scholarly journals Predecessors of A. S. Shishkov at the Naval Cadet Corps

Author(s):  
Dmitrii V. Rudnev ◽  

Despite the extensive literature on A. S. Shishkov’s linguistic views, the question of their sources has not yet been resolved. This article considers Shishkov’s views on language in the context of the cultural atmosphere in the Naval Cadet Corps in St. Petersburg. The upbringing of future marine officers was strongly influenced by the English naval science, which, apparently, left its mark on the cultural life of the Corps. In the last quarter of the 18th century, the Corps was dominated not by the Gallomania inherent in Russian high society, but by traditionalist views. An example of such traditionalism is the attitude of the Corps inspector V. V. Nikitin and his assistant P. I. Suvorov, who taught mathematics and a number of other disciplines, toward language. They put their linguistic views into practice in their two textbooks on mathematics — Euclidean elements and Two books of trigonometry where they translated all mathematical terminology into Russian. Moreover, they expounded their views in the introduction to the Euclidean elements. Based on the materials of the Russian State Naval Archive, the article traces the complex publishing history of these textbooks and their further fate. For over ten years, from the first half of the 1780s to the mid-1790s, Nikitin and Suvorov were spreading their linguistic views through their math textbooks and while teaching cadets. Shishkov, who served and taught at the Naval Cadet Corps in the 1770–1780s, was undoubtedly familiar with these views. Some features of his point of view on language suggest that it could be influenced by the linguistic views of his colleagues from the Naval Cadet Corps.

Author(s):  
Tatiana Feklova

The history of the Russian Magneto-Meteorological Observatory (RMMO) in Beijing has not been extensively researched. Sources for this information are Russian (the Russian State Historical Archive, Saint Petersburg Branch of the Archive of the Academy of Sciences, Russian National Library) and Chinese (the First Historical Archive of Beijing, the Library of the Shanghai Zikavey Observatory) archives. These archival materials can be scientifically and methodologically analyzed. At the beginning of the 18th century, the Russian Orthodox Mission (ROM) was founded in the territory of Beijing. Existing until 1955, the ROM performed an important role in the development of Russian–Chinese relations. Russian scientists could only work in Beijing through the ROM due to China’s policy of fierce self-isolation. The ROM became the center of Chinese academic studies and the first training school for Russian sinologists. From its very beginning, it was considered not only a church or diplomatic mission but a research center in close cooperation with the Russian Academy of Sciences. In this context, the RMMO made important weather investigations in China and the Far East in the 19th century. The RMMO, as well as its branch stations in China and Mongolia, part of a scientific network, represented an important link between Europe and Asia and was probably the largest geographical scientific network in the world at that time.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1119-1130
Author(s):  
Ivan A. Ladynin ◽  

The article presents a publication of the letter from Vasily Vasilievich Struve (1889–1965), pioneer in the research of the Ancient Near East societies in the Soviet Union, to Mikhail Ivanovich Rostovtzev (1870–1952), the prominent Classicist, one of the first scholars in socio-economic history of the Antiquity in pre-revolutionary Russia. The letter was written during Struve’s post-graduate sabbatical in Berlin in 1914; it is stored in the Russian State Historical Archives in St. Petersburg. The document is significant due to its information on Struve’s stay in Berlin and on his contacts with leading German scholars (including Eduard Meyer and Adolf Erman), but it also touches upon a bigger issue. In the early 1930s Struve forwarded his concept of slave-owning mode of production in the Ancient Near East, which was immediately accepted into official historiography, making him a leading theoretician in the Soviet research of ancient history. It has been repeatedly stated in memoirs and in post-Soviet historiography that this concept and, generally speaking, Struve’s interest in socio-economic issues was opportunistic. His 1910s articles on the Ptolemaic society and state published prior to the Russian revolution weigh heavily against this point of view. The published letter contains Struve’s assessment of his future thesis (state institutions of the New Kingdom of Egypt) and puts its topic in the context of current discussions on the Ptolemaic state and society and of his studies in the Rostovtzev’s seminar at the St. Petersburg University. Struve declares the study of Egyptian social structure and connections between its pre-Hellenistic and Hellenistic phases his life-task, introduced to him by Rostovtzev. Thus, Struve’s early interest in these issues appears to be sincere; it stems from pre-revolutionary trends in the Russian scholarship.


