Philosophy of history by A.Ya. Gurevich (the experience of understanding the Marxist tradition)

The paper reviews the philosophy of history as a cognitive guideline for historical research and epistemology of historical knowledge in the scientific works of A.Ya. Gurevich, one of the prominent Soviet and Russian scientists. The author investigates the attempts of the world-renowned expert in medieval studies to comprehend the value principles of the Marxist tradition. A sequential analysis of Gurevich’s evaluation approaches to the theory of Karl Marx is carried out in the context of the long-standing domestic tradition of making reference to his research in the works of Russian leading historians. The fundamental studies of Professor Gurevich being of considerable interest to his contemporaries interpret the legacy of Marxist strategies of resistance to scholastically closed schemes of understanding the historical process. It is proved that the scientist has treated the categorical understanding of historical reality as a cultural and historical epistemological practice that specifies the subject matter of studies, updates their toolkit, poses new questions of historians, and opens up new unlimited opportunities.