scholarly journals “To Prevent the Destruction of Precious Archives”: The Draft of the Instruction on the Caucasus Military Historical Department Activities (1900)

2020 ◽  
pp. 1020-1033
Author(s):  
Tatiana A. Kolosovskaya ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Military History ◽  
Russian Empire ◽  
Main Concern ◽  
The Caucasus ◽  
Military Studies ◽  
Caucasus Region ◽  
History Of ◽  
Russian Military ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
The Military

This is the first publication of the draft of the instruction on Military Historical Department of the Caucasus Military District Stuff activities. It was worked out by the Head of the District Headquarters Major General N.N. Belyavsky in 1900. The document helps to establish the area of responsibility of the institution that was a party in the foundation of the archival fund in the Caucasus region of the Russian Empire. It shows that the main concern of the Military Historical Department was research. Its members collected materials on military history, thus providing the source base for writing academic papers on the history of the Caucasus integration in the Russian Empire. Its areas of work included archiving, museum activities, and publishing. The published document provides valuable data on the problem of perished materials of regional military archives on the example of the Caucasus Military District. It is important that all Caucasus regional military archives were given into the management of the Military Historical Department. According to the instruction its stuff oversaw documents storage, compiling scientific reference apparatus, and destruction of the expired papers. Thus, the Military Historical Department was the institution that was directly responsible for the destruction of old files in the archives of regimens, directorates, and headquarters in the Caucasus Military District. The document may interest those who study the history of military institutions of the Russian Empire or preservation of cultural heritage. The instruction secured to the department such activities as sorting out, description, and control of safekeeping of documents kept in Caucasus military archives, as well as their publication and acquisition, which helped to set the scientific base for Caucasus military history studies. In its functions, the Military Historical Department was the predecessor of the Russian Military Historical Society. The published document is stored in Russian Archive for Military History (Moscow) in the fond of the Imperial Committee for Military Studies.

scholarly journals The ‘Turkestan Generals’ and Russian Military History

2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-184 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Morrison
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
Military History ◽  
Russian Empire ◽  
Public Figures ◽  
History Of ◽  
Collective Biography ◽  
Russian Military ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
The Military

This article is a short collective biography of six so-called ‘Turkestan Generals’, all of whom played a prominent role in the Russian conquest and administration of Central Asia. These campaigns are usually seen as marginal to the military history of the Russian empire in the nineteenth century, but they were central to the reputations of three of the most prominent generals of the period, who became important public figures – Cherniaev, Skobelev, and Kuropatkin. The article shows that this was not accidental, but the product of a carefully constructed narrative in Russian military historiography.

European Experience in Organization of Military Libraries in the Russian Empire

2021 ◽  
Vol 70 (5) ◽  
pp. 525-538
Author(s):  
Anatoly M. Panchenko
Keyword(s):  
Russian Empire ◽  
Periodical Press ◽  
Legal Documents ◽  
Military Literature ◽  
European Experience ◽  
History Of ◽  
Russian Military ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
The Military ◽  
First Time

Due to the lack of comprehensive research in the area of use of the experience of military libraries in Europe, the article for the first time examines the ways of studying it and the forms of implementation when establishing military libraries in the Russian Empire. The purpose of the study is to identify the influence of Europe on the military librarianship in Russia.The author collected data from dozens of pre-revolutionary publications, articles from the military periodical press and regulatory documents that allowed to characterize the source base of the study as representative.The article presents the history of military libraries of European states. The results of research show that the main ways to obtain information about them were: the study of foreign military literature and the military periodical press; analysis of regulatory and legal documents (statutes, rules, manuals, regulations, catalogues) regulating the activities of these libraries; foreign business trips of officers and generals in order to familiarize themselves with the structure and functioning of foreign armies and their libraries; reports of Russian military agents; participation in international exhibitions of books and textbooks.The author revealed dozens of articles indicating that the experience of creating and operating of military libraries abroad was widely covered in the Russian military periodical press. The military Department of Russia closely followed these processes, adopting and implementing the best and useful of them taking into account Russian realities. The study of the creation of military libraries in Europe became a prerequisite for their organization in Russia. The European experience was reflected in the ways of budgeting and acquisition, in the forms of management and supervision over them, the formation of regulatory framework and in the variety of their types.The conducted research expanded the understanding of the state of military librarianship in European countries, about the ways of studying their experience by the Russian military Department and the forms of its practical application in the structure of military libraries of the Russian Empire.

