A special way: from ideology to the method

The idea of ​​the "Special Way" can be attributed to one of the "eternal" and at the same time purely "Russian" scenarios of national identification. In this collection, we would like to dispel this illusion, pointing out the relatively recent genesis and intellectual trajectory of the idi -weg idioms. For the first time published in Russian, the texts of leading German and English historians who studied the history of pre -war Germany in the future of the Nazi catastrophe open up new opportunities for the productive use of the metaphor of the "Special Way" - as the basis for the modern historiographical methodology. The comparative method helps to identify the specialty and community of each of the compared objects and thereby eliminates the teleologism of the macronarratic. We offer readers a whole set of historical cases and theoretical polemic - from the idea of ​​salvation in medieval Russia to "especiallyness" in modern political culture, from disputes around the Nazi catastrophe to criticism of the historiography of a special path in the 1980s. Reflection of the concept of "especiallyness" in Germany, Russia, Great Britain, the USA, Switzerland and Romania allows you to resemble in a new way to determine the problems of the traumatic birth of modernity