Contenu du sommaire

Hans Rogger, Government, Jews, peasants, and land in post-emancipation Russia. In the vast body of legislation that governed Imperial Russia's treatment of its Jewish population, nothing was adhered to with more persistence or stringency than the laws, rules and regulations restricting the rights of Jews to live, as well as to own or lease land, in the rural districts of the country. Even when the upheaval of war made necessary the abandonment of the Pale of Settlement — that prime source and symbol of the inferior status of the Jews — the countryside remained closed to them. A discriminatory policy which was so sharply focused and so long maintained had to be rooted in more than traditional prejudices, the more so since it conflicted on occasion with the fiscal interests of the state and more often with those of the landed gentry. Our investigation concludes that it is in the nexus between the Jewish and the agrarian problems — that is, in the way in which these problems were perceived (and related) by Russian officials — that the explanation for their tenacious resistance to expanding Jewish rights in the countryside must be sought. Anti-Jewish bias joined with a paternalistic and fearful attitude toward the peasantry to place severe limits on Jewish emancipation and to rationalize the maintenance of legal discrimination.

René Girault, The relations between France and the USSR after September 1939. This article based on the archives of President Daladier endeavours to define the different stages of relations between France and the USSR between September 1939 and May 1940. It would seem that two periods can be clearly distinguished: in September 1939, the French government, in spite of the invasion of Poland, makes an effort to preserve a neutral attitude towards the Soviets, because the French are unsure of the final objects of the USSR policy. The military setbacks of the Soviets in Finland, end of December 1939-January 1940, tend to hasten the preparations of a French intervention. Finally, however, there will be no intervention, because the concerned neutral countries (Sweden, Turkey) on the one hand, the British Ally on the other, will hinder this enterprise as much as they can.

Gilbert Doctorow, The Russian gentry and the coup d'état of 3 June 1907. The gentry were the chief beneficiaries of the coup d'état of 3 June 1907. The new general electoral law issued on that date conferred on them the dominant position in the State Duma. This fact and certain boasts later made by gentry spokesmen have led historians to believe that gentry pressure was the cause and determinant of the coup d'état. In the present essay this assumption is tested against the record of corporate gentry activity in the year preceding the coup and is found to be false. The several lobbying efforts of the gentry for change in the electoral system were themselves inspired by bold actions of the government. Moreover, none of the gentry's specific proposals was subsequently adopted by the government. At most, gentry activity merely provided a propitious setting for the coup.

Michel Mervaud, Friendship and polemics. Herzen criticizes Quinet. The friendship between Herzen and Quinet is a strange one. Based on reciprocal admiration for each other's talent, backed by a common aspiration to liberty, it did not exclude important divergencies of views. Herzen sets them out publicly in his articles and in his Byloe i dumy. Would it not be true to say that he considered Quinet as a representative of French thought, traditionally timid? The religious tendency of Quinet was foreign to Herzen, who was a materialist and an atheist. Neither could he persuade the moderate republican Quinet to share his views as to Western or "Russian" socialism. Furthermore, if he taxed Quinet with being exclusively absorbed in France and with lamenting its decline, he himself appears, first and foremost, as a Russian, concentrating all his hopes on his people. We endeavoured to bring forth the meeting of the two exiles in Switzerland, quoting the unpublished Mémorial of Mme Quinet, which retraces in detail these discussions and gives vivid descriptions of Herzen.

François Cornillot, Lermontov or the "unquenchable thirst". Analysis of the central theme of Lermontov's poetry. At the very start of his poetical career, Lermontov denned poetry as a quest for "unlimited freedom of divine soul" and draws a symbolic vista figuring the fundamental aspiration which directs him in the pursuit of this quest. Elements of this vista of "unlimited freedom" appear regularly in his creative work, in particular outlines of sails and clouds, descendants of the Žukovsky's version of the Prisoner of Chillon of Byron. The common theme of three poems: The confession, Boyard Orša and Mcyri is formed in close contact with this version. These three poems appear as a true cycle of Lermontov's work during his whole life. The theme uncovers the profound meaning of these poems. It is the symbolical transcription of the psychological and metaphysical situation of the poet: that of the young prisoner thirsting for "unlimited freedom".