Unnoticed Coup D’état

The article is devoted to the history of the emergence and development of the political crisis of the Interregnum. The central question of the article is examination of the reason why Nikolai, having received news of the death of Alexander, decided to swear allegiance to Konstantin. An analysis of historiography demonstrates that the most diametrical interpretations of this event are presented in the literature: Nikolai acted under pressure from M. A. Miloradovich and/or Maria Fedorovna, together with the Governor-General and/or Empress Mother. An important aspect of the work is the study of the normative component of the problem of succession. It is shown that by November 1825 a contradictory situation had developed: by law the heir was Konstantin, by family agreement — Nikolai. The article justifiably proves that the Manifesto of Alexander I on the transfer of the throne of Nicholas was a model of separate family law and was never supposed to be published. On the basis of a wide range of sources, the article reconstructs the course of meetings on November 25, describes the features of taking the oath on November 27, and reveals the development of the dynastic crisis arising from them. It is demonstrated that Nicholas had a complex plan to seize power, which implied unification with representatives of the generals and the highest bureaucracy, an oath in favor of Konstantin in violation of the established tradition, pressure on his older brother and, ultimately, the proclamation of emperor. The article presents the question of rumors spread in St. Petersburg society related to the secession of Poland and the hypothetical murder of Constantine.

The Textbook on the History of Science outside Science

The article is a review of the textbook on the history of Russian archaeology prepared by A. S. Skripkin, professor of Volgograd State University, a well-known archaeologist specializing in the study of the Sarmatian tribes. The textbook was issued by the “Urait” publishing company in 2017. The first part, dominating in amount, is devoted to the history of the development of the Russian archaeology from the 18th century until the last quarter of the 20th century. The second part briefly outlines the topic well-known to the author — the history of archaeological research in the Lower Volga region in the same chronological period. However, the main problem of the reviewed publication is the author’s failure to use a considerable number of works published on this subject over the last 25 years. Almost all the information contained in the first section of the textbook was borrowed from the books by A. A. Formozov, G. S. Lebedev, V. F. Gening, A. D. Pryakhin published in the 1980s and early 1990s. However, in the years passed since then, a whole direction connected with the study of various aspects of its history has been formed in the Russian archaeology. A significant range of monographic publications, collections of articles and conference materials have been published; more than fifty candidate and doctoral dissertations have been defended. Unfortunately, all this remained beyond the scope of A. S. Skripkin. Therefore, there are numerous out-of-date ideas concerning various subjects connected with the formation and development of the Russian archaeology. Furthermore, the text contains a considerable number of factual errors, inaccuracies, misprints.

Collective Political Portrait of Landlords of the Oryol Province

Within the previous work during the launch of the project “Implementation of the reform from February 19, 1861 in the Oryol province (experience of computer analysis of mass sources)” the topics touched upon were not only the ones which were based on the analysis of mass sources, but also some scenarios related to the aspects of the socio-economic situation in the region were developed. The work was continued, and some observations made during the preliminary study are given in the presented article. The key point here is the discussion of problems related to the “determination of the grounds” for the development of the position of the provincial nobility with regards to existing at that time correlation of interests between the supreme power, bureaucratic reformers and landowners. The author attempts to outline a collective portrait of the representatives of the landowning and agrarian-industrial local nobility of the Oryol province. This period in question was the peak of the political activity of the local nobility, a time when subjective and personal factors in the preparation of the peasant reform were fully manifested. The representatives of the Oryol nobility had different motives that determined their attitude to the upcoming abolition of serfdom. The study of a wide variety of differences in the views of the local nobility, the analysis of the factors that determined their views in these conditions, will help broaden the understanding of the foundations of the upcoming transformations and the level of historical responsibility of the main estate of the country.

Ladislaus Jagiello in Modern Polish Culture

This article deals with Polish representations of Władysław II Jagiełło, Grand Duke of Lithuania, ruler of the Crown of the Polish Kingdom, founder of the Jagiellonian dynasty. Research on representations of the past has become one of the main fields of memory studies in recent years. They allow us to look at historical events and their emblematic protagonists through the prism of their successive emanations. The kaleidoscope of images of the past reflects changes in social awareness and collective memory of a given political community. Jagiełło and the Battle of Grunwald (1410), which is inseparably associated with his reign, offer a model case in point. Among the numerous representations of Jagiełło, those created in the nineteenth century have made a lasting impression. At first, they took the form of literary works and paintings, and only later did they appear in political journalism and historiography. With time, they transmogrified into grass-roots commemorative initiatives, the most spectacular manifestation of which was the jubilee of the 500th anniversary of the Battle of Grunwald, celebrated in Kraków in 1910. The works of Józef Ignacy Kraszewski, Henryk Sienkiewicz and Jan Matejko fulfilled their role and became part of the canon, on which the Polish imagination depended from then on, regardless of the changing political configurations. In this way, Jagiełło became one of the most important figures in the pantheon of rulers, while the distant historical experience of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was permanently grafted onto and modelled the Polish political imagination. This observation is also confirmed by his twentieth-century portrayals in Polish films and historical series.

