Othering Europe: Ambivalence in Moroccan Discourse Towards Modernity under the Dogmatic Understanding of Islam and the Political Affiliation to the Monarchy

This paper is a study of the reaction of the Moroccan intellectual elite against/towards European modernity in the nineteenth century. The primary focus is on the Moroccan failure to formulate and develop a positive and reasonable response to European expansionism and menace. This threat may seem military in its core as it was related to colonialism, yet the encounter was essentially cultural and the reaction of the Moroccan elite took its grounds from religious and cultural stands. This is simply because Europe was not only a colonizing Other, but also a cultural opponent with which Morocco had armed conflicts, long-standing rivalries, and even cultural dialogues. This paper develops an argument that the Moroccan intellectual elite exemplified via ambassadorial travel writers, the Makhzen’s envoys to Europe, failed to see Europe as a possible model or at least to open some horizons of cultural dialogue and encounter. Due to cultural reasons and historical circumstances, this intellectual elite rejected Europe and modernity. The present paper limits itself to the question of ambivalence shown by Moroccan ambassadorial travel writers in their narratives. It argues that their travel accounts were torn between the writers’ religious thinking and political affiliations. It postulates that ambassadorial travel writers showed ambivalence in their connection to the idea of modernity. Their narratives were governed by the dichotomy of admiration of the material progress of Europe and rejection of Europe as a possible cultural model.

Religious policy of Sultan Abdul-Hamid II in the Syrian vilayets of the Ottoman Empire (1876-1909): methods and symbols

The author examines the religious and political course of the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II (1876-1909), aimed at strengthening the unity of the Ottoman state and society based on the principles of Islam, and the implementation of this strategy in the Syrian provinces of the Ottoman Empire. The research is based on reports of contemporaries, as well as research works in Russian and English. Particular attention is paid to the strategic role of Ottoman Syria (including Lebanon and Palestine) in the context of strengthening the religious authority of the Sultan as the caliph of all Muslims and recruiting prominent ideologues and supporters of Islamic traditionalism from the Syrian vilayets to serve the Sultan. The author especially examines the role of wo representatives of the Muslim intellectual elite: the Sufi sheikh Abu-l-Huda al-Sayyadi as a close associate of the Sultan who provided patronage to the conservative ulama, as well as Ahmad Izzet Pasha al-Abid, who became the main inspirer of the Hejaz Railway. The article also reveals the features of the state policy towards religious minorities (both Muslim and non-Muslim) and migration processes in the Syrian provinces. With the weakening of the international positions of the Ottoman Empire and the strengthening of foreign interference, Syria set an example of relatively successful modernization based on Islamic tradition. At the same time, confessional identity continued to dominate over ethnicity, and the emerging feelings of Arab and Syrian patriotism did not conflict with the principle of Islamic unity of the subjects of the Sultan-Caliph.

Nikolay Antsiferov. ‘That’s our life in letters’: Letters to family and friends (1900s — 1950s)

The collection prepared by IMLI RAN contains letters of the eminent specialist in local history N. Antsiferov and focuses on the biography of this St. Petersburg Imperial University alumnus, who, despite many arrests by the Soviet regime on trumped-up charges, incarceration in prisons and guarded camps and exile, preserved his inner freedom and, therefore, his scholarly potential. The book details the political context that brought about the outrageous persecution of this highly skilled and staunchly apolitical scholar aswell as the abrupt clearance of charges. Also included is a summary of his scholarly output in literary history, local history and cultural studies. The book lists the scholar’s acquaintances and correspondents, e. g., M. Bakhtin, V. Vernadsky, M. Lozinsky, A. Meyer, K. Chukovsky, B. Eichenbaum, and many other members of the intellectual elite. The book is celebrated as a landmark scholarly publication; highly praised are the text preparation efforts and explanatory notes.

Phrasing the Yugoslav Crisis: Jovan Mirić and the Constitutional Debates of the 1980s

In this article, I analyze the debate triggered in Yugoslavia in 1984 by Jovan Mirić’s book The System and the Crisis. Drawing from a wide corpus of sources, mainly from the Yugoslav press and the intellectual production of the time, I argue that the episode sheds light on many aspects of the Yugoslav crisis. First, it shows the ultimate incapacity of certain actors of the Yugoslav political and intellectual elite to accept a compromise with those who pushed for reform. Second, the episode attests to the changes introduced by the crisis on the Yugoslav political and intellectual landscape, which allowed for an intellectual with no political prominence to attain unexpected influence over party politics overnight. Finally, I also argue that the Mirić affair shows that many in the Yugoslav political and intellectual world who could not be identified as nationalists were nevertheless anxious about the way in which authorities were dealing with the Serbian question, which invites us to leave aside black-and-white notions when considering the power of Serbian nationalism and its rise during the 1980s.

