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

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

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 late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...

. 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 Georges Duby (7 October 1919 – 3 December 1996) was a French historian who specialised in the social and economic history of the Middle Ages. He ranks among the most influential medieval historians of the twentieth century and was one of Fran ...

, and he considered himself a member of their Annales School. 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 philosopher, literary critic and scholar who worked on literary theor ...

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

Marxist Marxism is a left-wing to far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict and a dialecti ...

and met with hostility in the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

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

Perestroika ''Perestroika'' (; russian: links=no, перестройка, p=pʲɪrʲɪˈstrojkə, a=ru-perestroika.ogg) was a political movement for reform within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) during the late 1980s widely associated wit ...

. 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 ''saeculum'', "worldly" or "of a generation"), is the state of being unrelated or neutral in regards to religion. Anything that does not have an explicit reference to religion, either negativ ...

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

family. In 1946 he graduated from the

Moscow State University M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU; russian: Московский государственный университет имени М. В. Ломоносова) is a public research university in Moscow, Russia and the most prestigious ...

. 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 Candidate of Sciences (russian: кандидат наук, translit=kandidat nauk) is the first of two doctoral level scientific degrees in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States. It is formally classified as UNESCO's ISCED level 8, "d ...

and a lecturer of Kalinin State Pedagogical Institute (now

Tver State University Tver State University (russian: Тверской государственный университет) is a university in the city of Tver and one of the largest universities in the Tver Oblast, of which Tver is the administrative center An a ...

), 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 Doctor of Sciences ( rus, доктор наук, p=ˈdoktər nɐˈuk, abbreviated д-р наук or д. н.; uk, доктор наук; bg, доктор на науките; be, доктар навук) is a higher doctoral degree in the Russi ...

degree at

Leningrad University Saint Petersburg State University (SPBU; russian: Санкт-Петербургский государственный университет) is a public research university in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Founded in 1724 by a decree of Peter the G ...

. 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 ; non, víkingr is the modern name given to 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 se ...

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 the combination of the legal, economic, military, cultural and political customs that flourished in medieval Europe between the 9th and 15th centuries. Broadly defined, it was a way of structu ...

adopted in Marxist historiography, 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 ( nl, Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, abbreviated: KNAW) is an organization dedicated to the advancement of science and literature in the Netherlands. The academy is housed ...

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 is the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by King Henry VIII in 1534, it is the oldest university press in the world. It is also the King's Printer. Cambridge University Pr ...

, 1990. ::Bornstein, Daniel
Review of ''Medieval Popular Culture: Problems of Belief and Perception'' by Aron Gurevich; János M. Bak; Paul A. Hollingsworth
''

Church History __NOTOC__ Church history or ecclesiastical history as an academic discipline studies the history of Christianity and the way the Christian Church has developed since its inception. Henry Melvill Gwatkin defined church history as "the spiritua ...

'', 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 ''The Journal of Social History'' was founded in 1967 and has been edited since then by Peter Stearns. The journal covers social history in all regions and time periods. Articles in the journal frequently combine sociohistorical analysis between ...

'', 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 ''The Journal of Religion'' is an academic journal published by the University of Chicago Press founded in 1897 as ''The American Journal of Theology''. The journal "embraces all areas of theology (biblical, historical, ethical, and constructive ...

'', 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 largest and one of the oldest university presses in the United States. It is operated by the University of Chicago and publishes a wide variety of academic titles, including '' The Chicago Manual of Style' ...

, 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 and the official publication of the American Historical Association. It targets readers interested in all periods and facets of history and has often been described as the ...

'', 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 n ...

'', 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 ''Neue Zürcher Zeitung'' (''NZZ''; "New Journal of Zürich") is a Swiss, German-language daily newspaper, published by NZZ Mediengruppe in Zürich. The paper was founded in 1780. It was described as having a reputation as a high-quality ...

'' 13.05.1996

Life and career

Publications

References

External links

See also