Quaestio Rossica最新文献

{"title":"About an Unknown Letter “from the Newly Conquered City of Areshek”","authors":"Alexey Alekseev","doi":"10.15826/qr.2023.3.826","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15826/qr.2023.3.826","url":null,"abstract":"A handwritten book Collection of Military Letters is kept in the funds of the Russian National Library. It is a collection containing copies of messages about the military operations of parts of the Russian Army in 1702–1710. The study of the manuscript makes it possible to establish that the collection comes from the office of Boyar T. N. Streshnev and belonged to Clerk I. P. Topilsky. On the first pages of the collection, there is a previously unknown letter with a message about the assault and capture of the fortress of Nöteborg. An analysis of the letter demonstrates that its author was P. P. Shafirov, secretary of the Ambassadorial Prikaz. He was sent to Nöteborg to negotiate the conditions for surrendering the fortress. The letter contains information about the events of the assault, the course of negotiations, an assessment of the damage to the fortifications, and reports on the losses of the Russian side. Shafirov’s letter, written the day after the assault, is much longer than the known letters of Peter I but is not a work of the editors who created the official text of the report much later. The introduction of a new source about the assault and capture of Nöteborg adds to the knowledge about one of the significant events of the initial stage of the Northern War.","PeriodicalId":43664,"journal":{"name":"Quaestio Rossica","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135865975","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"“A Territory of Threat”: The Banning of the Herrnhut Communities in Livonia and Local Society in 1743","authors":"Maya Lavrinovich","doi":"10.15826/qr.2023.3.822","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15826/qr.2023.3.822","url":null,"abstract":"This article analyses the decree issued by Empress Elizaveta Petrovna on April 16, 1743, the first in the Russian Empire and targeting the Herrnhut Brethren Community. It has been mentioned in historiography but quoted from secondary sources and interpreted as a decree directed against the missionaries, even though J. Eckardt (1876) and, recently, O. Teigeler (2006) put it in the context of the history of the Herrnhut communities in Livonia. The author analyses the content and implementation of the decree of 1743 in the context of the development of the Herrnhut communities in Livonia, including the island of Ösel, in the 1720s–1730s. The documents of the investigative case against the Herrnhut communities preserved in the fund of the Secret Chancellery (RGADA) and partly copied in the investigation dossier compiled by the College of Justice for Livonia, Estland, and Finland and kept in the fund of the College of Foreign Affairs in AVPRI, reveal that by 1743, the St Petersburg authorities did not consider the sermon of the Herrnhut to threaten them or Orthodoxy, nor did they have any idea of the doctrine itself. First, the decree ordered that Countess von Zinzendorf be caught, as the purpose of her stay in St Petersburg in 1743 was unclear. Further, the decree of 1743 was not intended against the few missionaries settled in St Petersburg who were striving to reach Asia through the Russian Empire. The correspondence between Chancellor A. P. Bestuzhev-Rumin and I. A. Cherkasov, Cabinet Minister of Empress Elizaveta Petrovna, reveals that the action taken on the community in 1743 was largely prompted by the foreign policy circumstances. The main threat to the central government was the commissions set up a year earlier by local noble elected bodies, i. e. the Landtags and the Ober-Consistory, to investigate the activities of the Herrnhut communities in Livonia. The activities of the Baltic nobility carried out independently of the imperial centre aroused the gravest suspicions because its specific rights and privileges, though confirmed by the Peace of Nystadt, were kept vague for the St Petersburg authorities by the 1740s. The local nobility, dramatically involved in the activities of the Herrnhut communities in the 1720s–1740s, found themselves in a difficult position, torn between their adherence to the doctrine and the need to remain loyal to the St Petersburg authorities, fulfilling the requirements of the personal decree of 1743.","PeriodicalId":43664,"journal":{"name":"Quaestio Rossica","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135865822","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Imperial Spaces: Processes and Actors","authors":"Dmitry Redin","doi":"10.15826/qr.2023.3.815","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15826/qr.2023.3.815","url":null,"abstract":"___","PeriodicalId":43664,"journal":{"name":"Quaestio Rossica","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135865977","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Captain Botsis’ Odyssey: On the Biography of the Russian Naval Commander","authors":"Alexey Yastrebov","doi":"10.15826/qr.2023.3.830","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15826/qr.2023.3.830","url":null,"abstract":"Referring to archival data of the RGADA (Relations with Venice Fund), this article provides new information about the little-known