The article studies the author's historiosophy of modern Russian writer V. Sharov, expressed in his essays on various subjects. Essays "Oprichnina Ivana Groznogo: chto eto takoe?" ("The oprichnina of Ivan the Terrible: What is it?") (1989), "Stolitsa i provintsiya: dva puti ponimaniya zhizni" ("The capital and the province: two ways of understanding life") (1999), "Mezh dvukh revolyutsiy. Andrey Platonov i russkaya revolyutsiya" ("Between two revolutions. Andrei Platonov and the Russian Revolution") (2005), "Narod Andreya Platonova" ("People of Andrei Platonov") (2010) reflect the attitude of V. Sharov to the aim, sense and logic of the development of Russian history. The main concepts in Sharov's reflections about Russian history are statehood, revolution, people, power. Russian statehood, from the point of view of Sharov's historical consciousness, is based on a certain idea, supported and developed by the people, the Church and the supreme authorities. The writer finds a single algorithm of history development associated with the formation of an idea, its interpretation by the authorities and the people, development and transformation into a utopian project. The formula of Russian history has predictable cycles of "high" and "low" revolutions, showing the teleological and Messianic nature of Russian history. The revolution, according to the writer, is not a phenomenon, an exception to the historical rule, but an organic matter, the meaning of Russian history. Revolutionary character of Russian history is in the interpretation of the original idea, in different understanding of the sense and aim by the supreme state power and by the people, the spiritual underground. This leads to the national schism, a tragic confrontation within the country. This is the modality of Russian history which is not a progressive building of a strong state, but a regressive tragic pursuit of a mirage, utopia which involves the whole nation. Russian history is a cyclically manifested revolutionary reform of the country's and the people's life that pursues utopian goals and leads into the abyss, madness, chaos. In V. Sharov's philosophy of history, man as the subject of history expresses the tragedy of private life and individual consciousness in the coordinates of a big idea. The perspective of the writer is associated with the perception of the text, the narrative, the words in history. In its own depths, it opens person's consciousness which verifies the proposed ideas and projects. In the diversity of historical narratives (history is finished stories, continuing stories, witnesses' description of an event, its interpretation), Sharov searches for and creates spiritual impulses of real people trying to return the meaning of life out of chaos, death, horror, oblivion, absurd in their individual word, not logistic and pragmatic projects. History preserves the traces of the presence of the individual, it has a memory. Sharov finds salvation in the resurrection of memory, recreation (albeit imaginary) of texts which disappeared in the abyss of the history of people trying to tell their truth and find meaning in an absurd historical reality.
