scholarly journals On guard of the Eastern borders. – Book review: Dmitriev, A.V. (2017). Russkaya regulyarnaya armiya v Sibiri (1725–1796 gg.): osobennosti voennoi sluzhby na «vostochnoi okraine» Rossiyskoi imperii v XVIII stoletii [Russian Regular Army in Siberia (1725–1796): Features of Military Service on the “Eastern Outskirts”of the Russian Empire in the 18th Century]. Mocsow, Saint-Petersburg, Tsentr gumanitarnykh initsiativ. 528 p.

Author(s):  
I.P. Kamenetskiy ◽  
Author(s):  
Anton Matveev

The article is devoted to the organization and activities of the Central Snitch Squad at the Saint-Petersburg Security Department for ensuring the security of the head of state in the Russian Empire. The normative basis for the activities of agents of the Central Snitch Squad and the specifics of implementation of their job descriptions are described in the article. The Central Snitch Squad was a separate division of the Search and Surveillance Service of the Russian Empire, which solved the various and most complex tasks of search-and-surveillance. The Central Snitch Squad operated until the fall of the monarchy in February 1917, but the experience gained by it in fulfilling tasks of national importance continues to be used in modern Russia. At the same time, the issues of the organization and functioning of the Central Snitch Squad have not received a comprehensive analysis yet. One of the activities of the Central Snitch Squad, which has not received proper coverage in historical and legal literature, is the protection of imperial majesties in the Russian Empire at the beginning of the 20th century. Therefore, its regulation and implementation has become the subject of this article. The main and integrating method of research on the organization and activities of the Central Snitch Squad was the method of materialist dialectics. General logical (deduction, induction, analysis and synthesis), general scientific (systemic, structural-functional, typologization) and special (formal-legal, historical-legal, comparative-legal, interpretations of regulatory legal acts, sociological and statistical) methods of legal research were used. It was concluded that the protection of imperial majesties and the highest persons in the Russian Empire was one of the most important areas of activity of the gendarmerie. The simultaneous existence of three different divisions that guarded the emperor ‒ the Central Snitch Squad, the Security Unit and the Security Agency led to duplication of agents activities and inconsistent actions of the units. The Central Snitch Squad of the Saint-Petersburg Security Department has accumulated a variety of search-and-surveillance experience that can be used to solve problems of national importance in modern Russia.


Author(s):  
Maksim Anisimov

Heinrich Gross was a diplomat of the Empress of Russia Elizabeth Petrovna, a foreigner on the Russian service who held some of the most important diplomatic posts of her reign. As the head of Russian diplomatic missions in European countries, he was an immediate participant in the rupture of both Franco-Russian and Russo-Prussian diplomatic relations and witnessed the beginning of the Seven Years' War, while in the capital of Saxony, besieged by Prussian troops. After that H. Gross was one of the members of the collective leadership of the Russian Collegium of Foreign Affairs. So far there is only one biographic essay about him written in the 19th century. The aims of this article are threefold. Using both published foreign affairs-related documentation and diplomatic documents stored in the Archive of the Foreign Policy of the Russian Empire, it attempts to systematize the materials of the biography of this important participant in international events. It also seeks to assess his professional qualities and get valuable insight into his role both in the major events of European politics and in the implementation of the foreign policy of the Russian Empire in the mid-18th century. Moreover, the account of the diplomatic career of H. Gross presented in this essay aims to generate genuine interest among researchers in the personality and professional activities of one of the most brilliant Russian diplomats of the Enlightenment Era.


Author(s):  
Utash B. Ochirov ◽  

The article examines activities of Turko-Mongols to have inhabited the Great Steppe and adjacent territories in the military service of Russia throughout the 18th and early 19th centuries. The period witnessed the employment of ethnic military units of irregular cavalries Russian army recruited from the Mongolian-speaking Kalmyks and Buryats, Turkic-speaking Bashkirs, Teptyars, Mishar and Tatars. The work focuses on the largest ethnic military forces ― those of the Kalmyks and Bashkirs. Despite Russian forces were reorganized to from a regular army in the early 18th century, the latter still contained significant irregular components, including ones recruited from Turko-Mongols. Initially, the ethnic groups had served as independent military contingents with traditional structures, tactics, and weapons, but by the late 18th century all ethnic forces were clustered into Don Cossack-type regiments. In the first part of the article, published in the previous issue, the features of military service of the Kalmyks and Bashkirs in their usual habitat ― in the Great Steppe were considered. The second part of the article analyzes the actions of the Turkic-Mongol cavalry in the three largest wars of Russia in the XVIII-early XX century. XIX centuries. (The Northern, Seven-Year War, the Patriotic War of 1812 and the Foreign Campaign of 1813–1814). Rational approaches and command of the ethnic units would yield good results ― both in Eurasian plains and European battlefields. The use of ethnic forces within the Russian army not only saved essential financial and physical resources for the defense of large territories and dramatically long frontiers but also facilitated further integration of their elites into the Empire’s community.


