Contenu du sommaire

Leonid Heller and Antoine Baudin, Socialist realism as organization of the cultural field. This article gives a survey of Zhdanovist socialist realism viewed less as aesthetics or ideology than as a particular delimitation of the cultural field organized on several levels which are briefly described here, in the light of suggested schemes. The institutional actors of these schemes are presented here as well as their functional instances (constitution, chain of production-distribution-reception, control...). The Zhdanovist campaign around opera shows how it works. Its main characteristics and general effects are the following: a centralization and increasing hierarchization as well as the increase in the number of organs and the splitting of functions that serve to square the field and control artistic institutions (an institutional complexity that introduces into the system "air pockets" that are part of it); the generic, thematic, formal paradigmatization, the ideological, aesthetic and organizational integration of all the subjects combined with partitioning; the control of all instances on the axis production-distribution-reception; the concentration and even the scarcity of the production together with the expansion of its distribution and the unprecedented ritualization of its applications.

Irina Gouzévitch and Dmitri Gouzévttch, Franco-Russian contacts in the world of higher technical education and engineering craft. During the first half of the nineteenth century, Franco-Russian relations, traditionally rich and multiform, were destined to play the part of catalyst in the field of craft, training and institutionalization of the engineering profession in Russia. After the creation of the Institute of transportation, a pioneer of Russian higher technical schools, that had as prototypes the École polytechnique and the École des ponts et chaussées, a whole system of higher technical education was organized towards the middle of the century, under the direct or indirect influence of French establishments. Several questions remain to be solved: Why was this part played by France rather than by some other European country? Was it a matter of mere chance or of choice? How was this influence exercised? Who were its actors and its main vehicles? What were its immediate consequences and the general assessment? The article has tried to find a reply to some of these questions.

Dimitri Segal, History and poetics in Mandel'shtam's work A. The shaping of the poetic world. This study deals with the process of emergence of the main principles of the poetics of Osip Mandel'shtam as these are evident in the earliest poems from the years 1908- 1910. The basic assumption is that these poems deal with the emergence of the world from the chaos as well as with the emergence of the structure of the poetic "I". The article traces the semantic sujet and the semantic movement inherent in the sujet. The structure of the semantic movement is then treated as a hermetic story of the birth of the soul which is then sent to abide in the body of the poet. Similar relevant motifs and poems of other Russian poets are examined in the article including those by Tiutchev, Boratynskii, Aleksei Tolstoi, Fedor Sologub and others.

Pascal Marchand, The manipulation of scientific information in USSR (based on the instance of river development). Research on ex-USSR was made difficult because of the nature of available scientific information. Statistical yearbooks — sources of primary data — were rare. It was therefore often necessary to turn to "second hand" figures, collected in articles and other printed material which consisted either (in most cases) of a unique source or of several ones. Whatever the case, such data were to be used cautiously: they represented a "formal" reality which had little to do with the "real" one. This distancing process ranges from "passive" devices (impossibility of checking data, shortness of series...) to "active" devices (delusion, flexible series, fake correlations...) that are means of deception. The widespread use of such methods can be ascribed to the general purpose of the system; however, the human factor and lobbying scientists have their part as well. This is the way how sector-based ministries brainwashed the leadership of the country, presenting them only with "formal" realities.