Contenu du sommaire

A. Bennigsen and Chantal Lemercier-Quelquejay, Moscowy and the Ottoman Empire during the 1577-1588 successoral crisis in the Crimean khanate. Nomadic tradition and the pattern of sedentary monarchy. The present article is devoted to the history of the three izgoj čingisside princes, Sa'âdet, Murâd and Safâ Girây, who took refuge in Moscow after the death of their father, the khan Mohammed Girây II "Semin." The lapse of time between the death of the latter in 1584 and the disappearance in 1591 of his son Murâd Girây, who had accepted to serve the Tsar Feodor in his expansion policy in the Caucasus, constitutes the turning point in the relations between Moscowy and the Crimean khanate or, more generally, in the history of the Tatar khanate. This epoch is marked by the end of the "Mongolian" period of the khanate and the failure of the endeavours of the Girâys to reunite under their leadership the inheritance of the ulus of Batu, but on the other hand also by the suspension for nearly two centuries of the Russian advance towards the Caucasus and the Black Sea.

Samuel H. Baron, The fate of the gosti in the reign of Peter the Great. When Peter I ascended the Russian throne, the gosti were to all appearances still a flourishing institution. In the first part of his reign, Peter showed how important he considered them by assigning them prominent roles in his shipbuilding plans and his 1699 urban reform. By 1710, however, the gosti were greatly reduced in number, and in the 1720's they passed out of existence. As the survival rate of gosť families had always been low, the perpetuation of the group depended upon the government's willingness to designate new gosti. Peter chose not to make new appointments because he came to believe that the gosti were unreliable and incapable of contributing to the dynamic development of Russia. In their stead, he sought to devise new institutions that would better serve his purposes.

Sigrid Grosskopf, Appropriation, employment and apportionment of land during the NEP period. The increase of the agricultural production, on which was based the industrialization of the country, and the socialist transformation of the agriculture were the two sides of one of the main problems that the Soviet Union had to face during the period of the NEP. This article endeavours to outline the state of one of the factors of the agricultural production — the land — taking into consideration this double aspect. In view of the lack of livestock and of agricultural implements, peasants could start but slowly on the cultivation of the soil conquered by them through the October Revolution. Even at the close of the NEP period, the difference between available surfaces and cultivated ones was considerable: according to the information released by the People's Commissariat of Agriculture, 25 to 30% areas cultivated in 1913 were still fallow in 1928-29 in the former "wheat granary" of the country. The irrational repartition of lots was here one of the principal causes of the uncomplete employment of land. This article also describes the spontaneous endeavours of the poorer peasants to solve this problem.

Anahide Ter Minassian, Armenian revolutionary movement, 1890-1903. From 1890 to 1918, Armenians have participated in all the revolutions that occurred in the area extending from the Balkan Peninsula to the Middle East, from Transcaucasia to Egypt. The analysis of a report of the Tiflis Constabulary gives a clear picture of the stages of the Armenian revolutionary movement from 1890 to 1903 and its ramifications from the Ottoman, Russian and Iranian Empires to the principal centers of the Armenian diaspora. This analysis sets out the original characteristics of the movement in question: its comparative precocity, its paramilitary organisation as expressed by the fedaï movement, the socialism claimed by the hintchaks, daschnaks and Social Democrats which appeared in the phases of the development of the national liberation movement.