Is it Legitimate to Talk about Historical Politics before the “Memorial Era”? (on the Example of Russia of the 16th – 17th Centuries)

Abstract

In modern works of historians and political scientists, various issues of the broad field of “memory studies” are given more and more space, but the problem field remains quite narrow and is reduced to the “abuse” of the past, the phenomenon of “memory wars”, collective trauma and strategies of “detraumatization”. At the same time, at all times, the task of historians has been to organize the historical narrative, embed selected facts and events into it, and form a certain historical optics. In Russia, too, there is a historical policy based on a long tradition, the beginning of which can be attributed to the 12th century. Its heyday falls on the 16th — 17th centuries. Using this example, the article proves the validity of the study of historical politics in this or earlier epochs.