This article undertakes a comparison of models of alcohol consumption in Russia and China at the turn of the twentieth century, a task rarely attempted in scholarly literature. The study demonstrates that, despite obvious cultural differences, these models share more typological similarities than might be expected. The patterns of drinking behaviour among Russian and Chinese peasants appear to be broadly similar, as do those found among various strata of the populations of the industrial cities of both countries. Thus, changes in patterns of alcohol consumption should be understood not in terms of differences between ethnic cultural traditions, but in terms of the transition from an agrarian to an industrial society in both countries. Among the many features distinguishing the urban model of alcohol consumption from the rural one, perhaps the most significant is the desacralization of the communal feast. Drinking ceases to be a condition for entering a festive state, in the traditional understanding of the holiday as a sacred opposite to everyday life. Alcohol loses its status as a means to an end and becomes an end in itself and an everyday habit. Against this backdrop, the physiological human need for alcohol becomes more pronounced. The modern city becomes an ideal environment for the manifestation of alcohol’s addictive potential, functioning as a mass market characterized by widespread distribution and high demand. The close interrelationship between physiological needs and the sociocultural context which gives rise to an ambivalent attitude toward alcohol in human behaviour makes it possible to assess human actions – both individual and collective – from a different perspective and thereby expand the methodological range of historical research.
This article analyses the influence of the political and ideological campaigns of the second half of the 1940s and early 1950s on the development of higher education in history in Sverdlovsk. Based on annual departmental reports and minutes of meetings of party organizations, it examines the mechanisms of ideological control that determined the directions of research and educational activity within the History Department of Ural State University. The study demonstrates that the tightening of party supervision led to a revision of research topics, adjustments to academic courses, and a greater emphasis on ideologically significant subjects, substantially narrowing the problem field of research in the humanities. The political and ideological campaigns were accompanied by personnel changes: some faculty members were criticized, demoted, or ‘relieved of their assignments’ in connection with methodological, ideological, or administrative complaints. The most significant episodes of ideological pressure involved M. A. Gorlovsky, M. Ya. Syuzyumov, N. A. Finkelstein, K. B. Gadashevich, B. A. Divinsky, S. G. Livshits, N. M. Katerinochkin, and others. The article establishes that, despite the absence of the mass repressions characteristic of the 1930s, the political mobilization of the second half of the 1940s and early 1950s substantially undermined the institutional stability of the History Department of Ural State University, led to a shortage of personnel, and slowed its scholarly and pedagogical development. At the same time, some faculty members avoided the negative consequences of ideological pressure owing to the support of regional and Moscow-based scholars. The study clarifies the specific ways in which the campaigns of late Stalinism affected regional scholarly and pedagogical communities in higher-education institutions and reconstructs the changes they brought about in the system of higher education in history in Sverdlovsk, as well as their long-term consequences.
This review examines the fundamental study Leonid Brezhnev: A Political Biography written by the prominent Russian and German historians A. I. Savin and V. Dönninghaus (Moscow, 2024). The author analyses the methodological innovation of the work, its source base, key scholarly achievements, and controversial aspects. Also, the reviewer emphasises the successful adaptation of the methodology of the ‘new cultural history’ and the ‘linguistic turn’ to the study of Soviet political biography. Special attention is given to a source introduced into scholarly circulation for the first time: Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev’s ‘working journal’ (1964–1982). The review evaluates the monograph’s contribution to the reinterpretation of the Brezhnev era, presenting Leonid Ilyich as the architect of the Soviet social state and a pragmatic politician, rather than as a passive or unprepared leader, as has often been depicted in historiography. The reviewer acknowledges the methodological boldness, professional source criticism, balanced judgments, and stereoscopic vision of the era, characteristic of the authors and achieved through the analysis of documents at different levels. At the same time, certain lacunae in the study are noted (problems in the sphere of industry, the Kosygin reform, the completeness of the analysis of foreign policy), as well as the limits of the interpretive possibilities of the main source. It is concluded that the monograph under review can serve as a model of contemporary historical biography, setting a new standard for the study of Soviet leaders.
