Russian History Research Articles

Антропологические исследования в советских лагерях для военнопленных в 1940-е гг.

The article fills an important gap in the history of Russian (Soviet) physical anthropology. Based on previously secret archival papers discovered by the author, the history of anthropological research in prisoner-of-war camps on the territory of the USSR in the 1940s is revealed. Following the example of anthropologists during World War I, Soviet anthropologists, led by Viktor Bunak, initiated and carried out an extensive research program under the auspices of the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences in close cooperation with the NKVD authorities. The published archival materials strictly document the work of the scientists, who in 1943 proposed the idea of this large-scale study, and presented the project to the Deputy Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars, Andrey Vyshinsky. The immediate permission to conduct the expedition was personally given by Lavrentiy Beria. The project was carried out in 1944–1946 under strict secrecy, which also was extended to the publication of its results. Specific information is provided on the conduct of anthropological research in a number of prisoner-of-war camps, the composition of the expedition, instructions, and methodologies. The article analyzes the reasons why the entire history and results of this project remained classified as secret until the collapse of the USSR. The article is preceded by a review of anthropological research by Russian (Soviet) scientists involving special contingents as informants, explaining why special contingents (army conscripts, military personnel, mentally ill individuals, prisoners in prisons and camps) were actively used in anthropological research.

Linguistic and cultural images of Moscow and Warsaw in Russian and Polish language parodies

The subject of this study is the parodies of the Russian and Polish languages, containing ideas about Moscow and Warsaw. The material was proverbs and sayings recorded in the dictionary of V.I. Dahl "Proverbs of the Russian people" and the collection of Y. Krzyzanowski "Nowa księga przysłów i wyrażeń przysłowiowych polskich". The Paremiological Foundation plays a special role in preserving the cultural memory of the linguistic community, expresses the most important and stable stereotypes of national consciousness. At the same time, the ideas verbalized in the parodies can have both a universal, timeless character, and fix the features of the socio-historical context, the material and spiritual culture of society in a certain epoch. In the course of the research, the author identifies, analyzes and compares the components of the linguistic and cultural images of Moscow and Warsaw, verbalized in the parodies of the Polish and Russian languages. In this work, the method of synchronous description was used, as well as methods of semantic and linguistic-cultural analysis. The scientific novelty of this work lies in the multicomponent analysis and comparison of the expression of the image of Moscow and Warsaw in Russian and Polish paremiology. In the course of the study, it was possible to establish the multicomponence of linguistic and cultural images of Moscow and Warsaw. Russian and Polish parodies contain ideas about these cities as the centers of economic, political and cultural life in Russia and Poland. At the same time, the parodies express the traditional attitude towards Moscow and Warsaw as rich, beautiful cities with a high standard of living, developed trade, but at the same time expensive and dangerous. The parodies characterize the residents of Moscow and Warsaw, their habits and mores, and also refer to the role of individual streets and districts in the life of cities. The study also found that the Russian language parodies contain ideas about Moscow as a city associated with important events in the history of Russia, a city with rich architecture and certain relief features. The above-mentioned ideas about Warsaw were not recorded in the Polish language parodies.

The Participation of Women’s Monasteries in Missionary Activities of the Russian Orthodox Church in the Second Half of the XIX – Early XX Centuries

The study of the role of the Russian Orthodox Church in the life of Russian society is an urgent task for Russian historical science. The solution of this problem requires a comprehensive objective study of the missionary activities of Orthodox monasteries in the second half of the XIX – early XX centuries. The contradiction between the insufficient knowledge of the missionary activity of women’s monasteries and the need to study it in order to obtain a holistic view and an objective assessment of this activity has become a research problem. The purpose of the article is to analyze the participation of women’s monasteries in the missionary activities of the church among groups of the Russian population of different confessions in the second half of the XIX – early XX centuries. The novelty of the article lies in the fact that the evolution of the establishment of nunneries is investigated; the main directions and forms of their work are characterized; factors that influenced the work of monasteries in the church mission are identified; the results of their missionary activities are analyzed. For the first time, summary statistics on women’s missionary monasteries are presented. The study was conducted on the basis of a systematic approach using the principles of objectivity and historicism, historical-genetic and historical-comparative methods. The author concludes to the conclusion that the activities of women’s monasteries contributed to the expansion of the church mission through the use of various forms of work with the population. Social and charitable activities were of great importance. The advantage of nunneries is the use of forms of work that are attractive to the population. This not only contributed to the solution of missionary tasks but also ensured the cultural and civilizational development of the population, influenced its religious and moral state. The results of the research can be used in the content of the academic disciplines “History of Russia”, “History of traditional religions of Russia”, in studies on the church mission, the history of Russian Orthodox female monasticism. The prospects of the research are to study the missionary activities of “non-native” nunneries, co-religionist nunneries, and women’s missionary communities

