Klyuchevsky, Boris helped him a lot in his work, and after the scientist’s death he collected and preserved his archive, actively participated in the publication of his father’s scientific heritage, and was involved in the publication and reprinting of his books.

In the 1920s, Klyuchevsky’s colleagues and students accused the “heir” of the fact that the grave of his parents was in disrepair: there was neither a monument nor a fence. Most likely, Boris Vasilyevich simply did not have the funds to install a worthy monument, and the events of the revolution and the Civil War contributed little to the concerns of living people about their deceased ancestors.

Through the efforts of the university community, the “Committee on the Issue of Perpetuating the Memory of V. O. Klyuchevsky” was created, which set as its goal the installation of a monument to the historian on one of the central streets of Moscow. However, the Committee limited itself only to the creation in 1928 of a common monument-tombstone at the grave of the Klyuchevsky spouses (Donskoy Monastery cemetery). After the “academic affair” (1929-30), persecution and expulsion of historians of the “old school” began. V.O. Klyuchevsky was ranked among the “liberal-bourgeois” direction of historiography, and it was considered inappropriate to erect a separate monument to him in the center of Moscow.

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The historian’s son, Boris Klyuchevsky, already in the first half of the 1920s broke all ties with the scientific community. According to M.V., who visited him in 1924. Nechkina, he served as an assistant legal adviser “in some automobile department” and, finally, was engaged in his favorite business - car repair. Then Klyuchevsky’s son was an auto technician, translator, and minor employee of the VATO. In 1933, he was repressed and sentenced to exile in Alma-Ata. The exact date of his death is unknown (around 1944). However, B.V. Klyuchevsky managed to preserve the main and very important part of his father’s archive. These materials were acquired in 1945 by the Commission on the History of Historical Sciences at the department of the Institute of History and Philosophy of the USSR Academy of Sciences from the “widow of the historian’s son.” The V.O. Klyuchevsky Museum in Moscow was never created by him, and memories of his father were also not written...

Only in 1991, on the 150th anniversary of Klyuchevsky’s birth, a museum was opened in Penza, named after the great historian. And today the monuments to V.O. Klyuchevsky exist only in his homeland, in the village of Voskresenovka (Penza region) and in Penza, where the Klyuchevsky family moved after the death of their father. It is noteworthy that initiatives to perpetuate the memory of the historian, as a rule, came not from the state or the scientific community, but from local authorities and local history enthusiasts.

Elena Shirokova

To prepare this work, materials from the following sites were used:

http://www.history.perm.ru/

Worldview portraits. Klyuchevsky V.O. Bibliofund

Literature:

Bogomazova O.V. Private life of a famous historian (based on the memoirs of V.O. Klyuchevsky) // Bulletin of Chelyabinsk State University. 2009. No. 23 (161). Story. Vol. 33. pp. 151–159.

History and historians in the space of national and world culture of the 18th–21st centuries: collection of articles / ed. N. N. Alevras, N. V. Grishina, Yu. V. Krasnova. – Chelyabinsk: Encyclopedia, 2011;

The world of a historian: historiographic collection / edited by V.P. Korzun, S.P. Bychkova. – Vol. 7. – Omsk: Om Publishing House. State University, 2011;

Nechkina M.V. Vasily Osipovich Klyuchevsky (1841-1911). History of life and creativity, M.: “Nauka”, 1974;

Shakhanov A.N. The fight against “objectivism” and “cosmopolitanism” in Soviet historical science. “Russian historiography” by N.L. Rubinstein // History and historians, 2004. - No. 1 – P.186-207.