La géographie russe (1845-1917) à l'ombre et à la lumière de l'historiographie soviétique

Abstract

Russian geography (1845-1917). In the shadow and in the light of soviet historiography. — In pre-Revolutionary Russia, geography experienced an institutional development and a blossoming very close to European standards of that time. However, for multiple reasons, it has remanied almost unknown in Western Countries where it is just being discovered. The geography historian anxious to work in this field, will have at his disposal, besides an access to texts and different sources, a weighty mediator: the Soviet historiographical tradition. Therefore, this article is first an assessment of the content, the characteristics, and the limits of this production. It points out its slow and relative professionalization following the controversies of the 1960'S. Then, a reinterpretation of the history of Russian geography from a sociohistorical point of view is outlined. It would be a question of showing that the late and uncompleted charcateristics of the institutionalization of the discipline in Russia stems from the weakness of the civil society all over the xixth century and from specific geographical requirements of the state apparatus which did not favour the autonomy of an academic science.