Specifics of syntactic structures of Russian business writing (compared with Arabic)

The object of the study is the syntactic features of modern Russian and Arabic business correspondence; the subject is the specific features of the syntax of modern Russian business documents, which become more obvious in comparison with Arabic business writing. The scientific novelty of the study lies in identifying the features characteristic of Russian business writing at the present stage of its development, and comparing these features with the features of Arabic business letters. Also a certain novelty is the connection made by the author between the history and culture of Russian and Arab official business correspondance styles and the transformations that they are actively occurring. One of the author’s tasks was to find out why new features of business correspondence, spreading under the influence of globalization, manifest themselves differently in different languages. The study was carried out on the basis of structural-semantic, comparative and functional approaches using methods of component analysis of the text of letters, interpretation of their structure and content, observation, description, comparison. Syntactic structure of modern Russian business writing is currently actively developing. The personal nature of a business letter increases, the ways of expressing imperativeness change, the level of emotionality increases, and all of the above is reflected in the types of syntactic structures used. In Arabic business writing, transformations are less pronounced, which is due to the history of its development and the characteristics of Arab culture. In electronic business correspondence, the syntax of Russian and Arabic business letters has similar changes. It is concluded that Russian and Arabic business writing are influenced not only by globalization processes, but also by their original ancient history, as well as Russian and Arabic culture, which determines the differences in the syntactic structure.

Reflection of Russian History in Literature Course (Based on Example of Ust-Medveditskaya Women’s Gymnasium)

Reflection of Russian History in Literature Course (Based on Example of Ust-Medveditskaya Women’s Gymnasium)

Правда и ложь в исторических репутациях. Образ императора Николая I в отечественном кинематографе

The article analyses the problem of distortions of historical reputations of the rulers of the Russian Empire, in particular, Nicholas I, who is considered one of the most slandered monarchs on the Russian throne. Attitudes to Nicholas I and to his thirty‐year reign, which started with the Decembrist uprising (1825) and ended with the Crimean War (1853–1855), were and still are largely conditioned by historical assessments of the two events. These assessments, in their turn, have been influenced by the notorious political expediency, which implies manipulations, selective citations, hushing up the positive points while emphasizing the negative ones, arbitrary abridgments of utterances, etc. However, recent decades have demonstrated obvious efforts to undertake objective or, better to say, fair reassessments of the personality of Nicholas I, as well as of the personalities of other Russian monarchs. During one hundred and twelve years (1910–2022) Russian cinema produced about fifty films in which Nicholas I is shown, but mostly as a supporting character whose appearance, in some cases just for a minute, is a necessary attribute of the biographies of his contemporaries: poets, writers, composers, rebels, etc. The article concentrates on those films in which Nicholas I appears as an active figure, interacting with A.S. Pushkin or reacting to the tragic events of the Decembrist uprising. New trends in studying Russian history have generated in Russian cinema, especially in documentary and documentary feature cinema, the desire to scrutinize the events that took place two hundred years ago in order to try to understand why the scions of the highest nobility staged a coup and planned, to begin with, to exterminate the whole family of the Emperor.

Истоки правового статуса лица, разбиравшего хозяйственные споры

the history of Russia in order to identify the main trends in its formation and a deeper understanding of the status of modern judges of arbitration courts.

Могут ли стороны частноправового спора распоряжаться фактами в судебном процессе?

