The Making of a Success Story

This chapter introduces the main protagonist of the book: Carlo Calà Duke of Diano, a jurist and high-ranking official in the viceregal administration. This chapter also sets the historical context of the story of the forgery by describing the main political, economic, social, and religious characteristics of the Kingdom of Naples in the seventeenth century. More specifically, this chapter explains the social, cultural, and intellectual advantages that a noble pedigree conferred to the Neapolitan non-aristocratic elites; explores the main sources of tension between the papacy and the Neapolitan viceroy; sheds light on the power dynamics between the Roman Inquisition and the local ecclesiastical leaders; and introduces the complexities of the liturgical and devotional life of early modern Catholics.

The heuristic capabilities of the family epistolary texts in the Russian Sstate

The purpose of this article is to examine the composition of letter texts by Von Wall and his family as a potential source for the study of everyday family life by a high-ranking official of the Russian Empire in the last quarter of the nineteenth century - early twentieth century. The methodological basis of this study is the historical and anthropological approach and methods of source analysis according to sources of personal origin. This article presents the results of Von Wall. The study of the legacy of von Wall and his family focused on three Russian federal archives. The authors found several groups of correspondence from the closest circle of correspondence with Von Wall is a special group consisting of epistemological texts addressed to Von Wall, his siblings, his wife and children. Some of the features of the composition of these documents are due to various circumstances such as the establishment of interpersonal relationships in his family, how to maintain correspondence, saving drafts and copies of his correspondence by von Wahl.

“... I am meant to always remain an incorrigible correspondent”: letters from I. Ivanov to S. Platonov written in 1923–1924, introductory article, publication, commentary Authors:

There are still many blank pages in the history of Tver regional studies, especially in that related to the early 20th century. In order to minimize them, the letters of the outstanding Tver local history expert Ivan A. Ivanov (1850–1927), the chairman of the Tver Provincial Scientific Archival Commission (1899–1918), are introduced into scientific circulation. They were written in 1923–24 and are addressed to Academician Sergei F. Platonov, whom the author met in 1897. The warm relations between these people were maintained for almost 30 subsequent years. S. Platonov took an active part in organizing and conducting significant historical and educational events initiated by the Tver Commission. The published letters are the only source of information about the almost unknown period in the life of I. Ivanov after he left Tver in September 1918 and about his active scientific research during this period. The content of the correspondence makes it possible to recreate an accurate picture of the daily life of a former high-ranking official who found himself in completely new life conditions caused by the changes in political situation. The ways of overcoming everyday difficulties, such as lack of accommodation, food and basic necessities, are indicated. Despite all hardship, insecurity, and concern for his children, I. Ivanov remained in need of active intellectual activity. His relatives (wife and children), new acquaintances, and communication with fellow villagers helped him in that. Some prestigious scientific institutions with which I. Ivanov established close ties, for example, the Russian Museum, showed interest in his selfless work.

Activities of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania chancellery under the management of Leon Sapieha (1585–1623)

After the reforms that took place in 1566 the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Union of Lublin began its new phase of life in 1569. During this phase The Chancellery of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania played an essential role. At the time the institution was comprised of Chancellor, Vice-Chancellor and its most important employees – clerks – people of average nobility that had a chance to show their knowledge working at a chancellery. Leon Sapiega was one of such people. While examining the works of other historians we can notice that L. Sapiega has a variety of biographies, but not including the clerical aspect, they can be considered to be a collection of chronological presentation of facts and not a comprehensive biography of a high-ranking official. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to answer the question of how L. Sapiega as a person influenced the development of the Chancery of the GDL. Institutions are usually represented by leaders and each leader leaves a footprint in the institution’s history. L. Sapiega was not an exeption as his office had undergone several stages of development.

Monument to the Mansi Stepan Chumpin in the context of the Russian pre-revolutionary me-morial environment

