The “Flip Side” of Peter the Great’s Reforms

Under discussion the question if Peter the Greats reforms were truly revolutionary. The author focuses on two aspects: the extent to which his innovations altered the patrimonial system that had dominated Muscovy over the previous three centuries, and the role arbitrariness, bribery, embezzlement and other kinds of corruption played during his reign. She examines the first Russian emperors changes that most affected Russias various estates, including the introduction of a poll tax, the conversion of peasants on state lands into state serfs, as well as the intensification of the nobilitys service obligations and the reduction of its privileges. The author concludes that Peter not only did not destroy Muscovys traditional patrimonial system, but intensified it and even used it to impose his reforms on a reluctant population. Meanwhile, although the emperors initiatives in the sciences, arts and secular education were important, they only affected the upper class. In other respects, Peters efforts to westernize his realm were only superficial. The author also considers how Russians regarded the notion of freedom. She argues that there is a connection between seemingly opposite phenomena - the popular desire for freedom and arbitrariness of the service nobility. The author pays particular attention to corruption, which she considers to have had a major impact on the governments relationship with the elite, and was tolerated both to maintain the latters loyalty but also to manipulate it.

The Challenges to Social Control in Brezhnev’s Soviet Union, 1964-1982

This article examines the development of social control in the Soviet Union under Leonid Brezhnev, who was General Secretary of the Communist Party from 1964 to 1982. Historians have largely neglected this question, especially with regard to its evolution and efficiency. Research is based on sources in the Russian State Archive of Modern History (RGANI), the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI) and the Moscow Central State Archive (TSGAM). During Brezhnevs rule, Soviet propaganda reached the peak of its development. However, despite the fact that authorities tried to improve it, the system was ritualistic, unconvincing, unwieldy, and favored quantity over quality. The same was true for political education, which did little more than inspire sullen passivity in its students. Although officials recognized these failings, their response was ineffective, and over time Soviet propaganda increasingly lost its potency. At the same time, there were new trends in the system of social control. Authorities tried to have a foot in both camps - to strengthen censorship, and at the same time to get feedback from the public. However, many were afraid to express any criticism openly. In turn, the government used data on peoples sentiments only to try to control their thoughts. As a result, it did not respond to matters that concerned the public. These problems only increased during the era of stagnation and contributed to the decline and subsequent collapse of the Soviet system.

India of 1920s as Seen by Soviet Playwright, Consulting Indologists, Theater Critics

The authors of this contribution analyze the circumstances and the history of a popular play that was staged in the Soviet Union in 1927-1928. Titled Jumah Masjid, this play was devoted to the anti-colonial movement in India. A manuscript of the play, not indicating its title and the name of its author, was found in the St. Petersburg Branch of the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences among the papers related to A.M. and L.A. Meerwarth, members of the First Russian Expedition to Ceylon and India (1914-1918). Later on, two copies of this play under the title The Jumah Masjid were found in the Russian Archive of Literature and Art and in the Museum of the Tovstonogov Grand Drama Theatre. The authors of this article use archival and published sources to analyze the reasons for writing and staging the play. They consider the image of India as portrayed by a Soviet playwright in conjunction with Indologists that served as consultants, and as seen by theater critics and by the audience (according to what the press reflected). Arguably, the celebration of the 10th anniversary of the October Revolution in Russia in 1927 and the VI Congress of the Communist International (Comintern) in 1928 encouraged writing and staging the play. The detailed picture of the anti-colonial struggle in India that the play offered suggests that professional Indologists were consulted. At the same time the play is critical of the non-violent opposition encouraged by Mahatma Gandhi as well as the Indian National Congress and its political wing known as the Swaraj Party. The research demonstrates that the author of the play was G.S. Venetsianov, and his Indologist consultants were Alexander and Liudmila Meerwarth.

Review on: Amanzholova, Dina A. Sovetskii proekt v Kazahstane: vlast i etnichnost, 1920-1930-e gg. [The Soviet project in Kazakhstan: the power and ethnicity, 1920-1930]. Moscow: The Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences Publ., 2019. 488 p.

