Search

This article reveals an unsuspected instance of a problem that has troubled most states: the transposition of 'resident aliens' into 'enemy aliens'. Acknowledging that many British residents in Russia remained undisturbed during the Crimean War, the article focuses on those who found their property and their persons at risk. Their experiences illuminate the wider question of treason, itself only one of the forms of betrayal that stemmed from the contrasting naturalization laws then in force in Russia and Britain. Because allegiance to a state and its monarch carried both rights and duties, the article discusses in turn the wartime diplomatic protection offered to British subjects and the obligations demanded by both sides of those naturalized Russian subjects who manufactured armaments for the tsar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a literature review of the historiography on Russian noble identity, including the two articles in the issue by Michelle Marrese and Igor Fedyukin. The positivist approach of 19th-century historian Aleksandr Romanovich-Slavatinskii is discussed, as are the theoretical contributions of scholars in the 20th century, including: Iurii Mikhailovich Lotman, Isabel de Madariaga, Marc Raeff, and others. Issues of the relationship between the state and the nobility, and between Russian and European culture, are discussed.

Attracting adoring crowds with his 'delicate, beautiful, feminine face' and 'powerful will', Ieromonakh Iliodor (Sergei Mikhailovich Trufanov, 1880-1952) combined right-wing rhetoric with spiritual plausibility. Concentrating on the peak of Iliodor's notoriety at Tsaritsyn between 1908 and 1911, this article offers the first scholarly investigation of a scandalous career which threatened to undermine P. A. Stolypin. Drawing on the archive of the Holy Synod and a range of contemporary newspapers, the article touches on questions of masculinity and celebrity while concentrating on the damage inflicted on the Russian old regime when an unbalanced individual claiming to be its most loyal supporter was unleashed in an exceptionally unstable place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the imperial history of superstition in Russia. It states that superstition is a cult of false, badly directed religion, contrary to reason and to the sound ideas one ought to have of the supreme being. It notes that superstition is a sort of enchantment or magical power which fear exercises over the soul and the wretched daughter of the imagination who attacks it with ghost, dreams and visions. It outlines some consideration of the nature and social diffusion of the beliefs that were often condemned as superstitious. Moreover, it examines the official response concerning the circumstances inhibiting Russian public policy on the suppression of superstition.