Moscow Archives Research Articles

АЛТАЙСКАЯ ЭТНОГРАФИЯ В ПИСЬМАХ

The article analyzes letters from the 1920s and early 1930s containing information on the history and ethnography of Altai and Mountain Shoria. The selection of the letters was made in the archives of Moscow, St. Petersburg and Gorno-Altaysk. The authors of the letters are ethnographers-Altaiologists and their informants: the Teleuts and the Altaians. The author considers the following: 1) letters from scholars to their colleagues and teachers; 2) letters from the Teleuts and the Altaians to the ethnographers; 3) “letters of repentance” to the newspaper, in which shamans and Burkhanism priests repent of their religious activities. The letters describe the peculiarities of state policy in the region, the interethnic relations issues, the role of ethnographers in conducting national zoning of the 1920s.

Таможенная книга Великого Новгорода 1677/78 г. как исторический источник

Customs books are the major mass source on the history of domestic and foreign trade of Russia in the 17th century. Then one of the most important national centers of trade was Veliky Novgorod. There are several Veliky Novgorod customs books stored in the archives of Moscow and Stockholm: for 1610/11, 1613/14, 1614/15, 1714. In 2019, the author got acquainted with the Novgorod customs book for 1677/78 from the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts, no information on which has been cited in historical literature. This document was discovered by archeographer N. Ogloblin among the documents of the Siberian Prikaz in the mid-1890s, but was not included in the inventory of the Novgorod bureau of the Razryad and Siberian Prikazes published in late 19th century. The article presents a brief archaeographic description of the Novgorod customs book for 1677/78: its format, volume, binding. The article lists the names of officials responsible for collecting customs in Veliky Novgorod in 1677/78, the customs head and his assistants (tseloval'niki); it also provides data on the customs head and treasurer (larechnyi) from the Veliky Novgorod census book for 1677/78. The structure of the customs book for 1677/78 and the forms of individual records (information on residence and social status of traders, type and quantity of goods) are analyzed in detail. Unique feature of the Novgorod customs book for 1677/78 is that it contains not only the composition of the goods offered for sale, but also of the purchased goods. The analyzed document is a valuable historical source, containing extensive statistical and factual material on the history of domestic and foreign trade, not only in Veliky Novgorod, but in the whole of Russia. It is to be published as a publication-study, in which the text of the source is to be accompanied by the research essay and biographical and terminological notes.

Букет фиалок и немного нервно: штрихи к нобелевским дням 1933 г.

In 1933, Ivan Bunin was the first Russian author to be awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. This article bears on the materials held in Moscow archives that contribute to the Bunin “Nobeliade” that researchers have reconstructed relying on foreign collections. The ego-documents of direct participants and first-hand witnesses of the events that took place between November 9 (the announcement of the Swedish Academy) and December 3 (Bunin’s departure from Paris to Stockholm) add touching details to this historical moment and also demonstrate different attempts to manipulate the laureate. Dozens of telegrams and some letters to the laureate are stored in the Russian archive of art and literature. They overlap with the letters of the abovementioned Bunin’s correspondents to other persons held in the House of Russia Abroad. They latter archive also includes a handwritten note of Bunin. This is the first publication of the mentioned archive materials.

The Rise and Fall of Russia's Far Eastern Republic, 1905–1922: Nationalisms, Imperialisms, and Regionalisms in and after the Russian Empire by Ivan Sablin

