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Reverse processes in the public socio-cultural life of modern Russia are associated with the revival of a number of contradictory past values: the Soviet society ideals (the social experiment of building socialism ended twenty years ago, and before that it lasted more than 70 years); religious Orthodox revival (focused on the values of pre-revolutionary Russia before 1917); the development of traditional folk culture (transferring the value horizon into pre-Christian Slavic culture). The purpose of the article is to show how historical memory "lives" in the collective consciousness of modern Russians, how the archaization processes of historical memory and memorial practices are implemented at various social levels - from individual families (family memory), lower social cells (the level of municipalities, local clubs, schools), to federal school textbooks and national holidays. And turning to the analysis of Russian reality through the approaches of "memory studies" can have serious heuristic potential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How can the loss of connection with history be experienced and expressed? The relationship with the past is difficult to capture and describe, although at some historic moments the emotional connection with the past becomes pivotal. This article introduces the debates on loss and cultivating the sense of losing the past in modernizing Russia in the late 19th - early 20th century. It contributes to the history of emotions, analyzing the discourse on the disappearance of Russian cultural history cultivated by intellectual and artistic circles around the journals Mir Iskusstva, Starye Gody and Iskusstvo in the late Russian Empire, and tracing distinct voices that problematized the relation to earlier times in Russia and promoted the preservation of Russian cultural and historical monuments. The article concludes that the discourse of losing the connection with Russia's own past played an important role in forming the discourse and practices of Russian heritage preservation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article approaches the ample Tsarist campaign diary (1,300 folios), describing Moldavia and Wallachia's 1848-1850 military occupation by the Russian 5th army corps led by general commander Alexander Nikolaevich Lüders, and the protecting power's armed interventions in Transylvania (1849). The echoes of this long military campaign were feebler at that time, than those of the muchclamored Russian campaign in Hungary (June-August 1849). Ignored so far by the Russian and Romanian historiographies (even if for different reasons), the 1848-1850 occupation of the Romanian Lands is minutely related by an unknown source, recently discovered in the Russian State Military-Historical Archive in Moscow and edited by us. Also analyzed the difficult conditions of access in the War Archive of the former Tsarist Empire, today Eastern Europe's largest military archive of medieval and modern history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The historical case study of G. Lignana represents a new direction in the developing historical study of relations and cooperation in the fields of culture and academic research between Italian and Russian scholars in the second half of the nineteenth century. The Italian linguist G. Lignana can be considered the forefather of Slavic studies at a university level in post-unification Italy. This article attempts to examine Lignana's close relationship with representatives of the Imperial Academy of Science and two of the most important scholars of the nineteenth century: F.I. Buslaev and Ja.K. Grot. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article Vasilenko's novel The Little Fool is analysed in order to highlight the ways the author created the hybrid genre of the "novel-hagiography" by re-visioning a series of classical, biblical and folk myths. The novel has a frame-like structure and the main character of the novel has two hypostases in two different timelines: Nad'ka in the early Sixties and Ganna in the early Thirties, both in the Soviet Union. The core of the novel re-visions and recreates the figure of the 'Fool in Christ' by assigning this role to a female protagonist, the thirteen-year-old girl Ganna. Her double, Nad'ka, merges the figures of the archetypal Great Mother and the Mother of Christ. At the end of the novel Nad'ka gives birth to a new Sun thereby saving her people from the menace of a nuclear war. This novel is a fine example of the neo-mythological conscience which, in the late twentieth century, found expression in the works of many Russian women writers who reworked classical and folk myths, giving agency to female characters and astutely altering the traditional plots of myth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study describes the concepts of Russian national identity and Russian history that are presented in current Russian children's books on history. The analysis allowed for the formulation of the semantic profiles of "Russia", "Russian Empire", "Soviet Union", "Great Patriotic War" and "Russian people". These concepts include key aspects of Russian national identity and history. A comparison with Soviet and post-Soviet textbooks has demonstrated that current concepts are directly related to those of the Soviet and post-Soviet period. Russian history is told as linear and harmonious, practically inevitable in its course. It ranges from the Kievan Rus to the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union to today's Russia. Russia, the Russian nation with the tsar at its center, embodies a beautiful world. The children's books narrate in simple and clear form the myth of the distinctiveness of the Russian nation and its historical path. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the history of using wood and timber waste and annual plants in the Soviet Union from the 1950s to the1960s. In the middle of the twentieth century, Soviet leadership, producers and scientists expressed their anxiety about the lack of forests near pulp and paper plants, and started looking for alternative raw materials. Modernisation during the same period witnessed a number of initiatives to use different sources for pulp production, ranging from wood and timber waste to reed and annual plants. It included attempts to develop low-waste and non-waste industrial technologies. In most cases, however, this search did not transform the supply of raw materials. Instead, most factories continued manufacturing pulp and pulp-based products using wood, and thus kept cutting and exploring undisturbed forests, in particular those in Siberia. In this article, I investigate the attempted use of alternative resources in industrial operations and examine why employing these materials was not successful in the Soviet Union in the 1950s-1960s. I am interested in the organisational and technological aspects of how forestry developed and used resources in the Soviet Union. I illustrate how technologies circulated not only within the country, but also between the USSR and Western countries. The article contends that new practices did not change wasteful wood-use practices, in large part because the industry continued to contend with infrastructural and organisational obstacles while attempting to introduce alternative resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article talks about the rise and demise of the Soviet Russian Empire. Topics include the Russian Civil War that was fought across the vast multinational territorial expanses of the former tsarist Russian Empire; contribution of Vladimir Lenin in the Russian Empire; and the Russian Communist Party.

