SUMMARY:

Alexander Kamenskii recognizes the importance of questions posed by Ben Eklof yet disputes his answers and approaches. He contextualizes from the insider’s perspective many of Eklof’s observations regarding the meaning of Western, especially American, historiography for Soviet historians. Kamenskii’s personal experience does not support a vision of a colonial Western historical corporation. In his view, situation in global scholarship is so complex and multifaceted that it cannot be described within the colonial paradigm presuming domination of one side upon the other. He redefines the topic of discussion as following: have Western and Russian russianists formed a common scholarly community or have not? The essay offers a thoughtful analysis of the Russian historical corporation which appears to be segmented not along the lines suggested by Eklof (central versus provincial universities, financial possibilities), but along ideological divides and professional orientations. This non-existing corporation failed to develop general conventions governing scientific procedures and criteria of their evaluations. The very boundary between expert knowledge and popular history is blurred in the nowadays Russia. Thus the fact that one part of this segmented community of Russian scholars has successfully integrated into the Western academic world while others stood behind, is only normal. Kamenskii suggests ways for internalization of Russian scholarship.