Contenu du sommaire

Gilles Veinstein, Ottoman merchants in Poland-Lithuania and in Muscovy during the reign ofSuleyman the Magnificent. This article is a systematic exploitation of the correspondence — in Ottoman Turkish preserved mainly in the archives of Poland — between the Ottoman sultan, Suleyman the Magnificent (1520-1566) and the successive kings of Poland, Sigismund and Sigismund Augustus, with the objective of studying Ottoman trade in Poland, Lithuania and Muscovy during this period. As a matter of fact, the three aforesaid destinations are closely linked so long as connections between Istanbul and Moscow pass mostly by the so-called "Moldavian- Polish" road. In the sixteenth century, the participants in this trade are the Ottoman merchants, the only ones to visit Christian lands with those who travel to Ancona and Venice. They belong to two categories : the "Court merchants" (hâssa tâciri) and the private persons. Those of the first group deal (as already been stated) in the acquisition of precious furs in Moscow. However, these goods become pre-eminent only progressively and never attain exclusivity : birds of prey and tin are also brought back by those Court merchants whose prerogatives, methods and status are outlined in this article. For its part, private trade — also encouraged and protected by the sultan — is remarkably active. It is handled mainly by Muslims and Armenians who export Anatolian textiles, spices and jewels and import cloth and linen, while valuable furs remain the privilege of official merchants. In the practice of their trade they make use of limited partnership, barter, and credit operations.

Rudi Matthee, Anti-Ottoman politics and transit rights : the seventeenth-century trade in silk between Safavid Iran and Muscovy. Trade relations between Russia and Iran go back to pre-Islamic times. They remained intermittent, however, until the rise of Muscovy, its annexation of the khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan in the mid-sixteenth century, and the consolidation of Safavid rule in Iran in the same period. The backdrop to their subsequent expansion was a shared Russo-Iranian interest in anti-Ottoman alliances, which led to intensified diplomatic relations following the termination of the Livonian War and the accession of Shah 'Abbas I to the Safavid throne in the 1580's. The Russo-Iranian diplomatic exchange never produced an anti-Ottoman agreement, but did contribute to enhanced commercial traffic and the gradual formalisation of trade relations, both in the form of managed royal trade and of private commerce. Among the wares transported to Russia was silk, Iran's main export commodity. The importance of silk lay in Shah 'Abbas 's search for alternative export channels to the Anatolian route to the Levantine ports in order to lessen his dependence on the Ottomans. Russia was one such alternative outlet, yet, due to political differences over the Caucasus and logistical problems, the possibility of a diversion of Iran's silk to the northern route was never fully explored. With Shah ' Abbas 's death in 1629, Safavid interest in managed trade decreased. The Safavid-Ottoman peace of 1639, moreover, obviated any Iranian interest in Russia as an anti- Ottoman partner. Official contacts leveled off as a result. Trade relations continued, however, with private merchants taking the lead. Indeed, the latter part of the seventeenth century witnessed a great increase in the flow of silk from Iran to Russia. Interested in the fiscal advantages and increasingly in need of raw material for their manufacturing industry, the Russians encouraged the trade by giving the Armenians, its mast active practitioners, a privileged status. The latter capitalized on this, yet never intended to shift their entire operation away from the Anatolian route. The Russian hope of a total redirection was thus never fulfilled and the flow of silk, though increasing, at no point reached the volume of the Levantine connection.

Aleksei Voskresenskh, The genesis of the "Hi crisis " and the Russian-Chinese Livadia treaty of 1879. The so-called "Ili crisis" in Sino-Russian relations that had been caused by the intervention of the tsarist troops in the Hi valley, in 1871, is the central theme of this article. The decade-long Russian occupation of the Hi territory was ended by the formal signing of the Russian-Chinese Livadia treaty in 1879. However, Chong Hou, the Chinese representative at the negotiations, agreed to make concessions to Russia that caused such indignation in the Qing society that Chong Hou was called back to Peking and condemned to death, and the treaty was never ratified by the Chinese. The article shows that the failure of Chong Hou's mission was a result of the struggle that took place in the Qing court between the military- feudal groups and their leaders in the broader context of the international relations in Central Asia.