The article is devoted to the problem of constructing a new cultural identity of the highlanders living in the Terek region during the period of 1860-1917. In this article, the authors proceed from the established ideas in the science that the entire evolution of Russian history is filled with the practice of organizing the coexistence of different cultural identities in their constant interrelated development. The specific historical examples show how the inclusion of the Northern Caucasus in the Russian Empire, the modernization processes experienced by Russia itself during this period, the conscious acceptance of the elements of new consciousness, norms and values by the highlanders, has influenced the rationalization of the culture of the Terek region population. Such factors as kunachestvo, borrowings in the material culture, the provision of highlanders with economic and trade opportunities to work peacefully and provide their families with the results of peaceful work, the integration of highlanders into education and enlightenment on a modern basis have become effective means of creating a mechanism of interpenetration of the highlanders' and Slavic cultures in the region and the formation of a new cultural identity of the North Caucasian highlanders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The historical assessment of the impact of military-industrial production on the development of prerevolutionary Russia, especially in 1914-1917, is a matter of controversy. Some historians stress the imprudent nature of government policy in this sphere, which eventually had catastrophic consequences. Other authors cite macroeconomic data which show increased economic activity in the country triggered by the First World War, and the role of defense services in boosting people's living standards during the war years. The roots of this controversy lie in the underestimation of the historical, i.e., interdisciplinary, essence of the problem. It cannot be resolved by statistical methods alone. First, it is necessary to assess the validity of the sources, mainly in order to analyze how the economic processes, discussed in this article, are related to political interests and social structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the current focus on how digital technology alters our conception of the self and its place in the broader perceived reality yields fascinating insight into modern issues, there is much to be gained by analyzing the presence of dualist and augmented reality discourses in a pre-digital era. This essay will examine the ontological interplay of textual dualist norms in the Russian and Soviet states of the 19th and early 20th centuries and how those norms were challenged by augmented claims embodied in rumors, refrains, and the spelling of names. By utilizing the informational concepts of mobility and asynchronicity, three Russian historical vignettes--the Emancipation of the Serfs in 1861, the documentation of Jews in Imperial Russia, and the attempts by Trotsky to realize Soviet symchka--demonstrate that not only are dualist discourses prevalent in periods outside of the contemporary, but also that the way in which those conflicts framed themselves in the past directly influences their deployment in today's digital world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the author considers the moral economy of terrorism in late imperial Russia during the early twentieth century. It focuses especially on the writings of French Algerian existentialist author Albert Camus on Russian terrorist Ivan Kaliaev of the Combat Organization of the Russian Socialist Revolutionary (SR) Party and political theorist Michael Walzer in his book "Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations." It explores how terrorists determined the timing of their acts of violence based on the presence of innocents, or people not the target of their political assassinations. Other topics include notions of collateral damage, terrorism in the press, and myths associated with terrorist-martyrs.

