The article analyses the crisis in the post-Soviet historical studies as a natural and objective stage of its development. The author considers the causes and consequences of that crisis in two key aspects: in a view of new themes of studies and in the connection with novel kinds of historical sources. Obviously, the lessons of the crisis lead the community of professional Russian historians to the reappraisal of the approaches and research methods of the most disputable problems of a contemporary history. According to the author, these approaches and methods should rest upon the interdisciplinary and comparative paradigm associated with modern computer data processing.