Reviewed by: The Rise and Fall of Russia's Far Eastern Republic, 1905–1922: Nationalisms, Imperialisms, and Regionalisms in and after the Russian Empire by Ivan Sablin Paul J. Welch Behringer (bio) Ivan Sablin, The Rise and Fall of Russia's Far Eastern Republic, 1905–1922: Nationalisms, Imperialisms, and Regionalisms in and after the Russian Empire ( New York: Routledge, 2019). 300 pp., ill. Bibliography. Index. ISBN: 978-1-138-31730-7. Ivan Sablin, a research group leader at the University of Heidelberg, has published an important book that will be required reading for anyone studying the history of the Russian Far East in the revolutionary and civil war periods. In this book Sablin, a prolific writer and intrepid researcher who works with archival documents in several languages, expands on his many published articles on the subject.1 Readers familiar with his previous work will recognize some of the book's arguments and evidence, but Sablin does an excellent job of bringing all these threads together [End Page 301] in a coherent and detailed regional history. Sablin has written the first detailed monograph in English on the Far Eastern Republic (FER). Although other historians have touched on the republic's history (nearly all histories of the Russian Civil War mention it), sustained analyses of the Soviet buffer state are few.2 And none of them approach the deep archival research conducted by Sablin and presented in The Rise and Fall. In addition to working in Russian archives in Vladivostok, Khabarovsk, Ulan-Ude, and Moscow, he draws on some U.S. and Japanese primary documents. Sablin also incorporates findings from the post-Soviet Russian-language secondary literature on the FER.3 It would have been laudable enough if that were the extent of Sablin's contributions. But the author also attempts to expand on the way historians conceptualize the Far Eastern Republic's regional significance. This is often treated as a discreet and strange episode that lasted only from 1920 to 1922. Sablin demonstrates how competing strands of regional and national identity interacted with the geopolitical contest among empires, influencing the creation of the FER as well as its demise. Rather than simply focusing on the action in the FER's capital (Verkhneudinsk and later Chita), Sablin takes a wider regional approach, explaining why the FER succeeded where its competitors (such as the left-leaning zemstvo government in Vladivostok or S. D. Merkulov's Priamur Provisional Government) failed. Sablin is also in conversation with the New Imperial History and the latest research on nationalism in the Russian and Soviet empires, which have left the Russian Far East in this period relatively unexamined. Sablin builds his case over the course of an introduction, five chapters, and a conclusion. Although the book follows a roughly chronological narrative, the author's conceptual framework sometimes causes him to jump back and forth in time, which, along with some dense and [End Page 302] awkward prose, occasionally makes it hard for the reader to follow the course of events or to find information quickly. Nevertheless, Sablin's interpretations are well constructed and convincing. The maps and illustrations throughout the book are excellent. An extensive bibliography follows each chapter. In the introduction, Sablin gives an overview of the Russian Far East up to 1905 – Russia's eastward imperial expansion, conflicts with the Qing and Japanese empires, and the region's place in the administration and imagination of the Russian Empire. He also provides a useful summary of the English- and Russian-language historiography on the Russian Far East, lays out his conceptual framework, and describes his sources and methods. Sablin's overarching argument is that the advocates of three types of identity competed to dominate the FER's creation, state-building policies, and foreign relations. The regionalists were led by A. M. Krasnoshchekov, the FER's first head of government and foreign minister, who envisioned an autonomous state structure within a larger Soviet federation. In Krasnoshchekov's conception, the FER would be based on a regional, multiethnic identity. It was Krasnoshchekov who sold the idea of the FER buffer state to Moscow in the first place (and not, as Soviet-era historians often claimed, Lenin's brainchild). The...

David Vigódski, o Tradutor

O artigo apresenta alguns detalhes importantes da trajetória de vida e obra do crítico literário, poeta, escritor e tradutor David Vigódski. Praticamente desconhecido no Brasil, David desempenhou um papel importante, nos primeiros anos da União Soviética, de divulgação de obras de escritores da Espanha, de Portugal e dos países da América Latina. O artigo apresenta um material encontrado em arquivos em Moscou, levanta algumas indagações a respeito da tradução do conto do escritor brasileiro Alcides Maya que figura em uma coletânea organizada por David e traz a tradução de um poema escrito por ele antes de morrer tragicamente.

Women’s international Democratic Federation, the ‘Third World’ and the Global Cold War from the late-1950s to the mid-1960s

ABSTRACTThis article examines the work of the Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF) with women from Africa, Asia and Latin America. It analyzes their role in the WIDF’s decision-making process and activities during a period marked by decolonization and the intensification of women’s rights activism outside Europe. This analysis contributes to a better understanding of the extent to which the WIDF’s official position on support for the rights of women in the Global South was translated into the practical work of organization. The article is based on materials from Moscow archives that have hitherto not been explored in research on the WIDF. It shows that, in spite of the WIDF’s formal anti-colonial stance, women from the Global South were not always given a voice or able to insert their demands into WIDF policy.