period of life (1700–1703) of Ivan Botsis related to his transition to the Russian service and directly preceding it. Until now, there is no full-fledged biography of the outstanding associate of Peter the Great, and this study supplements the information about his life full of dangers. Botsis played a significant role in Russia’s success in the Baltic Sea during the Northern War, so filling the gap in his biography is of particular interest. Based on the information introduced into scholarly circulation, the author draws information about his activities immediately after the Morean War (1684–1699). Although he is primarily known as a Russian naval commander, based on the data studied, one may conclude that in his homeland, he proved himself to be a loyal subject of his new homeland, the Venetian Republic, in military affairs. And after the end of the conflict and the conquest of the Peloponnese by Venice, showered with honors, he tried to succeed in a peaceful profession, trading business, and not so much as a merchant but as a coordinator of the commercial activity of his compatriots for private and public benefit. At the peak of his career, the enterprising and even adventurous nature of the Greek captain led him to a conflict with the Venetian and Ottoman authorities, and the hope for the Russian tsar as the deliverer of the Greeks from Turkish rule and sympathy for his military enterprises during the Northern War made him abandon a privileged position in his homeland and embark on a perilous journey to Russia to serve Peter I. The details of his risky escape, described in a petition addressed to the tsar, resemble an excerpt from an adventure novel. The appendix of the article contains previously unpublished documents, i. e. a petition of Captain Botsis and an excerpt of a decree of Tsar Peter on the allocation of his salary.","PeriodicalId":43664,"journal":{"name":"Quaestio Rossica","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135865837","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The State Church Policy of the Russian Empire in Alaska","authors":"Yuliia Egorova","doi":"10.15826/qr.2023.3.821","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15826/qr.2023.3.821","url":null,"abstract":"This article deals with the management of missionary activity in Alaska in the late eighteenth – nineteenth centuries. The main objective is to reconstruct the management strategy of the Russian Orthodox Church in Alaska with reference to archival documents and published sources. The research methodology relies on analysing the regional approach, where the region is perceived both as an object and a subject of empire-building. In the eighteenth century, the management of Alaska was carried out by the Shelikhov – Golikov Company, a Russian fur trading venture. The Russian merchants fully supplied the Orthodox mission consisting of monks. Later, the Russian authorities entrusted control over the Russian overseas lands to Shelikhov’s heirs, represented by the Russian-American Company. The conflicts between the colonial administration and the missionaries called for a new strategy, i. e. sending secular clergy to Alaska. Meanwhile, the Management of the Russian-American Company returned to the plans of G. Shelikhov, who knew the region well, unlike the metropolitan authorities.","PeriodicalId":43664,"journal":{"name":"Quaestio Rossica","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135865360","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Provincial Financing During the First Regional Reform. The Arkhangelsk Version","authors":"Dmitry Redin","doi":"10.15826/qr.2023.3.831","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15826/qr.2023.3.831","url":null,"abstract":"Provincial institutions created by Peter I in 1710 were designed to ensure fiscal mobilisation, large-scale and maximum possible collection of material resources for the needs of warfare and the simultaneous reform of the armed forces. The first Russian governors had extensive administrative powers but, at the same time, they were under the strict financial control of the highest governing bodies: the Senate, its divisions, and the monarch himself. The governors were deprived of legal opportunities to spend at least some of the money collected through the provincial cash desks to ensure the functioning of their apparatus. It was not only about paying salaries to the ranks of provincial administrations, maintaining administrative buildings in working order, and purchasing consumables for office work. There was no money for more substantial expenditures: payment for the travel of numerous commissioners from the centre to the provinces, for the travel of their officials within the provinces, for the fees for the accommodation of these agents, for the expenses of their maintenance, for the payment of various kinds of state works, for the transportation of recruits and material supplies to the centre, i. e. everything that constituted the very essence of the functioning of local authorities. In this paradoxical situation, the main support could only be obtained from the zemstvo self-government bodies. The long-known practice of state bodies of local power being maintained by the population of the uyezd was replenished in the Petrine era with new elements. Lay fees covered the expenses of crown agents sent