Home – Home – Jornals – Humanitarian sciences in Siberia 2017 number

The article analyzes historians’ position in the scientific dispute about false urbanization in the history of Russia/USSR. Generalization of its results is determined by the significance of national historical urban studies development. The problem field of the article includes a study of negative interpretations (concepts of M.G. Meerovich, V.A. Isupov, A.S. Ivanov, I.N. Stas, M.N. Baldano), as well as the positive estimations of the Russian urbanization (theories of A.S. Senyavskii, S.S. Bukin, V.I. Isaev, A.Yu. Ilyin, O.V. Gorbachev). Research methodology of the article is based on principles of synthesis of the historiographic analysis and socio-cultural anthropology that contribute to understanding the historiography as a social scientific phenomenon to reproduce research activity of scientists with different self-identity, determined by their scientific schools and conceptual-theoretical orientation. The author comes to conclusion that historians unanimously interpret urbanization in Russia as unfinished process. However, the dispute essence lies in assessing results and understanding driving actors of urbanization. At the same time, the author believes that because of the relative youth of the urban history and rarity of generalizing works on urbanization in Soviet Russia, disparate opinions have not really attained a discussion form. Starting in 1990s, the dispute did not become a full-fledged scientific discussion in the form of conferences, seminars or series of scientific articles in particular journals, but rather took the form of correspondence exchange. A wide range of issues persists, that are rarely examined by historians in order to analyze urbanization processes. However it is important to study these issues for the sake of elaborating conceptual-theoretical models of urban development.