Dadykina , M. M. Kraikovskii , A. V Laius , Iu A. Pomorskie promysly na Shpitsbergene v XVIII - nach. XIX v. Issledovanie. Dokumenty (review)

SEER, 97, 2, APRIL 2019 364 Dadykina, M. M.; Kraikovskii, A. V. and Laius, Iu. A. Pomorskie promysly na Shpitsbergene v XVIII – nach. XIX v. Issledovanie. Dokumenty. AliansArkheo , Moscow and St Petersburg, 2017. 504 pp. Notes. Tables. Figures. Appendices. Bibliographical references. Indices. Price unknown. Russia’s emergence as a maritime power during the reign of Peter the Great is widely discussed in the literature. What is less widely appreciated, however, is the fact that Russian maritime activities long predated Peter. The peoples of the Russian north (the ‘Pomors’) constructed sea-going craft enabling them to engage in fishing, hunting and associated pursuits on and near the various islands and lands of the Arctic and sub-Arctic long before the time of the TsarReformer . One of the locations favoured by Pomor fishermen and hunters was the archipelago of Svalbard, or Spitsbergen as it is still known to the Russians. Svalbard’s historically contentious geopolitical status, plus recent tensions over the whole of the Arctic basin deriving from both environmental and political factors, mean that this book is likely to attract some international attention even though it focuses on the relatively distant past (eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries). Although Svalbard has been the subject of much discussion over the years both among scholars and among politicians and others, the authors of this book contend that discussions have long been hindered by the absence of scholarship based on solid documentary evidence. It is this lacuna which they seek to address. The focus is on Russian maritime activities taking place on and around the archipelago during the period within the broader context of the Arctic environment, the northern economy and society, government policy, and prevailing ideas on modernization, economic theory and the rational use of resources. Both the activities of the Russian state and those of the local participants in maritime enterprises are considered. Key questions include the part played by maritime activities on Svalbard and its surrounding seas in the northern economy, and in what ways such activities interconnected with government policies and schemes for modernization. The book is divided into two principal sections. The first, entitled ‘Spitsbergen in the Politics, Economy and Culture of the Russian Empire’ is a broad-brush survey of the subject based primarily on the documentary sources found in the second section, supplemented by secondary sources where appropriate. Having surveyed the earlier (primarily Russian) historiography, attention turns to maritime activity in the Russian north in the context of attempts to ‘Europeanize’ the Russian Empire. Government policies to organize companies to exploit the resources of Svalbard and nearby territories (train-oil, walrus products including valuable walrus ivory, seal products, cod) are discussed and their significance for the local economy assessed. The government’s repeated attempts to develop a Russian whaling industry are also considered. Detailed REVIEWS 365 consideration is given to the ways in which the Pomors organized their activities, including the winter land-based hunting of fox, polar bear, northern reindeer and eider-duck. Altogether it is concluded that Pomor expeditions to Svalbard did not play a substantial role in the northern economy, though the sources available are two meagre to allow for a definitive judgement. The book’s second section consists of some 184 documents, most of which appear in published form for the first time. The authors and their assistants have scoured archives in Moscow (RGADA), St Petersburg (RGIA, Arkhiv SPbII RAN) and Archangel (GAAO) to make a wide range of materials available to the scholarly community. The documents include those relating to government attempts to establish monopoly companies according to mercantilist principles, and to develop a whaling industry, and those which cast light on traditional Pomor activities. An important role in the latter is played by data from the Archangel customs receipts. There are two appendices. The first is a list of excerpts from the St Petersburg vedomosti for the 1740s and ’50s with details about whaling activity plus a translation of an account of a voyage to Svalbard undertaken in 1780 by S. Bacstrom. The second contains data on the arrival and departure of relevant vessels at the port of Archangel with the provisions and imports carried (1780s) and other details. There is a...

Smiley , Will From Slaves to Prisoners of War: The Ottoman Empire, Russia, and International Law (review)

