EVOLUTION OF THE CONCEPTIONS OF SPACE AND TIME STRUCTURES’ REFLECTION IN THE EUROPEAN TRADITION OF HISTORIOGRAPHY

INTRODUCTION The historical science of modern times functions over 80 years already in the shade of French “Ècole des Annales”. Since 1929 it was considered an avant-garde of the most progressive trends in it, and never lost this status. This school is highly appreciated and regarded not only for its groundbreaking penetration into the research fields previously neglected by historians but also for its creation of generalizing conceptions of the past helping mankind to orientate itself in the space and time of the past 1 . The philosophical approach of the school wasn’t anything totally unpredictable but mainly continuing and developing the way of research outlined by Dutch historian Johann Huizinga in his work “The Autumn of the Middle Ages” (1919) 2 . From the very start it was threw in the field of cultural history and historiosophy never tied with historical science so tightly as from that time. In the period before history dared seldom to speak so freely about common trends of European civilization. Previously patriotically motivated and only partly belonging to the human race on whole, the historical science gradually moves since then up to the phase where just general history (“world history”) exists. The starting point was the ambitious attempt to prove the truly scientific character of history in the times when positivistic approach dominated and natural sciences were appreciated the highest. They provided the most important advancements during the period of arms race, and, of course, there was no idea that new ways of mankind’s self-identification towards the past would ever be of the same meaning. However the things have changed dramatically after the world wars’ period was over in the mid XX century. Since that time the significance of