SUMMARY:

This is the Russian translation of the introduction and first chapter of The History Manifesto by Jo Guldi and David Armitage (http://historymanifesto.cambridge.org/). The main focus of the book is a critique of the shortage of long-term thinking that, according to the authors, characterizes the social imagination of our time and the dominant mode of history writing. They propose the return to a longue durée history as a tool of social analysis directed toward the future. In a crisis of short-termism, Guldi and Armitage claim, our world needs somewhere to turn for information about the relationship between past and future. History – as a discipline and a subject matter – is an ideal candidate for the job, just the arbiter we need at this critical time.
The authors contend that thinking about the past in order to see the future is neither particularly difficult nor new. In chapter 1 they examine the historiography of the longue durée and socially concerned versions of history, mapping the rise and fall of long-term thinking among historians. They suggest their own understanding of how thinking about the long past helps to envision alternative possibilities in the future.