REVIEWS 365 consideration is given to the ways in which the Pomors organized their activities, including the winter land-based hunting of fox, polar bear, northern reindeer and eider-duck. Altogether it is concluded that Pomor expeditions to Svalbard did not play a substantial role in the northern economy, though the sources available are two meagre to allow for a definitive judgement. The book’s second section consists of some 184 documents, most of which appear in published form for the first time. The authors and their assistants have scoured archives in Moscow (RGADA), St Petersburg (RGIA, Arkhiv SPbII RAN) and Archangel (GAAO) to make a wide range of materials available to the scholarly community. The documents include those relating to government attempts to establish monopoly companies according to mercantilist principles, and to develop a whaling industry, and those which cast light on traditional Pomor activities. An important role in the latter is played by data from the Archangel customs receipts. There are two appendices. The first is a list of excerpts from the St Petersburg vedomosti for the 1740s and ’50s with details about whaling activity plus a translation of an account of a voyage to Svalbard undertaken in 1780 by S. Bacstrom. The second contains data on the arrival and departure of relevant vessels at the port of Archangel with the provisions and imports carried (1780s) and other details. There is a short bibliography and indices of personal and geographical names, but unfortunately no subject index. In conclusion, this book can be said to be a very solid contribution to the literature concerning Russian maritime activity in Svalbard and its surrounding seas, and in the north more generally, in the eighteenth century. In addition it provides scholars with a major new resource for future research. All historical scholars with Russian Arctic interests will value its appearance. School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences Denis J. B. Shaw University of Birmingham Smiley, Will. From Slaves to Prisoners of War: The Ottoman Empire, Russia, and International Law. The History and Theory of International Law. Oxford, Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 2018. x + 283 pp. Map. Notes. Bibliography. Index. £65.00. Narratives of captivity and slavery loom large in imperial Russia’s encounter with the Ottoman empire, evoking the Orientalist tropes that characterized broader European discourses about ‘the East’. These narratives also had material basis in the Russo-Ottoman confrontation, marked by internecine wars that resulted in large numbers of captives on both sides. In From Slaves to Prisoners of War: The Ottoman Empire, Russia, and International Law, Will SEER, 97, 2, APRIL 2019 366 Smiley places the shifting norms, governance and practice of captivity on the Russo-Ottoman frontier at the centre of a new account of international law’s development before the twentieth century. This account provincializes western Europe and the ‘Law of Nations’ doctrines articulated by Grotius or Vattel, and argues instead for a set of norms regarding subjecthood and the laws of war that emerged from the exigencies of inter-imperial competition on the ground. Beginning with Peter the Great’s attempts to puncture Ottoman control of the Sea of Azov in the early eighteenth century, and tracing RussoOttoman relations through to the eve of the First World War, Smiley presents a compelling genealogy of law wrought by war, and the implications of this process for subjects of the Tsar and Sultan. Over the course of ten chapters, Smiley presents a clear chronology of stepwise and contingent legal change. Ottoman approaches to captives (many of whom were also slaves) evolved from the ‘Law of Ransom’ in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, to the ‘Law of Release’ from the 1730s through to the mid-nineteenth century, and a prisoner-of-war system that began under the aegis of ‘benign reciprocity’ in the mid-nineteenth century. This transformation was, Smiley argues, ‘complex and multilayered’ (p. 237) and not characterized by a single direction of ideological travel from west to east. Crucially, the Ottoman captivity system, which by 1900 had come to resemble the norms expounded by international humanitarian law, was formed through contestation with Russia and then expanded to apply to Ottoman relations with other powers...

«Костры горели всю ночь…»: о работе А. Н. Толстого над романом «Петр Первый»

The archives of Moscow and St. Petersburg have preserved materials for A. Tolstoy’s novel „Peter the Great.” Among them, there are sources of text, autographs, and typesetting with copyright, with descriptions of interrogations and executions of archers. They form a single “plot” and help to reproduce the sequence of the writer’s work on the text, which completes the last chapter of the first book of the novel. The samples of handwritten and printed sketches for individual scenes of the novel “Peter the Great”, stored in the ar-chives of Moscow and St. Petersburg, help to restore the writer’s working process on the text.

Источники по истории установления дипломатических отношений СССР со странами восточной африки в московских архивах

Источники по истории установления дипломатических отношений СССР со странами восточной африки в московских архивах

New sources on Soviet perpetrators of mass repression: a research note

ABSTRACTAt the end of the Great Terror, Stalin reversed course and reined in the NKVD. Hundreds of NKVD interrogators and other officials were arrested and charged with “violations of socialist legality.” Punishments ranged from imprisonment in the Gulag to execution. This repression of the NKVD was the result of a combination of scapegoating and “clan” politics. The arrests and accompanying trials of these NKVD officers created an enormous paper trail of sources, strictly classified in the FSB archives in Moscow. Recently, however, the security police archives in Ukraine opened its doors to researchers. The result is access to a range of sources which allow researchers, for the first time, to explore in detail the topic of Soviet perpetrators, in this case, the Soviet security police during and in the aftermath of the Great Terror.

