POWER IN MIDDLE AGES: SOME ACTUAL TRENDS IN THE RUSSIAN MEDIEVAL STUDIES

The article presents an overview of the main trends in Russian medieval studies in the field of medieval power. There is a steady increase in the number of works on political history, the emergence of new research perspectives, and the expansion of the range of sources, including through archives in Russia and abroad. The dominant theme is the problem of the relationship between government and society. The attention of historians has shifted from confrontation to their cooperation. This tendency was clearly shown in the study of the history of order-representative assemblies. The influence of various social groups (local, regional, professional, corporate, and intellectual) on power indicates polycentrism as a characteristic feature of the medieval political structure. There is still interest in the history of the court as a «place of power» and the strategy of constructing a social support for the monarchy. The principles of dominance were established through ceremonies, celebrations, high ideas, and cultural practices. The history of the formation of the Etat modeme remains an important trend in the research of Russian historians. It is viewed through the prism of the transformation of the nature of the monarch’s power from private and personal to collegial and public-legal. Of particular interest are the forms of statehood in the Middle Ages and Early Modem history - empires / composites and ethno-national political formations. In recent years, historians’ attention has been drawn to the problem of the correlation between the processes of formation of the state and Nations, as well as the forms of identity of the medieval man. Great importance is attached to the terminology and adequate dictionary of the researcher of the political history of the Middle Ages.

medieval science in Russia, political history of the Middle Ages, history of medieval states’ formation, power and society, empires and ethno-national states, monarch’s court