"Консерватизм" и "новаторство" на кафедре истории средних веков исторического факультета МГУ в 1970-х - 1990-х гг. (анализ изменения тем дипломных работ)

Abstract

The article discusses the changes in topics of the graduate theses, defended at the Department of the Medieval History of the Faculty of History of Moscow State University in the 1970s-1990s. The influence of that Department at Soviet and Post-Soviet Medieval Studies was described from diametrically opposed positions in the context of the so-called "Memoirs War": it was considered either as a leading institution or as an inert “medieval establishment”, suppressing free scientific search of the “unofficial medievalists”. In our opinion, this problem cannot be fully comprehended without referring to the issue of interaction between different generations, an everyday work of the scientific advisors with their students. We investigate a database of diplomas defended at the Department in the period 1970-1990, tracking changes in terminology and analyzing, in what manner was effected the transition from the "conservative" era of the 1970s (which was characterized by an outward adherence to Marxist dogmas) to the thematic and methodological diversity of the 1990s. These changes are characterized not as a sharp fracture and a "revolutionary" establishment of the entirely new approaches, but as a gradual, decades long "shift" of the thematic spectrum: a decrease in the number of topics related to the marxist dogmatism and an increase in the number of works inspired by the other methodological approaches. At the same time there were preserved some elements of the “conservative” tradition, and were developing some “innovative” ideas (at first little by little, and then more and more intensively). An extremely important role in these transformations was played by external factors - socio-political changes, the innovative methodological searches of "unofficial medievalists". However, the mechanisms of "internal self-regulation", which, in our opinion, allowed the university environment to respond to external changes, were also very important.