HISTORICAL WRITING: BETWEEN SCIENTIFIC THEORY AND HISTORICAL NARRATION

The issue puts the global question: what makes a work of professional historiographic writing and a narrator’s «telling a history» different? It is, first of all, a definitive indication of concerns of the study, suggestions of its theoretical grounds, identification of the topic’ explorations level and, finally, the definition of the research methodology. Without compliance with the above conditions a historical work might not claim the status of scientific research. The issue examines various works of historians who tried to respond to these questions and to offer innovative approaches towards historical description, focusing at the same time on the very peculiarity of the historical narrative. The author tries to respond to the challenge of his own study on Stalin as a criminal, a prisoner of State. The author comes to the conclusion that theories rather label the historian’s narratives than give a structure for them, as depending on a variety of subjective factors. In other words, the theories and narrations, the author insists, turn out to be totally different and separated fields. Everyone, after all, reads one’s own book and draws upon one’s own historical experience