Professional reflection of the historian and the canon of scientific and qualification research in contemporary Russian science

The article is devoted to the problem of the impact of the “historiographic revolution” occurred at the turn of the XX-XXI centuries to the dissertation culture of contemporary Russian historians. The study is based on the full-text collection “Electronic library of dissertations of the Russian State Library”, an online resource. On the example of doctoral dissertations on Russian history defended in 2015-2019, the author examines the priorities of Russian historians in choosing problematics and chronological framework of scholarly works, analyzes theoretical and methodological foundations of their studies as well as their ideas about the social mission of history. She proves that most authors of doctoral dissertations choose the post-reform or Soviet period of Russian history for study, and highlights two blocks of priority topics: the history of state policy and governance, and social history. An analysis of the methodology of dissertations (scientific and qualification works) led to the conclusion that the nature of Russian historical science has changed as a result of an anthropological turn, which allows us to take a fresh look at the problems of political, economic and social history. Historians are increasingly setting the task of understanding people of the past in the whole variety of their mental structures, social connections, strategies and practices, both in everyday situations and in extreme conditions. But in practice, writing a dissertation requires not only a high degree of professional reflection, but also the ability to fulfil the formal requirements for scientific and qualification work: original ideas are sometimes difficult to fit into template, cliched formulations that have become generally accepted in the scholarly community.