Contenu du sommaire

Matitiahu Mayzel, The formation of the Russian General Staff, 1880-1917. A social study. The military reforms initiated and implemented by D. A. Miliutin caused deep institutional and social changes in the Russian army. One such change was the rejuvenation of the General Staff and its Academy which supplied qualified and well-educated officers to the General Staff. Admittance and success were based not on social position but on merit and academic excellence. Officers-graduates of the Academy became a close, coherent group, which served not only on the General Staff but also in all central military organs and in staff and command position in the field. In the last two decades of the roth century they were, in effect, the new elite of the army. In the period after the war with Japan they dominated and monopolized the high command and the General Staff. At the same time, before World War I, they began to develop oppositionary political attitudes. During the War they cooperated with the civil voluntary organizations and the conservative political groups.

Marie-Claude Burnet-Vigniel, Bardina: the itinerary of a populist. Bardina was one of the most attractive figures of the "Muscovites' Trial" which was to reveal to the public opinion the famous "march toward the people" of the populists. With as starting point her biography composed by Stepnjak in 1883, after her suicide in Geneva, the endeavour to reconstruct her true image, insofar as the cross-examination of witnesses allows to recognize it behind the mask of a militant, we plunge into the drama of a generation so frequently haunted by voluntary death and the boundless despair born of failure. Doubtless, Bardina cannot be defined as a "historical figure" if the phrase is meant to describe a personality influencing events or ideological trends. Nevertheless her personal tragedy, so deeply moving in itself, reveals the true character of her time and of the set in which she lived, just as a bursting bubble demonstrates the ebullition of a mass.

Claudie Weill, Apropos of the word "Bolshevism". The present article is devoted to the study of the words "Bolshevik" and "Bolshevism" at the period when they are still "confidential," that is to say when their use is restricted to political organizations, before they penetrate into the language of society. This period extends from their emergence at the end of 1904 till the revolution of 1917. The use made of them by supporters and adversaries is as revealing of the history of the Social Democrat movement as of their conception of this history guided by polemical considerations. In fact, the two terms prove to be substitutes of onomastic designations of "leninist" and "leninism" at a time when international socialism endeavours to impose generic qualificatives to the trends that pass through it in order to legitimate its image of mass movement. This care preoccupies especially the Workers' Social Democrat Party of Russia having its origin in a chaos of small disseminated circles and subjected perpetually to new divisions.

Bernard Marchadier, Traditionalist opposition and dissidence in the Orthodox Church in USSR. The present article summarizes briefly the grave events that affected the hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church in the years that followed October 1917. It then proceeds to examine the different schisms originating from these disturbances : the "Josephian" schism at the end of the 1920's, "The True Orthodox Church," then, before the second World War, "The True Christian Orthodox." The doctrine, the cult and the way of life of the latter are described in contrast with those of the Old Believers. Finally the article recounts the struggle of Orthodox dissidents that appeared during the 1960's, situating it within the Russian history and the context of the present USSR, endeavouring also to bring into focus the principal lines of the traditionalist religious dissidence in the country.

Thomas Kuttner, Russian jadïdism and the Islamic world Ismail Gasprinskii in Cairo, 1908. The short-lived publication by Ismail Bey Gasprinskii of an Arabic newspaper, al-Nahdah, during his brief sojourn in Cairo in the months of Feb.-March, 1908, has hitherto gone unnoticed. However, the appearance of al-Nahdah is of no little significance, for it underscores the important role which Russian Jadîdism and the Jadîdist thinkers played in the development of Islamic modernism. Al-Nahdah served as a vehicle for Gasprinskii's socio-economic ideas and was his first outright venture into the field of political commentary, an area in which he had not hitherto entered, due to the stringent government control of the Russian Muslim Press. Finally the newspaper served as an organ to broadcast Gasprinskii's proposal for a Universal Islamic Congress, a proposal frowned upon in official circles and one which never came to fruition.

Rasma Karklins, World Revolution and the Soviet Germans. The article discusses the involvement of the German minority of the USSR in the early Bolshevik attempts to spread the world revolution to Germany. In the first years after the October revolution contacts between the Soviet Germans and their non-Soviet conationals abroad were strongly promoted and there was much propagandistic interaction. This special foreign revolutionary role of the Soviet Germans led them to benefit in terms of nationality policy, especially in regard to autonomous party organizations, intensified recruitment of native cadre, and stress on territorial autonomy. The latter was given a special revolutionary emphasis by the creation of the "Workers' Commune of Volgagermans" in October 1918 which was projected abroad as a nucleus for the future German socialist state.

Eden Naby, The Assyrians of the Soviet Union. Soviet Assyrians, the bulk of whom fled north from Iran and Turkey during the general Assyrian diaspora caused by the events of World War I, have, in the past, derived extensive cultural benefit from their status as a recognized Soviet nationality. In a number of cases, their path has diverged from that of the remainder of world wide Assyrians. One fundamental development setting them apart from other Assyrians has been the replacement of the Syriac alphabet with the Latin alphabet. Another divergence has emerged as a result of the official Soviet anti- religious stand. The Soviet Assyrians, on a relatively small scale, reflect the changes which larger Soviet nationalities also experienced. Despite a certain trend toward assimilation into Russian culture, the small Assyrian community continues to maintain its nationality culture.