Contenu du sommaire

Antonello Venturi, Hopeless collectivism : the double-faced mirror of the Italian myth and the Russian socialist identity, 1900-1914. At the beginning of the century, the Russian revolutionary movement hardly dealt with the characteristics of socialist future, so limited was it by its formal attitude against Utopia. Hence, it had been resorting to other reference points, often holding Western "real socialism" as a model. An unintended identity stands out from Russian representations of Italian collectivism. In fact it turns out to be a double-faced shaping. It stresses the common originality of European peripheries: nevertheless you can find there totally opposed pictures, animated either by a Social Democratic black imagery or by a Socialist-Revolutionary golden dream. Besides, representations of Italian socialism were nourished with extremely dubious images. This stands out clearly in connection with the genuine self-consciousness of the Russian revolutionary movement, as it results from the First-hand experience of Russian emigration in Italy.

Ewa Bérard, Why did the Bolsheviks leave Petrograd? The departure of the Bolsheviks from Petrograd on March 10, 1918 and the transfer of the capital to Moscow marked the end of a two-hundred-year long "Petersburg era" of Russian history. Was this transfer that took place immediately after the signature of the Brest-Litovsk peace treaty, really dictated (as it was claimed) solely by the German military danger? The present article - supported by documents - promotes the thesis according to which this move had been decided earlier, after the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, and was necessitated by the explosive situation in the city. Equally essential was the symbolic effect of the desertion of the "anti-national" Petrograd and of the rehabilitation of the old capital, on anti-revolutionary opinion: once they were established in the Kremlin, the Bolsheviks were endowed by their adversaries with the legitimacy of new assemblers of Russian lands.

Hakan Kirimli, The "Young Tatar" movement in the Crimea, 1905-1909. During the 1905 revolution, a nationalist-revolutionary movement emerged among the Crimean Tatar intelligentsia, whose members were called the "Young Tatars." Strongly influenced by the Russian revolutionaries, the Young Tatars engaged in a political and social struggle involving a network of underground cells, as well as legal publications and enlightenment activities. They introduced the political concept of "fatherland," defined by the Crimea, thereby providing a territorial basis for national identity. While endorsing broader Turkic and Islamic allegiances, they concentrated primarily on the Crimean Tatar people as the starting point of their national identity.

Taline Ter Minassian, A sample of the part played by the minorities in the foreign policy of USSR: Armenians in the Soviet policy in Iran in the early 1920s. Dictated by geopolitical and strategical considerations, Russian - and later on Soviet - policy in Iran stressed the part of Transcaucasia as a "buffer state." Based on hitherto unpublished sources (Erevan archives), this article displays the part allocated to the Armenian minority, actor as well as target of Soviet diplomacy. As from the 1920's, by means of "minority networks," particularly in Iranian Azerbaïdjan, the latter creates a real sphere of influence. At the beginning of this period, the above-mentioned networks are active in three essential sectors: the diplomatic mission of the SSR of Armenia in Persia (till 1922), the Armenian section of the Iranian Communist Party, Adalat, in Tabriz, and finally in the secret service the members of which are mostly recruited from the Armenian community.