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and ideological levels of historical consciousness

Despite all the objective importance of historical knowledge and consciousness for the development of society, in practice this fact is not always taken into account. This, in particular, is evidenced by the well-known aphorism: “If history teaches anything, it is only that it teaches nothing.” Another outstanding German philosopher G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831) noted in this regard: “Peoples and governments have never learned anything from history or acted according to the teachings that could be drawn from it.” Unfortunately, there are plenty of examples in world history confirming such judgments. Let us just remember the constantly repeated and invariably failed attempts of rulers to establish world domination - from Alexander the Great to Napoleon and Hitler. Or attempts to forcefully impose on society a certain speculative rational model of social order - from Plato to the leaders of totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century.

Why do “history lessons” often turn out to be useless for society and its elite? Is historical knowledge itself to blame for this? This is how the outstanding Russian historian of the 19th century answers these questions IN. Klyuchevsky: “History, say those who have not learned from history..., has not taught anyone anything, even if this is true, does not concern history as a science: it is not the flowers that are to blame for the fact that the blind cannot see them... History teaches even those who do not studies; she teaches them a lesson for ignorance and neglect. He who acts in addition to her or in spite of her always regrets his attitude towards her in the end. She still teaches not how to live according to it, but how to learn from it, she so far only flogs her slow-witted or lazy students, just as the stomach punishes greedy or careless gastronomes, without telling them the rules of healthy eating, but only letting them feel their mistakes in physiology and fascination of their appetite. History is power: when people feel good, they forget about it and attribute their prosperity to themselves; when they feel bad, they begin to feel its necessity and appreciate its benefits” (Klyuchevsky V.O. Letters. Diaries. Aphorisms and thoughts about history. M., 1968. P. 265-266). These remarks by the Russian historian turned out to be especially true in relation to the Soviet period national history. Quite often, “the reading public tends to shift responsibility for the mistakes and miscalculations of politicians onto historical science,” notes modern Russian historian A.A. Iskanderov. – Of course, history cannot be responsible for the affairs of politicians, and it has never had a real opportunity to influence the process of making government decisions. The state itself did not really listen to the voice of history; it kept this science unclaimed” (Iskanderov A.A. Historical science on the threshold of the 21st century // Questions of History. 1996. No. 3. P. 6).

However, forgetting the lessons of history is caused not only by certain political considerations of government officials. Society itself is not always able to fully appreciate and use historical knowledge. (For more information about this, see: Polyakov Yu.A. Why doesn’t history teach us? // Questions of History. 2001. No. 2. P. 20-32). And here the main obstacle is the low level of historical consciousness.

The concept of “level of historical consciousness” includes two main criteria by which the maturity of people’s ideas about past historical reality is assessed: a) the degree of completeness and systematicity of the historical knowledge that people possess; b) the level of motivation and ability to apply this knowledge for any purpose. (Criterion is a sign on the basis of which something is assessed, defined or classified; a measure of assessment.)

Based on these criteria, we can conditionally distinguish three main levels of historical consciousness – everyday (spontaneous), ideological and scientific.

The lowest of them is ordinary level of historical consciousness. It is distinguished by the following characteristics:

Its carriers lack a stable and conscious interest in learning history, the desire to use historical knowledge to understand and explain modernity and for orientation in real life circumstances.

Their historical knowledge is fragmentary (fragmentary) and unsystematic.

The main sources of obtaining this knowledge, as a rule, are rumors, works of art, journalism, and propaganda materials in the media.

Vulnerability to ideological and political manipulation by certain socio-political groups.

Unfortunately, it must be admitted that this level of historical consciousness is also the most widespread.

Ideologized level of historical consciousness society or its individual groups has the following distinctive features:

It is formed by ideologues and politicians to achieve broad public support for their actions and plans, as well as to discredit rivals and opponents based on the appropriate manipulation of historical information.

Mobilization of the masses for certain actions with the help of historical information is ensured in many cases both with the help of direct falsifications (falsification is the deliberate distortion of any data ), and through a tendentious interpretation (interpretation) of the historical past, when, for example, “unprofitable” historical facts are kept silent, while the “profitable” ones are widely publicized. This last method is also called “history laundering.” A clear example here can be found in almost all history textbooks of the Soviet period, where the real and fictitious achievements of the state and its leaders were clearly extolled and the history of capitalist countries was clearly interpreted negatively, the activities and views of not only representatives of the opposition, but also all dissidents were hushed up or indiscriminately denigrated.

