Contenu du sommaire

Jean-Marc Négrignat, Images of the twenties and thirties in Nadezhda Mandel 'shtam and Lidiia Ginzburg: implications of recollection. The works belonging to written memory of Stalinist years are called upon to play a reference part in the debates of Russian historical consciousness about the significance of this period. The article analyses the memoirs of N. Mandel'shtam from that point of view and draws from them a structured set of themes: the "illness" of society, of personality, of memory; the search for the origins of this "illness" in the "revision of values" and the betrayal of intelligentsia; Osip Mandel'shtam's poetry as spiritual resistance; finally, the experience of Bolshevism as a "negative lesson to the world". This vision is compared with Lidiia Ginzburg's analysis which gives an explanation of the intelligentsia's varying behavior: she describes how general mechanisms like adaptation and justification, the necessity of realizing one's creative potentialities, the coexistence of different value systems, have been working in the exceptional context of the terror years. The conclusion sees in N. Mandel'shtam a normative and axiologic approach, in L. Ginzburg an analytic and objective one, and asserts the equal legitimy of both for understanding an "extreme phenomenon" like Stalinist Bolshevism.

John D. Basil, Alexander Kireev: turn-of-the-century Slavophile and the Russian Orthodox Church, 1890-1910. Alexander Kireev was an active Neo-slavophile in Russian Orthodox Church politics throughout his public career, which spanned the time between 1870 and 1910. The princi pal points of what he called his Weltanschauung included (a) the need for a holy and indissoluble link among church, state and the people of Russia (b) the belief that special gifts had been granted to Slavic peoples, and (c) the conviction that the basis of Western Christianity was weak. He rejected parliamentary and democratic рпх-edurcs as unsuited for Russia, but favored a version of ecumenical theology. His views are still popular with some Russians. During his lifetime, Russian liberals criticized him as a reactionary, while conservatives criticized him for converting tradition into an ideology. Kireev died in 1910. His letters were published in two volumes in St. Petersburg in 1912.

Claudie Weill, Conviviality and sociability of Russian students in Germany, 1900-1914. In Germany, between 1900 and 1914, students originating from the Russian Empire, in butt to the hostility of their German condisciples, tended to organize themselves into a counter-society within the framework of the host-state. This counter-society was, however, composed of groups diversified according to nationalities (Germans, Finns, Poles, Caucasians, Jews, Russians...). The groups in question, constituting networks of sociability, awarded to students material and cultural assistance and finally played the part of a framework and logistic support to their political activities that were, in most cases, socialist and revolutionary until 1908, and nationalistic during the second decade of the century. These formations were also centers of primary importance as combinations of conviviality and sociability.

Alexandra Pasquinelli, Kuzmin, Nabokov, Chinnov, Alexandrian poets. The Alexandrian influence clearly appears in the works of these authors, and characterizes their forms. That influence reveals itself especially in the first period of Kuzmin's literary production. Nabokov, through his pragmatic Hellenistic culture, finds the way to surmount the « double event » of his destiny, the Revolution and the exile. Chinnov is connected with Kuzmin, and was properly considered - as he does about himself - as an "Alexandrian": it is just in the Alexandrian field that he was able to overcome the mourning of "Note parisienne" and to interpret the Hellenistic theme in a personal and quite modern way.

Dmitry V. Shlapentokh, Thermidor or Mongol Empire: History as a political model in Russian émigré thought. The article demonstrates that the Russian émigrés had been preoccupied with the historical analogies of the events which followed the Bolshevik Revolution. There were basically two historical models: French and Oriental. According to the "French model", the downfall of the Bolshevik regime would come about and the regime would suffer its Thermidor. On the other hand, according to the "Oriental model", the regime would enjoy its stability. While the French model had been popular shortly after the Bolshevik Revolution, the Oriental model became popular in émigré thought from the 1930's to the end ofthe 1950's.

Boris Orlov, On the eve of the Great Terror: the army and the opposition. The problem of Army participation in Party opposition fighting is studied very poorly. Publications of new documents contribute to a better understanding of the epoch of terror, mostly of its first period. In the twenties, the Army people did participate in Party opposition, fighting against Stalin's power. The opposition of Trotsky was supported rather weakly by the Red Army, in spite of the fact that a few eminent Army officers were on its side (Primakov, Putna, Schmidt). The right wing opposition was not popular in the Army but, in the early thirties, there were some efforts to have top Army officers (such as Blukher) on its side. The beginning of the terror in the Army is tied up to the arrests of Officers, - former members of the Party opposition -, and to efforts to organize, in the fall of 1936, a trial against "Trotskist officers" with Primakov and Putna as the main accused. These efforts failed because of the resistance of the arrested officers to the harsh interrogation methods. Later on, the Primakov-Putna case was included in the trial of Tukhachevsky and other top officers, so that the "Army officers" trial assumed a "Trotskist" nuance.