Olga Dobiash-Rozhdestvenskaya, Vladimir Yakubskiy and the problems of studying socio-economic history in their studies

Olga Dobiash-Rozhdestvenskaya (1874-1939) became a representation of the trend of accepting women into the university environment in the first half of the 20th century, especially into such disciplines as medieval studies. More than that, she can also be considered a scholar who contributed to the preservation of ties between European and Russia medieval studies at a time when it was difficult to do so on the eve of the World War II. It seems that some of the topics, which Dobiash-Rozhdestvenskaya developed, for example, the problems of agricultural development in Western Europe and of feudalism, especially in the context of the development of this topic in European science of that era, were not adequately covered. It is particularly important to pay attention to her works on agricultural technologies, which became a key topic for M. Blok in the process of formulating his idea of the High Middle Ages as an era of technological and economic breakthrough. These ideas became an extremely important element of the methodological approach to teaching history of the Middle Ages and the concept of medieval hierarchy, formulated by Vladimir Yakubskiy (1924-2013) at History of the Middle Ages Department of St. Petersburg State University. The consonance of her interests with the key topics of world medieval studies should be considered as an indicator of her characteristic breadth of thinking and practice in setting the most relevant and fundamental tasks.