Contenu du sommaire

John P. Le Donne, Ruling families in the Russian political order. I : The Petrine leadership, 1689-1725 ; II : The ruling families, 1725-1825. The purpose of these two articles is to identify families related to the Romanov house which constituted the leadership of the Russian Empire for more than a century. These families are seen to form two groups, and the origin of these groups is traced to the two wives of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich, Peter the Great's father. The politics of the Russian Empire is presented as a struggle between these two groups over the distribution of the spoils, i.e., appointments to important administrative positions from which their holders were in a position to develop patronage networks. It is then suggested that the Russian political order in the eighteenth century was held together by the general acceptance of the autocratic principle, by serfdom, and by the extension of patronage networks, both within Russia proper and between Russia and its borderlands.

Françoise Lesourd, A new expression of the Russian national idea : Dmitrii Likhachev. This article situates the work of D.S. Likhachev within the tradition of philosophers such as Berdiaev, Karsavin and Losskii. The conception of a possible return to a "society of the sacred", formulated by Berdiaev, inspired Likhachev's study dealing with the historical evolution of Russian culture, defined as an "irresistible advance" toward individualization and pluralistic systems of value. He goes on to demonstrate with, as a starting point, the distinction drawn by Karsavin between two great types of religiosity (collective and individual) that a collectivist tendency - such as the "sobornost"' - is not the dominating element in the formation of religious sensibility in Russia. Contesting the fear of Berdiaev with regard to "atomization" of modern society, Likhachev asserts that the "organicheskoe tseloe" (Losskii's expression) represented by every national culture, serves to preserve the connection of the individual with his "vital environment" and generates liberty as well as the necessary features of artistic creation. Developed on basis of anti-slavophile positions, Likhachev's defence of ancient Russian culture and re-examination of Peter's period bring new data into the debate on the Russian national idea.

Ginette Stulz, An aspect of Bunin : study of qualifying adjectives. A detailed analysis of adjectives and past participles in books I and II of the Life of Arsen'ev allows to have a clear view of the subtlety and the rigor of Bunin's prose. These abundant and varied qualifications, often created by their author himself, are infinitely supple and nevertheless conform to a constant requirement of veracity, originality and poetry. Their strictly motivated accumulation and the specific place allocated to them in given sentences convince of a deliberate choice made by the author. They are delicately underlined by the rythm and the sonority handled poetically by Bunin. The analysis results in an apparent paradox : this multiplicity of adjectives induces concision.

Boris Chichlo, The history of the formation of the autonomous regions of the Siberian Mongol Turks. The research is dedicated to questions not discussed in the works of E. Carr and R. Pipes, which remain the most in depth studies on Sovietization and nationality relations in Russia after October 1917. On the basis of Soviet sources, which in recent years have benefitted both from newly opened archives and ethnographical material, the author examines the complicated and grievous formation process of Soviet-type autonomy for the Buryat, Yakut, Altay, Khakas and Tuva peoples. The author raises the question why central authorities chose certain forms of autonomy for certain peoples : republic, oblast' or okrug, and why certain peoples, like the Shor or Tofalar, were not granted their own autonomy and thereby were cut off from the autonomous territories of their fellow Siberian Turks. Statistical information about the ethnical evolution of each autonomous region from 1926 to 1979 is provided in supplementary tables.

Jean Bonamour, Birth of a novel. Comments on the case of A hero of our time. There is a great and justifiable terminological uncertainty about the inclusion of A hero of our time in the history of the Russian novel. Does this "almost-novel" constitute a stage in the history of novelistic genre in Russia ? Such an interpretation might be rather belittling. The autonomy of each short story, already noted by Belinskii, is an essential aspect of the structure of the work which is significant at all the levels. The interpretation of the character of Pechorin must conform to the poetic rule of the fragment opposed to the global purpose of the title in a creative tension. An existential vision of life underlies the work split in fragments. The fragmentary form was the only adequate one for this conception, very different from what later on the Russian realistic novel will be.

Edward Kasinec, A friendship destroyed : the hitherto unpublished correspondence (1917-1921) of the academicians Rozhdestvenskie with the expatriate, A.V. Got 'stein. The seven letters published in this communication, dating from the period 1917-1921, were sent from Ol'ga Antonovna Dobiash-Rozhdestvenskaia (d. 1939) and her husband, Dmitrii Sergeevich (d. 1940) to Aleksandra Vasil'evna Gol'stein (d. 1937), a Russian expatriate living in France. Although the Rozhdestvenskie had lived in Western Europe for extensive periods of time, these letters from the extensive Gol'stein papers held at the Bakhmeteff archives (Columbia University, New York) date from the period when both held academic positions in Petrograd. They shed important light on specific points in the biographies and careers of both scholars, as well as giving us insight into the process whereby they gradually accommodated to the new political and social order. Their acceptance of the Soviet regime was evidently the decisive factor in the rupture of their relationship with Gol'stein, still a little-studied though important catalyst in Russo-French cultural relations of the early twentieth century.