The History of the 20th Century: A Variety of Historiographical Approaches to Understanding the Phenomeno

Abstract

The article analyzes various methodological approaches and theoretical strategies applied to the study and understanding of the phenomenon of the 20th century. Realizing the breadth and semantic richness of the historical narrative of the past century, its multi-level temporal integrity, the author proposes following the logic of selectivity, focusing on the most significant events, trends, and processes. This focus on “significance” means that historical science remains true to its great humanistic ideals, striving to be a "teacher of life" and participate in the absorption of the most valuable experience of the past in order to apply it in the search for answers to the challenges of the future. Such nodal subjects of historiography should include demographic, economic, social, intellectual, cultural, military history, the history of everyday life of the 20th century. The author of the article notes that, summing up the results of the twentieth century, most historians proceed from the idea of the exhaustion of the Eurocentric approach to historiography. There is no doubt that all parts of the world and all peoples participated equally in the history of the 20th century, and therefore a retrospective view of the past century is possible only from the perspective of global history. The article notes that it is impossible to ignore the substantial contribution made to the understanding of global processes and relationships by numerous subdisciplines of history, such as the history of empires, history of international relations and organizations, urban history and the history of urbanization, history of finance, climate history, etc. The author notes that current perceptions of the 20th century are marked by massivization and commercialization. Their content is formed not only by the need to find historical truth, but also by the desire to hold the attention of the readership. More and more historical books today are written on the order of book publishers, which are guided by the demand of the reading public. The modern information society has created new challenges for historical science, but at the same time it has created new channels of communication between the historical science and society, scholars and authorities, intellectual and mass culture, individual and collective representations. The rapid increase in the volume of information, the development of mass media, the emergence of the Internet, and new means of communication in a certain sense led to the medialization and virtualization of historical knowledge. On the other hand, the vast information field has become a fertile ground for the cultivation and dissemination of historical рmyths, often archaic and primitive.