ОРГАНИЗАЦИЯ И СЛУЖЕБНЫЙ СОСТАВ КОЛОМЕНСКОГО УЕЗДНОГО КАЗНАЧЕЙСТВА ВТОРОЙ ПОЛОВИНЫ XIX - НАЧАЛА ХХ В.

The article considers the organization and personnel structure of Kolomna regional treasury office in the second half of the XIX - at the beginning of the XX century. Analyzing the legislation of the Russian Empire and archival documents of the Central State Archives of Moscow, in particular, staffing lists, the author traces the changes in the structure and functions of regional treasury offices on the whole, identifies the structure and status of the employees of Kolomna regional treasury office, analyzes and summarizes the information concerning their education, rotation, financial position and the system of rewards.

ЛАНДШАФТНАЯ ЛЕКСИКА В ДЕЛОВОЙ ПИСЬМЕННОСТИ ПРИЕНИСЕЙСКОЙ СИБИРИ XVII - НАЧАЛА XVIII В.

The article provides a description of landscape vocabulary fixed in the handwritten monuments of business content of Yenisei region Siberia of the XVII - the beginning of the XVIII century. The paper analyzes the vocabulary associated with the landscape of both natural and anthropogenic origin. Consideration of natural and geographical conditions experienced by the first Russian settlers in Yenisei region Siberia allowed the author to identify and characterize 290 lexemes nominating terrestrial and water objects and the territories with a certain type of vegetation. The paper introduces into scientific use the data acquired from the handwritten monuments stored in the archives of Moscow (Russian State Archives of Ancient Acts), Saint Petersburg (St. Petersburg Branch of the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences), Krasnoyarsk (State Archives of Krasnoyarsk Territory).

Myron Korduba and the Archeographic Commission of the NTSh: cooperation in the early XX-th century

The purpose of the article is to find out the features of M. Kordub’s cooperation with the Archeographical Commission of the Taras Shevchenko Scientific Society (AK NTSh) at the beginning of the 20th century. The formation of the Korduba-Archaeologist occurred under the influence of M. Hrushevsky. The initiative of his teacher was an immediate impetus for the archaeological searches of a young scientist to publish the sources of the Ukrainian Cossacks, which were identified as a priority direction created in January 1896 by the Archeographical Commission of the NTSh. Including the long-term M. Korduba’s interest in the Ukrainian Cossacks and the already considerable source material he had gathered, M. Hrushevsky identified the student’s task to find, process and publish the documents which were covering the Khmelnytsky era. The peculiarity of M. Kordub’s collaboration with AK NTSh was that, unlike the other colleagues at the school of Lviv, for a long time he did not formalize his participation in the project of the Cossack archeology, being in the role of a guest lecturer. Another important feature was that, when he was working as a professor at a gymnasium in Chernivtsi, M. Korduba didn’t have the possibility of direct contact with the teacher to discuss the various aspects of the realized project. This discussion took place in writing, which gives us an unique opportunity to look into the creative laboratory as a whole project of the Cossack archaeography, and, more importantly, to recreate the process of becoming Korduba-Archaeologist. As a result of the painstaking study of the Viennese, Lviv and Moscow archives, during the first half of 1908 M. Korduba made arrangements and proposed his project to AK NTSh as another part of the archeographic series «Zherela to the History of Ukraine-Rus».

COUNT MICHAL KLEOFAS OGINSKI’S MUSICAL COLLECTION FROM THE RUSSIAN STATE ARCHIVE OF ANCIENT ACTS IN MOSCOW

The article is devoted to the collection of manuscripts and musical publications from the heri­tage of count Michal Kleofas Oginski (1765—1833). For the first time ever, there is revealed his diplomatic archive (including his manuscripts), stored in the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts in Moscow. Oginski was not only a politician and diplomat, but also a violinist and a talented composer. The article aims to demonstrate the diversity of count M.K. Oginski’s personality. The author brings a new approach to the study of the compo­ser’s creative heritage, demonstratively proving that his works (particularly, the widely known in Europe and Russia polonaises) are an important source of knowledge about his musical preferences and artistic achievements, and a valuable illustration of that age as well. Studying of these materials is a component of the larger research project “Musical Polonica in the Libraries and Archives of Moscow”, carried out by a Polish-Russian group of librarians and musicologists. For the first time, the efforts of specialists from both countries will be aimed at identification of unexplored and unknown sources and documents showing the relationships and interinfluence of the musical cultures of Poland and Russia in the 19th—20th centuries.