The article discusses the relationship between male same-sex sexuality, violence, and masculinity in the Soviet Union's Leningrad Province during the 1950s. Particular focus is given to two criminal cases from the period involving sodomy, rape, and murder. According to the author, the men in these cases used their gender privilege and the violent exploitation of women and effeminate men to construct spaces in which they could experience sexual and emotional relationships with other men. Details on the effect of World War II on violence and gender relations are presented. Other topics include gay male culture in rural areas, homosocial spaces, and the consumption of alcohol.

This paper examines the discussions on peacekeeping in the United Nations during the 1980s and up to the disintegration of the Soviet Union. It demonstrates that the call for wider implementation of UN peacekeeping operations and for the broadening of their functions began in the final stages of the Cold War. This was not a result of a shift in the policies of the Western powers or the work of the UN Secretariat; rather, the major source of change was an alliance between Western states which were veterans in contributing to peacekeeping operations and Eastern European states led by the Soviet Union. These two groups of states identified a need for multifunctional United Nations peacekeeping operations as the appropriate instrument for dealing with conflicts in the new world order of the 1990s. Many UN member states supported the new ideas which suited their myriad interests, albeit with reservations on several new functions of the operations. Therefore, with the end of the Cold War the international community found in peacekeeping the most uncontested instrument available to maintain international peace and security. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article presents the views of the Soviet Union and Russia of Victor Vladimirovich Erofeyev, a noted Russian writer and columnist. The author of the article focuses especially on Erofeyev's views of the former Soviet Union and its two most recognizable leaders, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and Joseph Stalin, as well as his opinions concerning selected aspects of contemporary Russian politics, society, capitalism, and the Russian mentality. The author notes that Erofeyev's opinions and views are shaped by his unique opinions vis–à–vis society and politics, and he also seeks to show the relationship Erofeyev's approach to Russia and its drive towards Westernization in relation to the Russian intellectual movement of the 19th century (thus demonstrating that Erofeyev's views stem from a tradition of Westernization found within Russia's own intellectual history).

This article examines the early-Soviet dialect of the German language as evidenced within the "Русско-немецкий словарь" ("Russian-German Dictionary") of Алексеи Федорович Несслер (Aleksei Fedorovich Nessler). The authors first trace the history and fate of Russia's German population from the 15th century through the 1940s, noting both population figures and the periods of support for and repression against that ethnic group. The authors then use the Nessler dictionary, which was published in 1934, to note the unique dialect of German spoken by Germans living within the Soviet Union (one that was filled with various Russian and Soviet-era neologisms).

The article discusses the Bethania Mental Hospital of Russia, established by the Mennonites of Russia in 1910. The article states that the Mennonite Teachers' Society suggested a hospital for the handicapped in 1904 and that a Bethania Commission oversaw the operating principles of the hospital, which were patterned after the Bethel Institute in Bielefeld, Germany. The article states that the commission required that doctors appointed to the hospital adhere to the principles of the Mennonite faith, and that Dr. Wilhelm Stieda was the first appointee. The author suggests that the hospital suffered from the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, and states that the hospital was closed by the government of the Soviet Union in 1927.

Illustrates the mechanism of artistic identification reflected in the literary careers of young Russian emigres in inter-war France which came into play when each exile defined his or her artistic identity in the emigre-French-Soviet triangle. Focus on Iurii Fel'zen who combined the legacies of Russian literary ancestors Marcel Proust and Mikhal Lermontov.