Studying the History of Classical Scholarship in Soviet Russia

P. 35–49.

Braginskaya Nina V.

The difficulties and problems of the study of the  antiquities in the XXth cen. Russia are defined by the state and accessibility of archives and sources as well as  fullness of the bibliography , which all are meager.  The deficiency of the high quality professional historians who include in their toolset many disciplines prevents to develop the field . And the low level of the secondary Classical education add to difficulty: one  has to take into account the history of the secondary school. Classical education is strongly coloured by ideology and values. An acute problem is a description from within. Thus the hagiographic paradigm  once created is not prone to change given image of the academic community. Finelly, during the Soviet period, the ideological  pressure and the predominant idea of positive knowledge acting  as a firewall against it, resulted in the self-contained cult of akribeia, which stands in the way of innovation an new ideas.

Keywords: self-image, Classics in Russia since Revolution, history of scholarship, hagiographic paradigm description from inside, cult of akribeia, классики в России после революции, культ акрибии

In book

Classics and Class. Greek and Latin Classics and Communism at School

Warsz., Ljubljana: "Artes Liberales" Printing House, 2016.