Constantinople “Mascaralyc” in Letters and Memoirs of K.A. Goubastov

The publication contains fragments of unpublished letters and memoirs of a Russian diplomat K.A. Goubastov (1845–1919), telling about the life of the embassy in Constantinople before the Russian-Turkish war of 1877–1878, in particular about the evacuation on April 11, 1877. The letters are addressed to his friend since 1867 K. Leontiev. The topic of correspondence allows us to consider these documents not only as just as eyewitness account, but also as the material enlarging our scope of Danilevsky epoch understanding and the source associated with the historiosophical issues that N. Danilevsky was engaged in.

Revolution on Trial

The Mémoires de Wéber, concernant Marie-Antoinette were of central importance to the wave of memoirs of the French Revolution published during the Restoration period. Commonly attributed to Joseph Weber, Marie-Antoinette's foster brother, the Mémoires' authorship has always remained doubtful. This article discusses the text's complex origins in the London émigré community around 1800 and analyzes the process by which it became a canonic eyewitness account with its republication in 1822. In light of newly discovered sources and recent scholarly interest in the emigration and postrevolutionary period, this article reexamines the Mémoires as a case of ghostwriting revolving around royalist loyalties, public emotions, and publication strategies. Highlighting personal networks reaching from the Revolution to the emigration and into Restoration France, this article makes a case for reconsidering generational factors, long-term relations, and interpretative struggles among the eyewitnesses of the Revolution in a period when memoirs became a key element of turning the Revolution into contemporary history. Les Mémoires de Wéber, concernant Marie-Antoinette ont contribué de manière décisive à la vague des mémoires sur la Révolution française publiés pendant la Restauration. Généralement attribué à Joseph Weber, le frère de lait de Marie-Antoinette, la paternité littéraire de ce texte a pourtant toujours été douteuse. Cet article retrace les origines complexes du manuscrit au sein de la communauté d'émigrés à Londres autour de 1800. A travers l'édition de 1822, il démontre comment les Mémoires de Wéber se transformaient ensuite en témoignage oculaire canonique. Utilisant des sources jusque-là inconnues et des travaux récents sur l'émigration et la période postrévolutionnaire, nous proposons de réexaminer ces Mémoires comme un exemple de « ghostwriting » influencé par des loyautés royalistes, des émotions publiques et des stratégies de publication. En mettant l'accent sur les réseaux personnels reliant Révolution, émigration et Restauration, cet article souligne les facteurs générationnels, les relations à long terme et les combats d'interprétation parmi les témoins oculaires de la Révolution à une époque où les mémoires formaient un élément-clé de l'histoire contemporaine émergente de la Révolution française.

Telling true ghost stories

The purpose of this research is to consider the language used for telling true ghost stories. True ghost stories, that is, those anecdotes initially shared by friends and family describing personal experiences and encounters with paranormal activity, is an unusual genre for storytellers in that it lives within a space that can be seen as both fiction and non-fiction, with specific vocabulary that joins the two genres. The non-fiction part of such a story, as with all non-fiction narratives, relies on the verbatim reporting of an eyewitness account. The fictional part depends on a writer utilizing specific semantic tropes of the ghost story, such as mysterious shadows, unexplained noises and fluctuations in temperature. Bridging these two areas is the language found in the narrative, where a responsible writer employs careful phrasing to relate the story whilst avoiding a vocabulary that endorses unprovable phenomena. For example, I cannot, in good conscience, write: … and then the ghost attacked her. To be honest to my own scepticism, and to the limited evidence usually presented with such stories, I have to write: …and then she claims the ghost attacked her or …and then it appeared the ghost attacked her. Through a critical analysis of existing narratives and an examination of hedging strategies used, this research intends to demonstrate how some writers in this genre maintain their own truthfulness to present a compelling narrative.

A brief autobiography of Peter Kogoy

The reader is offered a brief autobiography of Peter Kogoy — a Slovenian member of the partisan movement in Yugoslavia during World War II, a Communist who emigrated to the USSR in 1948, after the Information Bureau adopted a resolution on Yugoslavia. He spent most of his long life in Moscow. He studied at Lomonosov Moscow State University, then worked for many years as an employee of the Slovenian section of the Moscow radio, until its liquidation in 1994 and his retirement. The Autobiography of P. Kogoy, written by himself in the 1990s, is a sincere and emotional eyewitness account of the struggle of the Yugoslav partisans, about the life of a Slovenian emigrant in Russia during the second half of the twentieth century and his perception of the events. It also contains interesting materials about Russian-Slovenian relations of this period. P. Kogoy gave his autobiography to I. V. Churkina, doctor of history, the Russian premier expert on the history of Slovenia, at that time also the Chairman of Triglav, the Russian-Slovenian society of friends of Slovenia. It is located in her personal archive. I. V. Churkina translated the text into Russian, wrote comments and introductory remarks.