Historical Views of the Russian Peasantry: National Consciousness in the Nineteenth Century

Abstract

A sense of a common historical past is essential to the formation and development of national consciousness. This relation is established in two ways. First, a historical memory is in itself evidence of a certain degree of ethnic self-awareness. A common knowledge of the past is one of the elements of ethnic and, at a certain stage, national consciousness. Second, historical judgements serve as a source for the study of different aspects of national consciousness. Such sources permit us to identify the historical events and individuals that are committed to collective memory, the reasons for such, various ethnonyms, and so on. We may also discern the degree of national awareness in particular epochs, and the social classes and strata which had made national causes their very own, and so on.