Aron Yakovlevich Gurevich (also spelled Aaron Gurevich ; May 12, 1924 – August 5, 2006) was a Russian

medievalist The asterisk ( ), from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek , , "little star", is a Typography, typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a star (heraldry), heraldic star. Computer scientists and Mathematici ...

historian, working on the European culture of the

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and ...

. Gurevich's work was informed by

Jacques Le Goff Jacques Le Goff (; 1 January 1924 – 1 April 2014) was a French historian and prolific author specializing in the Middle Ages, particularly the 12th and 13th centuries. Le Goff championed the Annales School movement, which emphasizes long-term ...

and Georges Duby, and he considered himself a member of their

Annales School The ''Annales'' school () is a group of historians associated with a style of historiography developed by French historians in the 20th century to stress long-term social history. It is named after its scholarly journal '' Annales. Histoire, S ...

. He was also influenced by ideas of

Mikhail Bakhtin Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin (; rus, Михаи́л Миха́йлович Бахти́н, , mʲɪxɐˈil mʲɪˈxajləvʲɪdʑ bɐxˈtʲin; – 7 March 1975) was a Russian people, Russian philosopher and literary critic who worked on the phi ...

, challenging some of them at the same time. Gurevich's work was considered anti-

Marxist Marxism is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a dialectical and materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to analyse class relations, social conflic ...

and met with hostility in the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

, but enjoyed support abroad among the Annales School, although he was not allowed to travel abroad before

Perestroika ''Perestroika'' ( ; rus, перестройка, r=perestrojka, p=pʲɪrʲɪˈstrojkə, a=ru-perestroika.ogg, links=no) was a political reform movement within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) during the late 1980s, widely associ ...

. He won the 1988 International Nonino Prize in Italy.

Life and career

Aron Gurevich was born in Moscow on May 12, 1924, to a

secular Secularity, also the secular or secularness (from Latin , or or ), is the state of being unrelated or neutral in regards to religion. The origins of secularity can be traced to the Bible itself. The concept was fleshed out through Christian hi ...

Jewish Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...

family. In 1946 he graduated from the

Moscow State University Moscow State University (MSU), officially M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University,. is a public university, public research university in Moscow, Russia. The university includes 15 research institutes, 43 faculties, more than 300 departments, a ...

. He initially specialized in Scandinavian languages. In 1950 after defending his dissertation ''Peasantry of South-Eastern England during the pre-Norman period'' he became a

Candidate of Sciences A Candidate of Sciences is a Doctor of Philosophy, PhD-equivalent academic research degree in all the post-Soviet countries with the exception of Ukraine, and until the 1990s it was also awarded in Central and Eastern European countries. It is ...

and a lecturer of Kalinin State Pedagogical Institute (now Tver State University), a provincial posting he was relegated to, and which he held from 1950 until 1964.Yelena Mazour-Matusevič, ',' in Yelena Mazour-Matusevič, Alexandra Schecket Korros (eds.),
''Saluting Aron Gurevich: Essays in History, Literature and Other Related Subjects,''
BRILL 2010 p.xiii. In 1962 Gurevich received a

Doktor nauk A Doctor of Sciences, abbreviated д-р наук or д. н.; ; ; ; is a higher doctoral degree in the Russian Empire, Soviet Union and many Commonwealth of Independent States countries. One of the prerequisites of receiving a Doctor of Science ...

degree at Leningrad University. 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 Vikings were seafaring people originally from Scandinavia (present-day Denmark, Norway, and Sweden), who from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries raided, pirated, traded, and settled throughout parts of Europe.Roesdahl, pp. 9� ...

history. 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. Aron Gurevich returned to Kalinin and became a professor in 1963. 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 Feudalism, also known as the feudal system, was a combination of legal, economic, military, cultural, and political customs that flourished in Middle Ages, medieval Europe from the 9th to 15th centuries. Broadly defined, it was a way of struc ...

adopted in

Marxist historiography Marxist historiography, or historical materialist historiography, is an influential school of historiography. The chief tenets of Marxist historiography include the centrality of social class, social relations of production in class-divided s ...

