Contenu du sommaire

Césare G. De Micheus, The Protocols of the wise men of Zion. Philology and history. After the publication of Henri Rollin's essay in 1939, the origins ot the Protocols of the wise men of Zion (PSM) were not questioned any more. Finding it impossible to go further, it was acknowledged that the history of the use of the text was more important than the text itself. This finally resulted in passively gobbling the tales of the mystification. With this research, we try to bring to light the still dark aspects of the PSM's origins (they were edited five times in Russia in the years 1905-1906), and this, not with the help of the numerous contradictory leaflets which appeared along with their publication, but with the help of the only element which cannot be disguised and cannot lie: the text itself, with its typological conformation and the forms of its tradition.

Yves Cohen, Letters as means of action: Stalin at the beginning of the 1930s, as seen from the Kaganovich fund. This article is a partial (in the double meaning of the word) presentation of Stalin's eighty letters found in the Kaganovich fund which became accessible at the RTsKhlDNI in 1996. These letters give a new outlook on Stalin's governing practices at the beginning of the 1930's, since they embody his way of acting while he is resting on the Black Sea. At the heart of this paper, several situations of the summer 1932 and a series of Stalin's concerns regarding the relations among the "managing group," the State and the executives. The impending complete publication of these letters will show, as this article underlines, that they allow new interpretations of what made Stalin's power, his close management of the USSR and the international communist movement.

René Houle, The place of Russians and non-Russians at the head of political and economical institutions in the USSR. A study of the censuses, 1926-1979. This text examines the distribution of the staff at the head of political and economic institutions according to nationalities in the USSR and its regions. Using the Soviet unpublished censuses available in Moscow, it was possible to throw more light on the tempo and localization of running staff for the main Soviet nationalities. The importance of the 1930's period for the formation of Soviet elites in the USSR, Russians as well as locals, becomes obvious. It is shown that even if a real tendency to equity in sharing power between Russians and local populations developed between 1926 and 1979, a gap persisted which widens the higher we get in the hierarchy.

Dorena Caroli, Homeless children in court in pre-revolutionary Russia, 1864-1917. This article tackles the problem of abandonment and juvenile delinquency in Russia (1864-1917) from a legal point of view. This process combines an analysis of the criminologie discours of the time and of their impact on the penal reforms concerning minors. The reconstitution of the trend of depenalization of juvenile delinquency was based on the works of D.A. Drir and M.N. Gernet. Part one tells of the development of a penal procedure and special penal treatment which were introduced with the legal reforms of 1864; it also tells how, thanks to studies on socio-biological causes of juvenile delinquency (1897), Dril' "modernized" these reforms. At the turn of the century, Dril' himself altered his views and advocated a policy of social prevention of delinquency. Part two shows how Gernet's emerging legal sociological discourse on the social causes of delinquency allows the introduction of juvenile courts (1910). The survey of the cases treated by the juvenile court of St. Petersburg showed that the state should support homeless children. This completely changed the status of young delinquents and became a leitmotiv in the speeches on the role of court up until the October Revolution.

Ralph Della Cava, Reviving Orthodoxy in Russia. An overview of the factions in the Russian Orthodox Church in the spring of 1996. Orthodoxy today is Russia's numerically largest confession and has for more than a millennium remained one and indivisible with the culture of the Eastern Slavs (including Belarussians and Ukrainians). But, the Russian Orthodox Church, that credo's most expressive and representative institution, faces a crisis of faith and institutional organization unparalleled in its history. The causes of that crisis are just as complex as are the strategies and tactics which the Church has adopted during the past five years to restore its ascendancy over believers and reestablish its credibility as a social force at home and abroad. In many ways, this challenge mirrors that of the Russian state and society. In this respect, the Church also finds itself no less rent by internal divisions. Four major ecclesial factions have emerged. Identified here as Ultra-nationalists, Ecumenists, Institutional ists and Pastoralists, each is examined separately and in relationship to one another. The perspective is largely from within the Church universe proper, while at the same time Church ties to political and social changes occurring inside post-Communist Russia are kept in sight. Data for this account are based on scores of personal interviews with clergymen, scholars, journalists and lay persons conducted in the spring of 1995 and 1996 in nine cities of European Russia and, for the first time in such an inquiry, on a close reading of the Orthodox and specialized religious press in Russia and abroad.

Leonid A. Shlychkov, N.P. Smirnov and Russkie novosti. In this article, the author recounts the life and works of N.P. Smirnov (1898-1978). Journalist, literary critic (Krasnaia nov', Novyi mir), landscape writer member of Pereval, N.P. Smirnov was sentenced in 1934 for being Trotskyist. From 1961 onward, he was one of the main contributors to the pro-Soviet weekly Russkie novosti (1945-1970) published in Paris, whose history and contents are also examined. A great admirer of Bunin, Smirnov built a bridge between Soviet and émigré literatures.