The paper examines the history of creation and life of the monument to the Mansi Stepan Chumpin on the top of the Blagodat Mountain (сity of Kushva, Sverdlovsk Region), in the context of development of the Russian memorial culture. The paper aims to explore conformity of this monument with the memorial landscape during the time of its installation, as well as with the trends in the development of public commemoration in the pre-revolutionary period. Chumpin was the discoverer of a large field of magnetite on the Blagodat Mountain. The monument belongs to the category of anniversary ones, as it was built shortly before the centenary of the discov-ery of the field. Commemoration of this important event with the monument was the idea of the head of Goro-blagodatsky mining district Nikolai Mamyshev. This high-ranking official was also a sentimentalist writer. The monument he erected was not similar to those in the style of classicism that were made in Russia in this period. It represented a cylindrical bowl-shaped base for iron casting bursting tongues of flame. The inscription on the ped-estal says that Chumpin was burned here in 1730. It is believed the latter was done by his tribesmen associates. The paper formulates and justifies the hypothesis of the influence of Mamyshev's literary work on the concept of the monument: Chumpin, a «contemptible» character and a foreigner, is portrayed as a «noble savage» and a figure that evokes compassion. Such image of the discoverer gave a distinct ethnic orientation to the monument. It also appears as a memorial, since it was erected over the remains of a glorified person (although historians have proved that the fact of Chumpin's death in this place is a fiction). The monument is attributed to the monu-mental ones, as it is related to the great discovery by Chumpin, and to geographically motivated ones, as it is placed on the Blagodat Mountain. The monument is also a reminder of a significant event — the discovery of a rich deposit, and it affirms the recognition of the merits of the Mansi by the state. Even by the beginning of the 20th c., this monument did not become typical for the Russian memorial environment, although it turned into a popular tourist attraction.

Multimodal Discourse on BRICS Produced by Diverse Stakeholders: Identifying Attitudes, Cultures and Perspectives

The paper explores the conceptual vision of BRICS in the contemporary world. The study focuses on language and images that are used within BRICS-related institutional communication. We argue that the research is important because of the increasing impact of BRICS on the development of the multilateral and multipolar world. The research aims to offer preliminary considerations with regard to key topics, features and tools of multimodal discourse that comes from the BRICS nations and representatives of other international/regional organisations. This area has not been subject to academic analysis so far. This confirms the novelty of the present study. The research material includes 600 image-text correlated items from BRICS official sources of information and from organisation and institutions, which are not affiliated with the BRICS and refer to national or international actors. The research combined theoretical analysis of literature, empirical investigation of materials within qualitative paradigm, through content-based analysis and manual coding on thematic and pragmatic criteria. The findings reveal different approaches to BRICS that are introduced by different actors through specific coordination of verbal and visual tools, in explicit and implicit ways. The findings show that BRICS sources contain proportioned use of texts and photos of high-ranking official events, socio-cultural features of BRICS countries, and pictures of youth with regard to BRICS mission, values, goals, and policies. This strengthens the concept of equality and human rights provision in the modern world in general and leads to the understanding of the need to include the issues of youth rights and their equality on the BRICS agenda in an explicit way.

Ezra Taft Benson Meets Nikita Khrushchev, 1959

In 1966 Ezra Taft Benson, high-ranking official of the LDS church and former U.S. secretary of agriculture, delivered a speech on the campus of LDS-owned Brigham Young University in which he summarized his encounter with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in September 1959. Benson told BYU students that Khrushchev had bragged to him, in part, “[W]e’ll keep feeding you small doses of socialism until you'll finally wake up and find you already have Communism. We'll so weaken your economy until you'll fall like overripe fruit into our hands.” This essay examines the accuracy of Benson's recital of Khrushchev’s alleged comments and concludes that Benson misstated the incident and attributed statements to Khrushchev he did not make. It also speculates why Benson misrepresented, or misremembered, the facts of the encounter.

Unrest will complicate Macron’s reform agenda

Significance Fort will be the eighth high-ranking official to resign since Macron took office in 2017. This will raise further doubts over the credibility of Macron’s presidency and reform agenda. Impacts As the euro-area’s second-largest economy, France threatens euro-area growth prospects. Failure to control France’s budget deficit will result in conflict with Brussels. Such economic concerns will reduce Macron’s ability to drive EU political and economic reforms.

The history of science and the history of bureaucratic knowledge: Saxon mining, circa 1770

This article looks into mining in central Germany in the late eighteenth century as one area of highly charged exchange between (specific manifestations of early modern) science and the (early modern) state. It describes bureaucratic knowledge as socially distributed cognition by following the steps of a high-ranking official that led him to discover a rich silver ore deposit. Although this involved hybridization of practical/artisanal and theoretical/scientific knowledge, and knowers, the focus of this article is on purification or boundary work that took place when actors in and around the mines consciously contributed to different circuits of knowledge production. For the sake of analysis, the article suggests a way of opposing bureaucratic versus scientific knowledge production, even when the sites, actors involved in, and practices of that knowledge production were the same or similar. Whereas the science of the time invoked consensus among equals to conflate competing knowledge claims, bureaucracies did so by applying a hierarchy among ranked individuals.