FROM "THE PETERISTIC THINKER" TO "UNKNOWN GENIUS": ABRAMOV IN RUSSIAN HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE END OF THE 19TH - BEGINNING OF THE 21st CENTURY

Abstract

The article is devoted to the history of research of views and activity of Y. Abramov, a wellknown ideologist of right-wing populism in the 80-s - 90-s of the ХIХ century. For a long time his name has been associated only with the development of the theory of "small deeds " as the core of the ideology of moderate right-wing populism. A sustained interest in Abramov's ideological legacy was awakened only in the 1990s on the wave of revision of attitudes toward supporters of peaceful social progress. And by now Abramov has grown from a "minor" writer and publicist, as Abramov was considered to be at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries, to a "ruler of thoughts" and an "unknown genius". Trying to understand the reasons for this metamorphosis, the author consecutively examines the works of pre-revolutionary, Soviet and modern researchers of the so-called "Abramovshchina" and comes to the conclusion that from the very beginning the attitude to Abramov as a theorist of "cultural" populism was highly ideological and there are still many blank spots in his intellectual biography. Special attention is paid to the works of Abramov's countrymen (Agapkin, Novak, Zverev, Golovko and others), who managed to attract the attention of modern researchers to his ideological legacy. In the conclusion of article the circle of questions which need the further studying is defined. And these are not only the gaps in the biography of the populist-culturnik, but also the main question: was Abramov the "father" of the theory of "small deeds " or should he be regarded as a theorist of "great cultural work", as the researchers Golovko and Mokshin insist.