The article substantiates the fundamental possibility to dispose of facts within the framework of legal regulation, especially through the application of admission of facts; presents a brief excursion into the Russian history of judicial admission and analyzes its main concepts; shows on the example of foreign practice approaches to the solution of key issues in the case of application of the dispositive theory of admission.

Formation of historical memory of students of a pedagogical university in the process of teaching the academic discipline “History of Russia”

Formation of historical memory of students of a pedagogical university in the process of teaching the academic discipline “History of Russia”

Отношение носителей русского языка к его нормам: динамический аспект

Different historical periods are characterized by different attitudes of native speakers of the Russian language to its norms. Russian history during the Soviet period was marked by the struggle for the purity and correctness of the Russian speech. The process of protecting the Russian language was filled with deep ideological meaning, since the Russian language acts as a single means of communication for the multinational population of the USSR. The period of perestroika is characterized by the struggle against Soviet officialese, which took the form of the democratization and vulgarization of speech, the abolition of censorship in the media. This resulted in a stream of substandard and non-literary vocabulary penetrating into public speech, a special literary-jargonizing type of speech culture being formed in the journalistic environment. The second and third decades of the 21st century demonstrate an easy attitude of native speakers of the Russian language to its norms, the decreasing concern about the form of thought expression, the active penetration of colloquial speech into other spheres of communication. Digitalization of communication leads to a decrease in the level of speech culture, the development of clip thinking and the predominance of “point” attention (this is especially noticeable among adolescents and young people). Globalization of the most important spheres of society, on the one hand, contributes to the expansion of the morphemic and lexical repertoire of the Russian language, the development of the meanings of its lexemes, on the other hand, it brings about a fashion for anglicisms and a focus on foreign speech culture. Nowadays, protecting Russian literary language standards is becoming one of the most important national tasks; finding an effective solution will help preserve the Russian culture.

Anti-war Russophone Poetry after Feb. 24, 2022: Reinterpreting Russian History and Culture

Abstract Since launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24th, 2022, Russian authorities have provided several narratives to justify their aggressive actions and war crimes. According to the first, their war is only a response to the actions of the “Nazis”; therefore, the current war is a continuation of the Great Patriotic War in which Russia defeated Hitler. The second asserts the superiority of Russian culture over Ukrainian and explains the attack on Ukraine by the desire to protect the Russian language and culture on Ukrainian territory. Both of these narratives can be categorized as ressentiment, a term coined by Nietzsche that refers to a feeling of hostility towards an individual who is deemed responsible for one’s failures or hardships. This reaction involves glorifying an idealized past and vehemently opposing anything associated with the freedom and cultural values of another. Russophone anti-war poetry written after February 24th, both in Russia and abroad, deconstructs these propaganda narratives and offers its own narrative strategy for talking about Russian history, which I term the poetics of “de-ressentiment.” This essay analyzes anti-war poems by Russian-speaking poets and identifies the principles and tasks of de-ressentiment in the context of Russia’s catastrophic policies. The paper explores how Russian-language anti-war poetry tries to find the right language to discuss the most traumatic topics in Russian history and proposes a total revision of Russian history and culture. This de-ressentiment revision should break free modern Russia’s destructive focus on its past that deprives it of any future.

Periodization as Decolonization

Abstract This piece argues that a greater understanding of the role of regions in Russian history could lead to different ways of writing Russian history that need not center the state. By including a wider range of intellectual and political actors from the regions, as well as tracing the long connections between them and Ukrainian thinkers, such a history would make regions subjects rather than simply objects. The original post and the significant number of responses provide an important snapshot of the thinking of the field of Russian history about questions related to the territorial integrity of Russia and Ukraine. The responses also deal with related topics concerning the role of indigenous peoples and the processes of colonization in the narrative of Russian history.