Рre-war Personal Pensions for Relatives of Prominent Citizens

The article is devoted to the practice of awarding a personal pension on the occasion of the loss of a breadwinner to the relatives of people outstanding in the sphere of culture, science and revolutionary movement in the period of 1920–1930. The main sources for analysis include the pension documents kept in the State archive of the Russian Federation as well as the personal cases on the issue of granting pensions being in the process of consideration. In particularly, the archival documents revealed information concerning the pension provision of the relatives and inheritors of L. Tolstoy’s, F. Dostoevsky’s, N. Chernyshevsky’s, M. Glinka’s, and F. Dzerzhinsky’s. The documents in questions describe the difficulties they faced during the early decades of the Soviet period. A special emphasis in the applications is placed on health problems as personal pensions were granted only to disabled or elderly citizens. The author underlines that the number of relatives of outstanding people was more numerous than the one of ordinary people receiving personal pensions. It included not only minor children, brothers, sisters, spouse and parents, but adult grandchildren, nephews and nieces. It is noteworthy that the dependence of the applicants on the deceased breadwinners was not always proved. The results of the research indicate that awarding a personal pension for the loss of a breadwinner became one of the means to honor the memory of those who provided outstanding service to the Soviet Republic.

Symbolic Actions and Anti-royal Propaganda during a Political Crisis

On Christmas Eve 1402, Hungarian noblemen gathered in the Cathedral of Nagyvárad, where St. Ladislas’ tomb was located, and swore an oath on the holy king’s relics. They proclaimed thus their allegiance to King Ladislas of Naples and conspired against the ruling King Sigis mund of Luxemburg. By swearing an oath on St. Ladislas’ relics, the conspirators united their minds and forces around the ideal figure of the holy king and knight who became the symbol of a political cause and the embodiment of the kingdom which King Sigismund was no longer suited to represent. The symbolic gesture of oath-swearing on St. Ladislas’ relics took place in the midst of a three-year political crisis (1401–1403) that seized the Kingdom of Hungary as a consequence of the barons’ dissatisfaction with King Sigismund’s measures, which jeopardized their wealth and political influence. By relying on both written accounts and visual sources, the present paper examines the utilizing by Hungarian noblemen during this political crisis of important political and spiritual symbols associated with the Kingdom of Hungary. These included: the cults, relics, and visual representations of St. Ladislas, the Hungarian Holy Crown, or the kingdom’s heraldry. The propagandistic usage of these spiritual and political symbols was reinforced by their insertion into elaborated rituals and symbolic actions, such as coronations or oath-swearing on relics. By activating the link between secular and religious spheres through these rituals and symbolic actions, their performers hoped to attract the divine approval. By discussing such instances, the present paper seeks to illustrate how the ideal figure of St. Ladislas became the catalyzing force behind a political cause.

The Spanish Republic’s Diplomatic Mission to Moscow during Civil War. Part 1

The Spanish Civil War played a unique role in the Soviet Union’s geo-political strategies in the second half of the 1930s. The conflict marked the first occasion that Moscow had participated in a foreign war beyond its traditional spheres of influence. But Soviet involvement in the Spanish war went far beyond the sale of armor and aviation to the beleaguered Spanish Republic. While Moscow organized and supported the creation of the International Brigades, on the cultural front, the Soviets sought to roll out a broad program of propaganda, employing film, poster art and music to link the destinies of the Slavic and Hispanic peoples. If scholars have succeeded in recent years to rewrite the history of many components of Soviet participation in the Spanish Civil War, diplomatic relations between the Republic and Moscow remain an unexplored theme. This is the first instalment of a two-part article, unpublished official documents, as well as memoirs, newsreels, private letters and the press, to offer the first narrative history of the Republican embassy in Moscow. The diplomatic rapprochement between the USSR and Spain in 1933 is explored as a prelude to the exchange of ambassadors following the outbreak of the Civil War in summer 1936. The appointment of the young Spanish doctor Marcelino Pascua to a newly recreated Moscow embassy is examined in detail, up to autumn 1937. This article allows the reader hitherto unavailable access to the daily trials, disappointments and occasional breakthroughs experienced by the Spanish Republican ambassador in Stalin’s Soviet Union.