Author(s):  
Galina I. Sinkevich ◽  
◽  
Olga V. Solov'eva ◽  

The article is a publication of the first Russian printed work on the Russian history of mathematics. It is dedicated to the ancient Russian numeral systems and was published anonymously in 1787 in the “New monthly works” of St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. The author tells about the Old Russian numeral system, Russian calendar and commercial account. In the popular science editions of the 18th century Imperial St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences there were many publications on the history of sciences, arts, crafts, the history of discoveries and inventions in other countries. At the same time, there was a clear lack of publications on the history of Russian culture. Russian scientists were dissatisfied with the interpretation of Russian history presented by the historiographer of the Russian state, an academician G. F. Müller, as well as with descriptions of Russia and its history by other foreign authors. In the Catherine’s time, many articles appeared, sometimes anonymous, defending the originality and ancientry of Russian culture. To analyze the data on the authorship of the work, the popular scientific editions of Academy in the 18th century and are described, information about their authors is presented, hypotheses are expressed, and the terminology of the article and the names mentioned in it are commented.


Author(s):  
Olga A. Krasheninnikova ◽  

This article analyzes for the first time the full text of objection of Theophan Prokopovich (1681–1736) to the work of Markell Radyshevskiy (†1742) on monasticism ([Objection to The announcement of monasticism], 1730), and explains the circumstances and motives for its creation. In his polemical treatise of 1734, Theophan Prokopovich polemicises with the most important provisions of Markell Radyshevskiy’s work, defending the views of Peter’s companions on monasticism and the Church. In his rebuttal, Theophan Prokopovich stands as a staunch supporter of Peter I and his Church reform, a supporter of unlimited autocratic power and unconditional subordination of the Church to the head of state. He polemicises with important arguments of Markell Radyshevskiy’s work, defending all the main provisions of Peter’s 1724 decree on monasticism. The first full publication of Theophan Prokopovich’s objection will give a clear idea of the nature of the ideological and religious disputes of Peter’s time, the essence and intensity of the controversy between Church reformers and conservatives in the era of formation of the Russian state in the 18th century.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yakov Lazarev

This article offers contextual analysis of unpublished editorials from one of the issues of Voprosy Istorii academic journal, published in 1955. The issue focuses on the problems of studying the history of Ukraine and was written by N. L. Rubinstein, an outstanding Soviet historian and historiographer. The historian discusses the problems related to the history of Ukraine between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries, as well as the formulation of the academic heritage of pre-revolutionary historians and the “school” of M. S. Grushevsky. The need to overcome a dependence on the conceptual heritage of “Ukrainian bourgeois-nationalist historiography”, which, according to the historian, practically leveled the achievements of Ukrainian scholars, is a red thread through the article. A kind of “familiar track effect” caused significant gaps in the study of Ukrainian 17th- and 18th-century history, as well as the dominance of negative assessments in understanding the process of integration of Ukraine into the Russian state. For the first time in Soviet historical science, the unpublished editorial voiced the need to overcome the monopoly on the study of Ukrainian history held exclusively by institutions of the Ukrainian SSR. In this regard, Rubinstein paid special attention to the Institute of History of the USSR Academy of Sciences, which, in his view, had to be transformed into a key organisational centre for future research. All this suggests a potential divide in the academic study of Ukrainian history in the USSR and its conceptual rethinking, since Rubinstein was highlighting existing research issues. Via the case study of the unpublished Rubinstein editorial, the author demonstrates how the production of academic texts and regulation of research in the USSR were closely intertwined with administrative academic positions and personal connections of Moscow academics and Ukrainian historians (sometimes informally). Under these conditions, the directives of the party leadership at the centre and in the provinces fell into a certain dependence on the internal organsation of the academic community. Existing personal connections opened the way for a kind of academic lobbyism. This kind of lobbying paved the way for the entry of controversial ideas, interpretations, and conceptions that did not fit into the existing ideological framework in the difficult political conditions of the day.


