CC BY
39
ИНТЕРВЬЮ
Elena F. Sinelnikova
PhD in History, Academic Secretary S.I. Vavilov Institute for the History of Science and Technology of the Russian Academy of Science, St Petersburg Branch
St Petersburg, Russia; e-mail: sinelnikova-elena@yandex.ru
Joseph Bradley
PhD, Professor Emeritus of History The University of Tulsa, College of Arts & Sciences History
Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA; e-mail: joseph-bradley@utulsa.edu
Interview with Joseph Bradley: The American Historian about the Life, Research and Profession
УДК: 929:316.3
DOI: 10.24412/2079-0910-2021-3-194-204
The famous American historian Joseph Bradley, interviewed by Elena Sinelnikova, has answered a number of questions on his life, previous and current researches, and historian profession, such as: How you became a historian? What did attract you in the history of Russia? Why then you went in your research to history of the most prominent learned societies in the Russian Empire? How difficult was it to work with documents of scientific societies in Russian archives? What are the features of Russian scientific societies that distinguish them from scientific societies in other countries? What role do scientific societies play in the modern scientific community (national and international)? What do you think about scientific conferences and congress in the modern era, and especially at the current time, when most scientific events are transferred to the online? What impression was made on you by the Soviet people when you were in the Soviet Union for the first time? What changed in Post© Синельникова Е.Ф., Брэдли Дж., 2021
Soviet Russia in the best direction and in the worse one in comparison with the USSR? How did your relationship with Soviet/Russian historians develop, and how did your relationship with Russian colleagues change in light of the deteriorating relationship between Russia and the US? What has changed for last decades in historical education in the US? What research do you do now? What new articles and books are you going to write?
Keywords: history of Russia, history of the USSR, scientific societies, American Russian studies, modern scientific community, Post-Soviet Russia.
— How you became a historian? What did attract you in the history of Russia? Whether it was difficult to find your main subject for research? What was the reason for that choice?
I have always been interested in reading about the past, especially about the modern era. In high school I had good history teachers who made the past come alive. I remember, in particular, my World History teacher in 10th grade. She organized panel discussions, and we had to give reports, just like at conferences! The topic of one panel was the Russian Revolution, and I was assigned to give a report on Lenin. From then on, I was intrigued by Russia. In Literature class in 12th grade we read Crime and Punishment. But as yet, I did not have plans to make a career studying Russian history, and I did not study yet the Russian language. I had greater interest in British history, and went to Warwick, England, for study abroad while in college. During the winter holidays at Warwick, I took a student tour to the USSR. (I was completely unprepared: no hat, no boots, and a British raincoat, but at least a long British school scarf! I must have looked hilarious!) After this trip I decided to specialize in Russian studies, and I started to learn the language. Of course, my decisions took place against the backdrop of the Cold War, and study of the Soviet Union, the other superpower, was considered "strategic". My graduate studies at Harvard were fully funded by government grants.
Do you mean the subject of my dissertation? Throughout college and graduate school, I had been interested in immigration, especially from Eastern Europe to American and British cities. I read books about immigrants in London, New York and Chicago. In addition, in the 1960s and 1970s, the field of urban history enjoyed popularity. After I had been studying Russian history for a few years, I decided to focus on urban history. I noticed that on the eve of World War I only about 30% of the population of Moscow was Moscow-born. But Moscow's immigrants, unlike those who came to New York, were not from other countries, but were peasants from the interior of Russia. I decided to study peasant migration to Moscow as well as certain aspects of the immigrant experience and the response of the municipal government — poverty and poor relief, the housing stock, labor force participation. I read many books about the Moscow poor and also studied city censuses and reports of the municipal government. The dissertation was akin to historical sociology or historical demography and in 1985 became my first book, Muzhik and Muscovite: Urbanization in Late Imperial Russia.
— Why then you went in your research to history of the most prominent learned societies in the Russian Empire? Why did you choose scientific societies as the subject of case studies?