Accordingly, the ideologized level of historical consciousness is also distinguished by monologism, i.e. confidence in the infallibility of their positions and absolute intolerance to criticism and other views. For example, during the Soviet period, the slogan “Who is not with us is against us” was very popular.

One of the main foundations of this level of historical consciousness is dogmatism, often justified by the noble desire to remain faithful to principles. The credo of dogmatism is implicitly expressed by the statement: “If the facts contradict my concept, then so much the worse for these facts” (For more on this, see O. Volobuev, S. Kuleshov. History in Stalin’s style // The harsh drama of the people: Scientists and publicists on the nature of Stalinism. M., 1989. pp. 312-334).

The ideologized level of historical consciousness is most widespread in authoritarian and totalitarian political regimes, as well as in societies experiencing rapid and large-scale social upheavals and transformations, when the questions “Who is to blame?” come to the fore in the public consciousness. and “What should I do?”

The ideologized level of historical consciousness in its extreme manifestations can demonstrate repressiveness. After all, if lying is a principle, then violence is a method. The slogan of Soviet times is well known: “Whoever is not with us is against us.” It should be recognized that the repressiveness of ideologized historical consciousness has a huge number of illustrations in world and domestic history. (For more information about this, see Semenikova L.I. Russia in the world community of civilizations. M., 1994. P. 14-26).

Often, the ideologized level of historical consciousness is formed on pseudoscientific ideology, i.e. an ideology that seeks to give itself the form of a scientific theory. Thus, communist ideology is based on the theory of scientific communism, formulated by K. Marx and F. Engels, where communist society (formation) is presented as the result of the action of objective (“iron”) laws of history. The scientific nature of ideology is intended to give it the greatest persuasiveness and reliability in the eyes of public opinion. The desire to ideologize historical knowledge and consciousness is present in any, even the most democratic society, which creates one of the most significant obstacles to a truly scientific, reliable comprehension and understanding of past social reality.

The ideologization of historical consciousness is dangerous primarily because of its disorienting consequences, when society, intoxicated by false complacency and mobilized for an irreconcilable fight against the enemies of infallibly correct teaching, loses the ability for free civil creativity and ceases to draw the necessary lessons from history. “The desire to “whitewash” the past, to treat it uncritically inevitably leads to its repetition,” noted in this regard the famous domestic culturologist A.I. Arnoldov (Arnoldov A.I. Man and the world of culture. M., 1992. P. 10).

What determines the ambiguity of the historical consciousness of people and society? What factors influence the cognitive and value attitude towards the past and its interpretations in historical science, ideology, and spiritual culture in general?

Many scientists have noted that the actualization and degree of significance for society of historical topics varies. In conditions of a relatively stable social state, in times when changes are gradual and local in nature, public interest in history seems to fade. The study of history for some time remains the lot of scientists, teachers, museum workers and other persons professionally associated with historical science. Most people are interested in the past to please their curiosity. Knowledge of the past remains largely unclaimed in social and practical terms.

Section 2. Essence, forms, functions of historical consciousness.

In modern Russian literature, historical consciousness quite often means “the body of knowledge accumulated by science and spontaneously emerging ideas, all kinds of symbols, customs and other phenomena of the spiritual sphere in which society reproduces, realizes, that is, remembers its past.” With this approach historical consciousness, firstly, is identified with historical memory. Secondly, historical consciousness is considered only as a supra-individual reality, that is, in this definition the personal aspect is eliminated. Historical memory, reflecting the past, is an integral part of historical consciousness, in which ideas about society are integrated into the unity of its past, present and future. Historical consciousness, along with cultural archetypes, is the “connector” of times and generations. Historical consciousness can be both mass (group) and individual. Mass historical consciousness is a way of rational reproduction and assessment by society of the movement of society in time. Individual historical consciousness is the result, on the one hand, of familiarization with knowledge about the past, and, on the other, of understanding the past and generating a sense of involvement with it. Therefore, individual historical consciousness also acts as a form of meaningfully transformed past as “co-knowledge” and “event”.

