Sociocultural History of Rio de Janeiro

The city of Rio de Janeiro underwent profound changes between 1870 and the early 20th century. Its population grew dramatically, attracting migrants not only from abroad but also from other regions of Brazil. It also expanded significantly in size, as the construction of trolley and railway lines and the introduction of real estate capital powered the occupation of new areas. Meanwhile, urban reforms aimed at modernization transformed the social ways in which urban space was used. During this period, Rio de Janeiro went from being the capital of the Brazilian Empire to being the capital of the Brazilian Republic. It nevertheless maintained its position as the cultural, political-administrative, commercial, and financial center of the country. Against this backdrop of change, the city was an important arena for the political struggles that marked the period, including demonstrations in favor of abolition and the republic. Rio de Janeiro’s citizens were not inert during this period of transformation, and they found various ways to take action and fight for what they understood to be their rights. Protests, demands, petitions, and a vibrant life organized around social and political associations are examples of the broad repertoire used by the city’s inhabitants to gain a voice in municipal affairs. Citizens’ use of public demands and petitions as a channel to communicate with the authorities, and especially with city officials, shows that while they did not necessarily shun formal politics, they understood politics to be a sphere for dialogue and dispute. The sociocultural history of Rio de Janeiro during this period was therefore built precisely through confrontations and negotiations in which the common people played an active role.

Methodological pursuits of the Soviet historians: “Marxist structuralism of A. Y. Gurevich (in the works of 1960s)

This article is dedicated to the problem of seeking new ways in interpretation of the empirical material through the prism of the methodology of “structuralism” undertaken by a range of Soviet historians in the 1960s. The object of this research is the works of the medieval historian A. Y. Gurevich, who created a series of methodological articles on the “Soviet structuralism”. His opinion is most vividly reflected in the articles “General Law and Specific Pattern in History” (1965) and “The discussion on pre-Capitalistic Social Formations: Development and Structure” (1968), which marked the “methodological turn” in his works, and currently serve the object of this analysis. The conclusion is made that that the works of A. Y. Gurevich methodologically correspond to the concept of “structuralism”, although with peculiar orientation towards Marxism. The author demonstrates that the key parameters of methodological work of the historian were determined not by the influence of Western historiography, but by the revision of Marxist dogmas. The system of structures, described in his works, required a different theoretical field, which later found reflection in a number of other works of the historian of rather applied nature. The author believes that an unsuccessful attempt to “renew” the Marxist theoretical thesaurus leads A. Y. Gurevich to the methodology of sociocultural history.

Lingual trickster as a sociocultural phenomenon

The article reveals the problem of the penetration of foreign linguistic traditions into the cultural and historical space of Russia and the people from the perspective of the language trickster phenomenon. The author focuses on the point that the lingual trickster has a great impact on the diverse aspects of the sociocultural history of society as they modernize culture and cause a number of ambiguous spiritual, creative conflicts in it. The lingual trickster penetrating the historical field of a country takes different ambivalent forms of manifestation and aspects of influence, often determining how society adapts to new cultural realities and forms of behavior. Having emerged like a “chimera” lingual trickster “invades” a new society and begins to change the existing traditions and customs of this society, while ignoring its fundamental cultural values and basic life-determining meanings. This phenomenon manifests itself in a completely paradoxical way as a chimerical being under the influence of the rapid "transferring" of the spiritual-valued settings of a more developed culture of one society to a developing culture of another; or in the process of testing for the strength of new sociocultural values and ideals. It is a kind of combination of the incompatible and exists as long as culture is in existence.