I came to my research on Russian learned societies more by accident than by design. After I finished my first book, I was asked to write an article on Moscow for a collection on Russian cities to be published by an American publisher. While reading about many aspects of pre-revolutionary Moscow that I had not researched in my first book, I was struck by
the frequent presence in the historical record of various kinds of clubs and societies, whose names suggested similarities to the many clubs and societies of Victorian-era Europe and North America. But conventional wisdom told me that Russia was not a nation of "joiners" and that autocracy had allowed no space for public initiative. So, what were all these societies doing in Russian cities? Were they pale imitations of those in Europe and America? Were they lackeys of the autocratic state, simply executing orders from the tsar and his minions? I decided that we needed to know more about these organizations — how were they founded, who were their leaders, what were their missions, what was their relationship to the state.
It quickly became apparent to me that there were far too many organizations to study them all. I had to make some choices. I decided to focus on a few of the most prominent learned and scientific societies of Moscow and Petersburg for several reasons. There is a large literature in European and American history about the ways scientific study and science organizations can both uphold and also challenge existing cosmologies and authorities. This "sociology of science" can provide a lens through which we can see changing views of how the world "ought to be". In Russia, science societies represented a state-society partnership, at least initially, which tells a different story of Russia than the often-told story of statesociety antagonism. The learned societies were encouraged and patronized by the state, and government officials were prominent charter members. These organizations, among the oldest societies in Imperial Russia, left a long paper trail of Izvestiya, Trudy, and Zapiski that provide the historian with a rich source base. Equally important, the many projects sponsored by the learned societies — from the Free Economic Society's essay competitions in the late 18th century, to the Russian Technical Society's vocational schools at the beginning of the 20th century — received much public attention. Finally, the age and prominence of these organizations meant a long relationship with officialdom, which created a long paper trail in the archives. By the end of the 19th century, the societies I selected were what we might call "big tent" organizations, in that they contained a diverse membership ranging from those who pursued the practice of "pure" science to social activists.
I made no claim that the organizations I selected were typical of all of Russia's learned societies, let alone of all associations. But certain key moments in the life of these learned societies — their founding and aims, their relationship to the state, the pursuit of useful knowledge, and the realization of public projects — allow us to reconstruct the broader social, intellectual and institutional framework in which associations operated. The book, Voluntary Associations in Tsarist Russia: Science, Patriotism and Civil Society was published by Harvard University Press in 2009.
— How difficult was it to work with documents of scientific societies in Russian archives? Were there any problems with the search and availability of the materials you are interested in?
Generally, it was not difficult to work with documents of science societies in Russian archives, apart from the inevitable slowness of ordering and utilizing archival material and the difficulty using material on microfilm. By the late 19th century, many of the archival records, especially those dealing with the central state authorities were typed or printed. However, much material of an internal nature — summaries of meetings, internal correspondence — as well as the accounts of societies' activities through letters and diaries was still hand-written, making for a much slower process, especially for a foreigner. Fortunately, my focus was more on the macro-history, the "external relations" of societies, if you will, rather than on a micro-history of the internal dynamics of societies. Clearly, the latter would be a fruitful field for further research.
Unlike some materials of 20th-century history, none of the materials I needed was sensitive, so I never had any trouble getting documents. The archivists were always very helpful; they seemed to be pleased that a foreigner was interested in the documents in their archives. The archives I used the most were GARF in Moscow and RGIA in Petersburg. The Film and Photograph archive in Petersburg was especially helpful in providing photographs, including the one on the book's cover. The Russian edition, «Общественные организации в царской России: Наука, патриотизм и гражданское общество», was published by Novyy Khronograf in 2012, and I donated copies to several libraries and archives in Moscow and Petersburg.
— What are the features of Russian scientific societies that distinguish them from scientific societies in other countries?
