Russian History

""""The Cold War was one of the most significant geopolitical conflicts of the twentieth century. It’s no wonder that, decades on, cinema is still exploring the motif. Stanley Kubrick’s film Dr. Stranglelove (1959) and the James Bond series are just two well-known examples out of many.
The Cold War has not only fascinated film directors. It has recently become research focus for archaeologists as well.
Between military installations, nuclear bunkers, spy equipment, and a trail of documentation, the Cold War left behind a massive material legacy in many countries that is fascinating to study for its physical and human dimensions. (In fact, universities run courses on it.)""

"Providential Empire: Russia's Religious Intelligentsia and the First World War" analyzes and contextualizes controversial commentary on the First World War by Russian religious philosophers, primarily Nikolai Aleksandrovich Berdiaev, Vladimir Frantsevich Ern, Sergei Nikolaevich Bulgakov, Prince Evgenii Nikolaevich Trubetskoi, and the Symbolist Vyacheslav Ivanovich Ivanov. Examining the prominence of the concept of Providence in their thought, the dissertation shows how Christian Providentialism can become the basis of an ideological worldview. Belief in the ability of the human mind to perceive the hand of God in history and unfolding events, along with belief in the need to interpret this ostensible evidence of the hand of God as callings to which individual believers or collective actors, such as nations, are meant to respond, leads to the emergence of a "politics of Providentialism." While expressed in a specifically Russian idiom and shaped by a specifically Russian context, the religious intelligentsia's politics of Providentialism was not unique to Russia, and was derived naturally from a traditionalist Christianity that arose in late modern Europe to stand against the perceived cultural threat of nihilism. This politics of Providentialism was one of the defining characteristics of the late imperial Russian religious intelligentsia, and, a socially significant phenomenon, it had a substantial presence in late imperial Russian civil society.

Exploring the prominent role that the concept of Providence played in the worldview of Russian religious philosophers including Nikolai Berdiaev, Sergei Bulgakov, Vladimir Ern, Prince Evgenii Trubetskoi, and the Symbolist Vyacheslav Ivanov, this article demonstrates that their Christian Providentialist thinking was inherently political. One significant expression of these intellectuals' “politics of Providentialism” was the controversial commentary they produced on the First World War, which must be confronted and construed as operating within the discourse of Russian religious philosophy. Examining the concept of Providence represents a new approach to the study of Russian religious philosophy as Christian ideology, one that highlights the social significance of Russian religious philosophy in late imperial Russian civil society and that allows us to situate Russian religious thought in international and interconfessional comparative perspective, as one part of a broader twentieth-century European and American manifestation of politicized traditionalist Christianity that arose in response to the perceived cultural threat of nihilism.

"References to St Cyril and St Methodius in a copy of the Russian
Chronograph from the collection of the National Library in Sofi a
(NBKM no. 774)

Angel Nikolov

The article looks at the references to the Slavic enlighteners St Cyril and St Methodius contained in manuscript no. 774 from the collection of the National Library inSofia (Bulgaria). The manuscript is a hitherto unknown version of the Russian Chronograph redaction from 1620. Published here are the references to the creators of the Slavonic script found in: 1) Ch. 147 – full text of the Story of the Translation of the Books from the Russian Primary Chronicle in a version practically identical to the one in the Kholmogory chronograph; 2) Ch. 148 – a) the short entry On the Translation of the Books from the Greek into the Slavic Language from the Russian Chronograph of 1512 and b) the short Vita of St Cyril from the Synaxarium."

This monograph examines previously unstudied issues of Lithuanian exile in East Siberia, namely in the Buryat-Mongolian republic east of Lake Baikal. The case study of Lithuanian deportees in Buryat-Mongolia sheds light on many aspects of everyday life in special settlement in Stalin's USSR. Based on previously unpublished primary sources, this monograph is an insight in a complex problem of forced migrations from the Baltics during Stalinism. This is one of the few works on special settlers based on rarely accessed material of Russian regional archives.

"The present study explores the concept of Nationality, which was created by Count Uvarov, the Minister for Public Enlightenment in Russia from 1833 to 1849. This concept formed the crucial part of the doctrine of Official Nationality, which served as the state ideology in the late Russian Empire. The author assesses various approaches taken to interpret and historicise the concept and the Minister himself.
The author investigates the uses to which the concept of nationality was put in the governmental periodical publication, The Journal of the Ministry for Public Enlightenment, and the writings of its author, Count Uvarov, and traces the developments that the concept has undergone from the initial stage in the issues of the Journal in the 1830s to 1840s. Furthermore, the author explores the implications of the concept, ranging from Russia's attitude towards Europe and the possibilities of a Russian Sonderweg to the problems of Russification in various imperial lands. The author asserts that while certain traits of the idea of nationality had undergone a process of solidification, it was the main unchanged characteristic of nationality, namely, its amorphousness, that enabled it to survive until the end of the Russian Empire. "

"В последние годы у многих людей крепнет ощущение, что в нашей стране всё меняется, не меняясь.
Важно задаться вопросом, какие именно устойчивые особенности традиционного мировоззрения, ментальности, поведенческих стереотипов и реакций, свойственных большинству русских (и многих нерусских) жителей страны, являются определяющими для создания специфической общественно-государственной ситуации, которую мы опять наблюдаем."

Russia is a nation with a long and tumultuous history. It has been constantly reshaped by the often-violent intersection of competing factions. From the clashes of Nordic and Asiatic nomads in the early medieval period, through the struggle between czarists and revolutionaries in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and up to the current competition for power in the post-Soviet period, this volume examines Russia as a nation defined by ethnic, political and cultural rivalries.

Вопреки утверждению А. И. Солженицына, лингвиста Эр. Хан-Пиры и авторов некоторых словарей, слово «зэк» (расшифровка графической косолинейной аббревиатуры «з/к») – производное не от существительного «заключённый», а от словосочетания «заключённый каналоармеец», обозначавшего узников, трудившихся на Беломорканале (так у Жака Росси, да и многих других). Вкратце прослежена раннесоветская терминология, обозначавшая места лишения свободы и самих заключённых.