Suchergebnisse

This article is devoted to one of the most complicated issues of Russian history, i. e. the challenges of modernity, which are viewed through the prism of the concept of modernisation (used to describe the transition from a traditional agrarian society to an industrial and urban one). A historical challenge is a complex category, not a simple action "to spite the arrogant neighbour". One of the main reasons for its emergence is technological revolutions that fundamentally change the conditions of human communities. Typologies of challenges vary from natural and climatic to social and political. Russia has come across many of them. Civilisational, geopolitical, technological, socio-political, cultural, and ideological challenges are the most typical of the imperial period. Their research discusses the characteristics of the essence of a challenge, the need to understand it, respond to it, the struggle of opinions about the reaction to them, and the evaluation of the results achieved. As an example of this approach, the authors consider two of the aforementioned challenges. In Russian historiography, the concept of "challenges" is not uncommon, but quite often the reaction to them did not take into account the dynamics of modernisation. The method put forward by the authors, based on the "challenges and responses" scheme, makes it possible to bridge this gap and provides practically meaningful results without them being ready-made recipes. Preliminary conclusions about two of the indicated challenges demonstrate that they were only slowly understood by the Russian ruling elite, which resulted in the cataclysms of the First World War and the Revolution of 1917 that put Russia on the brink of a civilizational catastrophe, although one should not forget that in the course of the period under study the country turned into a power of world significance. ; Вызовы Нового времени в российской истории рассматриваются сквозь призму концепции модернизации – перехода от традиционного аграрного общества к индустриально-урбанизированному. Одна из главных причин возникновения исторических вызовов – технологические революции, принципиально меняющие условия существования человеческих сообществ. Показано, что типология вызовов, с которыми сталкивалась Россия, очень разнообразна – от природно-климатических до социально-политических. Наиболее типичными для имперского периода были цивилизационные, геополитические, технологические, социально-политические, культурно-мировоззренческие. Их исследование включает характеристику сущности вызова, необходимость его осознания и возможности ответа, борьбу мнений по поводу ответа, оценку достигнутых результатов. Обращено особое внимание на цивилизационный и геополитический аспекты. В российской историографии понятие «вызовы» не редкость, но ответы на них часто давались без учета модернизационной динамики. Предложенный метод анализа по схеме «вызов – ответ» поможет преодолеть такую ситуацию и дать практически значимые результаты. Вызовы с опозданием осознавались российской правящей элитой, что и привело в конечном счете к катаклизмам Первой мировой войны и революции 1917 г., поставивших Россию на грань цивилизационной катастрофы. При этом, по мнению авторов, надо оценивать усилия, приложенные населением страны, в результате которых она за рассматриваемый период добилась значительного прогресса, превратившись в державу мировой значимости.

The title of this book has a double meaning: on the one hand, it deals with two very different societies both of which made iron in the early modern period. On the other hand, iron "made" these societies: the needs of iron production and the resistance to these demands from local peasant communities gave the societies a special kind of cohesion and rationality. This volume presents the findings of a joint team of Swedish and Russian scholars examining the social organization of work in early modern iron industry and their respective societies. The comparison was carried out against the backdrop of the international discussion on proto-industrialization, its prerequisites and consequences. There has, however, been a certain bias in much of that debate, the focus being mainly on Western Europe, particularly on Britain, and on textile trades. This book offers an important contribution to the debate in that it widens the perspective by discussing Northern and Eastern Europe and by studying the iron industry. More particularly it examines actual production processes, the organization of work, social conflict, questions of ownership and its evolution, as well as the diffusion and organization of technical knowledge. The comparative approach is consistently applied throughout, with each chapter closely integrating the results relating to the two selected geographical areas, thus showing ways of solving some of the problems arising from comparative history