Издан сборник документов об истории Псковской православной миссии

The reviewed work is devoted to a significant, and yet little-studied in both national and foreign scholarship, issue of the clergy interactions with German occupational authorities on the territory of the USSR in the days of the Great Patriotic War. It introduces into scientific use historically significant complex of documents (1941-1945) from the archive of the Office of the Metropolitan Sergius (Voskresensky) of Vilnius and Lithuania, patriarchal exarch in Latvia and Estonia, and also records from the investigatory records on charges against clergy and employees concerned in the activities of the Pskov Orthodox Mission (1944-1990). Documents included in the publication are stored in the archives of Moscow, St. Petersburg, Estonia, Lithuania, Leningrad, Novgorod, and Pskov regions. They allow some insight into nature, forms, and methods of the Nazi occupational regime policies in the conquered territories (including policies towards the Church). The documents capture religious policies of the Nazis and inner life of the exarchate, describe actual situation of population and clergy, management activities and counterinsurgency on the occupied territories. The documents bring to light connections between the exarchate and German counterintelligence and reveal the nature of political police work with informants. They capture the political mood of population and prisoners of war. There is information on participants of partisan movement and underground resistance, on communication net between the patriarchal exarchate in the Baltic states and the German counterintelligence. Reports and dispatches of the clergy in the pay of the Nazis addressed to the Metropolitan Sergius (Voskresensky) contain detailed activity reports. Investigatory records contain important biographical information and personal data on the collaborators. Most of the documents, being classified, have never been published before.

Вятские революционеры в «казенном доме». 1905-1913 гг.

The article analyses various aspects of the life in prison of political prisoners of the Vyatka gubernia. Unpublished documents from the archives of Kirov and Moscow, on which this study is based, designate the subject of the study; that is, they allow to establish forms of resistance of political prisoners to prison regime, to identify patterns of their escapes, to trace dynamics in occupancy of political prisons in the Vyatka gubernia, to establish instances of interaction between representatives of different left parties while in penal institutions. The timeframe of the study is the period of the first Russian revolution of 1905-1908, when prisons ceased to be the tenement of few and far between ardent revolutionaries from the privileged strata of society, and swarmed with much less versed ideologically masses of the discontented. Thus, in view of a participant of the revolutionary events of 1905-1908, Socialists-Revolutionary Maximalist G. A. Nestroev, the ideological grounding of the political prisoners deteriorated significantly. The author, however, believes that this ‘diversity’ of prisoners allows to conduct a more thorough analysis of their public activity in prison and to better link the activities of prisoners with the people on whose behalf the revolutionary forces acted. The author focuses on the Socialists-Revolutionaries, as their percentage among prisoners was much higher than that of the Socialists-Democrats. Known for several high-profile assassinations, the former were considered more dangerous state criminals than the Socialists-Democrat ‘propagandists,’ and thus were subject to more severe punishments. After the October revolution 1917, the Bolsheviks created an extensive mythologized literature on fellow party members who served time in tsarist prisons but mentioned only several Socialists-Revolutionaries, and these were politically harmless, or deceased (like E. S. Sazonov), or attached to the Bolshevik party (like V. N. Rukhlyadev). Findings and conclusions of the article can be used in research of the later periods in the history of Russia and the Soviet Union, particularly, for comparison of the prisoners’ struggle with the prison administration and of the forms of assistance to prisoners from the outside in tzarist Russia and later.

La condition humaine d’André Malraux : pourquoi le roman n’a pas été édité en URSS dans les années trente

By studying the documents of Moscow archives and by comparing of original novel with available fragment translations , the author of the article arrived to conclusion that there is no published full translation of the most famous novel by André Malraux La condition humaine . The paper analyzes articles of the Soviet press of that period , memoirs and other documents , which help to understand why the famous novel of the world known writer has not been published in the USSR .

