The development of the foundations of source criticism as a scientific discipline at the Imperial Novorossiya University

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of the development of the source criticism’s knowledge in the Imperial Novorossiya University which was founded in the second half of the XIX century in Odesa. Grounding on a large complex of general scientific methods, and a historical method and source criticism, the authors identified the stages of the formation of source criticism in the process of teaching historical disciplines at the university, what they based on an analysis of the teaching activities of professors and associate professors of the Faculty of History and Philology. In the article, the development of the foundations of source criticism is considered as a complex process, which in Western European and Russian science was the result of the development of the theory and practice of everyday dialogue between scientists and historical sources. This process had a great influence on the advancement of a historical education in university, which was one of the important factors in the formation of source studies as a scientific discipline. The history of individual scientific disciplines cannot be understood outside the context of the development of science altogether, therefore the authors paid attention to the change of scientific paradigms in the period under the study. It is noted that reforms in the field of education and the development of European historical knowledge have become the main components of the formation of historians, who, with their scientific activities at the theoretical and practical levels, contributed to the development of the special historical disciplines. The article reveals a gradual increase in the number of courses taught at the historical department of the Faculty of History and Philology, in which teachers used the opportunity to teach students to work with various types and kinds of sources. The authors examine the contribution of the historians of Odesa in the XIX – early XX century in the process of institutionalization of historical disciplines, in the formation of a complex of special historical disciplines, which resulted in the actualization of their scientific works in subsequent years. As a result of the study, the authors came to the conclusion that the professors of the departments of general and Russian history, with their teaching and scientific activities, laid the foundations of source criticism as a special scientific discipline, raising theoretical problems in their lecture courses, and at the training workshops, teaching students how to work with sources in practical terms.