{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.018571428571428572, 'fraction_numerical': 0.005238095238095238, 'mean_word_length': 5.072254335260116, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
The Ambiguities of the 18th Century

This excursus into 18th-century historiography has proven to be an exceptionally difficult assignment. On the one hand, no other field of Russian history has remained so faithful to the powerful founding narratives of state and ruler as the 18th century. At the dawn of the 21st century we remain nearly as beholden to the fundamental state-centered histories of Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin and Sergei Mikhailovich Solov¢ev as did historians of a century ago. Whether in the outpouring of biographies of Peter and Catherine, examinations of governing institutions, or the elaboration of the well-ordered police state, we continue to think along lines articulated by our intellectual forebears. Ten years after the fall, and with the collapse of Soviet-style class analysis, our corner of the profession finds itself, if anything, more preoccupied with rulers and the organization of state power than it has for some time. On the other hand, 18th-century studies has produced quite a lot of vibrant and thought-provoking scholarship during the past decade (a phenomenon that is perhaps not so visible to the broader field), a good deal of which embraces the interdisciplinarity that traditionally has defined dixhuitièmisme. The work of Viktor Markovich Zhivov, for example, has brought the study of literary language and literature squarely into the mainstream of cultural history, and in so doing has attracted readers from half a dozen disciplines. One sees in his most recent scholarship the early outlines of what might be termed a post-binary, or post-semiotic mode of interpretation.1 The enduring affinity for the hermeneutics and periodization of state-school historiography is entirely understandable, and, against the backdrop of the essentialist alternatives, not at all a bad thing. At a workshop a number of years ago James Cracraft made the salient observation that dating the dawn of Russian modernity with Peter and the imperial state endures because it makes so much sense, a position that he has elaborated in two books on the Petrine cultural