Since historians, both in Russia and in the West, are "programmed" to see the differences between Russia and the West, I decided to be cognizant as well of the similarities, in this case between Russian and western science societies, which are given extensive treatment in my book. However, of course, there are important differences between Russian and western science societies, differences that stem mainly from the different environments in which they worked. Science societies in America grew in an environment with a very small and weak central government and a long tradition of private initiative and enterprise. Science societies in Russia grew in an environment of a "tutelary" state that intruded into many aspects of life. (Science societies in continental Europe, in France and Germany, for example, grew in an environment somewhere in between: more central authority than in America but more private initiative, and more cities, than in Russia.) Especially important in the Russian environment for science societies was the personal nature of autocratic rule and arbitrary officialdom: the monarch was a patron of many science societies, but along with patronage came supervision. In addition, the absence of a tradition of strong property rights and the rule of law, and the absence of intermediary political powers such as municipal corporations or organs of local self-rule, prominent not only in America but also in Britain and Germany, limited the autonomy of science societies. As a result, Russian science societies, while enjoying privileges from the monarch, were also subject to the whims of officialdom. Societies, and their members, enjoyed privileges, not rights. Until very late in imperial Russia, subjects desiring to form an association had to receive permission from the highest authorities. Similarly, any public enterprise required permission from the relevant ministry. Of course, such regulation existed to a degree in Europe, especially on the Continent, as well as in other parts of the world, but tsarist Russia was an extreme version of a regulated environment.
Finally, for too long autocracy was unwilling to tolerate a political public sphere in which societies might operate and which could deflect aspirations for radical change, seeing such a public sphere as leading only to anarchy and state collapse. Unfortunately, in Russia such intransigence on the part of the government in the end led to the very outcome it was designed to prevent.
— One of your articles is devoted to the relationships between Russian scientific societies and Bolshevik regime in 1917—1921. Do you think, if the October revolution had not occurred, would further successful development of scientific societies in Russia be possible as elements of civil society and a form of science organization? Did pre-revolution scientific societies have the necessary potential?
There is no doubt in my mind that Russian science societies would have continued to develop, and even prosper, if the October Revolution had not occurred. Of course, there are two large caveats here: the strain on Russia, as on other European countries, caused by World War I, and the instability after the fall of the monarchy, due in no small part to the war and to the intransigence of political radicals (a mirror image of the old regime). If Russia could have avoided October, science societies had the potential both to advance science and to improve the nation. Of course, the October Revolution eventually led to a more active role of the state in establishing priorities in science (the tsarist state, relatively speaking, had been more passive), in funding the scientific enterprise, especially high priority projects, and in mobilizing resources for so-called Big Science (though there was some movement in this direction even before 1917). But other countries, without an "October," notably Germany, but also the UK and the US, also moved in this direction of greater government involvement in the scientific enterprise.
— In your opinion, what role do scientific societies play in the modern scientific community (national and international)? Your book "Voluntary Associations in tsarist Russia: Science, Patriotism and Civil Society" examined the role of voluntary associations in the development of civil society in imperial Russia. The last chapter is devoted to scientific congresses. What do you think about scientific conferences and congress in the modern era, and especially at the current time, when most scientific events are transferred to the online?
These two questions are similar, so I'll address them together. In many ways, the role of science societies and of science congresses and conferences is similar to the role they played more than century ago in Europe, Russia and North America. They are designed to advance knowledge by means of research presented at the meetings of science societies and at the sessions of conferences. They facilitate what we now call networking, typically at the local level at science societies and at the national and international level at conferences. In the public sphere they can make policy recommendations and act as advocates of a great variety of causes and policies.
Of course, there are important differences between the roles of science societies and conferences then and now. In the late nineteenth-century, professionalization and professional specialization had just begun. Many more science societies today are highly specialized and exist to advance professional interests as much as to advance some abstract idea of "science". This is closely connected to the publication of papers, both of science societies and of conferences. Education and the training of young scientists, as well as the encouragement of the participation in the scientific enterprise of amateurs, which were important functions of both societies and conferences in the 19th century, has largely been turned over to universities and other educational institutions. In general, the research function of universities, institutes and laboratories, largely following the German model at the end of the 19th century, has superseded the research conducted by science societies. In many countries, the government's role in the advancement of science has also superseded that of science societies. Government funding and the development of government research laboratories and scientific institutes play a much larger role than in the 19th century, so the relative role of science societies has diminished. Nevertheless, science societies and, even more so, conferences continue to play an important role, often that of presenting research in progress and of gathering scientific talent.
