Contenu du sommaire

Nancy Shields Kollmann, The boyar clan and court politics: the founding of the Muscovite political system. The organization of politics at the Muscovite court in the fourteenth century is shown to have been based on kinship relationships amongst boyars, the counsellors of the sovereign grand prince. The circumstances of Moscow's emergence as a regional power in the fourteenth century and particular aspects of the family history of the sovereign Danilovich family nurtured the development of a cohesive political elite of boyar clans. One can plot the emergence of boyar clans in the fourteenth century, and one can discern a hierarchy of power amongst them. Study of the thousandman post, which fell into disuetude by 1373, reveals that kinship links with the sovereign clan were the foundation of predominance in the hierarchy, and further suggests that court political crises can best be analyzed as struggles amongst factions of boyars.

Pierre Voillery, A Bulgarian anti-Russian centre in Paris. 1836- 1846. Between 1836 and 1846, a homogeneous group of Bulgarians, Ottoman subjects, is constituted in Paris around Alexander Exarh. It consists of at least 21 members, most of whom belong to the class of Bulgarian notables, responsible for the revival of their people. All of them come from cities of Central Bulgaria and are studying either law or medicine. Politically, only one of them is clearly russophile, the others are supporters of prince Czartoryski, and refuse the russification of the Renaissance, which at the time is only a confused quest for a national definition within the Ottoman model. Such an analysis, if extended to all the "activists" of the Renaissance, the total number of which is low enough - 191 Bulgarians are attending University courses between 1835 and 1878, a few hundreds participate actively in the movement - would allow to better define the Bulgarian Renaissance with its internal struggles, its individual rivalries, its political contradictions and finally its real identity.

John Keep, Emancipation by the axe? Peasant revolts in Russian thought and literature. Contrary to widespread opinion, a continuous thread runs from the 17th- and 18th-century Russian peasant revolts to the agrarian revolutions of 1905 and 1917, manifested in the survival of social Utopian myths. The Razin legendary cycle, distorting Christian teaching, presents the "liberator" as an avenging apostle. Russian writers from Pushkin onward, and later social theorists, took up the theme of agrarian violence but were shocked by the brutal events of 1917-1918. Early Soviet writers (e.g. L. Leonov) offered a critical portrait of the peasant revolutionaries, but subsequently this theme has been neglected. A comparison of two novels on the Razin revolt (A. P. Chapygin, 1927; S. Zlobin, 1951) illustrates changes in the official ideology and Soviet literary taste; popular mythology is today manipulated for mundane political ends.

Michael Confino, Kropotkine in 1914: the war and the abortive congresses of Russian anarchists. Unpublished letters of P. Kropotkine to Marie Goldsmith. January 11-December 31, 1914. This publication comprises 14 letters of P. Kropotkine written in 1914 and an introduction to these documents, dealing with the two major problems roused by these letters (and which were also the most important questions on the agenda of the Russian anarchist movement ) . The first problem is that of the unification of the movement. The article describes the convocation and the development of the First unification Conference of Russian anarchists abroad (Paris, December 28, 1913-January 1, 1914) and analyzes its debates, its decisions and the profile of its composition. This conference took the decision to summon a Congress of anarchist groups abroad and a general Congress of the Russian anarchist movement. Both Congresses were to be held in August 1914 and did not take place because of the beginning of the war. The secondary questions that have been dealt with are: organization of the movement, presence of the Okhrana agents within the groups and the part played by them, relations between the federations, etc. The second problem is that of the attitude towards militarism and the war, more especially that of Kropotkine. In the light of these documents a new explanation of his position is suggested, and another interpretation of the motives that had incited him to adopt, in August 1914, a "defensist" line, different from that of the majority in the anarchist movement. Finally, the article as a whole proves, implicitely and explicitely, that the year 1914 was critical and tragic for the Russian anarchist movement. The year starts in the midst of enthusiasm and hope, and finishes in an atmosphere of pessimism due to dissensions provoked by war.

Christine Hamon, Radlov and the theatre of popular Comedy. S. Radlov is as yet a little known character of the Russian theatrical vanguard. Though as a stage-manager he did not enjoy the fame of Stanislavskii and Meyerhold - whose disciple he was in the pre-revolutionary era - he nevertheless achieved interesting theatrical creations in the twenties. The episode of popular Comedy that he animated in Petrograd between 1920 and 1922 deserves to be remembered because of its originality. His theatre favored the technic of improvisation on canvas, inspired by the commedia dell'arte, revived by Meyerhold in his studio. It also included the participation of circus artists (clowns, acrobats, jugglers, etc.) which allowed to offer original performances with scenes inspired by circus and music-hall. The originality of these shows was due to the association of renewed traditional technics and of theatrical styles somewhat scorned till then. The resulting performances, often of a satirical character, enjoyed considerable success with the popular public.