How the Field was Colonized: Russian History’s Ukrainian Blind Spot

Abstract This discussion seeks to trace the origins of a particularly sympathetic approach to the Russian state and its needs with the field of Russian history in the United States. The response notes some of the major scholars who have greatly influenced the study of Russian history. These include Michael Karpovich, Richard Pipes, and Edward Keenan among others. The discussion grapples with the question of how Russian history in the US has or has not included Ukraine in its narrative and the terms of that incorporation. The original exchange, on H-Russia, comprised the first two commentaries. Susan Smith-Peter’s response was not part of the original H-Russia post. Sean Pollock was not invited to respond.

THE REPERCUSSIONS OF THE RUSSIAN-UKRAINIAN CRISIS ON THE FUTURE OF THE INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM

Beginning with Ukraine's announcement on February 24th that Moscow would start a military operation in its territory, this study examines the current crisis in Ukraine from the perspectives of its causes and the consequences it will have on the future of the current international system. Moscow took a step to raise world concern and fear on February 24th when Kyiv announced that Moscow had begun military operations with a ground invasion of its lands. The previous day, the presidents of Donetsk and Luhansk had asked the Russian president to intervene and protect them from Ukrainian forces. Russia and NATO have been exchanging remarks and threats for some time, and now a confrontation in Ukraine is a distinct possibility. Following this unexpected move, there were analyses and guesses regarding the future of the international system and, by extension, the entire planet. Considering Russia's history of nuclear threats, including the most recent remark by the Russian president that alerts the country's nuclear deterrent forces, this is particularly true. As of this writing, the situation has not been resolved, and it occasionally shows signs of quiet before escalating again

Muscovite Claims to Rus Lands (1377–1700)

Abstract Muscovite princes like other medieval princes used the past to legitimize their policies. Their chroniclers traced Muscovy’s origins to the once metropole Kyiv according to the medieval logic of translatio imperii. After 1800, unlike their European counterparts, Russian historians did not dispense with medieval stories finally formulated by the mid 1500s, about their country. They still linked Moscow to Kyiv repeating an inherited tale about a supposed origins of “Russian history” to a non-Russian territory incorporated into their empire only in the late eighteenth century. They failed to separate the national from the imperial in their grand narrative of Russian history. This article reviews the evolution of Muscovites’ understanding of relations between Muscovy and Rus lands it did not control that historians of imperial Russia then adopted, rather than abandoned.

The Comintern and the National and Colonial Question: the Roots of Soviet Anti-Imperialism and Anti-Racism Reconsidered

Abstract With Russia’s escalation in Ukraine, many long-standing positions and relationships have become much more complicated. Many nations in the Global South have elected to remain neutral to avoid damaging their long-standing relations with Russia, which they rely on for political or economic stability. The Russian government has instrumentalized this history of Russian and Soviet support for anti-imperialism to buoy its own relations with the Global South. This support has its roots in the Comintern period when the Communist International promoted anti-imperialism, anti-racism, and self-determination of nations. These efforts, in turn, helped develop the image of the Soviet Union as an anti-imperial bulwark, while also providing an alternate path in which many nations in the Global South found inspiration following the Second World War. This thought piece reconsiders the history of the Comintern to ask fresh questions about its role in anti-imperial and anti-racist movements. In doing so, it calls for a greater attention to the limitations of the Soviet regime during the interwar period, and a reconsideration of the imperial actions of the Soviet Union as relates to this history. It also explores how the history of the Comintern and the complicated history of Soviet support for global decolonization in the interwar period remains relevant to contextualizing present-day reactions to Russian aggression in Ukraine and why, despite the correctives of the post-Cold War period, historians now need to ensure further complexities in this history are not overlooked in the instrumentalization of this history promoted by Russia following February 2022.

