Search

The article discusses historian Franco Venturi and his work concerning Russia. The author talks about how Venturi became a historian and provides biographical information on him. Venturi's diplomatic mission to Moscow, Russia in 1947-1950 is mentioned. The article explores Venturi's theoretical, moral, and intellectual assumptions. The author explains how Venturi's first visit to Russia was in 1936 and that he went there to study the 18th-century Enlightenment. The article also discusses the political system in Russia.

Russian historiography has known rapid changes in Russia and in Western countries during the last two decades. This evolution stemmed, first, from the historical events that occurred in the course of Soviet and Russian history since Gorbachev's policy of glasnost' (openness) and the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991; second, from the reappraisals that these events generated among practicing historians in Russia and the West; and third, to a lesser extent, from various research approaches in the humanities and the social sciences. This essay presents some reflections on the forms and content that these reappraisals brought about in historical writing, and on the new trends in the historians' views on past historiography. The constituent elements and prospects of one of these trends, the emergence of a process of internationalization of Russian historiography, are examined and evaluated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the attempt of literary postmodernism to subvert history as an eventful past and history as a discipline. Details of the directions of intellectual discourse and of historical thought and writing after the wars of the 20th century; Types of putschism against historical writing; Theories about the proposed end of history.