Post-Modernism and the Study of the Russian Middle Ages

In recent years many Russian medievalists have become convinced that positivism has outlived its usefulness. Critics despair that historians are trivializing medieval history by retreating into ever narrower topics. Positivism, they maintain, with its endless search for discrete facts, cannot render a new picture of the past and its study. Increasingly, therefore, Russian medievalists are turning toward post-modernism in search of new understanding. Russian historians are taking – albeit belatedly – the post-modernist turn. The following essay will survey some of the recent results of this development.