2021 ◽  
pp. 343-355
Author(s):  
Ilya O. Ivanov ◽  

The article details the activities of the Archive Committee of the Moscow Spiritual Consistory, set up on the initiative of Metropolitan Philaret Drozdov of Moscow to put in order diocesan archives, which had suffered in the Napoleonic invasion. The documentary complex of the consistory was the backbone of the institution. The disastrous state of the archive not only undermined the activities of the consistory, but also hindered its socially important search for information in the parish records. Thus, the first priority and essential task of the Committee was to sort through and describe burial record books, which were in disorder. The filed away documents of the consistory expeditions, or structural subdivisions of the consistory, also required serious systematization. The same was true of the historical part of the complex dating back to the previous century. Thus, the Committee faced a choice of an optimal classification scheme: territorial grouping of files by soroks and churches, which dated back to the 18th century, or grouping by “substance” — subjects corresponding to the activity areas of the consistory desks and expeditions. The latter was impelled by the Statute of the Consistory (1841), as well as by the permanently increasing volume of records. So far, the Moscow Consistory Archive has been studied primarily from a pragmatic point of view: as a rich source base for diverse research on the history of the Church. The issues of archival document arrangement have attracted no special attention in scientific literature, although the surviving materials of the Committee reflect an interesting debate of diocesan archivists on the possible solution to the existing problem. In this respect, the documents left by the Committee are a valuable illustration of the Church archiving in search for a better organization of systematic preservation of diocesan administrative documents. The conclusion is made that the Committee was directly involved in the development of the consistory's document complex, its continuous processing, description, and adaptation to the new records management conditions, as well as to the modern structure of the Moscow Ecclesiastical Consistory collections. Stable organization of work with documentary material would have been impossible without appropriate staffing. The Committee was an unusual, beyond-the-limits-of-corporate-culture union of Moscow priests. Representatives of the Moscow clergy formed a special type of archivist, combining work in the archives with everyday parish practice.


2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 15-21
Author(s):  
Vladimir N. Benda

The purpose of the research is to analyse the experience of organising the educational process and daily life of the Land Gentry Cadet Corps of the Russian Empire. The article deals with the issues related to the definition of the role of Land Gentry Cadet Corps, which it played in the training of command personnel (officers and non-commissioned officers) for the Russian army and in the development of the military school of the Russian state during this period. Scientific novelty of the work lies in the approach to the study of the educational process in the cadet corps from the point of view of accounting and use of their experience to being in connection with the revival and development of specialised aircraft, artillery and other military schools in modern Russia. Based on the studied archival and other sources, the author focuses on the role of heads of military educational institutions in instilling high moral qualities and professional knowledge in cadets. Some previously unpublished archival sources are being introduced into scientific circulation for the first time.


2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael B Melia

This essay is an exploration of historical knowledge: how it is authored and, more importantly, how we can access it. Through in-depth inspection and careful combination of primary source documents from 1690 to 1806, the text is a result of my attempts to reconstruct Brazilian slave autonomy as a kind of historical knowledge. Disassembling the language that framed colonial encounters, I argue that historical knowledge from primary texts must first be framed within the everyday ‘encounters’ of others in 18th century Brazil social life. Utilising a socially situated textual analysis, the essay accesses the often overwritten autonomy of slaves through historical documents: (1) the text of a friar writing on slaves’ fantastic religious accomplishments, (2) two colonial mandates prohibiting slaves’ promiscuous and suggestive fashions, (3) a history of slave rebellion against colonial powers and (4) a list of demands composed by slaves offered as a peace treaty to their owner. Through exploring the ‘normative horizons’ of the authorial point-of-view of each text, what follows is not merely an ethnohistorical experiment in accessing historical knowledge, but an ethnographic exposition in imagining the lives and futures of slaves in the past.


