The authors focused their attention on a number of problems related to the significant updating of the documentary base of the history of the peasant question, its versatile source assessment, its historiographical interpretation in the works by A.N. Dolgikh. The authors note the broad historiographical outlook of the Lipetsk historian. Special attention is paid to the complex consideration by A.N. Dolgikh the works written by historians and other authors of historical works of the 18th – first half of the 19th century. The article highlights such a feature of A.N. Dolgikh’s papers as respectful attitude to the work of predecessors and at the same time a reasoned justification of their attitude to the problems under discussion. Such a justification is based on the fact that A.N. Dolgikh himself introduces into scientific circulation a large and wide-ranging set of sources: noble reform projects, memoirs, diaries, works of journalism and fiction.The authors of the article note that A.N. Dolgikh gave a deep justification for the question that practically none of the critics of serfdom let their peasants go free. A special major problem analyzed by A.N. Dolgikh was the consideration of the policy of Nicholas I, who, according to the historian, was still preparing a peasant reform. At the same time A.N. Dolgikh’s word,s concerning factors hindering the emperor’s reformative activities, sound convincing. The authors of this article agreed with A.N. Dolgikh’s final assessment of the activities of Nicholas I, which manifested itself in the hampering the necessary reforms. The proposed article positively assesses the desire of A.N. Dolgikh to quantify the texts of noble projects and the results of voting on the peasant question in the State Council of the Russian Empire, at the same time, there is a call for the historian to deepen the use of quantitative methods and other interdisciplinary approaches in his research.
Key words: historiography, the peasant question in Russia, A.N. Dolgikh, interdisciplinary approaches in historical science.
ИльинCitation link: Ilyin A.Yu., Kanishchev V.V. Revisiting the study of the peasant question in Russia in the 18th - first half of the 19th century // Humanities researches of the Central Russia. – 2023. – №3. – P. 16-21.
DOI: 10.24412/2541-9056-2023-328-16-21