Science societies and, especially, conferences have become much more international. Of course, the newness of this internationalization should not be exaggerated: the cross-
fertilization of science across the borders of states and empires has existed for centuries; a "republic of letters" advanced science as far back as the 17th century, if not before. But this was limited to a very small coterie of men with means or with the patronage of monarchs. Now with the funding of government agencies, private philanthropies and universities, along with air travel and the infrastructure of travel, we can say that this internationalization has been democratized.
In the past two decades, more and more scientific research is presented and disseminated online, a development only intensified by the 2020—2021 pandemic. One's "community of science" exists less and less face-to-face and more online, the "location" of more of one's colleagues. The collateral damage of the Internet is a loss of face-to-face engagement and feedback. However, there is also a collateral benefit of the Internet, especially with Zoom: a greater opportunity to engage with scholars in the comfort of one's own room. Interestingly, the Internet has also facilitated the interest in science of amateurs, largely abandoned by the government laboratories, universities and scientific conferences of the 20th century. However, because scientific expertise cannot be controlled as easily on the Internet as it can be by universities and science societies, all sorts of ideas can be disseminated. One might say that alchemy is making a comeback!
— What impression was made on you by the Soviet people when you were in the Soviet Union for the first time? What surprised you during your last visit to Russia? What changed in Post-Soviet Russia in the best direction and in the worse one in comparison with the USSR?
The Soviet people were always friendly, engaging and generous to me, and my attitude toward them was always warm. My first trip to the USSR was in 1967. I was a college student studying in England that year and decided to take a trip to the USSR during the winter break. I had not studied the language, but I taught myself the alphabet by comparing the names of metro stations to names on a transliterated map. On New Year's Eve we were invited to a party at the British Embassy. During the evening, I thought to myself, "I didn't come to Moscow to socialize with Brits, Americans and Canadians". So, I left and walked around Moscow. But it was cold and I got tired, so I hopped on the metro in the direction of the hotel. I got off the metro at the last station, which at the time was ВДНХ. But I didn't know exactly where the hotel was, so soon I was lost. By now it was late, probably past midnight. I saw a couple out walking their dog. I went up to them, indicated by gestures that I was lost, and showed them the hotel card (пропуск). They turned around and walked back to the hotel with me.
One of my other first impressions of Soviet people was their modesty, especially compared to Americans. We live in a more individualistic and competitive culture and are forced to "advertise" ourselves more. But spending time with Soviet people who didn't always insert their "me" into the conversation was refreshing. I have observed this helpfulness and modesty in many situations when Russians went out of their way to help me, even to befriend me. This was multiplied many times on my second visit when I was an intern (стажер) at Moscow University and has continued during many post-Soviet visits. In this context, what surprised me on my last visit to Russia was that nothing surprised me. During a conference in Petersburg in 2017, you went out of your way to give me walking tours and museum tours of the majestic city.
Any evaluation of changes in post-Soviet Russia "for the better or for the worse" must come in two dimensions: changes experienced by Russians themselves, and changes experienced by a foreigner in Russia. The two evaluations overlap but might not always
coincide. It would be presumptuous of me to evaluate changes experienced by Russians, so I'll limit myself to changes experienced by a foreigner. Readers can judge for themselves whether they perceive these changes in the same way. One other complicating factor: "Post-Soviet" is now 30 years. The "post-Soviet changes" also change; in other words, some "changes" in the 1990s themselves changed in the 2000s and 2010s. And, of course, any comparison of "post-Soviet" to Soviet is also complicated by the question, "Which Soviet?" "When Soviet?"