Since historical consciousness is comprehension, we can distinguish two types of it: goal-rational and value-rational. The first type of consciousness is dominated by an orientation towards a specific historical result, towards understanding the course of historical events, their causes and consequences. Purposeful rational historical consciousness is not only always concrete, it is also theoretical. Value-rational consciousness, on the contrary, is focused not on a specific result, but directly on the value behind it. Such consciousness is more ethical than theoretical. It is dominated not by questions - why, for what purpose, but - what is the meaning, who is to blame. Since group goals at the individual level act as value-rational, value-rational individual historical consciousness is characterized by a significant degree of conformity in relation to mass historical consciousness. Therefore, the value-rational consciousness is largely subject to influence from the outside; it is more susceptible to transformation and manipulation. A person with such consciousness is able to easily change his views in favor of others, without experiencing any particular inconvenience or doubt.

If we proceed from the method of comprehension and the peculiarities of fixing ideas about the movement of society in time, then historical consciousness can take the form of myth, chronicle or science. Distinctive feature mythical consciousness is the syncretism of historical ideas. In them, thinking merges with affectivity. In the mythical consciousness there are simultaneously two layers of historical time - sacred and current. In sacred time, events occur that involve “knowledge-faith.” In such knowledge, for example, there is often a “legend of a golden age” (in the past or future) as the ideal of human existence. A historical myth is an emotionally charged idea of ​​historical reality, a fictional image that replaces this reality in the mind. Historical myths are created by the collective imagination or imposed on the mass historical consciousness from the outside, forming a certain historical perception of the world, socially conformal in given conditions and designed to form the desired patterns social behavior. Entering into the structure of cultural archetypes, myths activate historical consciousness during periods of disappointment and collapse of illusions, alarmism and frustration. Modern journalism provides many examples of the activation of mythologized consciousness: having become disillusioned with Soviet history, are looking for moral consolation and inspiration in the historical past of Russia.

Unlike mythical consciousness, chronicle consciousness is largely focused on recording real events of the past. However, in such consciousness there is no idea of ​​cause-and-effect relationships in history. These connections in the chronicle consciousness are replaced by a presentation of historical events in chronological sequence, secured by providentialist ideas and moral maxims. Hence the interpretation of history through the prism of divine providence, the dichotomy of good and evil, God and the devil, virtues and vices, plans and intrigues. Just as the mythical, chronicle consciousness forms, like the mythical, historical reality corresponding to the ideal of its time, the Past was depicted not as it was, but as it should have been.

The development of society's need for self-awareness and a deep understanding of the logic of the historical process led to the formation of history as a science of the past, which had a huge impact on strengthening the reflexive principle in historical consciousness. It turns first of all to the real facts of history, the “earthly” roots of certain events and processes, trying to comprehend cause-and-effect relationships and clarify the essence of historical phenomena. An achievement of scientific consciousness was historicism, which requires considering historical phenomena in development, in connection with other historical events, taking into account the specific conditions of a certain stage of social development. Scientific historical consciousness has a specialized character; its source and carrier is the scientific ethnos. Therefore, in the mass historical consciousness, its scientific component is intricately intertwined with artistic fiction and historical myths. In addition, if scientific consciousness is focused on the search for truth, then mass consciousness is primarily occupied with the search for historical “truth” as a result of an emotional and value-based attitude to reality.

In the historical consciousness inherent in a particular sociocultural environment, one can also identify its dominant and temporary forms. So, for example, dominant forms include monumental or antiquarian, statist or liberal, imperial or provincial historical consciousness. TO temporary forms- critical or apologetic, tolerant or rigorist. Various social groups in society have capital of various kinds, including symbolic, that is, they have the ability to introduce and cultivate stable principles of perception of historical reality, consistent with their own structures, transforming inner world people, including their historical consciousness. In this case, as a rule, it is not the dominant, but its temporary forms that change, capable of carrying out a complete inversion: becoming, for example, from apologetic to critical, and then in a modified form - again apologetic. The transformation of historical consciousness usually occurs in conditions of crisis of the social system, with a change of political regimes, with a sharp change in the course of social development, when in a situation of “revaluation of socially significant values” the “rewriting of history” begins.

