The serfdom in Russia: The historiographic aspect

The article deals with russian and foreign historiography devoted to the serfdom in the Russian Empire. The attention is paid to economic and legal aspects of serfdom, gender studies, and historical and comparative research. There were involved the materials of Soviet, russian and foreign historiography, namely the works published since the second half of the XX-XXI centuries. The authors used the methods related with the history of science while the analysis of historiographical sources. So, there was applied the culturalanthropological method that involves the disclosure of the author's position of historiographical source in the problem statement and selection of arguments in defense of his point of view. Besides, there was applied the method of discourse analysis, which involves the establishment of correlation between the content of historiographical source, the results of scientific research and socio-cultural context of the development of historical events and processes. The authors concluded that today the study of serfdom in Russia continues to attract researchers in the fields of history, economic history and history of law. Along with the economic and legal aspects, the great importance is given to the topics related to gender issues among dependent classes, as well as historical and comparative studies that examine serfdom and slavery in other territories. Copyright © 2017 by Sochi State University. Copyright © 2017 by Academic Publishing House Researcher s.r.o.