In order to end on a positive note, I'll start with changes for the worse. One of the charms of Soviet life, for a foreigner at least, was that Russians never seemed to have to work hard. Those who were willing to spend time with foreigners were able to spend a lot of time with foreigners. There were endless conversations at the kitchen table. A foreigner, especially an American, was an instant center of attention. These charms are now largely gone. PostSoviet life has become more competitive, and Russians seem much busier than before. There is less time for leisure. The foreigner is no longer an object of curiosity and the center of attention. In many ways, of course, this is healthy, and Russia is more like a European country, but it does come with some loss.
The increasingly shrill nationalistic political rhetoric of the government and its allies in the media is a change for the worse, though, happily, this has so far not penetrated into inter-personal relationships. It seems that many Russians, especially intellectuals, ignore the anti-western rhetoric, just as their Soviet predecessors ignored the bombastic rhetoric of the Communist Party and state propaganda.
In my view, changes for the better outnumber changes for the worse. Materially, the changes are definitely for the better. There are far more goods and services available than there were in the USSR. Of course, this is especially true of Moscow and Petersburg (which were always better off in Soviet times, anyway), but material improvement is notable in provincial cities as well. It is much easier, albeit more expensive, for a foreigner to live in post-Soviet Russia. The housing stock, never a major investment priority in the USSR, has greatly improved. It is also much easier to travel to and within post-Soviet. There are more opportunities for Russian sponsorship than there were in the USSR. The visa application process has become easier and multi-entry visas obviate the need to apply for a visa for each visit to Russia. The fear of the foreigner, a pervasive though sometimes exaggerated feature of the foreign experience in the USSR, has largely disappeared, and it is much easier to interact with Russians.
— How did your relationship with Soviet / Russian historians develop, and how did your relationship with Russian colleagues change in light of the deteriorating relationship between Russia and the US?
In Soviet days, it was not easy for a foreigner to develop relations with Russian colleagues. Russian historians had to report their contacts and visits with foreigners, and this deterred more frequent and informal meetings with colleagues. My warm meetings with Russians in Soviet days that I noted above were almost never with historians; rather they were with philologists and scientists. My relationships with historians did not develop until the 1990s, when I began meeting Russian historians not only in their offices but also in their apartments. Yuri Kukushkin was a gracious host when I spent the summer at Moscow University in 1993, a time when I began a long relationship with Larisa Zakharova and several of her students. I made friends with several historians at the Institutes of History in Moscow and in Petersburg and, later, at the Moscow Higher School of Economics, where I
also lectured. It became much easier to meet Russian historians and to see them informally. I realized that we had many common interests that in Soviet times had been kept apart by ideological and bureaucratic barriers. As more Russians traveled, it became increasingly possible to establish or continue friendships at conferences in Europe and in the US. The number of Russians on the program at the annual meetings of ASEEES1, our professional association in the US, would have been unthinkable 30 years ago.
Happily, the deteriorating relationship between Russia and the US has not interfered with my relationships with Russian colleagues. True, I have detected a more nationalistic and defensive tone in some Russian colleagues, especially when discussing sore spots of 20th century history. (A semester in Poland has made me more aware of the grievances of Poles that fully match those of Russians. For many Poles and Russians, the sore spots of the 20th century were only yesterday!) In any event, however, such discussions are fun and have not ended any friendships.
— You are an editor of "Russian Studies in History". How is the title theme of the issue chosen? Do you select theme and articles or, perhaps, they are recommended by your Russian colleagues?
Russian Studies in History is a journal of translations that began publication in 1962 as Soviet Studies in History. It was renamed in 1992. My wife, Christine Ruane, also a Russian historian, and I have been co-editors since 1994. The mission of the journal is to introduce to an English-language readership the work of our Russian colleagues. We publish articles from Russian journals, chapters in books, and also original manuscripts. Each issue is built around a theme that often examines the historiography, or the different approaches, to a particular historical topic. We have tried to make note of current historiographical questions among our Russian colleagues. I have selected the theme and edited many of the issues of the journal, but to broaden the scope of topics, I have relied on guest editors to select the theme, select the articles, and write a brief introduction introducing the contributions of the Russian authors. Initially, guest editors were all Americans, and they chose the topics, but in the late 1990s I began to recruit Russian colleagues to be guest editors and choose the topics. Larisa Zakharova was our first Russian guest editor, and there have been many since. In addition, about half of the members of our Advisory Board are now Russians.
