The book brought to your attention is a collection of articles by the major French historian Lucien Febvre (1878–1956), united in the work “Fights for History.” Febvre saw his main task in substantiating new principles of historical knowledge. The pathos of his work is the return to historical knowledge of the humanistic content that he had lost, the saturation of history with problems related to the life of modern society and dictated by its fundamental, deep-seated needs. Lucien Febvre waged “battles for history” with erudite historiography, hiding from reality behind catalogs with extracts from the ancients texts in which she was unable to sense living people. The collection demonstrates Febvre’s “battles for history”, for a new historical science in his understanding - “the science of man.” To help the reader, the publication is accompanied by an article by A. Ya. Gurevich, comments by D. E . Kharitonovich, as well as an index of names.

Contents: Fights for history Preface (1952) The court of conscience of history and the historian (1933) How to live history (1941) Facing the wind (1946) Collective research and the future of science (1936) )History or politics? (1930, 1945) History of Modern Russia (1933) Historicizing History (1947) From Spengler to Toynbee (1936) History and Psychology (1938) Sensibility and History (1941) Tribute to Henri Berru (1947) Marc Bloch and Strasbourg (1946) Feudal society (1940, 1941) The problem of “human geography” (1923) The Mediterranean Sea and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (1950) A General View of the Social History of Capitalism (1922) Capitalism and the Reformation (1934) The Merchant of the 16th Century (1921) Civilization: Evolution words and groups of ideas (1930) The main aspects of one civilization (1925) Folklore and folklorists (1939) How and why hagiographic themes arise (1932) Work: the evolution of words and concepts (1948) Reflections on the history of technology (1935) How Jules Michelet discovered the Renaissance (1950) The scientific impulse of the Renaissance (1937) Iconography and the preaching of Christianity (1914) A gigantic false rumor: The Great Fear of July 1789 (1933) A misstated problem: the origins of the French Reformation and its causes (1929) Witchcraft: stupidity or a revolution in consciousness? (1948) Appendix Lessons from Lucien. Fevra (A. Ya. Gurevich) Comments (D. E. Kharitonovich) Index of names