, 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. He won the 1988 International Nonino Prize in Italy. In 1989 during

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. In 1998 he became a foreign member of the

Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (, KNAW) is an organization dedicated to the advancement of science and literature in the Netherlands. The academy is housed in the Trippenhuis in Amsterdam. In addition to various advisory a ...

Publications

*Gurevich A. J. ''Categories of Medieval culture''. Trans. by G. L. Campbell. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985. *Gurevich, Aron. ''Medieval Popular Culture: Problems of Belief and Perception''. Trans. by János M. Bak & Paul A. Hollingsworth. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press was the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted a letters patent by King Henry VIII in 1534, it was the oldest university press in the world. Cambridge University Press merged with Cambridge Assessme ...

, 1990. ::Bornstein, Daniel
Review of ''Medieval Popular Culture: Problems of Belief and Perception'' by Aron Gurevich; János M. Bak; Paul A. Hollingsworth
'' Church History'', Vol. 59, No. 2 (Jun., 1990), pp. 234–235. ::Van Engen, John
Review of ''Medieval Popular Culture: Problems of Belief and Perception'' by Aron Gurevich
'' Journal of Social History'', Vol. 24, No. 1 (Autumn, 1990), pp. 164–167. ::Madigan, Kevin
Review of ''Medieval Popular Culture: Problems of Belief and Perception'' by Aron Gurevich; Janos M. Bak; Paul A. Hollingsworth
'' The Journal of Religion'', Vol. 70, No. 2 (Apr., 1990), pp. 254–255. *Gurevich, Aaron.
Historical Anthropology of the Middle Ages
'. Ed. by J. Howlett. Chicago:

University of Chicago Press The University of Chicago Press is the university press of the University of Chicago, a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. It is the largest and one of the oldest university presses in the United States. It pu ...

, 1992. ::Carruthers, Mary J
Review of ''Historical Anthropology of the Middle Ages'' by Aaron Gurevich; Jana Howlett
''

The American Historical Review ''The American Historical Review'' is a quarterly academic history journal published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical Association, for which it is an official publication. It targets readers interested in all period ...

'', Vol. 98, No. 4 (Oct., 1993), pp. 1220. ::Wylie, Jonathan
Review of ''Historical Anthropology of the Middle Ages'' by Aaron Gurevich
''

Ethnohistory Ethnohistory is the study of cultures and indigenous peoples customs by examining historical records as well as other sources of information on their lives and history. It is also the study of the history of various ethnic groups that may or may ...

'', Vol. 41, No. 2 (Spring, 1994), pp. 331–333. *Gurevich, Aaron.
The Origins of European Individualism
'. Trans. by K. Judelson. Oxford: Blackwell, 1995.

References

External links

*Mazour-Matusevich, Yelena & Svetlana Neretina (2006)
Obituary: Aaron Jakovlevich Gurevich
'' The Medieval History Journal'' 9 (2), v–viii. *Mazour-Matusevich, Yelena (2005)
Writing Medieval History: An Interview with Aaron Gurevich
'' Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies'' 35 (1), 121–157. * Le Goff, Jacques (2004)
Saluting Aron Gurevich
'' The Medieval History Journal'' 7 (2), 163–167. *Mazour-Matusevich, Yelena & Sean Bledsoe (2004)
On Concepts, History and Autobiography: An Interview with Aron Gurevich
'' The Medieval History Journal'' 7 (2), 169–197. *Ebner, Martin (1996)
Interview with Aron Gurevich
(in German) ''

Neue Zürcher Zeitung The (''NZZ''; "New Newspaper of Zurich") is German language daily newspaper, published by NZZ Mediengruppe in Zurich. The paper was founded in 1780. It has a reputation as a high-quality newspaper, as the German Swiss newspaper of record ...

'' 13.05.1996

Life and career

Publications

References

External links

See also