Contenu du sommaire

Francine-Dominique Liechtenhan, The court of Elisabeth as described by Prussian diplomats (2). Carl Wilhelm von Finckenstein was sent to Russia as ambassador plenipotentiary by Frederick II. He took his king's secret "Instructions" ordering him to win Elisabeth over to the Prussian cause. Once there, the ambassador was reduced to silence and a wait-and-see position. Russia had decided to take part in the War of the Austrian Succession against France, which was then an ally of Prussia. Finckenstein resigned himself to observing ministers, courtiers and foreign representatives and taking note of the reactions of the latter 's sovereigns to the reversal of the international situation. The result of his observations is a vivid depiction of the Russian empire under Elisabeth I, focusing on the court, the military system, or the financial situation, depending on Frederick II's concerns. His conclusions are clear: Russia was either on the brink of decline if power remained in the hands of the successive tsarinas, or at the threshold of a new economic development if a man such as Peter I took power. In either case, Western states must not interfere: like the Porte, the empire of the tsars was not supposed to integrate the continental political group.

Aleksandr Ia. Livshin, Igor' B. Orlov, Revolution and social justice: expectations and reality ("Letters to the authorities" 1917-1927). The phrase "letters to the authorities" refers to the various forms of appeal to the powers that be by the people during the post-revolutionary period (letters, complaints, petitions, denunciations). These letters constitute an important source for the study of social history and for the history of how people think. They were a means of dialogue between society and the authorities, an important means of communication within the "state — people" relationship during the Soviet period. The extent to which so basic a concept as that of justice is represented in people's minds is indicative of the changes that took place within popular consciousness during the first post-revolutionary decade. The perception of justice in various social groups was globally unstable, contradictory, and fluctuating. This reflected the deep social, political and cultural changes of the time.

Federico Varese, The society of the vory-v-zakone, 1930s- 1950s. This paper is a study of the society of the vory-v-zakone, a criminal fraternity that flourished in the Soviet Gulag. It is based on three types of sources: published recollections of eyewitnesses, unpublished memories and official records from the State Archive of the Russian Federation. The first part presents the main features of the society, the ritual, the code of behaviour, and the vory's meetings, where issues of common concern were discussed and sanctions passed on fellow vory and outsiders. The second part explores the origin of the society. Although the term vory-v-zakone is recorded only in Soviet times, the society might have emerged earlier. After a comparison with pre-revolutionary guilds (arteli), the paper points to some crucial differences between arteli and vory-v-zakone, such as the national dimension of the latter. The paper concludes that the Gulag system was a crucial precondition for the emergence of the society as a national network, although a final answer on the origin of the vory is not yet available. The third part chronicles a violent internecine war (such'ia voina) that brought the original society to an end. A new society emerged in the eighties and is a feature of present-day Russia.

Methodological debates and the rewriting of history in today's Russia. These are the proceedings of a colloquium which took place in 1997 at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales. Several French and Russian historians gathered around Gennadii Bordiugov whose exposé initiated the debate. The topic was the present state of historical research in Russia, particularly in such areas as the Soviet period, the Marxist heritage, the construction of national history and the "civilizational" approach (tsivilizatsionnyi podkhod).

David Shearer, From divided consensus to creative disorder: Soviet history in Britain and North America. This article examines changes in the field of Soviet history in Great Britain and North America since the end of the Second World War. In the early decades of the Cold War, which followed the end of World War II, public opinion and historical writing about the Soviet Union were dominated by scholars who based their work on the political philosophy of nineteenth- century liberalism and historical positivism. These scholars equated Soviet socialism with German National Socialism as the archetypes of twentieth-century totalitarian dictatorships. Scholarly arguments of totalitarianism underpinned American Cold War policies of containment against the USSR. In the 1970s and 1980s, a new generation of historians challenged Cold War liberal interpretations. Revisionist criticism grew out of social history and political radicalism in the history profession and on university campuses. Revisionism also had close ties to older leftist intellectual traditions. Since the end of the Soviet Union and the Cold War in the early 1990s, new kinds of history have emerged in the field of Soviet studies, and both liberal and revisionist interpretations have declined in importance. New historical trends have been shaped by a combination of influences - the end of Soviet socialism, the revolution in archive access in the former USSR, and especially the interpretive and methodological revolution in the history profession. This article assesses the effect of these influences on new directions in research in Soviet history.

Georges Nivat, Tsvetaeva and Brodskii: two types of references to the Bible. Tsvetaeva's references to the Bible appeal to great outcasts: Samson, Joseph in Egypt and above all, Hagar, Abraham's servant and mistress, who was cast out with her son Ishmael. Brodskii's great poem "Isaak i Avraam" contrasts Egypt's aridity with Russia's lush forests, the cruelty of the Old Testament with the gentle nature of the New Testament. The poet's cabalistic reading brings him to first see the Cross, then Art, in the burning bush. For both poets, drawing on the violence of the Bible is salutary.

Efim Etkind, Biblical terms in the Russian poetic language. Church Slavic vocabulary significantly enriches the Russian language. It has remained in the language thanks to the Bible that passed it on to secular literature which evolved into belles- lettres in the mid-eighteenth century. French underwent an ever-increasing purification process that culminated in Racine's two-thousand-word-rich poetry. Racine's biblical tragedies, Esther and Athalie, differ only very slightly in style from other tragedies. For the German language, biblical locutions were lost in Luther's 1521 and M. Mendelssohn's 1779 translations which took away the sacred aura of the Scriptures. Russian poetry, on the other hand, kept a significant amount of Church Slavic turns of phrase. Lomonosov, Derzhavin, and Pushkin used them in their own ways. During the Soviet era, poets found other ways of expressing solemnity. For example, Zabolotskii borrowed from the scientific language of mathematics, natural science, and philosophy. Anna Akhmatova's poetry is very individualized. Throughout her work, biblical terms no longer serve the purpose of ornamentation, but reflect the essence of man's inner world.

Zsuzsa Hetényi, Is the Jewish Bible a law, a tradition, or... ? Lev Lunts' Rodina (1922). Lev Lunts' Rodina deals with the Russian-Jewish writer's double identity. Double structures such as the parallel between the two cities, St. Petersburg and Babylon, or the dialogue in the form of a debate between the two protagonists (doubles of the writers Lev Lunts and Veniamin Kaverin), show that duality is at the basis not only of the poem's content but of its form as well. The central chapter, a flashback, represents not only another temporal layer, but symbolizes the depths of consciousness. The protagonists descend into the depths of the collective consciousness of the Jews, a community as much in exile in Babylon as in St. Petersburg. Leva's split personality and moments of doubt allow him to travel through different time periods, whereas the unyielding and proud Venia remains in the past with no hope of returning to the present. This reveals the key to the author's narrative which ends, paradoxically, with a binary opposition describing St. Petersburg both as a home-town and a foreign place. Lunts draws on the Bible but does not stick to the facts of the Old Testament: his liberal interpretation of the Biblical text reflects his direct ties with tradition.