Susan Layton, Lermontov in combat with Bibliotéka dlia chteniia. Inspired by Bakhtin's analyses of double-voiced discourse, this article examines Lermontov's attacks on two pieces of low-brow orientalia published in Bibliotéka dlia chteniia in 1838 — Dmitrii Kropotkin's poem "Pal'ma" and the semi-anonymous prose tale "Beduinka." In the first case, Kropotkin was the target of a hidden polemic in Lermontov's "Tri pal'my," a verse which critics have long associated with Pushkin's "Podrazhaniia Koranu." In the second case, Lermontov subversively parodied "Beduinka" in "Bela," first published separately in 1839 and then incorporated into Geroi nashego vremeni. The analysis suggests that Lermontov's combat with Bibliotéka dlia chteniia was to some extent a criticism of his own sadistic streak (notably manifested in "Hadji-Abrek"). But most of all, the author was derisively exposing the Russian readership's taste for vulgar tales of oriental "savagery."

Anastasia Pasquinelli, Italian themes in the poetry of Mikhail Kuzmin : Italy's role as memory theater. A trip of 1895 to the Levant and, after that, a short but very important voyage to Italy, in the spring of 1 897, stamped their mark on all the future literary production of M. Kuzmin. The Hellenistic culture with which he was already imbued, allowed him to discover in Rome the blending of the pagan civilization with the paleo-Christian culture and, in Florence, the neo- Platonic and hermetic trends of the period of Lorenzo the Magnificent. Throughout the work of Kuzmin, formed in the school of Italian Renaissance — which is based on the tradition of memory art and originated the memory theater as imagination space — Italy remains always an inexhaustible source of creativity.

Nora Buhks, A scaffold in the Crystal Palace : in connection with the novel of Vl. Nabokov, Priglashenie na kazn' (Invitation to a beheading). The novel Priglashenie na kazn' was written in 1934, while Nabokov was working on Don (The gift), or, more precisely, after he had finished "The life of Chernyshevskii" which was to become the chapter IV of the novel. The relationship between this text and that of Priglashenie na kazn ' is not limited to a simple contiguity within the chronology of the literary creation : from the point of view of their themes as well as their subjects and structure, the two books constitute a diptych : both are parodies — one of the hero condemned by society, the other of society condemning the hero. On basis of the comparative analysis of both texts, the article comes to the conclusion that Priglashenie na kazn ' is a parodie achievement of the Utopia described in Chernyshevskii 's novel Chto delať, the main character — an idealist philosopher — is a parodical replica of Chernyshevskii himself. The dramatic fate of Cincinnatus is similar to that of Chernyshevskii but in the conditions of the ideal society invented by the author ; it discloses the fateful deficiency of the ideal, while serving as a basis at the structural level of the organic unity of the subject in Nabokov's romantic diptych.

Michael Confino, Present events and the representation of the past. Some current problems in Russian historical writing. Historical writing is probably not just a re-enactment of the present by other means. Nevertheless, there is something of it in all historical writing. For that reason the real questions are : to what extent do current events influence the historian's work, and is he or she sufficiently aware of this influence and its by-products ? The recent developments in Russia have had a profound effect on Soviet/Russian historical writing, and a devastating one on Western Sovietology. But they have also put on the agenda of Western historiography new questions, or given an acute topicality to old ones. Is this new turn justified by the organic development of the discipline ? Is it a "paradigmatic revolution" of sorts ? Or does it reflect rather some inadequacies in traditional historiography during the last thirty years or so ? Inadequacies such as deterministic and teleological approaches inspired by the "1917 paradigm" ? In turn, these approaches have generated an hypertrophy of phenomena such as the crisis of the Old Regime, revolutionary processes, and social instability. For how, indeed, could "1917" have happened without such kind of overwhelming phenomena ? But as is well known, historical logic does not always follow the logic of the common sense. What have we learnt (about the present as well as about the past) from the recurrent and pervading ase of historical analogies as, for instance, between Gorbachev and Alexander I, or Yeltsin and Kerenski ? Do we need the constant evocation of reforms (failed or successful) in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in order to gauge the chances of success of the reforms in today's Russia ? Is Russian history repeating itself, or is there something atavistic in its course ? And is it the historian's task to predict the future instead of explaining the past ? Are these new problems a symptom of the discipline's growth and maturity ? Or rather non-issues indicating a malaise and perhaps a crisis ?

Ivaylo Znepolski, Opium of the intellectuals of the East. In his book that appeared in the 1950's, Opium of the intellectuals, Raymond Aron pointed out that the intellectuals, more than any other people, are seduced by Utopia. How is it that social Utopia is still active in the East in spite of the fact that intellectuals had been submitted to the reality of totalitarian repressions ? Why is it that "leftist tendency" is still appealing, in spite of the fact that the failure of socialist model is established ? From the mere semblance of a fulfilled Utopia, to the substitution of creator's myth for creation, and to the "deviation" of art, once the cultural conspiracy of "real socialism" is over, there still remains numerous drug addicts.