Prophecies, visions and omens were widely represented in the monuments of East Slavic writing from the first steps of its development to the 17th century. The author of the article comes to the conclusion that predictions in ancient Russian literature were not always accompanied by visions and signs. Sometimes the prophecies were quite mundane and were closely related to the image of everyday life. The paper considers two types of observers. The one-impartially depicts everything seen, without accompanying the story with judgements and characteristics. The other-actively participates in events, makes predictions an important element of their picture of the world, seeks not only to fix what is happening, but also to contribute to the fulfillment of predictions.
The article analyzes the function of the emblematic system and in particular the allegorical figure of the God Mars in Russian panegyric literature. In Peter I‘s epoch this allegory was actively used to formalize the new Imperial ideology. In panegyric dramas the image of the God Mars served to personify the highest values of the Empire: the new warlike Russia, the most heroized sovereign, the Russian army.
This report attempts to examine the daily activities of the last favorite of Catherine II, P.A. Zubov. The complex of published sources (letters of the Empress, chamber-Fourier journals and memoirs of contemporaries) and archival materials from the funds of the RGADA and RGIA (RSHA) allows us to characterize both Zubov’s duties at court as an adjutant General and one of the closest persons to the Empress, as well as his informal activities. The latter were connected primarily not with his official positions, but with the role of an influential intermediary, a channel of unofficial communication between subjects and the Supreme power. However, the same activity did not turn the favorite into a ruler, but rather, on the contrary, made him an Executive official within the existing mechanism of the office of state secretaries.
The article presents two letters from V.A. Musin-Pushkin which he wrote to his bride shortly before the wedding in 1828 (the letters are kept in the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts). The text of the letters reflects the context of the time and everyday life, the system of views and the peculiarities of the worldview of a young aristocrat, the specific features of intra-family interaction in the field of feelings, marriage, human relations which inevitably turn out to be associated with the concepts of the family honor, family duty, the need to preserve the status of a noble family. The author traces how the power hierarchy is manifested at the level of relations within a close circle of relatives, as well as how traditional patterns are combined with new elements. Vladimir Alekseevich Musin-Pushkin, the youngest son of the archaeographer Count A.I. Musin-Pushkin, was arrested in connection with the case of the Decembrists, transferred from the Guards to the army and exiled to serve in Finland, where he met his future wife, Emilia Karlovna Shernval von Wallen. The article provides details of the family life of this married couple, as well as private facts from the biography of some other members of the Musin-Pushkin family.
In addition to completing the army and Navy with lower ranks, the recruiting system performed another function, i.e. punitive. Small-time thieves, vagabonds, persons having no passports, drunkards, as well as negligent housekeepers, tax evaders, unauthorized woodcutters, “the insolent” and others, who for various reasons being objectionable to society or the landowner, were punished by sending to military service. In this paper, based on the materials of the local patrimony archive of the Sheremetevs, the patrimony management is considered in detail, as a mechanism aimed at clearing the rural society of the taxes non-payers and persons of depraved behavior by sending them to recruits. It is shown, in particular, that such a process on the part of the patrimony owner was a thought-out, organized and systematic one, what in some cases led to a mass, up to several tens people at a time, provision of peasants for military service. The final decision on punishment was made by the Count, taking into account the opinions of rural commune, patrimonial and house boards.
The article deals with the everyday life of participants in secret political organizations of the 1820s, Decembrists. To characterize the generation to which the Decembrists belonged, the definition of Yuri N. Tynyanov is used: “people of the twenties”. It is noted that this generation primarily belonged to young noblemen who took part in the war of 1812 and whose political views were formalized in the postwar period. The main conflict experienced by the Decembrists is formulated: between romantic ideas about life and the harsh reality of political conspiracy. The article describes the main milestones in the biography of P.I. Pestel - the head of the Southern society, one of the brightest representatives of the radical wing of the conspiracy. At the same time it is emphasized that the author of these lines has already repeatedly described his biography, and the difference in the attitude of critics to the assessments made by the author and to Pestel’s personality is revealed. It is formulated that this difference is due to the difference in attitude towards Pestel of his contemporaries. The political confrontation between Pestel and the representative of the “liberal wing” of the conspirators, I.G. Burtsov, is analyzed. It describes Pestel’s opponent, his attitude to the problem of interaction between society and the authorities, and his activity in secret society. The conclusion is made that it is impossible for Burtsov’s “line” to defeat Pestel’s “line” under specific historical conditions of the 1820s.
The article deals with actually little studied questions about the ways and methods of transporting political exiles to Siberia by rail, about the everyday life of that category of exiles in the new conditions of deporting in the 60-70s of the 19th century.
The article presents the reconstruction essay on the life world of a large professional and social medical nurses corporation during the First World War. The research is based on extensive first-time archive material. The main social and anthropological characteristics of medical nurses are presented: the number, age, education, psychological types, activities of the nursing organization, nurses’ relations with various, higher and lower, groups of the Red Cross employees, soldiers, officers, public attitudes towards the nursing corporation. The research focuses on the analysis of the world of life through the prism of the daily military and sanitary activities of that group, what was dictated by the work technology caused by the total war.
The article analyzes the communicative connection between the internal political struggle in VKP(b) and the satirical magazine “Crocodile” (a supplement to “Rabochaya Gazeta”), which was published in mass circulation. Usually the Crocodile illustrations did not depict the real motives of the political struggle; their task was to show the rejection of any party opposition as such. But in the December 1925 issue of “The Crocodile” (No. 47), the front page of the magazine suddenly displays an image in which all the party leaders are busy with general construction, and no matter how much you look at the picture - you will not find the main leader in it. Such was a political order. The article analyzes the reasons for the possibility of an appearance of an obviously ideological drawing in a satirical journal – with an attempt, approved at the very top of the political power - to portray exactly the “unity of the party”, and not a split that was about to happen ahead of the XIV Congress of the party, about which many Bolsheviks were speaking openly.
The author of this article analyzes methods of the nostalgia motivation in the Soviet song of 1930s and 1980s. Such task is set and solved for the first time. It is noted that appeal to nostalgia has traditionally been used as an evidence of love for the homeland. It is proved that such an argument was not used in propaganda until the end of the 1930s, because only a Soviet citizen could become the lyrical hero of the song, and there were no generally understandable reasons for his long stay abroad. It was noted that by the second half of the 1940s, the long stay of a Soviet citizen abroad was motivated by his military past. However, in ten years that motivation had already exhausted itself and a search for the others began. It is established that fundamentally new ones were never offered, and references to emigrant nostalgia were minimized by censorship. The tradition of polemical comprehension of the Soviet propaganda attitudes is also considered in the article. Examples relating to the so-called amateur or bard song and pop culture of the turn of the 1980s 1990s are analyzed.
