The article deals with the phenomenon of French historical epistemology and Gaston Bachelard's role in its theoretical and institutional establishment. It analyses the place of history of sciences in French historical epistemology, which was considered in France as epistemology perse from the beginning of XX century. The article accompanies first Russian translation of Bachelard's lecture "Topicality of the History of Science" and argues that this text represents Bachelardian program for reformation of scientific history as an academic discipline. The importance of (...) this text for French epistemological tradition bases on, firstly, the analysis of methodology of the historical investigation, which subject is a scientific discipline, and secondly, historian's and epistemologist's theoretical approaches. (shrink)