Contenu du sommaire

Francine-Dominique Liechtenhan, The court of Elisabeth as described by Prussian diplomats (1). In 1746, the Prussian diplomat, Axel von Mardefeld, returned to his country after having spent more than twenty years in Russia. Upon his return, Frederic II asked him to write a "Mémoire" on the key court personalities in Saint Petersburg who would be apt to help his successor and inform him of court procedures. Mardefeld was skillful at sketching portraits of Elisabeth, her favorites, and major ministers; he described with precision the behavior of the other foreign diplomats at a time when Russia had just sided with Maria-Theresa in the Austrian War of Succession whose original cause, the Habsburg inheritance, incited territorial disputes opposing French, English, Austrians, Saxons and Prussians. His keen analysis of the Russian national character was outstanding compared to most of the descriptions of the time. In that same year, when Russia joined Austria to fight France, Mardefeld's text proved to be of the greatest importance to European diplomacy and revealed what was the main task of a representative abroad: political, economic and military espionage; his successor, Finckenstein, understood this quite well and proved to be most zealous in carrying out this task.

Vladislav Ržeucku, The French in the Volga region: the Russian policy on migration during the 1760s and the establishment of French-speaking communities in Saint Petersburg and Moscow. The question of recruiting French settlers for Russia has not ever received the same attention as the influxes of French immigrants who populated the foreign communities of Saint Petersburg and Moscow. However, these French immigrants are often the same as those who came with the stream of German-speaking settlers destined for agricultural labor in the Volga region and who decided to establish themselves in the two capital cities, either upon their arrival, or by slipping away before reaching the Volga region, or after having known the difficulties of life in the settlements. They are largely responsible for the rapid growth of the French colony in Moscow during the years 1760-1770. A comparison of several lists of settlers, most of which have not been studied until recently, shows that this end result of the colonization campaign was in keeping with what usually happened in the case of French settlers. Given their cultural level, they frequently had already lost the habit of agricultural work at the time of their departure for Russia and most of them had been migrants for a great part of their lives. All these factors predetermined the most important collective migration of French settlers from the Volga region to the capitals, around the year 177S.

Dmitrij A. Rostislavlev, Svetlana L. Turilova, The French in Russia in 1793. In this article concerning the history of French immigration to Russia at the end of the eighteenth century, one finds for the first time data on immigrants: how many existed, the number that was distributed over the Russian territory, their occupation, birthdate, date of arrival in Russia, and religious denomination. Lists of French citizens who were compelled to condemn the execution of Louis XVI in 1793 are held in the collection of the Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Empire (AVPRI) under the title "About the French people of Russia who took an oath in compliance with the Imperial Decree of February 8, 1793." A statistical analysis of these sources allows us to draw conclusions on the characteristic features of French immigration to Russia. In the annex are printed a certain amount of hitherto unpublished documents: Catherine II's Decree of February 8, 1793 on the termination of political relations with France and the deportation of French people refusing to pledge allegiance to the Bourbons and become political immigrants, the oath, and other accompanying documents to the Decree.

Petr Zaborov, "I cannot forget Russia or the Russians." Twenty-five letters from the Baron de Damas to the Olenin family. The Baron de Damas (1785- 1862) was born into an aristocratic family who went into exile after the French Revolution. He received military training in Russia, and returned to France while taking part in the Russian military operations there. In 1813, he decided to stay in France and embarked on a long career in the royal family. He was, to name but a few of his activities, Minister of War, of Foreign Policy, and was named private tutor to the Duke of Bordeaux. For nearly half a century, he corresponded with the Olenin family whom he had met during his stay in Russia. At their home, he had had the opportunity to meet the artists and poets who visited Aleksei Nikolaevich Olenin, then director of the Imperial Public Library and president of the Academy of Fine Arts. This correspondence, which has hitherto been only partly published, is published here in its entirety. It provides the reader not only with information on political events both in France and Europe as well as on the baron's family life and occupations, but also with comments of a historical or philosophical nature on progress, religion, war, man's fate, etc., which reflect a conservative world view tinged with pessimism.

Svetlana M. Goršenina, Francophone travellers in Central Asia in the years 1860 to 1932. This article constitutes a preliminary report of research on the francophone historiography of Central Asia at the turn of the twentieth century. This research was conducted in collaboration with the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, the CNRS team on Hellenism and Oriental Civilizations and the French Institute for Central Asian Studies. A large amount of documentation (from archives, bibliographic resources, photographic archives) was collected for nearly all of the francophone travellers, scholars, and photographers who went to Russian (later Soviet) Central Asia between the beginning of Russian colonization and the closing of the frontiers in the 1930s. These travellers, with a few exceptions, fell into an unwarranted oblivion, or were presented in the Soviet historiography uniquely under the aspect of colonialism or espionage. This study attempts to reconstitute the historical environment of these travellers (their educational background, their personal motivations and those of their sponsors, the manner in which they were welcomed by the local authorities, etc.), as well as the political situation in Central Asia, particularly from the point of view of French interests in the region (commercial activities, political and economic information missions ordered by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1918-1922, etc.).

Marshall Poe, The imaginary world of Semen Koltovskii. Genealogical anxiety and falsification in late seventeenth-century Russia. The later seventeenth century was an era of unprecedented social mobility in the upper reaches of Muscovite society. Prior to the reign of Aleksei Mikhailovich, the boyar duma had been the preserve of a small set of pedigreed families. Aleksei, however, altered the traditional duma recruitment policy in the 1650s and began to promote undistinguished "new men" into the duma. Despite the claims of some historians, the new men were not radicals. It is true that many of them had made their way to the top by virtue of their service and skill, and not due to any hereditary right to elite ranks or offices. They were the beneficiaries of a very mild drift toward meritocratic appointment. But the new men did not necessarily share the principles standing behind the policy that brought them into the heights of Muscovite society. They had been born and bred in a society that took for granted the existence of a class of men who were the natural born leaders of the realm. The new men recognized that though they were among the elite, they were not of it in a genealogical sense. It likely never occurred to them to alter the basic principles of the old status system. The parvenus wanted to become members of the hereditary elite, not to destroy it. Evidence of widespread genealogical falsification by the new men is prima facie indication of this desire and the mentality that stood behind it.

Marie-Rose Belgodère, Job hunting in Russia at a time of transition: classified and unclassified advertisements (Moscow, 1994-1995). A study was made of jobs wanted and help wanted ads published in two daily newspapers of the central press in 1994 and in the Moscow specialized press in September 1994, and was supplemented by a further study on a representative sample of twenty job-seekers one year after the publication of their advertisement. These studies made it possible not only to gain a better understanding of the behavior of different socio-professional categories with regards to adaptability and mobility, but also to show changes in the Soviet employment pattern. The sense of initiative and the inventiveness shown by those seeking employment are thus compared to the companies doing the hiring. In the face of a job market which offers an availability of people, often young and educated, ready to reconvert, to downgrade or even to take on a double job, there is a highly fragile private business sector which is essentially focused on goods and services, and apparently not ruled by any labor laws so that jobholders may brutally find themselves in situations of uncertainty and instability.