The article deals with domestic conflicts in the French Quarter of Saint Petersburg under Peter the Great, namely: quarrels, brawls, showdowns with insults that arose among foreign artists and artisans who inhabited the settlement. The theoretical foundation of the research is such classical tools of sociology and cultural anthropology, as the concept of “Social fields” and the theory of “Social construction”. Based on archival sources and many published materials, the author solves questions about the causes of conflicts, the conditions of their occurrence, and the differences between domestic quarrels among the French and similar incidents common among Russian citizens. The author found out that in disputes, French masters primarily defended their personal dignity, translating Western European ideas of honor. Their high self-esteem inevitably led to conflicts, which usually occurred in the process of jointly spending leisure time. The article reveals that the French craftsmen not only sworn, but also used irony, which was almost unknown in Russia as an implement of social competition. It is clear that the most important factor in aggressive behavior was the contradictions between the ambitions of the masters, their social expectations, on the one hand, and the social reality of Petersburg, as the French imagined it, on the other.

This article is about the historical and cultural aspect of the formation of the Decembrists’ religious and political narratives: from the Charter of the Welfare Union to the “Orthodox Catechism” by S.I. Murav’ov-Apostol. It describes the political-religious situation in Russia in the 1810s – early 1820s, the time of the Bible Society and the Ministry of Spiritual Affairs and Public Education. It is noted that the search for “universal Christianity”, characteristic of that era, was embodied in the Charter of the Union, which aimed to assist the “government”.
Characterising the Decembrists’ later programme documents, the author notes that they were drafted at a time when the idea of that kind of assistance became a thing of the past and the Decembrists began to prepare a military revolution. Accordingly, references to religion in their late documents they primarily serve a functional role being used only as a convenient shell for expressing political ideas.

The article deals with an analysis of Mikhail Lermontov’s poem “The Poet” (“My dagger glitters with gold...”). The traditional Soviet interpretation is called into question here, since the ‘pro-Decembrist’ reception of that work now seems, at the very least, one-sided. At the time of writing the poem, Lermontov diverged in views from the Decembrists, and his radical individualism attains increasing significance. The might and aggressiveness of the dagger in the first part of the poem is directly related to the desire of the poet, the hero of the second part, for power over those around him. The image of the poetprophet in this poem is closely linked to the lyrical hero of Lermontov’s poem “The Prophet” and to the image of Lermontov’s Demon, who also has a prophetic nature. This similarity stems from the fact that, for Lermontov, the prophet is first and foremost an individualist, a ‘prophet of himself,’ striving for power. He may receive certain gifts from God, but for the prophet himself, that is insignificant for Novice (Mtsyri), who received from God the ability to perceive the thoughts of ‘dark rocks.’ At the same time, both Lermontov’s prophet (in any of his incarnations) and Novice perceive what they have received as a privilege that elevates them above other people. The article also contains a polemic with Boris Eikhenbaum and analyses the “alloying” of words in Lermontov’s poetry.

A special group of sources on the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905 are the so-called “cheap books for the people”, mass-published “on the topic of the day” and of diverse genres. The appearance of such publications was caused by the sharply increased interest of the Russian public in everything connected with Japan and the Far East. “Cheap books” represent the entire Russian political spectrum of the early 20th century – from extreme right-wing, Black Hundred groups to openly Marxist works. It was often emphasized that part of the profit, or all of the proceeds from the publication, were directed to “strengthening the Russian fleet”, “to the Red Cross fund”, “to help sick and wounded soldiers”, “for the benefit of orphans”, etc. Authors and publishers thus expressed their patriotic feelings, and sought to help their country in the fight against the Far Eastern enemy.

The article analyzes the Soviet political terminology of the 1920s. At that time, L. Trotsky and the “left opposition” were fighting the party leadership, which was headed by I. Stalin. The specific political situation demanded from the oppositionists an intellectual understanding of the issue of the hardware form of struggle, which Marxist theory had not previously encountered. Trotsky used a number of new political terms for the new theory. In particular, the terms “combination”, “combinatorship”, and “combinator” denoted those who were fighting not for class interests, but for hardware power. The article also raises the question of the connection of those terms with the “great combinator” – the protagonist of the novels by I. Ilf and E. Petrov.