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The Politics of Russian Memory: The Great War in the European Context

This article examines how the historical memory of World War I emerged and developed in Russia, and also compares it to how Europeans have thought about the conflict. The author argues that the politics of memory differed during the Soviet and post-Soviet periods. In the wake of the 1917 Revolution, Bolshevik efforts to re-format the memory of the Great War were part of its attempt to create a new society and new man. At the same time, the regime used it to mobilize society for the impending conflict with the 'imperialist' powers. The key actors that sought to inculcate the notion of the war with imperialism into Soviet mass consciousness were the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Communist Party, the Department of Agitation and Propaganda, and, in particular, the Red Army and Comintern. The latter two worked together to organize the major campaigns dedicated to war anniversaries, which were important both to reinforce the concept of imperialist war as well as to involve the masses in public commemorations, rituals and practices. The Soviet state also relied on organizations of war veterans to promote such commemorative practices while suppressing any alternative narratives. The article goes on to explain how, under Stalin, the government began to change the way it portrayed the Great War in the mid-1930s. And after the Second World War, Soviet politics of memory differed greatly from those in the West. In the USSR the Great Patriotic War was sacralized, while the earlier conflict remained a symbol of unjust imperialist wars.

Russian Empire’s Religious Institutions in the 18th - Early 20th Century: The Evolution of “Friend - Alien - Foe” Relations

The Russian governments three principal institutions to regulate the empires diverse religions from the 18th to the early 20th century are examined. Its author describes the evolution of these bodies, their features and purpose, as well as defining the concept of religious security by analyzing its specific historical content. The author also discusses the relationship between the institutions of the official Russian Church, religious tolerance for foreign confessions, and discrimination against the Old Believers through the prism of friend - alien - foe relations. This approach helps us understand the hierarchical nature of the relations and contradictions that existed between the institutions, whose activities regulated the religious life of the Russian Empires subjects until 1905. The article goes on to analyze the relationship between the official legal status of the Russian Church, imperial tolerance, and religious discrimination. It concludes that the formation of the three state-religious institutions that began in the 18th century ended during the reign of Emperor Nicholas I. That time saw the beginning of the gradual evolution of friend - alien - foe inter-institutional relations, which peaked under Emperor Nicholas in 1904-1906. The author also considers the changes in the governments policy towards the Russian schism of the 17th century, which ultimately removed the friend-or-foe opposition in the relations between the Russian state, the Russian Church and the schismatic Old Believers. In accordance with the modernized legislation on religious tolerance, lawful Old Believers and sectarians moved from the category of religious and political foes to that of aliens, to which foreign confessions traditionally belonged. Under the new legal and political conditions, intolerance and religious discrimination against the schism ceased to be an instrument of state policy.

Keeping cultural codes: the customs and ceremonies of ethnic minorities under Russian rule

When establishing its rule over other nationalities, the Russian Empire relied on local elites, including their aristocracy, tribal chiefs, and sometimes the clergy. In addition to retaining some of their traditional privileges, they were also granted new benefits. The same paradigm applied to the ethnic policy of both the Muscovite state and the Russian Empire: a combination of nation-wide standards of citizenship and management with local traditional principles of organizing society. The cultural codes of Russian officials and settlers on the one hand and the expanding states non-Slavic population on its the eastern and southern frontiers overlapped and influenced each other. To lessen the opposition of its minorities, the empires administration often adapted new regulations to their cultural norms. For pragmatic reasons, officials acknowledged the importance of at least showing some respect to subjects who spoke different languages and professed different beliefs. As a result of this interaction, the cultures of the rulers and the non-Russian nationalities they ruled influenced each other.

