Author: LI CHUIFA

(E. M. KOZHOKIN. THE HISTORY OF POOR CAPITALISM. FRANCE OF THE XVIII-FIRST HALF OF THE XIX CENTURY. MOSCOW: ROSSPEN, 2005. 368 p.)

LI CHUIFA 1

In China, the book "The History of Poor Capitalism" by the famous international expert, Director of the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies E. M. Kozhokin has been published in Chinese.

I've known Evgeny Mikhailovich for a long time. Recently, when he asked me to write a review of his book, I will not hide it, on the one hand, I was happy to undertake this review, but on the other hand, I was very worried. First of all, I am not a historian, but an economist. Secondly, my research profile is not a French question, but a Russian one. It's a big difference for me. The Chinese have a saying: "Show off your art to the master." But when I read the entire book in Chinese, many of the points and conclusions in it, and especially the author's research method, interested me.

It was immediately obvious that the author had made considerable efforts to use many unknown documents on the topic under study in the archives of Russia. This is a big scientific work. Based on an in-depth study of the socio-economic development of France in the 18th and first half of the 19th centuries, the author shows the history of the initial period of capitalism in France, reveals the content of the process of collision of capitalism, which acted as a new ideology, with the former political regime and the old ideology.

In research work, as you know, the research method is very important. After reading this book, you can see that the author did not study the history of capitalism in general, but only its history in one country - France, and took a relatively small but very important period, namely the XVIII-first half of the XIX century. This, in my opinion, is a good and effective research method. At the beginning of his book, the author writes: "Capitalism as a system has repeatedly overcome the accumulated alienation in society throughout its history. Moreover, every major crisis has pushed a significant part of citizens to try to get rid of this system, to create a fundamentally new one." According to the author," in order to understand what kind of society we will live in, it is necessary to consider the different phases of the development of capitalism, the specifics of socio-economic and socio-psychological processes","French capitalism was not like either American, English or German". The author concludes: "The political and social experience of France in the XVIII-XIX centuries was of exceptional importance for world development."

How do I study history? Scientifically and objectively, or vice versa, is a matter of principle, especially for a historian. The book under review, in my opinion, has a scientific and objective approach to history. As the author writes in his book, "a historian cannot and has no right to claim to change the social (or political) reality, and this is what distinguishes him from a political scientist, sociologist, economist, who analyze the living fabric of modern society, the impact on which is theoretically possible and ethically permissible. A historian in the course of his research is like a curator of a wax museum, he can brush the dust off them, change the angle of lighting, "move" them in space, but he can't make them dance, and if he tries, he will definitely break them."

According to the author, in Soviet times, ideology often hindered research on history. "Understanding of capitalism, which was carried out in the USSR, is partly significant to this day, but many questions fell out of the field of view of researchers: for the purpose of ideological self-preservation (consciously or unconsciously) they preferred not to raise it

1 Doctor of Economics, Chinese correspondent of the Jingji Zhibao newspaper in Moscow.

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"dangerous" questions. What is the current picture in this respect? The author writes: "Today we are defenseless against many of the abominations of capitalism, including because of our intellectual lack of weapons. Much that is fair from what was formulated within the Marxist tradition was urgently forgotten and rejected for reasons of sharply changed ideological and political conjuncture, on the other hand, what was not studied within the framework of this tradition did not fall into the focus of attention and new methodologies." This conclusion, in my opinion, is of great importance for current historical research.

I would like to mention the high level of Chinese translation of the book under review, carried out by well - known experts on Russian and international issues-Sun Run-yu and Tang Xiuzhe. They studied and then worked in Moscow for many years, so they know Russian perfectly.

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