HISTORY OF MEDICINE DEVELOPMENT IN TURKISTAN

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 63-67
Author(s):  
Mamarazok Tagaev ◽  
Keyword(s):  
History Of Medicine ◽  
Local Population ◽  
Russian Empire ◽  
Medicine Development ◽  
History Of ◽  
Russian Military ◽  
The Russian Empire

In the article, after the conquest of the Russian Empire in the province, hospitals were opened for the Russian military and turned them into a hospital. Opened hospitals in Tashkent, Samarkand and Kattakurgan and outpatients for women and men. However,the local population, fearing doctors in uniform, did not want to contact them and turned to healers and paramedics

scholarly journals World War II in modern interpretations of Russian and Polish politicians

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 82-90
Author(s):  
Boris Valentinovich Petelin ◽  
Vladilena Vadimovna Vorobeva
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Russian Empire ◽  
European Countries ◽  
The Political ◽  
Mutual Respect ◽  
World War ◽  
Red Army ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
The Military

In the political circles of European countries attempts to reformat the history of World War II has been continuing. Poland is particularly active; there at the official level, as well as in the articles and in the speeches of politicians, political scientists and historians crude attacks against Russia for its commitment to objective assessments of the military past are allowed. Though, as the authors of this article mention, Russian politicians have not always been consistent in evaluation of Soviet-Polish relationships, hoping to reach a certain compromise. If there were any objections, they were mostly unconvincing. Obviously, as the article points, some statements and speeches are not without emotional colouring that is characteristic, when expressing mutual claims. However, the deliberate falsification of historical facts and evidence, from whatever side it occurs, does not meet the interests of the Polish and Russian peoples, in whose memory the heroes of the Red Army and the Polish Resistance have lived and will live. The authors point in the conclusions that it is hard to achieve mutual respect to key problems of World War II because of the overlay of the 18th – 19th centuries, connected with the “partitions of Poland”, the existence of the “Kingdom of Poland” as part of the Russian Empire, Soviet-Polish War of 1920. There can be only one way out, as many Russian and Polish scientists believe – to understand the complex twists and turns of Russo-Polish history, relying on the documents. Otherwise, the number of pseudoscientific, dishonest interpretations will grow.

PARTICIPATION OF WOMEN OF UKRAINE IN MILITARY FORMATIONS IN THE FIRST WORLD WAR: CURRENT HISTORIOGRAPHY

2019 ◽  
pp. 46-52
Author(s):  
Mariia Huk
Keyword(s):  
Military History ◽  
Russian Empire ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Participation Of Women ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
The Military ◽  
First World ◽  
The Way

The article is focuses on the study of the issues of participation of women of Ukraine in military formations in the First World War by modern Ukrainian historiography (1991-2016). Based on the topic, the author tried to solve the following research tasks: to identify which aspects of women's military history are within the interest of historians, to analyze the scale, character and level of research of the topic. The author found that the study of women's military history is gaining momentum. Historians are actively searching women's stories in the sources of those times; they are in the process of gathering information. They call military history “personal” because research on the subject is partially based on reports of the press about women volunteers and mainly on participants' personal documents, memoirs and letters. In the letters, women wrote about the way to the front, military life, a little about participation in battles, relations with soldiers; they also left information about each other. At the same time, each of the women had personal experience of war, own motives and results. Therefore, historians concluded that "this experience is quite difficult to summarize ". Modern researchers approach the study of women's stories not only in terms of heroism but trying to understand the causes and consequences of women's actions. The authors mention such main reasons as boredom of everyday life, escape from duties and national impulse. Inspired by the new fashionable views on life, the girls tried to escape from their everyday duties; they wanted to overcome social barriers and to prove that women were capable to cope with any work. The escape to the front was an attempt to change the way of life. Women who came to the front and participated in hostilities had to adapt quickly to difficult conditions and trials; they had to fight and to protect their own lives. The authors also analyze how society perceived the phenomenon of women in the war. Military commanders heroized their actions with the reason to raise the fighting spirit. However, the views of military men varied: the village guys welcomed and supported the girls; on the contrary, the men from the intelligent circle condemned women regarding them as competitors. Civil women believed that the girls had forgotten their traditional duty, they could have been more helpful in hospitals and doing charity. The author of the article also found that the participation of women in the military unit of the Legion of Ukrainian Sich Riflemen was better studied. The researchers concluded that the Ukrainian women who lived in the Russian Empire supported the call in 1917 of the Provisional Government and Maria Bochkareva to form women's combat battalions. Women were motivated to go to the front by the same reasons as women in the ranks of the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen: failures in love, the desire to escape from violence and humiliation in the family, domestic problems, the desire to avenge the dead relatives and loved ones. In big cities such as Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odessa, Poltava, the Ukrainian women willingly enrolled in the army. Anyway, the inclusion of women in the combat units of the army of the Russian Empire was found out fragmentary, there are almost no names and characteristics of the activity of the women's battalions. Only a few researchers pay attention to the messages in the then newspapers about escapes and the heroic deeds of girls in the war. These issues require the search of information and detailed study. The author came to the conclusion that most of the questions remain scientifically open requiring the search for information about women in the ranks of Ukrainian Sich Riflemen and the army of the Russian Empire for the generalization of information and creation of a coherent picture of the military service of women at the front of the First World War.

