Page:Russian Realities and Problems - ed. James Duff (1917).djvu/224

 head, by military and agricultural institutions; and the Russian Empire, attaining its natural limits, by the autocratic regime, the ascendancy of the nobles, and enslaved agriculture and industry. Klyuchevsky presented this scheme in a brilliant picture of our evolution down to the 18th century, and formed a school of Russian historians. In a similar realistic and "sociological" spirit Milyukov explained the evolution of Russian culture, arranged in a homogeneous series, and with Kisewetter, Bogoslovsky and others entered upon definite investigations concerning the history of certain Russian institutions. This "realistic" conception of Russia's past could not, however, satisfy those who, like Pokrovsky, believed in Marxism: and he worked up again, from a materialistic point of view, the materials collected by the idealists.

The wide field of Russian history, surveyed in great detail by Ikonnikov, was of course cultivated in many other special directions: various historical problems concerning Russia's past were stated and partly solved by different historical schools.

The history of the Russian language, for instance, constituted one of these problems: Vostokov laid its foundation; Buslaev studied it in connection with the general evolution of Russian culture; and Shachmatov and Sobolevsky explained its evolution.

The critical school continued to develop itself in the works of Kachenovsky and other scholars. Krug had expressed his approval of the critical investigations of Kachenovsky's opponent, Pogodin, upon the Annals of Nestor; and Pogodin, in his turn, lent a helping hand to Kunik and Gedeonov at the beginning of their