ABSTRACT
The leading historians of late Imperial Russia developed the discipline in a cluster around two 'schools' based in the two 'capitals', the so-called 'St. Petersburg school' and the 'Moscow school'. Few would deny Kliuchevskii the appellation of heading, if not founding, the Moscow school, while historians like Sergei Feodorovich Platonov, Aleksandr S. Lappo-Danilevskii and Aleksandr E. Presniakov worked within the traditions of the St. Petersburg school. The eminent Russian statesman and historian Vasilii Nikitich Tatishchev has been considered the 'father of modern Russian historiography' for his attempt to envision and narrate Russian history on a scale that was absolutely novel. Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin was the first Russian historian to be honoured by the title of 'State Historian' by Alexander I in 1803 and commissioned, on an annual stipend, to write a history of Russia from its earliest known past. Russian historiography acquired a professional quality from the nineteenth century onwards, from when most histories were written by scholars at universities.
