“Our Architecture Has Long Acquired Global Significance”: International Contacts of the Union of Soviet Architects in the 1930s

The article is focused on the international contacts of the Soviet architecture in the 1930s. The direct object of the research is the cross-border communications of the Union of Soviet Architects: the tasks and forms of contacts of Soviet architects with foreign colleagues and institutions, as well as the role of the Union of Architects in this process; mechanisms of interaction with the authorities and tactics of the professional community in the context of regulation and control of international relations; conflicting nodes of state and professional interests. It is shown that in its international contacts, the Union of Architects did not appear as an independent actor, as it did not have institutional independence in international communications, autonomy in decision-making and its own resources for the implementation of projects. The institutional nature of the interaction prevailed; personal contacts were minimized and included into collective strategies. The international activity of the Union of Architects was part of the state policy of “cultural diplomacy” and had not only a professional, but also a propaganda-ideological component. The authorities ignored the professional motives of the architectural community if they did not coincide with governmental tasks. However, it is shown that the Union of Architects had its own tactics and realized its professional interests, using the interest of the state in a particular project. As a result, the thesis is presented that state regulation and total control sharply narrowed the possibilities of cross-border communications of the architectural community, distorted their forms and contents, but did not destroy them. The discovery and study of new documents shows that the myth of the cultural autarchy of the Stalinist USSR is not confirmed by the example of an architectural field.

“The Starry Round Dance”: Mastering the Universe by the Means of Folk Choreography in the USSR of the 1960s

In 1961, Tatiana Ustinova, the choreographer of the famous Pyatnitsky Choir, choreographed “To the Stars”, the first dance on the theme of space exploration in the Soviet repertoire. The suite, in the Russian pseudo-popular style, told of the Russian cosmonaut's encounter with the moon and stars. However, this work remained in the repertoire of the famous chorus for a relatively short time. How to assess the emergence and disappearance of this dance from the point of view of a historian? To answer this question, the choreographic event is placed within the Soviet historical context of the Thaw and the dance-artistic context of 1930s – 1960s. The paper shows that a combination of circumstances outside and within Soviet choreography was not favourable for the conjuncture of space dance in the USSR. The pathos of a break-through into the future expired soon after Khrushchev resigned, the boundless pride for the unparalleled leap forward was superseded by the bitterness of the untimely loss of the first man in space and the success of the American space programme, and the language of Soviet choreography was hopelessly anachronistic for description of a new reality. But the very attempts to portray space on the dance stage are evidence of the incredible popularity and ubiquity of the theme of space in the USSR in the early 1960s.

9TH CENTURY ARABIC-SPEAKING HISTORIANS AL-BALADHURI AND AL-YA‘QUBI ABOUT THE BYZANTINE ARMY OF ARMENIAKOI: ON THE BYZANTIUM’S MILITARY POLICY WITHIN ITS ARMENIAN AND WEST CAUCASUS POSSESSIONS DURING THE 7TH CENTURY

Greek sources, which tell us about a military-political history of Byzantium in the 7th century, mainly the famous “Chronographia” of Theophanes the Confessor, usually contain little evidence on relations between the Empire and local countries of South Caucasus and Armenian highland. But, having based on the Arabic-speaking historians al-Baladhuri and al-Ya‘qubi, who lived both in the 9th century, and also on the evidence of some little-studied Greek texts, i.e. a letter of Anastasius Apocrisiarius and the works of Theodoros Spoudaios, the author tries to discover a role of the Byzantine army of Armeniakoi within these interrelations. The army, which was located in the provinces of Cappadocia, Paphlagonia and Hellenopontus, was established in the mid-650s. It was predominantly composed of the former bodyguards of powerful Armenian nakharars (chiefs of local Armenian noble families). Time after time, depending on geopolitical situation in the region, a central power of Byzantium moved and located the regular units of the army in Lazika, i.e. within modern West Georgia. Moreover, the author traces that one of the noble Armenian nakharars named Nerseh Kamsarakan, who headed a powerful family of Artsruni, occupied the official office of the strategos of the Armeniakoi by 688. The army commanded by Nerseh Kamsarakan reconquered the princedom of Armenia from the Arabs in 686–688; therefore, as a result, the Byzantine Emperor Justinian II appointed Nerseh Kamsarakan as the Great Prince of Armenian princedom and located regular troops of the army of Armeniakoi on these lands.

