This article is about the Russian historian. For the rabbi, see
Aharon Gurevich.
Russian historian (1924–2006)
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Aron Yakovlevich Gurevich (also spelled Aaron GurevichRussian: Аро́н Я́ковлевич Гуре́вич; May 12, 1924 – August 5, 2006) was a Russian
medievalist historian, working on the European culture of the
Middle Ages.
Gurevich's work was informed by
Jacques Le Goff and
Georges Duby, and he considered himself a member of their
Annales School. He was also influenced by ideas of
Mikhail Bakhtin, challenging some of them at the same time. Gurevich's work was considered anti-
Marxist and met with hostility in the
Soviet Union, but enjoyed support abroad among the Annales School, although he was not allowed to travel abroad before
Perestroika. He won the 1988
International Nonino Prize in Italy.
Life and career
Aron Gurevich was born in Moscow on May 12, 1924, to a
secularJewish family.[1] In 1946 he graduated from the
Moscow State University.[2] He initially specialized in Scandinavian languages.[3] In 1950 after defending his
dissertationPeasantry of South-Eastern England during the pre-Norman period he became a
Candidate of Sciences[2] and a lecturer of
Kalinin State Pedagogical Institute (now
Tver State University),[2] a provincial posting he was relegated to, and which he held from 1950 until 1964.[3]
In 1962 Gurevich received a
Doktor nauk degree at
Leningrad University.[2] His doctoral thesis was Overview of Norway's social history in IX–XII centuries. It was the first doctoral thesis in Soviet Union completely dedicated to
Viking history.[2] His career would suffer notably from the fact that he was Jewish, something that spelled considerable difficulties for scholars within the Soviet Union at that time.[4]
Aron Gurevich returned to Kalinin and became a professor in 1963.[2]
In 1966 Gurevich joined Moscow Institute of Philosophy, but he was fired after publishing Problems in the Origins of Feudalism in Western Europe (Problemy genezisa feodalizma v zapadnoi Evrope(1970)), where he contested the theory on origins of
feudalism adopted in
Marxist historiography,[2] and was denounced for his employment of
structuralist methods. Thereafter on he was barred from academic teaching. He was employed in the Information Department of the
Institute for World History in Moscow until 1992.[2][5] He won the 1988
International Nonino Prize in Italy.
In 1989 during
Perestroika Gurevich was allowed to exit the country for the first time, and he lectured abroad in 1989–1991.
In 1993 he became a head of the Institute of the World History at the Moscow State University.[2]
Gurevich A. J. Categories of Medieval culture. Trans. by G. L. Campbell. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985.
ISBN0-7100-9578-3
Gurevich, Aron. Medieval Popular Culture: Problems of Belief and Perception. Trans. by János M. Bak & Paul A. Hollingsworth. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1990.
ISBN0-521-38658-6
^Mazour-Matusevich, Yelena (2005). "Writing Medieval History: An Interview with Aaron Gurevich". Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies. 35:1 (Winter 2005).
Duke University Press: 121–158.
doi:
10.1215/10829636-35-1-121.
^Harbana Mukhía, 'Aron Gurevich:A View from India', in Yelena Mazour-Matusevič,'Saluting Aron Gurevich: Essays in History, Literature and Other Related Subjects, 'in Alexandra Schecket Korros (eds.), Saluting Aron Gurevich: Essays in History, Literature and Other Related Subjects, BRILL 2010 pp.1-10, p.3.