from the centre to the region and helped pay for some government work within the province. However, the peculiarities of the legislation of the era put the governors and their employees, who shifted the financial burden on the zemstvo, into a risky position. They could be accused of bribery and “unspecified fees” that undermined the solvency of the taxed population. Never previously published documents on Arkhangelsk province discovered by the author of the article reveal the complete picture of the financial support of the township communities of the Dvina uyezd for the activities of the provincial administration in 1711–1713 and the complex vicissitudes of relations between the central and local crown authorities and secular organisations. The documents were archived during the investigation of the case of the Arkhangelsk vice-governor A. A. Kurbatov and reflect one of the investigative episodes of 1716.","PeriodicalId":43664,"journal":{"name":"Quaestio Rossica","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135865823","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"W. de Henning’s Position on the Privatisation of State-Owned Metallurgy","authors":"Mikhail Akishin","doi":"10.15826/qr.2023.3.817","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15826/qr.2023.3.817","url":null,"abstract":"The formation of metallurgy in Russia occurred during the Northern War, which predetermined the dominance of state ownership in this sector of the economy. During the end of the war, Peter I embarked on a policy of privatising the state-owned industry. The regulatory and legal basis for privatisation was the Berg Privileges of 1719. However, having begun the policy of transferring state-owned factories to companies of private industrialists, Peter I was not consistent. He thought about the development of the state-owned metallurgy of the Urals and, at the same time, considered the possibility of its transfer to private industrialists in the future. This article examines the position of W. de Henning on the issue of privatisation. During his leadership of the local mining industry in 1720–1722, V. N. Tatishchev was the first to raise the question of the need to privatise the state-owned metallurgy of the Urals. In 1722, Peter I appointed Henning as head of the state mining industry of the Urals, giving him extensive administrative power. In 1722–1724, Henning managed to reconstruct the old state-owned factories and build new ones – Yekaterinburg, Polevskoy, Pyskor, and Yagoshikha. Meanwhile, in 1724, Tatishchev presented to Peter I projects for the privatisation of state-owned factories in the Urals. The emperor “accepted these projects as beneficial ones” but at the same time, developed a complex procedure for considering privatisation issues in the relevant central and local state bodies. In 1724, Tatishchev’s projects received negative reviews from the Berg Collegium and Henning, who pointed to high profits from state-owned factories. At the same time, Henning proposed his projects which either meant the transfer of state-owned factories to the company of Peter I, A. D. Menshikov, F. M. Apraksin, etc., or the transfer of Pyskor plants to him, A. Stroganov, and M. Turchaninov. However, Tatishchev and Henning’s discussion of the projects ground to a halt due to the death of Peter I. Again, the question of privatisation of the state-owned metallurgy of the Urals arose during the so-called “sales crisis” of 1729–1732 and was already post-suppressed by Henning. Henning’s privatisation projects were discussed in the Senate, the Berg Board, and the Monetary Commission. In 1733, a Commission on state-owned factories was established. However, in 1732, the “sales crisis” was overcome, and Henning abandoned his privatisation projects. He finally came to the conclusion that state ownership in metallurgy was no less effective than private ownership and began a new stage of construction of state-owned factories in the Urals. The same position was held by Tatishchev, who replaced Henning in 1734–1737 as head of the Ural plants. The subsequent history of privatisation campaigns of the second half of the eighteenth – early twentieth centuries confirmed the validity of this conclusion, with considerable state ownership in metallurgy not only remaining but also e","PeriodicalId":43664,"journal":{"name":"Quaestio Rossica","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135865976","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"M. M. Speransky’s Administrative Reform Projects in a Comparative Retrospective of the Reigns of Alexander I and Nicholas I","authors":"Tatyana Andreeva","doi":"10.15826/qr.2023.3.824","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15826/qr.2023.3.824","url":null,"abstract":"This article studies the reforms and reformist searches in the sphere of public administration during the reign of Alexander I and the beginning of the reign of Nicholas I, the successive and distinctive features of the government reform policy in the context of the project activity of M. M. Speransky. The author focuses on determining the reasons for the actualization of transformations in the system of the higher and central apparatus between 1802 and the early 1830s, analysing the specifics of the modernization process in different periods of the institutional development of