FROM MIGRANT WORKERS TO THE “EASTERN BATTALION” OF THE RED ARMY: DYNAMICS OF THE IMAGE OF THE CHINESE IN THE EARLY 20TH CENTURY RUSSIA

The article analyzes the transformation of the image of Chinese labor migrants into the participants of the military conflict on the side of the Bolsheviks. The analysis of how the image of the Chinese workers was reformatted into the Red Army soldiers made it possible to reveal the cultural and historical specificity of the image of the Chinese, to show its main components and meaningful specifics before the revolution and during the Civil War. The source base was made up of materials from periodicals; archival documents of the Russian State Military Archive; and propaganda posters of the “white” movement. The texts published in the pre-revolutionary periodicals reflect the mass perception of Chinese migrants. The materials of the Bolshevik newspapers contain elements of the official discourse on Chinese migrants in the parts of the Red Army. Documents from the Office of the Moscow Military District, as well as the Army Directorate of the Southern Front, complement the picture created by newspaper reports. “White” movement posters were a powerful means of visualizing the enemy (in this case, the Chinese) on the side of the Bolsheviks. Historical imagology served as the methodological basis; to analyze press texts, content and discourse analysis was used. Diligence, impersonality, unpretentiousness, and the rapid development of new areas of activities formed the basis of the image of a Chinese migrant in the early 20th century Russia. The interpretation of this cultural construct depended on the use of one or another social optics. Before the revolution, partial or full recognition / denial of the ideology of the “yellow peril” made the Chinese either an effective tool for expansion or a workforce, the use of which should be streamlined and regulated as much as possible. Under the conditions of revolutionary upheavals, the characteristics of the Chinese in mass culture for some turned into a marker of threat and danger, and for others - into a criterion for choosing an ally.

NEW MEANS OF COMMUNICATION AND THE OLD SYSTEM (INTEGRATION OF THE TELEPHONE ACTIVITY INTO THE SYSTEM OF STATE REGULATION OF COMMUNICATIONS IN RUSSIA IN THE LATE 19TH AND EARLY 20TH CENTURIES)

The paper analyzes the process of formulating the main principles of the state regulation of the telephone activities in Russia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Even though the emergence of the telephone in Russia matched the process of the whole unified postal and telegraph service’s organizing, crucial necessity of including the telephone into the system of the state management of communications did not become just a step in these reforms’ development. It caused the discussion on another matter, namely on the main principle of the system’s functioning, i.e. perception of the communications as the subject of the state monopoly. Thus, the Russian government’s attempts to adopt the telephone to a broadly settled system of the state regulation happened to be followed by the debates on neither administrative no technical, but on the legal and economic matters. Lately, they moved to the principle of the state monopoly in the communications sphere as a whole and to perception of the latter as a source of the state income. Nevertheless, during the analyzed period, the focus of all the disputes was made on responding to the private capital’s threat to the monopoly status of the government. However, its main concern was not the monopoly itself, but one of its aspects, i.e. the most commercially profitable way to build and use the telephone communications.

THE ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR AT THE EASTERN FRONT: HISTORIOGRAPHIC LANDSCAPE AND RESEARCH PROSPECTS

A lacuna that clearly needs to be filled and remains among various topics of the ecological history of the First World War is the Eastern front theme. The authors of this historiographical essay attempt to analyze various papers and monographs on the ecological history of the First World War, such as works on ecological history and history of technologies, works on socio- and cultural-ecological aspects of the Great War, as well as publications on the experience of military occupation at the Eastern Front and its impact on the ecosystems of different regions. A critical analysis of the achievements and limitations of modern historiography allow the authors to emphasize thematic fields of perspective research. The authors notice that the Eastern front is still obscure and largely ignored by English-speaking scholars. The historiography includes a wide variety of thematic fields. Most of them are related to environmental changes in West European war theatre, as well as in colonial landscapes. Such a view deforms the general picture of the Great War. So, the reconstruction of the military impact on the landscapes of the Eastern front, attempts to economically organize the war space by different armies on the same territories, as well as the transformations of local population's management practice, seem to correct the idea of the universality of the Western front processes and phenomena.

THE FRENCH 47TH INFANTRY REGIMENT DURING THE FIRST WORLD WAR: AN ENVIRONMENTAL APPROACH

The First World War can be examined from the perspective of traditional military history as well as the perspective of the relationship between combatants and the environment. The author reveals based on a wide range of archival materials, printed media and ego-documents (diaries, memoirs, letters) the question of combat peculiarities of the 47th Infantry Regiment of the French Army considering with the influence of environmental conditions on the soldiers. The author demonstrates the dependence of the regiment's intensity and efficiency of combat operations on the terrain, weather and climate changes on the Western Front of the First World War. In the first phase of the conflict, soldiers were extremely vulnerable to even the slightest temperature changes (extreme heat, cold) due to their uniforms' problems. Physical strain from long marches across unfamiliar terrain and an extended stay in the trenches also harmed their health. The combat unit's active influence on the environment is also emphasised, with the pollution of the battlefield by sewage, leftover ammunition and weapons. The soldiers' health being adversely affected by the polluted environment (above all, the spread of contagious diseases, poisoning by chemical and metal warfare agents) is also considered. Severe environmental changes during battles also made combat operations more difficult. Thus, during the First World War, both the soldiers of the 47th Infantry Regiment of the French Army and all the other poilus became hostages to a severely altered environment due to the impact of millions of combatants.

