Russia Then and Now in the Pages of the American Historical Review and Elsewhere: A Few Centennial Notes

Abstract

EVEN AFTER NARROWING THE SCOPE of editor's charge to explore contrast between definition and treatment of northern European history in AHR at its inception and in discipline of history today to Russian history, which I have done here, it is realizable only in part: there was, almost at inception of AHR in 1895, a definition, but for many years there was no treatment. The definition was provided in first number of Volume 2 (October 1896) by Archibald Cary Coolidge, Harvard history professor who is generally considered father of Russian and what we would now call East European East-Central European historical studies in United States.' Coolidge's Plea for Study of History of Northern which had been presented as a paper at December 1895 annual meeting of American Historical Association, laid out three reasons for studying northern, or more especially ... north-eastern, Europe, which he defined as history of Scandinavians and Slavs or, in state terms, of Russia, Sweden, and Poland: first, the importance of Russia in world today. Second, historical influence of Scandinavians and Slavs on Western countries, which he broke down into two categories, one passive, other active: Western expansion into Scandinavian and Slav territories, as in German Drang nach Osten eastward mission of Catholic church, and active interference by the north in European affairs, such as Sweden's arresting progress of German Catholicism under Gustav II Adolf and joining of Triple Alliance under Charles XI, Russia's participation in Seven Years' War and Alexander I's triumph over Napoleon. Coolidge's third reason: this part of world afforded an arena for comparative study of peculiar features, workings of great principles in European history. Coolidge had in mind nationalism: lack of unity that had long prevailed in Western Europe-no emperor and no pope-and a resulting earlier development there than in West of the feeling of nationality that arose from precocious conflicts among peoples of region and between them and outside powers; he was also thinking of religion: Russia affords best example of historical development of Byzantine Christianity, and Poland has been principal theater of conflict between Catholicism and Orthodoxy,