1.2.2 Intellectual Elite in the Political Life of Europe (on the example of professional historians)
Oleg Aurov
Project Leader
Project period
2020-2025
Context of Research Project within a Subject of Human Capital
Assessing the role of intellectuals in political life is a significant part of the problem of human potential in the broadest sense. The high level of professional competence inherent in persons of intellectual professions directly affects the quality of human capital, but its role is not limited to this alone. Entering the system of power, intellectuals bring not only their professional competencies (knowledge and skills), but also individual (ideological, value, psychological and other) characteristics peculiar to their environment, which have a direct impact on both the content and nature of decisions made, and on the process of their adoption and, more broadly, on the style of political activity. In the case of historians (as one of the cohorts of intellectuals), the problem of the ‘reverse’ influence of the experience of real political activity on professional activity is also important, the reflection of political experience in the conceptual representations of historians of different eras – from the Antiquity and the Middle Ages to the present
Project Aim
Identifying general patterns of the processes of the relationship between intellectuals and power structures on the example of scientists (mainly historians) participating in the activities of state institutions
Project Objectives:
- Studying the influence of intellectuals in power (and more broadly – in socio-political activity) on their further professional activity
- Studying the influence of the specific professional and life experience of intellectuals on the participation of representatives of this group in power, from antiquity to government and parliamentary activities in Europe of the 19th – 20th centuries
- Studying the influence on the worldview of the highest representatives of the power vertical and on the practical politics of their time
Key Findings
2020
The main directions in the research of the stated problems have been determined, including the problems of intellectual elites (taking into account the correlation of the role of social origin, education and the influence of the social environment during intellectual and political activity), the influence of intellectual labor on political ideals and ideas, as well as on the ethos of political activity
2021
The main attention has been paid to the specifics of forming intellectual elites in the Middle Ages, the forms of their participation in the political life of their time, their role in the process of forming the foundations of national identity in Western and Central Europe, as well as the problem of analogues of this process in the national history of the same period. The forms of political propaganda that became widespread in the period preceding the appearance of modern mass media and their relationship with the tools of the 20th - early 21st centuries have been analyzed. A separate direction has been formed to study the forms of participation of intellectuals in the political life of the first half of the 19th century (on the example of the intellectual and political biography of F. Guizot, whose historical works, on the one hand, became a means of promoting his political ideas, and on the other hand predetermined a number of key areas of political reform in France during this period)
2022
The study of the phenomenon of the medieval ‘intellectual on the throne’ on the example of the King of Castile and Leon Alfonso X the Wise (1252-1284), previously practically not studied in domestic science, revealed an inextricable link between the political course and the intellectual pursuits of the ruler. It is established that many centuries before the emergence of modern nation-building technologies, Alfonso X and members of his academic circle predetermined a number of key elements of such technologies (constructing the past, a new ethnic identity, a language, and some others). It is shown that the studies of Alfonso X and his collaborators in the field of law led not only to the appearance of the first legislation in the medieval West in the spoken language, based on the most advanced concepts of university jurisprudence for its time, but also to the emergence of the concept of absolute monarchy, which became a reality in Spain only in the second half of the XVI century.
Publications
Tanshina, N. François Guizot: the Historian in Politics // Bulletin of St. Petersburg State University. History. 2021. № 4. C. 1161 – 1176. (accepted 05.06.2022). ISSN 1812-9323
Conferences
Round table Intellectual Elite in the Political Life of Europe (on the example of professional historians) (RU) (Moscow, Russia, September 14, 2020)
International conference Historian and the Power, Historian in Power: to the 800th Anniversary of Alfonso X the Wise (RU) (Moscow, Russia, September 20-23, 2021)