"Russia and West" as a Problem of Methodology of History (About Statement of a Question)
The article examines the long-standing opposition to «Russia and the West» as one of the key problems of historical methodology. In Russian thought this question was put in the 19th century. Attention to it first manifested itself in the political sphere and in historiosofic area and then moved on a level of concretehistorical research, and finally assumed the character of the problem of historical methodology. It is, above all, of Russia, because the West never to reflect about the otherness of their own history and the Russian and which has never been for the Europeans as a ‘point of reference’ in assessing ways of their civilization. Nevertheless, Russia and its history for a long time is the subject of attention of Western historians. In modern Western historiography there is no single criterion, a unified methodology for studying the history of Russia, although «philosophical» approach is dominated in which Western historians, above all, «stand guard over its civilizational code» (A. G. Dugin). In Russian historiography, history and civilization of Western Europe has long been a certain «measure» in assessing of Russia’s historical way. The modern national studies the concept «Russia and the West» retains the meaning of the key methodological principle. They still present a comparative approach, but there is a tendency to overcome the traditional skeptical assessment.