contemporary history


contemporary history

the study of contemporary events (i.e. events within living memory) using historical methods, including traditional methods such as documentary analysis as well as newer approaches such as ORAL HISTORY (see also HISTORY). Although the idea of contemporary history may appear paradoxical, and it faces difficulties such as prohibitions in the availability of key documents, contemporary history is a valid and scarcely new approach, in that historians have always studied the recent past.

Contemporary History

 

according to the periodization of world history accepted by Marxist historiography, the period beginning with the Great October Socialist Revolution of 1917 in Russia.