Sergey Solovyov (historian)

[1] Solovyov studied in the Moscow University under Timofey Granovsky and traveled in Europe as a tutor of Count Stroganov's children until 1844.

In his opinion, the Russian statehood resulted from a "natural and necessary development" of numerous political and social forces, which he attempted to trace.

He took particular interest in the Time of Troubles and Peter the Great's reforms, which he described as temporary diseases of the organism of the Russian state.

In the words of the 2004 Encyclopædia Britannica, his History "wove a vast body of data into a unified and orderly whole that provided an exceptionally powerful and vivid picture of Russia's political development over the centuries.

The work inaugurated a new era in Russian scholarship with its depiction of Russia as evolving through organic and rational processes from a primitive, family-based society into a centralized, autocratic state".