— What has changed for last decades in historical education in the US? Do modern students want to study the history of Russia? Did and do you have pupils?
The situation of history education in the US today is not a happy one (perhaps paralleling a sentiment I have heard my Russian colleagues frequently utter about history education in their country). Serious history is taught less and less in the schools and, as a result, students come to university with very poor backgrounds in history, especially in the history of other countries. (However, my colleagues who teach US history lament that their students, too, are poorly prepared in US history.) Although students still take history classes at the university, and most of them say they like history classes, fewer students "major" in history, that is, choose history as their main subject of study. The reasons for this are too complicated to treat here, but I suspect that this is a world-wide phenomenon. History shares the same fate as other disciplines in the humanities such as philosophy and
1 The Association for Slavic, East European, & Eurasian Studies.
literature. I think that, in general, university education has become less serious, and there are more "trendy" subjects, many of which have to do with "identity" and "oppression".
Unfortunately, the situation of the study of Russian history is no better. I always had students in my classes, but very few of them specialized in Russian history. (At any rate, I taught at a very small university, so I taught courses in modern European history as well as Russian history.) The study of Russia appears to students to be less important than was the study 30 years ago of the USSR, the other super-power. (China has replaced Russia.) In those days, students as well as the general public were fascinated by the Soviet Union (as, I suppose, I was when I began my career). The Soviet Union seemed to be a far-off, mysterious country — with nuclear missiles. Although the ideology of communism had had its attractions to progressive Americans in the early years of the Soviet Union, by the 1950s this was much less the case; it was not difficult to think of arguments against communism. Russia today does not have that allure among progressives as well as among the general public. In some ways Russian nationalism is not the same kind of ideology and is therefore more difficult to argue against than was communism. In the past decade, administrators at many American universities have been directing resources away from the study of Russia and toward other subjects such as China. Although it would be difficult to prove, I suspect that the poor relations between our countries and the perception among many Americans that Russia is a hostile country has had something to do with these decisions.
A few years ago at the University of Tulsa, there were five faculty members teaching in the Russian Studies program (not bad for a small university), including the famous poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko. Within five years, one died (Yevtushenko), and three retired, leaving only the Russian language teacher. None of these Russian Studies faculty was replaced, so the program was discontinued.
— As I know you decided to retire a few years ago. Why? What do you do being retired? What research do you do now? What new articles and books are you going to write?
I retired in 2018 after 40 years of teaching. I still enjoyed the teaching and working with the students, but I wished to retire "at the top of my game", so to speak, that is, while I was still enjoying teaching, as counterintuitive as that seems. I had observed older colleagues who stayed in the classroom too long; they were just going through the motions and no longer were effective teachers. I also retired because I seriously disagreed with the university administration's decisions to discontinue Russian studies, an issue I mentioned in my answer to the previous question.
I have kept busy with several projects. After studying the liberals in pre-revolutionary Russia, I decided to research something different. I had begun my study of voluntary associations and civil society at a time, in the late 1980s and early 1990s when the Soviet Union and Russia seemed to be taking a liberal turn, toward a civil society with a rich network of citizen initiatives and political life. By the 2010s, Russia seemed to be taking a more conservative and nationalistic turn. So I decided to study the ideas of pre-revolutionary Russian conservatives. The affinity between the thought of "rightists" and monarchists before the Russian Revolution and of today's conservatives is striking: Russian exceptionalism (самобытность) and the need to preserve Russian traditions; hostility to the West and western values and institutions such as liberalism, representative institutions, democracy and the accountability of the authorities to the citizens; the need of the Russian people and of the Russian Orthodox Church for a strong ruler (such as a monarch) to protect Russia from political anarchy and the break-up of Russia; and perpetual geopolitical threats.
