Review of the collective monograph "Dissertation culture of the Russian historical and scientific community: experience and practice in the preparation and defense of dissertations (19th - early 20th century)" (Moscow - Saint Petersburg, 2022)

The article contains a description and analysis of a collective monograph dedicated to the formation of professional historians in pre-revolutionary Russia. A description of the main definition of this work («dissertation culture») according to the authors of the monograph is presented. The monograph explored and reconstructed the main elements of dissertation culture: dissertation preparation, examination, and dispute (defense). The authors also showed the influence of dissertation defenses on the career of dissertators and their place in the historical and scientific community of pre-revolutionary Russia. The review contains a description of the types of sources used and some theoretical approaches, as well as the structure of the monograph. It is emphasized that the authors of the collective monograph created and analyzed a database of 409 dissertations on history defended at Russian universities in the 19th and early 20th centuries. An attempt was made to create a collective portrait based on the identified information about 280 dissertations authors. A quite convincing picture of the development of the scientific and historical community in pre-revolutionary Russia was obtained based on this metadata. Some comments are made on the content of the monograph, including aspects not studied by the authors. In general, this work deserves high praise and significantly contributes to the development of modern historiography as a direction of intellectual history about the formation of historians in pre-revolutionary Russia as well as the practices and experience of creating, examining and defending dissertations.