Velikorusskii Pakhar' at the global village: Comparing methods and approaches in western and Russian historiographies of the post‐emancipation Russian peasantry

Abstract

One of the best ways to address the problem of the prospect for a ‘single research community’ of Russian and Western historians is to compare the central approaches, methods and theoretical concepts developed in both Western and Russian historiographies in the study of a single historical topic. An appropriate topic for such a discussion, from both a heuristic and epistemological point of view, is the history of the post‐emancipation Russian peasantry. The present article is concerned with four methodological tools (comparison, models, macro‐ and micro‐history, and the new cultural history) and their use in the Russian and Western historiography of the post‐emancipation Russian peasantry, and with four groups of problems which are central to the study of the subject in both historiographies: peasant production and consumption; communal forms; family and household structures; and cultural conflict between the lower and educated classes in late Imperial Russia.