Post-Soviet diasporas in the age of the internet

This article examines the impact of recent developments in the diasporas of post-Soviet nationalities during the early 21st century. Its authors argue that new information technologies have a major impact on the creation of identities in diasporas, their interaction with the host countries and the historical homeland, as well as the social adaptation of migrants. Focusing on the evolution of expatriate communities in Russia and its Near Abroad, they point out that these diasporas use the Internet to promote common historical, cultural and civilizational values. The article goes on to analyze the information policies of ethnic and cultural organizations, the integration of intellectual elites of post-Soviet diasporas into scientific and educational institutions, the impact of digital technologies on the business activity of diasporas, the daily life of migrant workers, as well as the participation of diasporas in international culture and public diplomacy. The authors conclude that modern means of communicating information have created a fundamentally new environment for migration flows and the creation of diasporas in the post-Soviet space and around the world. Today, this trend plays an important role in economic and cultural integration and social development of Eurasia.

Childhood in the memoirs of Russian female historians of the second half of the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries

The present paper studies ego-documents of Russian female historians written in the second half of the 19th and the early 20th centuries, with a focus on the works of N.I. Gagen-Thorn, E.V. Gutnova, M.M. Levis, V.N. Kharuzina, S.V. Zhitomirskaya, E.N. Shchepkina, and N.D. Flittner. How do these authors, in their childhood descriptions, discuss their professional choices? By producing ego-documents, the female historians wanted to preserve their memory of childhood events in the form of a new historical source. In so doing they followed the principles that they also adhered to when wri- ting historical essays. At the same time their texts are very subjective: each reflects the respective researcher's personal experiences. Each text is unique, and there are few overlaps with the memoirs of other female historians of their time, or with those of younger colleagues. In many ways, the women were influenced by authors of the Russian memoirist tradition; they often adhered to self-censorship (even when there was no clear ideological pressure from society). As a result, the narrative about childhood turned into a narrative about the prerequisites for the self-identification of women as scientists. Memories became a form of self-representation, and this conditioned the selective nature of childhood narratives; later success in the profession was projected back onto childhood memories. The childhood narratives of Russian female historians differ from texts of their male colleagues: women preferred to describe their impressions with references to material artifacts and to everyday rituals, writing carefully about their emotional experiences. One of the most important subjects in these womens memoirs and diaries was when they for the first time experienced the gender conflict in their lives: when they understood that their scholarly ambition runs against the common attitudes about gender attitudes that they had internalized in early childhood.

The Patriotic War of 1812 and the Foreign Campaigns of 1813-1814 in the Historical Memory of the Peoples of the Urals

The article identifies the features of the Ural region in terms of preserving and updating the memory of the epoch of 1812-1814. Based on the analysis of various options for preserving images of the epoch (through living memory, materialized memory, festive events and other means), the author comes to the conclusion that the Ural region, despite its remoteness from the theater of war, organically fit into the all-Russian memorial context. At the same time the memory is shaped by the regions focus on military production, and by its providing a significant part of the irregular cavalry recruited from the Orenburg Cossacks and non-Russian peoples. The latter circumstance, through images of Northern cupids, gave the Urals an exotic fame abroad. Forms of preserving Urals memory of the events of 1812-1814 range from variants of living memory, which includes elements left over from the communicative memory, to purposeful activities of central and local authorities to organize mass events at anniversary dates. A significant role in memory preservation is traditionally played by educational institutions, which, starting from the school level, form the memory of childhood. The greatest concentration of memory elements related to the epoch is observed in the Southern Urals, which is predetermined, to a large extent, by the presence of compactly living non-Russian peoples who seek to emphasize their role in the events of all-Russian and even global history. Unlike a number of other national regions of the Russian Federation, the appeal to historical memory in the Urals takes place within the framework of a unifying and reconciling tradition. Despite some commemorative gaps, the three epochs (pre-Soviet, Soviet and post-Soviet) in relation to the historical memory in the Urals about the events of 1812-1814 look quite organic. Images of this great time continue to act as a unifying factor, thus preserving the sense of a common past not only with the all-Russian, but also with common European and global history.