My goal is to put together an anthology of the most important conservative ideologues, an anthology that could be used in a Russian or European history course in the US. I think such an anthology would help American readers understand some of the differences between America and Russia.
A book I wrote long ago, Guns for the Tsar: American Technology and the Small Arms Industry in Nineteenth-century Russia, will be translated and published in Russia by Academic Studies Press in its series "Contemporary Western Russistika". I have had to do several things to prepare the book for publication, the most important of which was to find the Russian originals of all my citations. At first I thought that this would be impossible: before leaving Oklahoma, I disposed of all my photocopies of articles and notebooks, thinking that I would never need them again. Oooooops! Luckily, Russian institutions, in particular, the Russian State Library in Moscow, have been doing a large amount of digitization, far more than the Library of Congress. I have been able to find almost all of my Russian citations online, including important military periodicals such as Военный сборник and Оружейный сборник. This has been time consuming work and a bit tedious, but perfect for the pandemic: I could do everything at home. In addition, I have had to contact the copyright holders of approximately twenty images in the book. So far, Russian archives and museums, including the Hermitage, have been very cooperative in providing reproductions and permissions for publication. I hope the book will be available to Russian historians interested in military history, the history of technology, and the history of one particular industry (the gun industry) in 2022.
One last project does not involve research, but it is very enjoyable. Another retired historian and I are reading Russian short stories (in Russian, to keep up our Russian). Every week we read a story and then meet virtually to talk about it. A project perfect for the pandemic! So far, we have read Pushkin's Повести Белкина, Turgenev's Ася and Первая любовь, Karamzin's Бедная Лиза, Tolstoy's После бала, Bunin's Солнечный удар and others, and our favorite, the master — Chekhov. Many Americans are familiar with Chekhov's plays, but few have read his stories. Historians who do not write biographies tend to see people in the aggregate — social groups, classes, nations — not the lives of individual people. Or, if we study individual lives, it is often to make some point about history rather than to study the individual lives for their own sake. But even though fictional, Chekhov's characters seem very real, and through them we may acquire a richer understanding of the human condition.
Интервью с Джозефом Брэдли: Известный американский историк о жизни, исследованиях
и профессии
Елена федоювна синельникова
ученый секретарь,
Санкт-Петербургский филиал Института истории естествознания и техники им. С.И. Вавилова Российской академии наук, Санкт-Петербург, Россия; e-mail: sinelnikova-elena@yandex.ru
джозЕф Брэдли
почетный профессор, Университет Талсы, г. Талса, Оклахома, США; e-mail: joseph-bradley@utulsa.edu
Известный американский историк Джозеф Брэдли в интервью Елене Синельниковой ответил на ряд вопросов, касающихся его жизни, прошлых и проводимых в настоящее время исследований, а также о профессии историка, таких как: Как Вы стали историком? Что Вас привлекало в истории России? Почему Вы в своем исследовании обратились к истории ученых обществ Российской империи? Насколько сложно было работать с документами научных обществ в российских архивах? Чем отличаются российские научные общества от научных обществ в других странах? Какую роль играют научные общества в современном научном сообществе (национальном и международном)? Что Вы думаете о научных конференциях и конгрессах в современную эпоху, и особенно в нынешнее время, когда большинство научных мероприятий проходит в онлайн-режиме? Какое впечатление произвели на Вас советские люди, когда Вы впервые были в Советском Союзе? Что изменилось в постсоветской России в лучшую и худшую сторону по сравнению с СССР? Как развивались Ваши отношения с советскими/российскими историками и как изменились Ваши отношения с российскими коллегами в свете ухудшающихся отношений между Россией и США? Что изменилось за последние десятилетия в историческом образовании США? Хотят ли современные студенты изучать историю России? Какие исследования Вы проводите сейчас? Над какими новыми статьями и книгами Вы сейчас работаете?
Ключевые слова: история России, история СССР, научные общества, американская русистика, современное научное сообщество, постсоветская Россия.