What is historical consciousness?

Section 2. Essence, forms, functions of historical consciousness.

In modern Russian literature, historical consciousness quite often means “the body of knowledge accumulated by science and spontaneously emerging ideas, all kinds of symbols, customs and other phenomena of the spiritual sphere in which society reproduces, realizes, that is, remembers its past.” With this approach, historical consciousness, firstly, is identified with historical memory. Secondly, historical consciousness is considered only as a supra-individual reality, that is, in this definition the personal aspect is eliminated. Historical memory, reflecting the past, is an integral part of historical consciousness, in which ideas about society are integrated into the unity of its past, present and future. Historical consciousness, along with cultural archetypes, is the “connector” of times and generations. Historical consciousness must be both mass (group) and individual. Mass historical consciousness is a way of rational reproduction and assessment by society of the movement of society in time. Individual historical consciousness is the result, on the one hand, of familiarization with knowledge about the past, and, on the other, of understanding the past and generating a sense of involvement with it. For this reason, individual historical consciousness also acts as a form of meaningfully transformed past as “co-knowledge” and “event”.

Since historical consciousness is comprehension, we can distinguish two types of it: goal-rational and value-rational. The first type of consciousness is dominated by an orientation towards a specific historical result, towards understanding the course of historical events, their causes and consequences. Whole-rational historical consciousness is not only always concrete, it is also theoretical. Value-rational consciousness, on the contrary, is focused not on a specific result, but directly on the value behind it. Such consciousness is more ethical than theoretical. It is dominated not by questions - why, for what purpose, but - what is the meaning, who is to blame. Since group goals at the individual level act as value-rational, value-rational individual historical consciousness is characterized by a significant degree of conformity in relation to mass historical consciousness. For this reason, value-rational consciousness is largely subject to influence from the outside; it is more susceptible to transformation and manipulation. A person with such consciousness is able to easily change his views in favor of others, without experiencing any particular inconvenience or doubt.

If we proceed from the method of comprehension and the peculiarities of fixing ideas about the movement of society in time, then historical consciousness can take the form of myth, chronicle or science. A distinctive feature of mythical consciousness is the syncretism of historical ideas. In them, thinking merges with affectivity. In the mythical consciousness there are simultaneously two layers of historical time - sacred and current. In sacred time, events occur that imply “knowledge-faith”. In such knowledge, for example, there is often a “legend of the golden age” (in the past or future) as the ideal of human existence. A historical myth is an emotionally charged idea of ​​historical reality, a fictional image that replaces this reality in the mind. Historical myths are created by the collective imagination or imposed on the mass historical consciousness from the outside, while forming a certain historical perception of the world, socially conformal in given conditions and designed to form desired patterns of social behavior. Entering into the structure of cultural archetypes, myths activate historical consciousness during periods of disappointment and collapse of illusions, alarmism and frustration. Modern journalism provides many examples of the activation of mythologized consciousness: having become disillusioned with Soviet history, they seek moral consolation and inspiration in the historical past of Russia.

Unlike mythical consciousness, chronicle consciousness is largely focused on recording real events of the past. At the same time, in such consciousness there is no idea of ​​cause-and-effect relationships in history. These connections in the chronicle consciousness are replaced by a presentation of historical events in chronological sequence, secured by providentialist ideas and moral maxims. Hence the interpretation of history through the prism of divine providence, the dichotomy of good and evil, God and the devil, virtues and vices, plans and intrigues. Just as the mythical, chronicle consciousness forms, like the mythical, historical reality corresponding to the ideal of its time, the Past was depicted not as it was, but as it should have been.

The development of society's need for self-awareness and a deep understanding of the logic of the historical process led to the formation of history as a science of the past, which had a huge impact on strengthening the reflexive principle in historical consciousness. It turns first of all to the real facts of history, the “earthly” roots of certain events and processes, trying to comprehend cause-and-effect relationships and learn the essence of historical phenomena. An achievement of scientific consciousness was historicism, which requires considering historical phenomena in development, in connection with other historical events, taking into account the specific conditions of a certain stage of social development. Scientific historical consciousness has a specialized character; its source and carrier is the scientific ethnos. For this reason, in the mass historical consciousness, its scientific component is intricately intertwined with artistic fiction and historical myths. At the same time, if scientific consciousness is focused on the search for truth, then mass consciousness is primarily occupied with the search for historical “truth” as a result of an emotional and value-based attitude to reality.