A Statistical Study on the University Professoriate in the Russian Empire

The article is devoted to a statistical analysis of quantitative and qualitative parameters characterizing the professoriate of Russian universities in 1755–1884. The material for such a study was drawn from the prosopographic database compiled on the basis of biographical data on professors and containing more than 1200 names of scientists. The following characteristics have been examined: the social composition; the dynamics of the replenishment of the professor corps; the distribution of professors by different universities and by branches of science; the average age of embarking on the professorial position; the length of the professorial service; the role of “junior” university positions and the importance of the period of teaching as Privatdozent before becoming a professor; the proportion of those who were graduates of the universities where they later taught, etc. These characteristics have been studied in chronological dynamics, depending on the main stages of replenishment of the professoriate, which coincided with the major university reforms in the 19th century. The similarity between some parameters for the entire professorial corps (for example, the average age of receiving professorship) and the evolution of parameters in different periods and differences between universities has been identified. Some phenomena of university life, known in historiography in a number of examples, have received a detailed explanation in the light of statistical analysis. At the same time, the study has demonstrated the potential of quantitative methods in revealing new properties of Russian university professors that cannot be found only through the analysis of narrative sources.

Messages of the President of the Russian Federation to the Federal Assembly as a Source of Studying the Historical Policy of Russia

The purpose of this study is to reconstruct the historical representation of the highest state power in modern Russia (the level of the president) by examining the texts of the presidential messages to the Federal Assembly from 1994 to 2020. As a key research method, content analysis, both semantic and quantitative, was applied. Fragments of messages containing an appeal to events, phenomena, personalities of the past and the historical process as a whole have been examined. The quantitative analysis has revealed the number of usages of the word “history” and the total textual quantity of historical references in the messages. The thinkers of the past quoted by the Presidents associated with various ideological connotations have been considered as a special indicative position. The generalized content analysis data is accumulated in the table in the article, which has the potential for further independent use in studying the dynamics of power discourse in Russia. The results of the study enable to confirm the fact of the paradigm shift in the perception of history at the highest state level in Russia lying in the transition from the liberal version of the theory of modernization to a nationally conservative approach similar to the theory of civilizations. Three Presidents of the Russian Federation — B. N. Yeltsin, D. A. Medvedev and V. V. Putin — despite the coincidence of positions on several issues of interpreting the past, presented different visions of the historical process in the texts of the messages. The integration of the current policy into the general outline of history is characteristic of all the messages, which points to the preservation of the tradition of historiosophical perception of the state activity in the Russian Federation, in spite of different versions of historiosophy. The transformation of historical politics in Russia is an indicator of the ideological inversion of the Russian state as a whole, the transition from a liberal to a nationally conservative model. The attitude of the authorities to the history reveals the potential of using axiological vectors of the current policy as a means of reconstruction.

Polish Censorship during the Late Stalinist Period

The aim of the study is to present selected aspects of the history of censorship in Poland during the Stalinist period (1948−1956). The article presents the circumstances of the establishment of the censorship office in Poland — the Central Office for the Control of Press, Publications and Events (GUKPPiW) — which was set up in January 1945 and operated throughout the period of the Polish People’s Republic, until April 1990. The article also gives an answer to the question about the role of the so-called Soviet advisers who came to Lublin in December 1944 and took full control of the process of creating state censorship. The employees of the Soviet censorship sent from Moscow were tasked with creating an institution that would control the media and operate according to the mechanisms established in the USSR. In the process of organizing the censorship apparatus, the Polish communists played a marginal and servant role towards the Soviet military (including General N. Bulganin) and advisers who came from Moscow. The most important decisions were made by the employees of Glavlit, whose recommendations were treated by the management of the Polish Workers’ Party as orders. Glavlit officers, who arrived in Lublin in December 1944, recruited censorship employees, developed instructions for them, rules for publishing and issuing printed works and drafted a decree on the control of the press, publications and performances, a draft order of the minister of public security regarding the introduction of censorship. The work also describes the process of recruiting censors, as well as the reasons and scope of censorship interventions.