Studying War in a Time of War: Russian Imperialism in the Seventeenth and Twenty-First Centuries

Abstract In the first two weeks of August, 535 Russian soldiers were seriously wounded in Eastern Ukraine. The year was 1678. 1678 saw some of the heaviest fighting in the Russo-Turkish of 1676–81, as the Ottoman and Russian Empires, alongside their local allies, struggled to gain control of the strategic location of Chyhyryn. In summer 2023, that town on the Dnipro was only around 300km from the front in the Russo-Ukraine war. To read about soldiers being injured and killed in service of imperial expansion three centuries ago as we watch the same empire engage in the same activities in the same location today brings home how history and the present are inescapably connected. Indeed, historians of violence have faced this problem before, as with a group at the University of Pittsburgh working on Gun Violence and Its Histories, who explicitly seek to use histories of violence to think about gun violence in the modern USA. Military histories have long been an established part of the study of Russian history, highlighting the technological, imperial, bureaucratic, and diplomatic aspects of organized state violence. The present moment demands a re-evaluation of histories of Russia at war, one that considers such issues as histories of disability and pain, and also engages with recent calls to decolonize Russian studies. Putting into dialogue these different perspectives on war and violence we can consider if, why, and how we can study the history of war during a time of war.

Blindspots in the Historiography of Russia’s Colonial Rule over South Ukraine and Crimea

Abstract The rethinking and decolonization of Russian history has become a significant challenge for historians. This process should cover primarily the history of the Russian empire. The study of different regions of the Russian empire is one of the possible approaches because the empire was heterogeneous. The history of imperial institutions would thus move to the sidelines, while the history of regions, cities, different social, ethnic and religious groups, as well as the interaction within and between them should become the primary focus of historians. This approach would foster a shift from a Moscow-centric view.

F.M. Dostoevsky’s Nationalism: History, Historiography, and Politics. An Old Controversy in a Post-2022 Context

Abstract Dostoevsky’s nationalism has long been a sensitive and controversial topic in Western scholarship. At the core of the controversy is the problem of explaining the stark contrast between Dostoevsky’s philosophical message of universal love and the explicitly xenophobic, chauvinistic and war-glorifying statements found in many of his journalistic articles. Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine has reignited the old controversy in ways that have brought to light the profound political implications involved in interpreting Russian history in a post-2022 context. Many Ukrainian intellectuals and public figures have come to question not only the appropriateness of Dostoevsky’s title as a “great humanist” but also the conventions of Dostoevsky’s reception in Western scholarship, which serve to maintain this image of the writer in the public mind, despite many of his unpalatable ideas. These sentiments are echoed by (as yet) a small group of Russianists in the West who argue for the need to reconsider Dostoevsky from a more critical, decolonizing perspective. This essay offers a historiographic review of the theme of Dostoevsky’s nationalism in Western and Russian scholarship over the past two decades. It also highlights the way in which Dostoevsky’s nationalist ideas have been used by Russian propagandists in popular media since Russia’s first invasion of Ukraine in 2014.

Moscow-the Third Rome Concept and the Russian Orthodox Church

Russians in 988, under the leadership of Kinyaz Viladimer, they accepted Christianity through the Patriarchate of Constantinople and entered a new phase in their history. With Christianity, the Russians were introduced to writing and, most importantly, to religious texts. At the same time, this change of religion also led to the acceptance of the belief of chosenness, which had spread to Christianity from Judaism. Nestor, a Russian priest who lived in the 12th century, wrote in his work that although Russians were the last community to accept Christianity, they would undertake important missions in the future. He also attributed a mission to the Russian society by referring to the biblical passage that the feet will be the head and the head will be the feet. However, in the mentioned centuries, the Eastern Roman Empire was still the centre of Orthodoxy. For this reason, the Russian Orthodox Church would remain for many years as a Metropolitanate under the Patriarchate of Constantinople. However, the increasing Ottoman pressure on Constantinople from the 1400s onwards created several historical opportunities for the Russians. In particular, the Byzantine agreement with the Pope of Rome in Florence in 1439 mobilised the Russian Church. Using this agreement as a pretext, Moscow severed its relations with Constantinople. In 1453, the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople, the centre of the Orthodox world, opened a new page in Russian Theo-politics. Russian priests believed that Nestor's prophecy had been fulfilled and Moscow developed the concept of the Third Rome. Appearing in the 16th century, the Moscow-Third Rome concept soon became the ideological basis for the formation of the Moscow kingdom. In this article, the concept of Moscow Third Rome, which is one of the important turning points in Russian history, is analysed through an analytical method. The background of the concept, the conditions that led to its emergence, its historical development and its reflections on the present day are emphasised.