Contenu du sommaire

Michel Heller, A first warning with a whip. The story of the expulsion in 1922 of the representatives of culture from the Soviet Union. The expulsion from Soviet Russia of an important group of thinkers, prominent representatives of Russian intelligentsia constituted in Summer 1922 an episode of the struggle of the Soviet state to implant conformism in the country. Famine which threatened some thirty million inhabitants of the Soviet territory, forced the government to accept for the first and last time the assistance of a community which demanded recognition. The permission granted to create a Pan-Russian Committee of assistance to the starving and the dissolution of this organization after five weeks are characteristic of the policy of the Soviet power towards those who endeavor to cooperate with it without, however, submitting completely to its will: make concessions when there is no other possibility, deny them when the necessity has passed, and retaliate for former tolerance. The expulsion of intelligentsia organized in 1922 by Lenin was an act of revenge of this type and a warning to those who remained.

Ingeborg Fleischhauer, The agrarian program of the Russian Constitutional Democrats. The agrarian question was one of the most burning problems in Russian party and parliamentary struggle from 1905 to 1918. The various parties' standpoints in the agrarian question were indicative of how each party, once in power, would handle and eventually master the complex reality of rural Russia. The agrarian conception of the party of People's Freedom (Constitutional Democrats or Kadets) was based on vast and elaborate research material concerning Russia and the West gathered by its numerous specialists. If compared to those of other competing parties, it would seem that the Kadet agrarian program proved to have by far the most learned, skilful, and realistic foundations. The course that political events took in Russia, as well as Soviet historiography have deprived the Kadet agrarian endeavors of much of their significance. A re-evaluation shows, however, that the Kadet agrarian program and strategy were coherent in a way, and that the moderate radicalism of its demands (similar to those of German Social Democracy) forsaw an appropriate compromise formula for appeasing peasant's land needs while alienating private land under legal precautions. Had the program materialized, the Russian state's traditional land absolutism would have been superseded by the liberal land order of a rather medium and small estate farming, following the pattern of development in agriculturally advanced Western societies.

Claudie Weill, Russian students in Germany. 1900-1914. Between 1900 and 1914, Russian student emigration towards Germany is in considerable increase. There are two major problems in this connection: the reasons for this trend and the reaction of the host milieu. Lumpsum numerical data have been collected so as to evaluate the importance of this phenomenon and to determine the ethnic, social and regional origin of Russian students in Germany, as well as their preferred fields of study. A distinction has been established as to their motives between the attraction exercized by German universities and the difficulties of penetration into Russian ones, either for intellectual or political reasons. The considerable inflow of Russian students to Germany contributes largely to the birth of the "problem of foreigners" as expressed by blazes of xenophobia and antisemitism within the German academic milieu. This hostility results in a series of measures tending to restrict the admission of Russian students into High level Schools. Thus rejected by their peers, Russian students look for contacts in other sectors of German society and penetrate into the marginal life of "Russian colonies" in Germany. Over a period extending from 1900 to 1914, a distinction must be made between two "generations" of Russian students: that of the "revolutionaries" close to the German social-democracy until 1909 and as from 19 10 a generation on its guard, ready to repel the attacks of German students, torn by quarrels between Jews, who constitute the majority of students emigrating from the Russian Empire.

Ternira Pachmuss, Poland, 1920. The narrative "Poland, 1920" has been written by Z. N. Hippius at the time when she was working on her Memoirs bearing the title D. S. Merežkovskij. It is centered around the events and the projects in which the Merežkovskie were involved in Poland, after their flight from St. Petersburg in 1919. When B. V. Savinkov arrived in Warsaw, he was entrusted with the task of organizing the resistance against the Bolsheviks; D. V. Filosof o v, a friend of long standing of the Merežkovskie, became president of the Russian Committee whilst Hippius headed the literary section of the newspaper Svoboda. Pilsudski approved of the constitution of a Russian detachment acting under the guise of an "evacuation committee". After the fall of Russian autocracy, Hippius laid great hopes in Savinkov and Kerenskij whom she considered as the bearers of new ideas. She expected the overthrow of the Soviet power which she hated. When she no longer thought that Savinkov was able to direct the struggle against the Bolsheviks, she considered him as a dictator and even as an evil spirit. This narrative which stresses certain causes and aspects of the 1917 Russian revolution is interesting above all as a historical and literary document.

Jean-Louis Bacqué-Grammont, Notes and documents concerning the Ottomans, the Safavids and Georgia, 1516-1521. The present article is one of the five studies (cf. list in the preliminary note) devoted to the part played by the Georgian States in the Ottoman and Safavid foreign policy between 1500 and 1524. It is dealing with the crisis which, as from the end of 1515 opposed two pretenders to the succession of atabeg Mzé-Čâbûk, prince of Samtzkhé-Saatabago (the southernmost Georgian State), tributary of the Ottoman Porte. This rivalry led the two competitors to seek help respectively from Šâh Isma'il and from the Ottoman Sultan Selîm I, at war with each other since 1514. Selîm, who at the time was fighting for the conquest of the Mamluk Empire, had decided to undertake upon his return a major campaign against the Safavid Iran, the defeat of which would have involved the settlement of the Georgian crisis to the advantage of the Ottomans. This particular situation explains why the military assistance granted by the Sultan to his candidate Manučar was extremely slight so that the latter was rapidly defeated by Kvarkvaré, protected by the Shah. Selîm was finally forced to give up the projected campaign and Kvarkvaré III remained atabeg. It is probable, however, that the Safavid suzerainty claimed too heavy a tribute from the principality, so that Kvarkvaré approached the Ottomans early in 1521, offering to place himself under their protection and to turn against Šâh Isma'il. However, Selîm had died the year before and his son and successor Süleymân, unlike his father, decided to withdraw progressively from the oriental front to concentrate his military efforts in the Balkans, so that the advances of Kvarkvaré remained without a reply. A few months later, the atabeg joined in the general revolt of Georgian principalities against the Shah. This event is studied in another article of the present series. As Georgian chronicles present gaps and are untrustworthy with regard to the history of this period, we have endeavoured to ascertain the facts on the basis of two important unpublished documents of the Topkapi Palace Archives and by confronting systematically the data provided by the available Ottoman, Safavid and Venitian sources.