A turning point in the study of the Old Russian «everyday life». About the monography Dolgov V. V. Byt i nravy Drevney Rusi. Miry povsednevnosti XI–XIII vv. [Life and customs of Ancient Rus’. Everyday life worlds of the 11th – 13th centuries]. St. Petersburg: Oleg Abyshko Publ., 2017. 592 p. ISBN 978- 5-903525-92-8

Abstract

The publication is a review of the monograph by Vadim Viktorovich Dolgov on the ancient Russian everyday life (Dolgov V. V. Byt i nravy Drevney Rusi. Miry povsednevnosti XI–XIII vv. [Life and customs of Ancient Rus’. Everyday life worlds of the 11th – 13th centuries]. St. Petersburg: Oleg Abyshko Publ., 2017. 592 p. ISBN 978- 5-903525-92-8). While noting that in Dolgov’s book for the first time in historiography a complete picture of the social structure was reconstructed as it seemed to the man of Ancient Rus’, the author of the review sees the main value of V. Dolgov’s monograph in the integrity of his reconstruction of the Old Russian picture of the world. In Dolgov’s book the Old Russian notion of society was examined at four basic levels: 1) at the microgroup level; 2) at the level of the city volost’; 3) in relation to other Russian volosts and the world as a whole; 4) in relation of the earthly / real world to the unearthly / supernatural world. Thus, in Dolgov’s book there were examined all the key coordinates of the Old Russian social world outlook and there was given an opportunity of representing what forms the basis of any picture of the world, namely a complex of images of the world and the location of man in the world. The author of the review emphasizes that when analyzing material that used to be examined in traditional historiography from the standpoint of «classical» political and social history, Vadim V. Dolgov applied methods of socio-anthropological research and used socio-anthropological terminology tools to describe everyday and political realities. The author of the review concludes that the publication of the fundamental monograph by V. V. Dolgov means a turning point in the study of Old Russian everyday life.