Demobilized Veterans in Late Stalinist Leningrad: Soldiers to Civilians by Robert Dale Stalin's Citizens: Everyday Politics in the Wake of Total War by Serhy Yekelchyk (review)

SEER, 95, 4, OCTOBER 2017 782 alternative evidence and views. Graziosi criticizes the Soviet and Chinese ‘official lies’ (p. 89) that concealed and distorted the history of these famines, yet none of the scholars mention the environmental disasters that drastically reduced the 1932 harvest (as documented in Tauger, Natural Disaster and Human Action in the Soviet Famine of 1931–1933, Pittsburgh, PA, 2001), even though the reduced harvest is very evident in their own table (p. 87). The authors’ one-sided interpretations are problematic for scholarly discourse, and readers should be aware that these histories are not nearly as settled as their essays imply. Department of History Mark B. Tauger West Virginia University Dale, Robert. Demobilized Veterans in Late Stalinist Leningrad: Soldiers to Civilians. Bloomsbury Academic, London and New York, 2015. xvi + 266 pp. Illustrations. Glossary. Notes. Bibliography. Index. £85.00. Yekelchyk, Serhy. Stalin’s Citizens: Everyday Politics in the Wake of Total War. Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 2014. xi + 270 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $61.00: £43.99. Historians have not reached a consensus about the post-war Stalin years in the Soviet Union — the time of ‘late Stalinism’, from 1945 to 1953 — but the fact that they continue to spend so much time researching it shows that they agree about its importance. The fundamental research question interrogates how the Stalinist system had to evolve as a consequence of the Second World War in order, first, to survive, and, then, to ensure that its old priorities — industrial advance, national security, coherent public culture, socialism-throughsacrifice — could be delivered. These two exemplary monographs, each of which focuses on a particular Soviet city, though in quite different ways, attest to the quality of work and varying approaches that historians are bringing to this question. Robert Dale’s first book is a precise, wide-ranging and formidably detailed study of the return of military veterans to Leningrad in the wake of victory. It draws on a very thorough engagement with archives in Moscow, St Petersburg and Vyborg, an illuminating selection of published material, a small number of oral history interviews, a mastery of the secondary literature and an imaginative field of comparisons. The book’s six chapters combine a chronological trajectory, in the sense that the first chapter concerns the initial homecoming, and the last takes the story through to 1953, with thematic analysis, covering housing, labour, disability, crime and ‘mental demobilization’ (a less clear formulation, which partly relates to political REVIEWS 783 opinions). The range of sources allows Dale to tell some intriguing and exciting personal stories, which bring events to life; it also allows him to pursue the problem systematically, using a large reserve of data. Dale reminds us about the extent of wartime damage to the fabric of the city, the breakdown of the barrier between the rural and the urban, and the sheer variety of experience of the returning soldiers and civilians in Leningrad in 1945. Veterans’ access to housing was one of the most intensely difficult and politicized of the issues that they faced. Dale shows how the frequent disappointmenttheyexperienced—believingtheyhadanentitlementtodecent housing upon their return, only to find themselves in miserable conditions while they waited for something better — required them to exercise their own initiative. Even when their status entitled them to some formal privileges, they often had little opportunity to exercise these, and a complicated, resentful relationship with the authorities resulted. Meanwhile, the Leningrad economy required veterans to return to work more-or-less immediately. There was plenty of work to be done, and the local authorities directed them towards employment in places where workers were needed, including reconstruction and the provision of basic services. Often the work was uncongenial or far below the level of skills that the veteran possessed. This created another disjunction between the needs of government and the hopes of veterans. Given the enormity of their experience, what they really needed was more generous welfare provision, and the time and space to restart their lives. But if they were disabled, they faced a recalcitrant bureaucracy and a struggle to assert their rights. Dale gives vivid examples of the fraught encounter between veterans and the welfare authorities. He writes...

The Wallenberg Affair and the Onset of the Cold War

The tragic fate of the courageous Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg after he was seized by Soviet forces at the end of World War II has never been adequately explained. For more than four decades afterward, Soviet officials refused to explain why Wallenberg was detained or what happened to him afterward. Even after the Soviet Union broke apart, officials in Moscow were averse to divulging much information about Wallenberg. The book Auf den Spuren Wallenbergs, edited by Stefan Karner, brings together contributors from several countries who draw on the latest releases from Moscow archives and produce up-to-date essays about what is known at this stage about Wallenberg's mysterious disappearance.