scholarly journals THE PROBLEM OF STUDYING THE MILITARY HISTORY OF THE HISTORY OF KAZAKHSTAN

2020 ◽  
pp. 568-574
Author(s):  
M.B. Magulov
Keyword(s):  
Military History ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Ruling Elite ◽  
Colonial Policy ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Regular Army ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
The Military ◽  
First World

This article examines the historical and military-historical research of Soviet, Kazakh and Russian scientists, the history of the creation of the armed forces on the territory of Kazakhstan, their formation and development. In Soviet historiography, the development of all national republics, especially their military history, was interpreted through the prism of the history of Russia or the Russian people. For many years, materials from this period (from the beginning of the 20th century until the collapse of the USSR) were not covered in the historical literature. For ideological reasons, the colonial policy of the Russian Empire was hushed up, especially during the First World War, when the "eastern aliens" were not drafted into the regular army, were used only in rear work, because the ruling elite did not trust them with weapons. This period has now begun to be viewed in a different way on the basis of new sources and began to acquire new content. At the same time, the author is guided by such a principle of scientific knowledge as historicism, consistency, comparatively comparable analysis and generalization.

scholarly journals Military Orientologist Schools in the Context of the Foreign and Military Policy of the Russian State in the Late 19th ‒ early 20th Centuries. [Review on:] Baskhanov M. K. A History of the Study of Eastern Languages in the Russian Imperial Army. Saint-Petersburg: Nestor-istoria, 2018. 632 p.

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 1189-1201
Author(s):  
M. D. Bukharin
Keyword(s):  
18Th Century ◽  
Special Role ◽  
Territorial Expansion ◽  
Imperial Russia ◽  
Military Schools ◽  
History Of ◽  
To Come ◽  
Russian Military ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
The Military

The territorial expansion of the Russian Empire in the 18th–19th cent. resulted in urgent need to study both the peoples of the newly acquired Eastern territories, which becameRussiaas well as and their neighbours. A special role in this process was played by the military servicemen who stationed on the borders. Since the second half of the 18th century in the Russian military schools was developed a system of teaching Oriental languages. In his recent monograph “The History of the Study of Oriental Languages in the Russian Imperial Army” (St. Petersburg: Nestor-Istoria; 2018) the author M. K. Baskhanov provides a detailed description of the history and teaching process in 24 Russian military schools where the cadettes were taught Oriental languages. M. K. Baskhanov outlines strengths and weaknesses of the teaching curricula, as well as the results gained by the Russian servicemen subject to this training. The author pays special attention to prospected plans in Orientalist training, which have never been implemented. The summary of M. K. Baskhanov’s research is that in spite of significant intellectual potential of the military specialists in Eastern countries their knowledge and experience were not used in full ‒ either in Imperial Russia or during the Soviet time. The monograph by M. K. Baskhanov is a remarkable piece of modern historical studies, which will be a reference book for many years to come for those who studyRussia’s foreign policy in 18th–20th cent.

scholarly journals Review of the Materials of the Baron F. F. Turnau’s Military Survey Expeditions on the Black Sea Coast of the Caucasus in the 1830s

2020 ◽  
pp. 664-675
Author(s):  
Dmitry S. Tkachenko ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Black Sea ◽  
Military History ◽  
The Black Sea ◽  
General Staff ◽  
The Caucasus ◽  
Russian State ◽  
Black Sea Coast ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Military ◽  
Sea Coast

