Abstract

The present stage in the development of historiography gives an opportunity to employ new research tools, including the reconstruction of the research practice of outstanding scholars of the past. The author attempts at reconstructing S.M. Soloviev’s concept of historical research in the midnineteenth century and examines the features of the formation of his cognitive interest and approach to history as science of national self-knowledge. This model of historical research aims at gaining an understanding of the specificity of the historian’s vision of the subject area of study and relevant cognitive strategies. The fact that S.M. Soloviev grounded his research on the principles of scientificity and historicism led to the prevalence of the significance of the sources in his study. While addressing to the works of his predecessors, the historian develops his own understanding of these principles. S.M. Soloviev specifically dwelled on the methods of cognitive activity and scientific research. Historical-comparative, historical-typological, historical-diachronic, historical-genetic methods and factor analysis are important (though not often directly indicated) components of S.M. Soloviev’s research laboratory. S.M. Soloviev ascribed an important role to the biographies of his predecessors in the study of their historiographical contribution. Emphasizing the impact of personality and talents of historians on their academic work, S.M. Soloviev also highlighted the influence of the epoch on the formation of their views and research methodology. He emphasized the importance of the period of a historian’s personal formation rather than of his utmost creative activity. The existing model of historical research allowed S.M. Soloviev to characterize the development of historical science in the eighteenth and first quarter of the nineteenth centuries on the basis of the social transformations, which he linked to the very emergence of this discipline in Russia. This analysis served as the basis for generalizing assessment of the contributions of the historians of the previous century, which allowed him to avoid a merely elementary presentation of the advantages and disadvantages of their works and to focus on the process of increasing scientific knowledge.