The past does not disappear, but continues to live on in the accumulated experience of social life. The generalisation and processing of accumulated human experience is the primary task of history. Historia est magistra vitae (‘History is the teacher of life’) - as the ancients used to say. Indeed, people always, especially during turning points in human history, try to find answers to the burning questions of the present in the giant laboratory of global social experience.
Historical examples teach people to respect eternal, enduring human values: peace, goodness, justice, freedom, equality, beauty, and love. I would like to recall an ancient aphorism: ‘Lies in the interpretation of the past lead to failures in the present and prepare for disaster in the future.’ History is one of the most important forms of human self-awareness. Opposing political forces seek to take advantage of historical experience. They justify their actions by referring to history.
Therefore, there is a constant struggle between different ideas and opinions in the interpretation of certain historical events. People's interest in the results of studying their past gives certain grounds for scepticism towards history as a science that objectively evaluates events and laws of historical development. It is often said that history is used to justify the goals of political struggle, that each generation and each party rewrites history, that it is ‘politics turned into the past.’ The view is expressed that the past can only be objectively understood by isolating oneself from the present. Sceptics also argue that in the age of scientific and technological revolution, history will only become a science when it adopts the methods and mathematical precision of the natural sciences.
Finally, the idea that it is impossible to reconstruct the irretrievably lost past due to the unrepresentative nature of the surviving data on events that actually took place is cited as an argument for the invalidity of history as a science. And yet, despite the pluralism both in answering global questions about the development of humanity and in interpreting individual facts, there is an objective truth. The task of scientific knowledge is not to accuse, but to study the past and explain it. The search for truth in history, historical knowledge, is a complex, laborious and interesting process that requires both an understanding of the peculiarities of this knowledge and a certain professional skill.
A historian cannot write without anger and bias, but he has no right to deceive, distort or conceal the truth. The search for and affirmation of truth has always been the main goal of science. As the social memory of humanity, the repository of its social experience, history passes this truth from one generation to another. And the interpretation of this experience makes it the property of the present.
Contrary to the opinions of sceptics, the role of historical science in people's lives is growing. Historians study the past not to escape the present. History serves the present by explaining today and providing material for predicting the future. Historical science attempts to provide a holistic view of the historical process in the unity of all its characteristics.
In this, it is no different from other sciences. As in other sciences, history involves the accumulation and discovery of new facts, the refinement of theory taking into account developments in other fields of knowledge (cultural studies, historical psychology, sociology, etc.), methods of processing and analysing sources... for example, the application of mathematical methods. Many facts, events, and phenomena of our history are now assessed differently than they were 25-30 years ago, with the discovery of new sources, the broadening of our horizons, and the improvement of theoretical knowledge. All this is evidence that history is being rewritten not only for political reasons, but also in response to the expansion of our knowledge of the past.
It is impossible to create a new world without taking into account the past — people have known this throughout history. Comprehensive scientific research into the material and spiritual culture of the past makes us richer and smarter, more generous and insightful in our thoughts and deeds, in our plans and achievements. All this testifies to the fact that knowledge of history allows us to understand the present more clearly, but the present, in turn, sets the task of achieving the most accurate scientific understanding of the past, which has not only moral but also practical value. It has long been noted that even stones speak, if they are stones of history.
The probability of conclusions is an essential feature of scientific knowledge. History as a science operates with precisely established facts. As in other sciences, history involves the accumulation and discovery of new facts. These facts are extracted from historical sources. Historical sources are all the remnants of past life, all evidence of the past.
Currently, there are four main groups of historical sources: 1) material; 2) written; 3) pictorial (pictorial-graphic, pictorial-artistic, pictorial-natural); 4) phonetic. Historians, studying historical sources in their entirety, do not have the right to ‘play’ with facts. They examine all facts without exception. The collected factual material requires explanation and clarification of the reasons for the development of society.
This is how theoretical concepts are developed. Thus, on the one hand, knowledge of specific facts is necessary, and on the other hand, the historian must comprehend the entire set of facts in order to identify the reasons for the regularities of society's development. At different times, historians have explained the causes and patterns of our country's history in different ways. Since the 1st century, chroniclers have believed that the world develops according to divine providence and divine will.
With the advent of empirical, rationalistic knowledge, historians began to look for objective factors as the determining force of the historical process. Human nature, human society and the nature of the country are the three main forces that shape human coexistence.