On the family and scientific ties of A.A. Lyapunov, Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences

В данной статье, посвященной 110-летию со дня рождения одного из основоположников отечественной кибернетики, члена-корреспондента АН СССР Алексея Андреевича Ляпунова излагается его родословная, восходящая к легендарному князю Рюрику, описываются родственные связи семьи А.А. Ляпунова, входившей в круг российской интеллектуальной элиты конца XIX - начала ХХ вв. Представлен подробный анализ его научной генеалогии с использованием проекта “Математическая генеалогия”. Показано, что в научной генеалогии соавторства А.А. Ляпунова оказались перечислены имена крупнейших математиков континентальной Европы XVII - второй половины XIX вв., а также выдающихся астрономов, физиков, медиков, философов, богословов Православия, католицизма, англиканства и лютеранства. Кроме того, проанализировано научное сотрудничество А.А. Ляпунова, зафиксированное в Collaboration Distance Project. Установлено, что расстояние соавторства члена-корреспондента АН СССР А.А. Ляпунова до наиболее известных математиков и физиков ХХ-XXI вв. составляет 3-5. This article is dedicated to the 110anniversary of the birth of one of the founders of Russian cybernetics, the Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Alexei Andreevich Lyapunov, and examines his family connections and scientific contacts. A.A. Lyapunov was a representative of the noble family of the Lyapunovs, a descendant of Grigory Petrovich Lyapunov who was a prominent politician of the Time of Troubles, bravely denounced False Dmitry I and was executed by the Impostor. In turn, according to the “Russian genealogical book”, G.P. Lyapunov was a descendant of Rurik in the 27generation through the line of Konstantin Galitsky, the younger brother of Alexander Nevsky. The article shows that the encyclopedic knowledge of Aleksey Andreevich Lyapunov was founded yet by family upbringing: the Lyapunov family was closely related by kinship ties with many famous families of the Russian intellectual elite, who created in fact the national science of the late 19th - early 20th centuries: the Sechenovs, the Krylovs, the Kapitsas, the Nametkins. Further in the article, a detailed analysis of the scientific genealogy of A.A. Lyapunov with the usage of the “Mathematical Genealogy” project is carried out. In this “Genealogy” there are the names of many of the greatest mathematicians of continental Europe of the 17- second half of the 19centuries, as well as the outstanding astronomers, physicists, chemists, philosophers, theologians of Orthodoxy, Catholicism, Anglicanism and Lutheranism. On one of the lines, the Lyapunov’s scientific genealogy can be traced up to the Persian mathematicians of the 12century. In addition, the scientific collaboration of A.A. Lyapunov, which is recorded in the Collaboration Distance Project, was analyzed. It was established that the distance of co-authorship of A.A. Lyapunov, Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, to the most famous mathematicians and theoretical physicists of the 20-21centuries, including almost all the Abel Prize laureates and a number of Nobel Prize winners in physics, is 3-5

The Lettered Barriada

In The Lettered Barriada, Jorell A. Meléndez-Badillo tells the story of how a cluster of self-educated workers burst into Puerto Rico's world of letters and navigated the colonial polity that emerged out of the 1898 US occupation. They did so by asserting themselves as citizens, producers of their own historical narratives, and learned minds. Disregarded by most of Puerto Rico's intellectual elite, these workers engaged in dialogue with international peers and imagined themselves as part of a global community. They also entered the world of politics through the creation of the Socialist Party, which became an electoral force in the first half of the twentieth century. Meléndez-Badillo shows how these workers produced, negotiated, and deployed powerful discourses that eventually shaped Puerto Rico's national mythology. By following these ragtag intellectuals as they became politicians and statesmen, Meléndez-Badillo also demonstrates how they engaged in racial and gender silencing, epistemic violence, and historical erasures in the fringes of society. Ultimately, The Lettered Barriada is about the politics of knowledge production and the tensions between working-class intellectuals and the state. Duke University Press Scholars of Color First Book Award recipient

Wielka sztuka niewielkiego narodu: Polska na tle kontaktów literackich Chin z Europą Środkowo-Wschodnią