Author(s):  
K.Yu. Anders-Namzhilova

The article describes the problem of searching for unknown manuscripts in the study of new spiritual literature that occurred in the Russian Empire at the turn of 18th century. The documents of Moscow Ecclesiastical Censor’s Archive are the main information source of church and religious materials written during that period. The Moscow Ecclesiastical Censor was the first specialized authority established by Synod in 1799 for considering the religious compositions. Compositions which were banned by censors couldn’t be printed and for this reason they become unknown even for modern scientific society. However, a lot of these compositions weren’t lost: they are kept in manuscripts which are dispersed throughout different archive and library funds, that’s why they cannot be attributed without the engagement of the censor committee’s archive documents.


2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 122-126
Author(s):  
Gulbanu Bolatovna Izbassarova

The Kazakhs Junior Horde, due to external - internal political reasons was the first one who became the part of Russian Empire. Chinggizid Abulkhair was an initiator of the Kazakh society incorporation into the structure of the Russian Empire. The aggravation of the Kazakh-Bashkir, Kazakh-Kalmyk, Kazakh-Dzungar relations leads to a search for a strong overlord. At the beginning of the 18th century, after the Prut campaign, the interests of the Russian Empire moved from the Black Sea to Asia, which is south-east direction. Formation of the imperial concept, change in the concept of Russias historical mission on the international scene forms new strategic and political aims of the Russian Empire. The Academy of Sciences founded in 1724 by the emperor Peter I as well as representatives of local administrations started to explain to the Russian public the acquisition of new lands policy. The reflection of this event to the Russian historiography of the XVIII-XIX centuries is studied in this article. The attention is paid to the study of a concept of citizenship, an interpretation of its character, assessment of the Kazakh khan Abulkhair, the accession initiator by pre-revolutionary historiography representatives. The article considers views of P.I. Rychkov, A.I. Levshin, who are for the first time in their writings, on the basis of archival, authentic sources, gathered a wealth of factual material, scientifically substantiated opinions on the issue of incorporation.


Author(s):  
Nathan Spannaus

Following the Russian conquests of the 16th century, ulama became the foremost social authorities for Volga-Ural Muslims. Tsarist efforts at governing the Muslim population increasingly focused on them in the 18th century, with greater tolerance and state support for Islamic institutions alongside a co-optation of scholars’ authority. In 1788, the Orenburg Spiritual Assembly was founded, placing all ulama under a hierarchy controlled by the state. The Spiritual Assembly offered stability and permanence to Islamic institutions, allowing for a flourishing in Islamic scholarship, but it also transformed the ulama and application of Islamic law. This chapter addresses Muslims’ shifting relationship to the Russian state and the structural changes to Islamic institutions, and how this impacted scholarship. Focusing specifically on ulama in the 18th and early 19th centuries, it places Qursawi’s life and career within this context, particularly his education, the formation of his thought, and his condemnation in Bukhara for heresy.


Author(s):  
Adrian Brisku

Four-centuries-long encounters between the Ottoman Empire and the Grand Duchy of Muscovy/Russian Empire point to complex relations that have been triggered and defined mostly by territorial, trade disputes, and wars, and maintained by diplomatic rivalry and occasional military alliances. Starting as friendly encounters during Sultan Bayezid II reign at the beginning of the 16th century, these relations, essentially and persistently asymmetrical, reveal an initial and long Ottoman dominance over the Muscovy/Russian side; one that lasted from the early 16th to the late 18th century—whereby the two sides shared no direct borders, traded and did not fight each other until the late 17th century—followed by a late 18th-century and mid-19th-century Russian ascendency. This ascendency was achieved largely thanks to the military reform that Tsar/Emperor Peter the Great undertook, namely, the establishment of a standing and professional army and consequentially due to the many wars that Russia won throughout the 19th century; the decisive ones being those fought during the reign of Empress Catherine the Great. The mid-19th century and the early 20th century—which witnessed the implosion of the Russian Empire due to the Bolshevik Revolution and the break-up of the Ottoman Empire by Britain and France—was a long period that saw few and brief military alliances, contested trade relations and yet continued wars. It was ultimately marred by an Ottoman drive to counterbalance Russia’s dominance, while the latter sought to preserve it, by involving other European powers (British and French)—the most crucial moment being the British, French, and Ottoman armies defeating the Russian one in the Crimean War (1853–1856)—transforming their bilateral interactions into multilateral but unsustainable relations.


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