Terminology of Russian History

An outstanding Russian scholar—historian Vasily Osipovich Klyuchevsky (1841–1911)—was an academic (and honorary academic of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences). He was a man of many interests and, besides the well-known lecture cycle “The Course of Russian History,” left remarkable works on the history of serfdom, estates/classes, finance, and historiography.

Today it is hard to imagine studying the university course “History of the Fatherland” without V. O. Klyuchevsky’s works. With Osipovich Klyuchevsky, his contemporaries cemented a reputation for a deep researcher, a brilliant lecturer, and an incomparable master of artistic language.

The combination of all three gifts in one person was an exceptional, perhaps even unique, phenomenon.

Outstanding Russian historian, student of S. M. Solovyov, academic (1900), honorary academic of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1908). In 1856–1860 V. O. Klyuchevsky studied at the Penza Theological Seminary; in 1861–1865—at the historical and philological faculty of Moscow University. After finishing university, he was left at the department “to prepare for the professorship degree.” And in 1871 V. O. Klyuchevsky entered a teaching chair for the first time, beginning to read lectures on Russian history at the Church-Historical division of the Moscow Theological Academy (he parted with it only in 1906). From 1879 to 1911, succeeding at the chair of his teacher S. M. Solovyov, V. O. Klyuchevsky taught the course of Russian history at Moscow University. In addition, for 16 years he lectured at the Alexandrov Military School, for as many years—at the Higher Women’s Courses of Gerye, and for 10 years—at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture. What a diverse audience! When teaching courses, it was necessary to constantly take into account different professional interests of future officers, future figures of culture and art, future servants of religious worship… Behind all of this stood daily intense labor of the teacher.