In the historical consciousness inherent in any sociocultural environment, one can also identify its dominant and temporary forms. So, for example, dominant forms include monumental or antiquarian, statist or liberal, imperial or provincial historical consciousness. Temporary forms - critical or apologetic, tolerant or rigorist. Different social groups in society have different types of capital, incl. and symbolic, that is, they have the ability to introduce and cultivate stable principles of perception of historical reality, consistent with their own structures, transforming the inner world of people, incl. and their historical consciousness. In this case, as a rule, it is not the dominant, but its temporary forms that change, capable of carrying out a complete inversion: becoming, for example, from apologetic to critical, and then in a modified form - again apologetic. The transformation of historical consciousness usually occurs in conditions of a crisis of the social system, with a change of political regimes, with a sharp change in the course of social development, when in a situation of “revaluation of socially significant values,” the “rewriting of history” begins.

What is historical consciousness? - concept and types. Classification and features of the category “What is historical consciousness?” 2017, 2018.

Historical consciousness - memory of the past and interest in it - is characteristic to one degree or another of all people and nations. At the same time, the very attitude towards the past and the methods of obtaining information about it are extremely diverse, which allows us to talk about the existence of different types of historical consciousness. The main difference between them is determined by two factors: firstly, different proportions of emotional and rational attitudes towards the past; secondly, the degree of reliability of the picture that is recreated on the basis of individual historical evidence.

The composition of historical memory largely depends on subjective and emotional aspects: the community, willingly or unwillingly, turns to the past as a source of information. The mass consciousness perceives the past emotionally, seeks in it confirmation of its own expectations and preferences, and easily blurs the boundaries between reliable and fictitious pictures of events. Social, or cultural, memory indicates the inextricable connection of generations and provides examples of experience that can be used in the present. The basis of scientific historical consciousness is the recognition of the difference between the past and the present, the requirement for the reliability of information on the basis of which the past can be restored, and constant doubts as to the extent to which historical phenomena can be compared with the facts of modern life. History as the experience of social life, without which modern society cannot understand itself and determine the path of development, is critically assessed by science from the point of view of the ways and possibilities of applying this experience.

Mass, or uncritical, historical consciousness is characterized by three features: modernization of the past; a retrospective approach to the past, which in this context is of interest only from the point of view of the origin of modern phenomena of social life; free use of fiction and imagination to reconstruct a holistic image of the past.

Mass consciousness is looking for examples in the past to emulate or condemn. This means that history is perceived as a kind of illustration of the ethical preferences of a particular era. Historical characters are portrayed as examples of social behavior, they are attributed qualities and motives that members of a particular community consider to be determinative of their own behavior.

Let's consider an example from European medieval history. In the 12th century. in Germany (the lands that are part of the modern Germanic tribes of the era of the Great Migration of Peoples, barbarian kingdoms, medieval states and monarchies of the late Middle Ages were perceived not as special ways of integrating society, each of which was characterized by individual forms of ethnic consciousness and political organization, but simply as stages of national and state unity.The wars of the Middle Ages were attributed to the same reasons as the conflicts of modern times: the struggle of national states for their interests.

Another example of the search for the historical roots of modernity is the desire to find in the past the prerequisites for current democracy: the structure of ancient city-polises, the Roman Republic, medieval commune cities, and the class organization of medieval knighthood were considered as such. All these heterogeneous phenomena belonging to different eras were attributed such qualities as the principles of freedom and equality of members of the community, the cultivation of institutions for collective and public adoption of the most important decisions. In modern Russia, the turn to the ideology of democracy and a free society is reflected in the desire to find similar traditions in its own history: the Novgorod Veche is quite seriously mentioned as an example of ancient political democracy.

