7 - The historian (1773–91)

Summary

History is the account of facts taken to be true …

Voltaire

… history is philosophy teaching by examples how to conduct ourselves in all the situations of private and public life …

Bolingbroke

A sense of history

The first edition of the Ancient Russian Library was published from 1773 to 1775; the Bag appeared alongside it. Not only was the latter a reaction to the failure of the Society for the Printing of Books. For a full understanding of the weekly, it is also necessary to read it in the context of Novikov's historical researches. While the Ancient Russian Library published essential archival material, it did not attempt to find solutions for, or even formulate, historiographical problems. However, the Bag provides a valuable glimpse of the prevailing attitudes to Russian history which should be considered before examining the Ancient Russian Library itself. Again no definite viewpoint can be said to have emerged from the Bag. Once more two extremist positions were given: one by the German, the graduate of a German university, and the other, not by the Chevalier de Mensonge (whose background would not have allowed him to deal seriously with history: again Novikov's scrupulous care with the validity of his ‘characters’ is apparent), but by a ‘correspondent’ outraged by the German's arguments.

Consciously idealising the past, the German considered it wise of the Muscovite rulers to have resisted the influx of arts and sciences from the West, since they held that the mores of Russia – which might suffer from such importations – were of greater value.