HOARDS OF THE STONE AGE AS ARCHAEOLOGICAL SOURCES

Hoards are a rare and informative type of archaeological sources. Different definitions of hoards are given in dictionaries and in special literature: “hoards-treasures”, “hoards of the caster”, “trading hoards”, “household hoards”, “cult hoards”, “sacrificial hoards”, “votive hoards”, “ceremonial-votive hoards”, “hoards-offerings”, “production hoards”, “hoards of raw materials”, “hoards of the master”, “hoards-satchel sets”, etc. Hoards are often found by accident and usually not by archaeologists. At the same time, the hoard is not always passed to specialists in full. A finder of the hoard can remove one or more items from it or, on the contrary, add items lying nearby to the hoard. All these factors reduce the degree of information content of hoards found by random people. The location of the hoard in relation to the relief and borders of the archaeological site is not always fixed. Also, the mineral raw materials of products from the hoard are not always described. Some researchers do not provide images of all the finds from the hoard in their publications and do not indicate the metric indicators of the items in the hoard. Quite often, any accumulation of finds on the site is considered as a hoard without additional arguments. But the accumulation of objects in the cultural layer of sites may be not a hoard, but a production set at a home workshop. It is proposed to refer to the actual hoards, first of all, the hoards found outside the cultural layer of settlements (sites). Hoards are also tightly packed products, which indicates that they were in some kind of container. Accumulations of products buried in a hole and covered with a stone or slab can also be called hoards. In other cases of the accumulation of items interpreted by the author as a hoard, the word “hoard” must be taken in quotation marks. Failure to comply with special requirements for the study and publication of hoards reduces the information capacity of hoards as archaeological sources.

ANCIENT HISTORY AND NEW PUBLICISM: ABOUT SEARCHING FOR A NARRATIVE IN THE SOVIET HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE STALIN TIME

The article discusses the features of the genesis and functioning of a special type of historical narrative in Soviet scholarship, which gained particular strength in the 1930s and gradually exhausted by the late 1940s. For convenience of characterization, the author focuses on Soviet works about ancient history and analyzes the main attitudes of their authors (“old” Marxists, scholars who coverted to Marxism, and the Soviet generation of historians), and the reasons and features of their appeal to the genre of historical and journalistic narratives about the past eras. This type of narrative is therefore associated with the formation and flowering of the Stalinist regime. The changes of the 1930s are all the more remarkable as we can compare the style of historians who wrote before and after this time. Using the examples of A. Tyumenev or B. Bogaevsky, the reader can see how respectful and loyal attitude to foreign scholarship was replaced by loud criticism of the limitations of “bourgeois” historians, in whose works Soviet historians certainly found features of “reactionary”. On the example of the books by N.I. Nedelsky and A.V. Mishulin, the author shows how historians who did not engage in scholarship before the revolution took the same path. In conclusion, the author gives the general characteristics of the genre, as well as an explanation of why it was doomed to gradual self-exhaustion, not only because it depended on external (political) but also because it was influenced by internal reasons.

NATIONALISM, CATOLICISM, FEMINISM? GENDER DIMENSION OF THE NATIONAL STRUGGLE IN IRELAND OF THE FIRST HALF OF THE 20th CENTURY

The author analyzes the evolution of the national movement in Ireland in the first half of the 20th century through the prism of women's participation and gender equality issues. It is argued that the Irish nationalists' choice of patriarchal Catholic ideology has not been predetermined since the revival of Irish nationalism, and although the Catholic faith played a significant role in the anti-British activities of the Irish national movement, there were many Protestants among its activists, as well as women who shared feminist values and played an important role in organizing the political and military struggle of the Irish for independence. The article focuses on the various methods of women's participation in the Irish national movement, including the creation of separate women's organizations, and membership in key societies and groups, as well as participation in constructing barricades and in fighting during the Easter Rising. It was more difficult to take part in the specifically women's struggle to grant Irish women the right to vote, which was associated with the activities of London organizations, the Women's Socio-Political Union specifically. It is argued that it was the anti-British orientation of the Irish political struggle that made it impossible (or difficult) to associate Irish feminists with the goals of the women's movement in the United Kingdom, which led to the victory of the social doctrine of Catholics and the “enslavement” of Irish women after the Irish Free State was created. The article analyzes not only sources of personal origin, telling about the participation of Irish women in the national movement, but also official documents of the young Irish state, demonstrating the evolution of its ideology in social and gender issues towards a patriarchal approach to the role of women in society, the fight against which has become the task of feminists of the second wave starting in the 1970s.