2013 ◽  
Vol 72 (4) ◽  
pp. 328-350
Author(s):  
Stefan Van den Bossche

De naam van heimatauteur Omer Wattez refereert meestal aan het door hem gecreëerde geografische begrip 'Vlaamsche Ardennen'. Literair-historisch gezien viel hij echter door de mazen van het net. Vandaag zou de literatuurwetenschap hem als een middlebrow-schrijver typeren: een exponent van het middenveld waarin de literatuur sterke democratiserende doelen dient. De breuklijn in Wattez' leven en werk is die tussen de Germaanse en Romaanse cultuur. De auteur verdiepte zich in de Duitse en Oud-Germaanse cultuur en zou talloze publicaties over het thema leveren, veeleer van pedagogische aard en met de bedoeling de contemporaine verfransing van het Vlaamse cultuurleven te counteren. De schrijver besteedde op nogal eenzijdige wijze aandacht aan de Germaanse kant van de Vlaamse cultuur, iets waar zijn lidmaatschap van het Brusselse kunstgenootschap De Distel niet vreemd was. Meteen na de oprichting in 1881 was daar al een germanofiele instroom merkbaar. Het genootschap viel op door verscheidene Duitsgezinde acties die geleidelijk overgingen in een politiek pangermanisme, de droom om Germaanse volkeren onder één vlag te verzamelen. Omstreeks 1900 trad Wattez opt als een van de leidinggevende figuren van het tijdschrift Germania (1898-1905), een initiatief van Alduitse oorsprong. Eerder had hij zich bij voorkeur als dichter en novellist gemanifesteerd. Hoe dan ook zal vooral zijn boekwerk De Vlaamsche Ardennen blijven de tand des tijds doorstaan. Het koppelen van uiteenlopende toeristische facetten en oden aan het onbezoedelde landschap van zijn jeugd enerzijds en literaire cultuur anderzijds lijkt typisch te zijn aan een flink deel van Wattez' oeuvre.________The legacy of a literary centipede. About the regional author Omer Wattez (1857-1935)The name of regional author Omer Wattez is usually mentioned in reference to the geographical concept of the ‘Flemish Ardennes’ that he created. However, it is difficult to pinpoint him from a literary historical point of view. At present the history of modern literature would characterise him as a middlebrow-author: an exponent of the mainstream in which literature serves strong democratising objectives. The fault line in Wattez' life and work lies between German and Romanic culture. The author delved into the German and Old-German culture and was to produce numerous publications on that topic, which were of a rather pedagogical nature and intended to strike back at the contemporary Frenchification of Flemish cultural life. The author paid attention to the German side of Flemish literature from a rather one-sided point of view, which might well be explained by his membership of the Brussels art society De Distel. Immediately after its foundation in 1881, a Germanophile influx was already noticeable. The society attracted attention by engaging in several pro-German actions, which gradually turned into a political Pan-Germanism, the dream to unit all German nations under one flag. Circa 1900 Wattez acted as one of the protagonists of the periodical Germania (1898-1905), an initiative of All-German origin. Previous to this, he had manifested himself preferably as a poet and novelist. At any rate, it will be in particular his book The Flemish Ardennes that will stand the test of time. The linking of a variety of tourist aspects and odes to the untarnished landscape of his youth on the one hand and literary culture on the other hand appears to characterise a large part of the works of Wattez.


Author(s):  
G. Kazakevych

The article is devoted to the O'Connor family, which played a noticeable role in the Ukrainian history of the 19 – early 20th centuries. A founder of the family Alexander O'Connor leaved Ireland in the late 18th century. The author assumes that he was a military man who had to emigrate from Ireland shortly after the Irish rebellion of 1798. After some years in France, where he had changed his surname to de Connor, he and his elder son Victor arrived in Russia where Alexander Ivanovich De-Konnor joined the army. As a cavalry regiment commander, colonel De-Konnor took part in the Napoleonic wars. He married a noble Ukrainian woman Anastasia Storozhenko and settled down in her estate in the Poltava region of Ukraine. His three sons (Victor, Alexander and Valerian) had served as army commanders and then settled in Chernihiv, Poltava and Kharkiv regions respectively. Among their descendants the most notable were two daughters of Alexander De-Konnor jr – Olga and Valeria as well as Valerian De-Konnor jr. Olga De-Konnor married a famous Ukrainian composer and public figure Mykola Lysenko. As a professional opera singer, she stood at the origins of the Ukrainian national opera. Her younger sister Valeria was a Ukrainian writer, publicist and political activist who joined the government of the Ukrainian People's Republic in 1917. Valerian De-Konnor jr. is well known for his research works and translations in the field of cynology.


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