It is noteworthy that in the modern world, any community or social movement seeks to discover its “historical ancestors”: for example, the feminist movement aims, on the one hand, to find examples of the significant and special role of women in history, and on the other, to declare the moral injustice of the total domination of men in the social and political life of previous eras. Ideologists of national movements, the struggle of ethnic minorities for rights or political freedom, use as an argument the fact that in the distant past the corresponding rights or freedoms of the people were taken away as a result of the unjust actions of another people or state. In a word, history is turned to as an argument that justifies ideological, social, and political claims that are relevant to modern times. The latter are credited with moral validity and long-term existence. Such a prehistory of current ideas and aspirations is often constructed in a biased manner; the past is endowed with those features that it was essentially deprived of.

In addition, the past is interpreted unambiguously and biasedly. Thus, the idea of ​​historical justice of the claims of a certain people to certain territories requires that facts confirming the historical rights of other peoples to these territories be removed from the evidence of the past. Perceiving the past as historical tradition, which justifies the aspirations and claims of individual peoples or social groups, is an irrational and often dangerous creation of mass consciousness. It ignores the complexity of historical processes, and sometimes directly falsifies the connections between phenomena belonging to different eras, creating the illusion of antiquity and the indisputability of ideas generated by the modern situation.

However, it is also difficult for historian-researchers who adhere to the principles of objectivity and strive for an unbiased analysis of facts to clear their perception of the past from emotional overtones and abandon the interpretation of past events as direct predecessors of the present.

Can a historian be impartial? This question is fundamental to modern science, however, they were also asked by people of previous eras who were able to critically comprehend the ambiguity of the past and knowledge about it. The historian never receives the material for his research in ready-made form: the facts contained in the sources (witnesses of the past) must first be collected, and then analyzed and interpreted.

Both procedures, including the initial one associated with the selection of material, depend on what tasks the historian sets for himself. In modern historiography, the idea that, unlike specialists in the field of natural sciences, historians themselves create the material for their research has become widespread. This does not mean that they falsify or supplement data from sources with arbitrary judgments, but they are forced to select certain information from the entire variety of evidence.

The question of what comes first - the sources (factual material) or the intellectual scheme - turns out to be akin to the famous paradox of the chicken and the egg in the work of a historian. When starting research, a historian must have a preliminary hypothesis and a system of theoretical and conceptual ideas, since without them he will not be able to begin working with evidence of the past. At the stage of interpretation of selected and systematized data, the results of his work depend even more on scientific, ethical and moral preferences. In his attitude to the past, the historian cannot be guided only by the requirement of objective and impartial analysis and is not able to completely subordinate his perception of historical reality to the principle of historicism. Other eras and societies are interesting for the historian from the point of view of their comparison with his own time. Like any other person interested in history, like many generations of distant predecessors who knew nothing about the principles of science and historicism, he looks in the past for the origins of those values ​​and forms of social life that are most significant in his contemporary society. In history the researcher finds elements of social organization similar or different from those that are basic to his own era. Modernity remains the ideal model from which the historian starts in interpreting the past.

Can, for example, a modern historian who shares the values ​​of democracy and individual freedom be impartial in the study of the social and political life of antiquity? Could the characteristics he gave to the polis democracy of ancient Greece and the despotic monarchies of the East be a simple statement of the existence of different forms of statehood? Voluntarily or unwittingly, he sees in ancient world features of the organization of social life that is close and significant to him, and therefore considers antiquity as the predecessor of modern society and at the same time perceives Eastern traditions as truly alien, deviating from the normal path of development. Unlike the average person, a researcher can consciously distance himself from such an emotional and value perception of the past. However, he is not able to free himself from it completely.

The moral and political bias of the historian is revealed even more clearly when studying the recent past, live connection which modern society has not yet lost touch with. The study of the history of the Third Reich or the Soviet period of national history can be carried out in different directions, but general judgments, as a rule, reflect the ideological preferences of the researcher. The most in-depth analysis of the objective and underlying causes that gave rise to fascism or Stalinism largely removes the burden of moral responsibility from the people who lived under these regimes and supported them, but is not able to deprive the researcher of the right to characterize them as tragic periods of national and world history. The assessment may also be dictated by real political and ideological conditions. In Hitler's Germany, historians who shared the ideology of National Socialism consistently sought and discovered in the past confirmation of the primordial national superiority of the German peoples and the Germans as a special nation. Soviet historians, following the ideology of the exceptional significance of the revolutionary struggle, found in Russian history direct predecessors of the ruling regime. These were popular uprisings and peasant wars, Decembrists, populists, revolutionaries and terrorists - forces that personified social struggle and revolution. At the same time, the ideology of a totalitarian state, whose task is to fight internal enemies, required a new historical genealogy for the Soviet government. Monarchs distinguished by cruelty and despotism were put forward as predecessors and role models - Ivan the Terrible and Peter I, who were Stalin's favorite historical characters.

