Contenu du sommaire

Basile Kerblay, Problems of socialization in the Soviet rural environment. Neither the traditional institutions (the family, the village) nor the school and the komsomol, nor the exterior influence to which an individual is submitted in the rural environment as from his childhood contribute to create the conditions of a consistent socialization in spite of the ideological control of the Party. The family plays an essential part in the training of the child in farm work, as also in the transmission of moral values and cultural traditions. But its influence does not tally with that of school and of the youth organizations whose aim is to fight not only the "petty bourgeois" spirit of the peasant but also the national and religious "survivals". School has allowed to raise gradually the education of rural youth to levels approaching those of the city. Extension of the schooling period resulted in a concentration of teaching establishments, the closing down of smaller schools and, as a consequence, the forsaking of countryside. The village community, which in the past exercized a strict control over the morality of its members, is at present subjected to urban influence, that of the television in particular. Social disorders (delinquency, alcoholism) reflect the failure of socialization in spite of the Party action in the countryside. Soviet authorities endeavor to solve social difficulties through an accelerated industrialization of agriculture and a new structure of rural habitat.

Mihail Agursky, Was there an infiltration of the conservatives in the Soviet political system? The present article intends to give some information on the fate of the extreme right parties after the Bolshevik revolution. It has been established that on the eve of the February revolution they had already lost most of their personnel and were in fact reduced to a ghostlike existence. After February and just before the October revolution, the majority of active lower members of the extreme right parties had gone over to the Bolsheviks. On the other hand, leaders of these parties had been wiped out by the Bolsheviks or had emigrated. Nevertheless, the fate of many is unknown. A number of members of the Black Hundred joined the Bolsheviks, the Party leadership not being openly adverse to them. The attitude of Lenin, Trotsky and Lunacharsky was pragmatic insofar as they were concerned, as shown by their public declarations. The ease with which the extreme right elements joined the extreme left is explained by the close psychological relationship of the extremes.

John Keep, From the pistol to the pen : the military memoir as a source on the social history of pre-Reform Russia. Memoirs by Russian officers who served during the early Imperial era (c. 1700-1855), despite the inherent defects of the genre, represent an important source for the study of material conditions and intellectual attitudes in the tsarist army. As members of a closed caste enjoying high social status and privileges, these men were overwhelmingly loyal to the 'state service'. Patronage influenced their choice of career and promotion prospects. The volatility of the labour market for officers made for insecurity and discontent. Although living standards improved, many were poor, and by 1800 there emerged a 'military intelligentsia' with reformist aspirations whose views were, however, heavily coloured by nationalism and respect for tradition. Their concern for moral rather than political issues helps to explain the failure of the Decembrists.

Claudine Amiard-Chevrel, Majakovsky and the dramatization of circus. As many other vanguard writers and artists, Majakovsky considered circus as a source of renewal of the theater and tried to help its adjustment to new needs. Making use of the methods of the Russian circus, he composed two works adapted to it. The championship of the class struggle is a French boxing match. Majakovsky endowes the competitors with clown-like masks of capitalists /politicians finally vanquished by the Revolution. The comical contest is commented upon by The Referee in the style of a propaganda sketch. Moscow burns renovates the old circus pantomime. Artists execute acts attached to their usual specialty but endowed with political presentation and meaning, included in a scenario glorifying revolution. In both cases the personal contribution of Majakovsky consists in the politization of the circus show and in the poetization of the text by the quantity and the quality of the verbal material.

Béatrice Picon-Vallin, Gogol' — starting point of research on the grotesque in the theater and cinema after the Russian revolution, 1917-1932. In the 1920's, the Soviet Russia is displaying a passionate interest in Gogol'. Formalists are analyzing his style, his plays are produced, his short stories are adapted in theater and cinema; debates on style and realism in theater (Stanislavsky, Meyerhold) take place with, as starting point, Gogol's material and its grotesque specificities. Gogol's violent contrasts, the language constructed in opposed strata and the flow between these strata, the interplay of realistic and fantastic elements never give a description corresponding to reality, but a kind of concentration of reality, meeting point of contradictory tensions, fully corresponding to the experience of the transition period lived by the 1917 generation. The theatrical grotesque comes into its own with Meyerhold's production of Revizor in 1926, in which it upholds the research of the FEX, the renovations and the practice of Vakhtangov and emerges into the concept of "fantastic realism".

Laure Idir-Spindler, The resolution of 1925 tested by practice. Soviet literature and struggle against the opposition according to the Pravda of 1927. 1927 is a year of political conflict and also a stage in the literary life of the Soviet Union. The material supplied by the Pravda throws a light on the creation, within the context of political struggle, of the FOSP (the Federation of the Associations of Soviet Writers), meant to apply the principles of the resolution of 1925. It also allows to measure the extent to which these principles have been overstepped. During the first months of the year 1927, the FOSP was the object of violent polemics between the party leaders and outstanding writers accused of belonging to the opposition. At the same time, the great classical novel is set as a model through the medium of readers. After the break with Great Britain, the FOSP is entrusted with the task of embodying on the international scene a unanimously loyalist Soviet literature whilst the measures adopted in favour of writers represent a kind of contract between them and the authorities. Writers are to create a Soviet literature of the future, the principal options of which are destined to reproduce more and more the new orientation of the proletarian literature: vision of the communist world, realism inspired by classical writers. Thus, the concrétisation of the 1925 resolution foretells also as from 1927 the creation of the Writers' Union and the "socialist realism".

Th. Noonan, When and how dirhams first reached Russia. This article constitutes the initial part of a larger study of the historical significance of the thousands of Islamic silver coins or dirhams found in medieval European Russia and adjoining areas. In this first part, it is argued that the flow of dirhams into European Russia began around 800 A.D., as was established by Richard Fasmer (Vasmer) in the 1920's and 1930's. The bulk of the article, however, attempts to demonstrate that the earliest dirhams to reach Russia came from the Near East and were transported to Eastern Europe via the Caucasus/Caspian route. There is no numismatic evidence that dirhams came to Russia from or through Central Asia at this time.