In 2020, Wydawnictwo Akademickie Dialog published the Polish version of Chiny i Europa Środkowo-Wschodnia. Historia kontaktów literackich (China and Central and Eastern Europe. The History of Literary Contacts) by Chinese literary scholars: Ding Chao and Song Binghui. The book is part of the series Historia Kontaktów Literackich między Chinami a Zagranicą (The History of China’s Foreign Literary Contacts) which aims to become a comprehensive description of China’s cultural exchange with other countries. Volume 17 is devoted to China’s relationships with Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia and Slovenia. In this group, Poland occupies one of the central positions due to, among other, a high interest in Polish history among Chinese intellectual elite of the early twentieth century and among the reformers of Chinese literature in that period. The article discusses the sources of the popularity of Polish themes in the formative period of modern Chinese literature and the reception of Polish literature in China today. It also attempts to familiarise the readers with the themes studied by the researchers, the goals they set for themselves and the methods they used to achieve them, and presents the benefits of publishing the book in Polish.

A mixed-methods framing analysis of Belarusian and Ukrainian protests

The following study analysed online articles in German media discussing protests in Ukraine in 2014 and Belarussian protests in 2020. A mixed-methods approach of combining qualitative and quantitative content analyses was used to examine frames and frame sources utilised in the articles. There were 489 articles used for the analysis. The study also examined statistically significant differences between the frequency of frames by country. A frame indicated in each story was coded as a variable (“human impact”, “powerlessness”, “moral values”, and “conflict”). The human impact frame was more common in articles regarding Belarus than in articles regarding Ukraine. The moral values frame was the least common frame in articles regarding both Ukraine and Belarus. The powerlessness frame was the most prominent for both countries. The most significant difference between the two countries was indicated regarding conflict frame utilisation. The statistical analysis shows that there is a statistically significant difference of frames covered by German media. The statistically significant difference of powerlessness frame was: 67,49% (Ukraine) and 76,74% (Belarus); in moral values frame: 2,48% (Ukraine) and 6,59% (Belarus); in the conflict frame: 24,46% (Ukraine) and 6,59% (Belarus); in human impact frame: 5,57% (Ukraine) and 10,08% (Belarus). Finally, the utilised sources by frame were indicated. Sources utilised for the powerlessness frame were international officials and local officials (in Ukraine and Belarus). Sources utilised for the human impact frame were citizens (in both Ukraine and Belarus) and oppositional politicians (Belarus only). Sources utilised for conflict frame: oppositional politicians (Ukraine only), international officials, local officials. Sources utilised for moral values frame were local celebrities, intellectual elite (Ukraine) and oppositional politicians (Belarus). Findings show that media in Germany relied mostly on politicians and international officials, while the perspective of ordinary citizens appeared to be less prominent.

The place of the elite of society in the context of individual freedom

The article is devoted to the study of the influence of the worldview of each individual - relating to a certain set of citizens - on the existence of a particular state system in the area. The generally accepted political classification of "elite-mass" is analyzed from the standpoint of informal distribution, where the intellectual elite consists of responsible selfless individuals who invent vital ideas, implement them and bring them to the masses under their control. If this or that idea is thus freely accepted by the general public, forms their general worldview, then this is the main factor in the fact that such a state system covers this community of citizens

The concept of “l’honnêteté” (nobleness) as the category of ethical and spiritual life in the French society of the XVII century

The subject of this research is the concept of nobleness “l’honnêteté” as the category of ethical and spiritual life in the French society of the XVII century. The ideas of “l’honnêteta” promted the formation of the new cultural and intellectual elite, anew ethos that was relatively supranational and standing above classes, adapted to court and secular life. The focus of the discussion that unfolded in the early XVII century is the question of whether it is possible to become a noble person by cultivating certain personality traits close to the ideal, or nobleness is an inherent quality and determined by social position in the existing hierarchy. The answer to this crucial question of the era had to destroy the stereotypes of medieval mentality. The philosophy of “l’honnêtetit” legitimized the infiltration of the third estate into the ruling class – nobles of the robe and petty nobility. The discussion around nobleness and the new ideal of a noble person performed the function of adaptation of the elites to the changing social conditions – the strengthening absolutism. The debate on the definition of a noble person continued unabated throughout the XVII century. However, by the second half of the XVII century, it was no longer relevant and completely replaced by the gallant ideal. The Russian historical literature did not give due attention to studying the “theory of nobleness”, which defines the relevance of this research. The focus of attentions shifts onto the new ideal that determines behavioral and communication pattern, system of education, and generated French society in the early XVII century; the ideals, which along with the French language and gallant culture, spreads across Europe and comes to Russia.