 The article studies the party purge in December 1929 in the main Soviet institution that implemented the policy of the NEP – the People’s Commissariat of Finance of the USSR. The analysis of archival materials shows that the main motive for the party “purge” was to remove all those workers who were involved to a greater or lesser extent in the implementation of the new economic policy, to remove them by accusing them of various kinds of “deviations”, which were considered as broadly as possible – from “right-wing position” to family squabbles. The Party Charter is being replaced by a criterion, the essence of which is the depersonalization of everything human, the urge to eradicate any “hesitation” of a communist as a manifestation of a personal beginning. That purge is the first and most important stage in the creation of a totalitarian system of power.

The article attempts a biographical reconstruction of the artist’s life with reference to his painting V.I. Lenin in Smolny (1930). I.I. Brodsky (1884–1939) and his work are presented against the backdrop of the terror of the 1930s, the ideological collapse of the fine arts, and the artist’s personal success. The diaries of P.N. Filonov (1883–1941) make it possible to see I.I. Brodsky from an unusual perspective not only as the founder of an entire movement of the so-called socialist realism in the fine arts of the Soviet Union, but also as a man with his own thoughts and feelings. Brodsky managed to undergo an amazing transformation from an academic artist of the pre-revolutionary period to a pillar of Soviet art. That reflected his talent of both a person and an artist who was able to grasp the tendencies of the time and respond to them with relevant art both before and after the Russian Revolution, while remaining a recognized academic master of the world level and whose canvases can be quite rightly placed alongside the works of Diego Velazquez, Alexei Antropov, or Jacques-Louis David. Based on a hitherto unknown work (a variant of the painting Lenin in Smolny), the article reveals an unknown up to the present day, contradictory, and experimental side of his art that echoes an era full of tragedy.

The article deals with the last public performance of Andrey Belу – an evening with the poet organized on February 11, 1933 in the Polytechnic Museum in Moscow. Memories of those who were there and a review  of the evening published in the newspaper “Vechernyaya Moskva” allow reconstructing the atmosphere of that event. The Program of the evening, drawn up by Bely for the approval of the theses of his speech by the organs of political control, shows that the writer tried, on the one hand, to present himself as a real Soviet writer, enthusiastically fulfilling the tasks set by the Communist Party, and, on the other hand, to remain true to himself, to defend the right to freedom of creative work in general and, above all, to freedom of creative experiment. Servile in form, the Program covered Bely’s intention to tell about the features of his new novel “Masks”. 

The article presents Yu. Kazakov’s unknown script “Man’ka” (1959), discovered in the papers of Mosfilm in Russian State Archive of Literature and Arts. It is a version of a well-known story, the writer’s first attempt in the screenplay genre and, apparently, one of the few completely independent scripts Kazakov has done. Observations on the style of the script, which differs from the style of the story of the same name (in the script we find abundance of tropes, a larger number of descriptions of various kinds, a different rhythm) allow to conclude that the form of the script was eemingly perceived by the young author at that time as a special artistic opportunity, an alternative to the story.
It is known that Mosfilm demanded that Kazakov make changes to the script and eventually refused to shoot the film; the article provides the text of an official letter to Kazakov, which clearly states the reasons for rejecting the script: the depiction of love as a “purely biological process”. The article shows exactly what in the script could be perceived as beyond the scope of what was permissible in Soviet cinema.

The article deals with the issue of the status of Soviet military and civilian advisers and specialists who performed international duty in Africa in the 70s and 80s of the 20th century. Special attention is paid to the nuances of the status of Soviet “progressors” in Soviet society, the Soviet political structure, socio-cultural and ideological substantiation of the features of Soviet “progressivism”.