The sermon by Patriarch Adrian dedicated to the Streltsy uprising of 1698, one of the most important events of Peter the Great’s reign, has never been published or used by historians previously. The text is known from a single manuscript written by Karion Istomin, a prominent writer who served as the patriarch’s secretary and who was apparently the author of the text. In addition to the sermon itself, the document includes a historical note by the same Istomin, briefly outlining the circumstances of the Streltsy uprising, its suppression, and the thanksgiving service held on 13 July 1698 to mark the victorious return of the boyar voivode A. S. Shein with his army to Moscow; the sermon was delivered by Adrian in the Cathedral of the Dormition in the Moscow Kremlin immediately before this service. The document also contains a laudatory address by the patriarch to Shein, delivered after the service. This source makes it possible to ascertain what contemporaries knew about the Streltsy uprising at the time of the revolt and shortly after its suppression, as well as how the event was interpreted by the church authorities. The most valuable layers of information, however, emerge when the sermon is placed in the context of contemporary sources, especially the reports of foreign diplomats, which record instances of the patriarch’s disloyalty to the tsar, hint at Adrian’s sympathies for the rebels, or even describe rumours of his interest in their victory. Certain omissions and reservations in the sermon, if not fully confirming the foreign diplomats’ accounts, at least show that it deserves more serious consideration than has previously been assumed. All this makes the published sermon a valuable historical source, expanding our knowledge of the relationship between the state, society, and the Church during the crisis of the summer of 1698.
The problem of individual and group identity in Stalinist society is central to the historiography of this period. Within the study of practices of social selfidentification, the ways in which historical narratives about the origins and history of particular social groups were constructed remain insufficiently examined. This study focuses on one such practice: the construction of historical narratives by the scientific intelligentsia and their use to legitimize its status as a distinct social stratum within the public propaganda discourse of 1929–1941. The adaptation of the academic approach of the intelligentsia of ‘bourgeois origin’, the so-called ‘old specialists’, to the Marxist paradigm and the demands of the authorities is analysed through the concepts of the ‘useful past’ and the ‘Great Appropriation’. Applying these concepts to popular-science materials on the history of science – including pamphlets, monographs, and articles in the press – makes it possible to reconstruct the conceptions of both the authorities and the scientific intelligentsia concerning ‘society’. These materials were produced by the intelligentsia under state control in order to promote the Cultural Revolution within the broader social transformation project of the ‘new man’, and they helped shape the semantic space of public propaganda discourse. This study focuses on the representation of Leonardo da Vinci in the popular-science literature and press of the period under examination. Analysis of these representations helps identify how the images of ideological public discourse, which was controlled by the authorities and shaped in response to their demands by the scientific and creative intelligentsia, were simultaneously used by the intelligentsia itself to pursue its own objectives. In the first half of the 1930s, the image of Leonardo da Vinci was used by the creative intelligentsia within the ‘new man’ project to promote the ideal of a new socialist scientific and technical intelligentsia. At the same time, the scientific intelligentsia of ‘bourgeois origin’ incorporated the image of the Vincian scholars into the ‘class history’ of its own social stratum, thereby legitimizing its service to Soviet power. In the second half of the 1930s, the creative intelligentsia pragmatically reinterpreted this image. During this period, conceptions of the history of the scientific and technical intelligentsia were adapted to the historical narratives surrounding the new elite, the test pilots known as ‘Stalin’s Falcons’. By the end of the period, however, although the dominant image of Leonardo as the ‘first aircraft designer’ remained in place, academic discourse displayed a tendency to restore the conception of him as a precursor of the Soviet scientific and technical intelligentsia understood as a unified social stratum. The analysis demonstrates that, for the intelligentsia of the Stalinist period, the construction of historical narratives was not merely a survival strategy but also an effective instrument for forming group identity and a way of reflection on society. This mechanism was successfully incorporated into the authorities’ projects for transforming society in the early 1930s and was subsequently adapted to the tasks of legitimizing and stabilizing the established social order by the end of the decade.
