?
L’historien entre aux archives: Comment l’historiographie russe d’avant 1917 a découvert l’État moscovite
This article analyzes the biases that archival practice introduced into Russian historiography on Muscovy before the revolution of 1917. It begins by presenting the main steps in the organization of historical archives since the reign of Peter the Great. For a long time, the state’s archival policy toward historical repositories was both passive and distrustful: little investment was made in the preservation and description of the collections, which remained difficult for researchers to access. The second half of the nineteenth century, marked by the liberal reforms of the reign of Alexander II, ushered in a new phase with the creation of a major historical archive, the Moscow Archives of the Ministry of Justice (MAMJU), and the consolidation of history as an academic discipline. It was during this moment that the fundamental historical assumptions that continue to shape our idea of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Muscovy emerged. Two case studies are presented: the use of ancient land and population registers (piscovye knigi) as a source for economic and social history, and Vasilii Kliuchevsii’s theory of social groups (soslovija). These examples show how the segmentation of archival materials, the uneven state of their preservation, the ambitions of archival science, and the nature and availability of new investigative tools produced by archivists influence the agendas and results of historical research.