About “Capital” and “Capitalism” in the Works of Soviet Historians on the History of the Urals and Siberia of the 17th Century, Published in the 1960s

The methodology of history determines what the authors will write in their books. The methodology of history is a subject of social philosophy. However, after analyzing the leading works printed before 1955 on the history of the Urals and Siberia of the 17th century we came to the conclusion that historians did not mechanically illustrate the conclusions of social philosophy. At the end of the 19th century V. I. Lenin, relying on Karl Marx, drew a conception of the «new period of Russian history». In the 1930s this scheme has become mandatory for all Russian historians. However, it quickly became clear that not all of its elements could be found in the Siberian history of the 17th century. The reasons may be related to the lack of sufficient autonomy for the merchants, great tax oppression, opportunities to benefit from social status, and military operations. Retaining full loyalty to the official position, in their concrete studies, researchers of Siberian studies turned out to be great empiricists and preferred to point out historical facts even if the facts contradicted official schemes. In addition, in the 1960s there was a change in the key formulations of the scheme, towards recognizing greater complexity and variability of the historical process.