On the «new» privileged status of the university course «The history of the South and West Slavs»

Abstract

The article contains the analysis of a status and significance of the course «The history of the South and West Slavs» in the system of historical education in contemporary Russian universities. The author characterized the transformations of this course whose «nomenclative» title remained nonetheless unchanged. The initiative of innovations most often came from Leningrad (St. Petersburg) historians who specialized in Slavic studies; they consistently affirmed regional and typological structure of the course teaching, and consisted that the course would be concentrated not only upon the nations of Slavic origins, but also on the non-Slavic population of the region. Despite all the transformations of the contents of the course, its significance and the «new» privileged status is determined by the position of the Slavs and the neighboring nations ― between the West and the East. The study of this «intermediate» territory, where the various civilizational influences were intercrossed and every process was marked with the special complexity, is very useful for the formation of complex vision of the European and even world history. Besides, the nations which are «clamped» between the West and the East share the unique type of the historical conscience, and the national historiographic traditions of these nations could provide an excellent base for the memory studies (primarily, the studies of traumatic memory) and the studies of historical politics.