The author of this exhaustively argued and heavily documented monograph (71 pages of notes support 191 pages of text) sets out to illustrate the “literary interface” (2) of Russian historical scholarship in nineteenth and early twentieth century Russia, a task at which she succeeds admirably. Frances Nethercott attributes the persistence in Russia of powerful links between literature and history compared to their decline in west European historical scholarship both to the established practice among the intelligentsia of employing fiction and literary criticism to reflect on meaning in history in opposition to the censorship and propaganda of the state and to the proximity of the chairs of Russian History and Russian Language and Literature from the early nineteenth century in university Historical-Philological faculties. Daily professional interactions and a shared purpose among professors to advance the goals of the intelligentsia through historical writing promoted an “intergeneric dialogue” or the use of a range of literary sources to support historical documents in the study of collective mentalities and the dynamics of daily life.

Nethercott builds her case around a prominent representative from each of three generations of academic historians: Timofei Granovskii, Vasilii Kliuchevskii, and Ivan Grevs. All served as mentors (nastavniki) to young scholars and stressed the moral responsibilities of the scholar historian along with public service. Active from the 1830s, Granovskii sought to present history as a science that aimed to form a “morally enlightened individual” (38) and a compatible social order. Influenced by the Hegelian notion of great men, Granovskii created portraits of prominent leaders in colorful language and images. His chosen vehicles to engage a larger audience were the public lecture and short articles written for non-specialist readers. Kliuchevskii taught in the post-emancipation era. In spite of the influence of positivism in this period, there lingered a widespread belief that literature reflected reality. Kliuchevskii considered history to be an art. He rejected the putative role of great men but saw in minor historical figures products of a singular socio-political order who typified the milieu in which they functioned. They revealed national character, as did personalities drawn from fiction. Kliuchevskii resisted the trend toward compartmentalizing the study of history and employed literature as a source to unite literary and historical studies. Although he used the public lecture to reach a wide audience, his generation witnessed the rise of the seminar that targeted more specific audiences. Grevs first taught in the reactionary atmosphere in education overseen by Dmitrii Tolstoi, then following the 1905 revolution and into the early Soviet period. Influenced by the rise in western historical circles of cultural history, an interdisciplinary enterprise, he became its champion. In his work on the economic life of the Romans, Grevs saw literary sources like the works of Horace, if carefully cross referenced with other source types, as a dependable guide to understanding the world in which his subject lived. He stressed fieldwork as essential to historical understanding and became an advocate of excursion history, which earlier Soviet educators incorporated into their curricula.

Nethercott reinforces her argument that positivism divided history and literature in Russia less than in the west with shorter discussions of other historians, notably Nikolai Antsiferov, a student of Grevs who furthered the spread of excursion history; Fedor Buslaev, who taught Kliuchevskii; Nikolai Kareev, who sought to define the discipline of history of literature and opposed the compartmentalization of historical studies; Nikolai Kostomarov who saw folk poetry as a true record of the past, and several others. The author does not ignore parallel developments in the west. She refers to Jakob Burckhardt, who relied heavily on art and literature in his study of the Renaissance; the romantic historian Augustin Thierry, who saw artistic imagination as an indispensable ingredient of historical writing; and Hippolyte Taine, who used poetry and novels to capture the mentality of particular times and places. Although the overlapping structure of the chapters involves some repetition, the whole presents a convincing case. Nethercott posits a competition between Russian writers and academic historians for ownership of the past. Although it was not within her remit, it would be interesting to assess the place in this competition of the many non-academic literary critics who populated the thick journals, debated the same issues, and commanded a wide readership for whom they interpreted the nation's literary output.