In general, it is possible to identify three groups of factors that have a socio-cultural conditionality and determine the historian’s attitude to the past: scientific concepts of social development, which guide the researcher in the selection, analysis and interpretation of historical facts; political and ideological principles of the structure of society, which the researcher perceives as a starting point in his perception of the past; personal worldview and ideological beliefs of the researcher.

Thus, the historian is engaged by his time and cannot be free from social ideas and political ideologies. Historical science, like mass consciousness, creates its own myths about the past and uses it to confirm certain current ideas. However, the integrity and professional integrity of the historian require a refusal to directly identify the past and the present. The historian balances on the brink of objectivity and partiality, but only he can put a barrier to the use of the past as material for political ideologies and false social myths.

HISTORICAL CONSCIOUSNESS - a set of ideas inherent in society as a whole and its constituent segments separately, about its past and the past of all humanity. Historical consciousness is in close connection with historical knowledge. Each social and economic community has a well-known set of historical ideas about its origin, the most important events and figures of its own past, their relationship with the history of other communities and all of humanity. These are those “historical legends” that constitute an integral part of the spiritual life of every people, their way of self-expression, and this gives historical consciousness a strong emotional coloring. History is organically present in the consciousness of society. All its constituent elements are historical - views, ideas, political and other theories, etc.

In philosophical literature, consciousness means the human ability to ideally reproduce reality in thinking, highest level mental activity of a person as a social being. In contrast, historical consciousness is always concrete. It exists as a specific historical pattern that studies the world of mental and spiritual realities. Historical consciousness is not immutable. In the 9th century it was different than in the 16th or 20th centuries. But it is also not the same in the horizontal dimension, differing at different levels of the social pyramid. The views of the present and past of the inhabitants of its lower floors differ significantly from the views of those who inhabit the upper floors. The protest mood inherent in them to varying degrees, captivating them historical memory generates its own image of history, expressing confrontational historical consciousness. It expresses the meaning of history as the most important argument in the ideological and political struggle various classes and classes, religious, ethnic, professional and other social communities. Therefore, at all times, the state has sought to bring the study and - in particular - the teaching of history under its control. The formation of mass historical consciousness was the goal of his policy in the field of education. However, his intervention in this sphere leads to its deformation. Even the great “tragic humanist” Johan Huizinga, noting that the need for historical knowledge is an absolute human need, a way of joyfully joining the world, wrote with alarm that the 20th century, more than ever before, made history an instrument of lies at the level public policy: no Eastern despotism in its fantastic “testimonies” has treated history the way a modern state does. Therefore, he warned that historical consciousness must be vigilant, “so that bloodthirsty idols are not erected in the name of history and will swallow up culture.” In times of crisis, he wrote, history can become a means of achieving the necessary consent of people.

Historical consciousness is characterized by an active, active principle aimed at transforming historical reality. This is its difference from historical knowledge, which emphasizes the relativity of historical truth. It is based on immutable ideological and moral foundations.

Historical consciousness is a moral category that requires, as a quality, mandatory condition professionalism of the historian, his observance of certain moral standards, which presuppose adherence to ideological and moral norms. They cover the entire sphere of human life from his personal and corporate connections to professional activity in the field of higher and secondary education and - indirectly - judgments about high politics.

B. G. Mogilnitsky

The definition of the concept is quoted from the publication: Theory and methodology of historical science. Terminological dictionary. Rep. ed. A.O. Chubaryan. [M.], 2014, p. 189-191.

Literature:

Mogilnitsky B. G. Introduction to the methodology of history. M., 1989; His own. Historical consciousness and historical science // Historical views as a form public consciousness. Part 1. Saratov, 1995; Tavrizyan G. M. Johan Huizinga: the historian’s credo // Huizinga J. Homo ludens. In the shadow of tomorrow. M., 1992; CarrE. N. What is History? Cambridge, 1962.