The article analyses the corpus of documents from the fonds of the Russian State Military History Archive, formed in the 1830s during the General Staff officer Feodor Turnau’s expeditions of to the Black Sea coast zone, which lay outside the Imperial control. Although his activities among the Circassian tribes can be termed one of the best Russian secret scouting missions and his memoirs published in 1864 are still considered an important source for studying the military and political history of the region, materials and reports of the survey missions have never been examined in modern Caucasus studies. The author compares the data included by Turnau in his secret reports to the Imperial authorities with what he mentioned in his memoirs. It shows which issues the Imperial authorities and the Caucasus Army command were interested in during the Russo-highlanders confrontation of the second half of the 1830s. The materials collected by F. F. Turnau can be useful not only in terms of clarifying certain aspects of his personal activities, but also in demonstrating the running of secret survey scouting in unexplored and dangerous ethnic territories off the Imperial frontier. They show high erudition and good training of the candidates selected from the ranks of the General Staff officers to run these scouting missions. The correspondence of the Caucasus Army commander with the central authorities in St. Petersburg on the issue of Turnau’s captivity shows differences in their understanding of the Russo-Caucasus relations. The author comes to the conclusion that the corpus of collected materials on topography, ethnography, political and cultural description of the Transkubanian region peoples could have formed a basis for a revision of the Imperial stand on the subjugation of tribal groups. Although this political alternative was missed, the materials collected by Turnau became a precious addition to the Caucasus studies source base.

scholarly journals “Most of Them are Honourable”. Luigi Villari and the Armenians during the 1905-1906 Armenian-Tatar War

2021 ◽  
pp. 257-273
Author(s):  
Aldo Ferrari
Keyword(s):  
Russian Empire ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Negative Stereotypes ◽  
The Caucasus ◽  
The First World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
Popular Language ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
First World

Luigi Villari’s book Fire and Sword in the Caucasus, published in London in 1906, is widely quoted by scholars working on the history of Transcaucasia, in particular in respect to the Armenian-Tatar war. Yet neither this text nor its author have been so far studied in detail. The Italian Luigi Villari (1876-1959) is a figure of considerable interest; he was a diplomat, traveler, and journalist. His father, Pasquale Villari (1827-1917), was an accomplished historian and politician who played an important role in nineteenth-century Italy; Villari’s mother was the British writer Linda White (1836-1915). It is remarkable that the author wrote a book an English at a time when this was not a popular language in Italy. He wrote extensively both in English and Italian about different topics, mainly related to history and international politics. It has been shown that, after the First World War, Villari joined Fascism and contributed actively to the regime’s propaganda in Great Britain. The present paper examines Luigi Villari’s book on the Caucasus, especially the author’s attitude towards the Armenians. I shall demonstrate that in his work, he handles negative stereotypes of the Armenians (“one of the most unpopular races of the East”), which were common in the Russian empire at the beginning of the twentieth century, in a rather interesting way.

scholarly journals The Battle of Preussisch-Eylau: The Fate of Trophy French Flags (1807)

2019 ◽  
pp. 583-594
Author(s):  
Vadim V. Kinshin
Keyword(s):  
Military History ◽  
Russian Empire ◽  
Reliable Information ◽  
Complete Disappearance ◽  
History Museum ◽  
Temporary Storage ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
Preservation And Restoration ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
The Military

The article presents results of the study of the fate of Napoleon’s army flags taken by Russian troops in the bloody battle of Preussisch-Eylau on January 26-27, 1807. These trophies were considered especially valuable in the Russian Empire. As the eternal symbol of the glory of the Russian arms, they were placed in the Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg on February 3, 1807. However, from October 1812 they were thought to have been transferred to an unknown location and fate. Lack of reliable information, confirmed by archival documents, gave birth to several unreasonable inferences and hypotheses. Although the very possibility of a complete disappearance of valuable trophies is dubious, the issue has remained unstudied. The article is to establish the fate of the trophy flags. The study of scholarship on the Russian Imperial army, memories of the participants in the battle and regimental histories allow to establish the circumstances of the French flags capture and their exact number, while Kammerfurier journals provide information on their delivery to the cathedral. Documents found in the archives have illuminated the fate that befell these flags. Contrary to conventional belief, six trophy flags were brought to the capital with an escort of two platoons of the Horse Guards Regiment. It has been established that the Preussisch-Eylau trophies had not been transferred from the Peter and Paul Cathedral in 1812, but remained there until October 1906. As careful preservation and restoration was then needed, they were transferred to the Museum of Artillery History for temporary storage, until the Military History Museum was built. In March 1918, together with other museum valuables, they were evacuated to Yaroslavl, where four were burned during the suppression of the White Guard uprising. The vestiges of the remaining two were transferred to the State Hermitage Museum in 1948.

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