Russia, identifying similarities and differences in the “administrative structure” of Alexander I and Nicholas I. It has been established that, in general, the official reformation in the field of public administration in the first third of the nineteenth century, based on the theoretical and conceptual framework developed by M. M. Speransky, was consistent, systemic, and interconnected and was an integral part of the modernization of Russian statehood. The author demonstrates that the transformational searches of the beginning of the reign of Nicholas I reflected in the activities of the Committee on December 6, 1826, and being a logical continuation of the reforms of Alexander I, were aimed at creating an effective, unified, and rationalized management system of absolutism of the New Age. The administrative transformations of the two epochs were subject to legislative reform and were an integral part of two models of relations between the government and society, Alexander and Nicholas, respectively.","PeriodicalId":43664,"journal":{"name":"Quaestio Rossica","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135865978","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Staffing and Recruiting in the USSR Nuclear Project","authors":"Evgeny Artemov, Evgeny Vodichev","doi":"10.15826/qr.2023.3.837","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15826/qr.2023.3.837","url":null,"abstract":"This review considers a monograph by N. V. Melnikova dedicated to the reconstruction of the most significant aspects of staffing in the atomic project in the context of the Soviet economic system. Despite the abundance of publications discussing the history of the creation of nuclear weapons in the USSR, this topic has not yet received adequate coverage, and the monograph under review fills this gap with a wide range of problems examined. More specifically, it addresses the issues of who determined the personnel policy in the nuclear project, what its specificity was, how staffing and recruiting occurred in practice, and due to which factors it was possible to quickly create a powerful and qualified team of the nuclear weapons complex and encourage people to work intensively and responsibly. The research makes a significant contribution to the historiography of the atomic project. However, its value is not limited to this. Some generalizations and conclusions in the monograph make it possible to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the “socialist economic system” and to clarify how it was possible to succeed in solving tasks significant for the country.","PeriodicalId":43664,"journal":{"name":"Quaestio Rossica","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135865979","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"“Tango for Two”: Women’s Interviews in Clinical Reproductive Practice","authors":"Natalya Gramatchikova, I. Polyakova","doi":"10.15826/qr.2023.2.805","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15826/qr.2023.2.805","url":null,"abstract":"This article attempts to combine data obtained through interviews by a psychologist of female donors participating in an assisted reproductive technology program and interpret them through narrative analysis and communicative situation analysis. The article describes the structure of an oocyte-donor which has never been done before with reference to Russian-language material. An ethical platform for the study is openness to a new type of scientific knowledge that results from the interpretation of the informants’ answers who try to comprehend their motives to donate. The narrative analysis of 21 transcripts helps determine the roles of the interviewer and the informant at each stage and their contribution to the discussion-testing communicative situation. The interview includes several stages, such as “a window to the past”, at which the autobiographical narrative is recorded as comprehensively as possible; a description of the donor’s current state which focuses on strategies for solving problem situations; the interview ends with a series of thought experiments that allow the psychologist to assess the emotional stability of the potential donor and make a forecast regarding the prospects for long-term cooperation with the reproductive medicine clinic. The paper outlines the cases of participants’ cooperation and mismatches in building a credible and value-consistent autobiographical narrative that includes the donation experience. The authors seek to fit this experience into a broader value context, including a compensatory one related to the urgent problems of potential donors. Women’s answers help specify the concept of donor ‘multi-motivation’. The ambiguity of public opinion regarding donation as a reproductive medicine phenomenon is expressed in the fact that the availability of information for those who are aware of the issue co-exists with donors’ persistent reluctance to display their activity outside the inner circle. Research perspectives include the need to consider the narrative contribution of each participant in the situation of reproduction, i. e. physicians, donors, and recipient parents, and its further use in practice.","PeriodicalId":43664,"journal":{"name":"Quaestio Rossica","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41571165","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}