Novaâ i novejšaâ istoriâ

In this study the author analyses the causes of mass emigration from Southern Europe in the nineteenth century, which had a profound influence on the formation of the modern composition of the population of several Latin American countries. The study is based on the push/pull migration model proposed by Everett S. Lee, as well as on the model of interrelation of migration and employment diversification by sector of economic activity developed by Gustavo Cabrera, where the mono-industry specialisation of employment in a region stimulates the population outflow. Despite slow demographic growth, lagging industrialisation in Italy and Spain could not cope with the surplus labour force that emerged in the agrarian regions. The gap between the agrarian South and the industrialising North, characteristic of these two countries, had an important impact on the formation of internal mobility. Political upheavals – the unification of Italy, the dynastic confrontation in Spain – also increased the outflow of population. Unresolved agrarian issues, population growth and lagging modernisation increased the push-factor effect. The author notes the structural similarity of the internal causes of mass migration but, on the basis of statistical data, emphasises the geographical diversity of the resettlement areas chosen. The collapse of the Spanish Empire brought an end to the colonial type of migration, which had its greatest impact on the situation in Cuba in the period indicated. Further dynamics were determined by the socio-economic motivations and policies of the host countries, especially in Latin America and the USA, where migrants found new opportunities.

In this article, the author examines the details of the detention of the British schooner “Vixen” on the north-east coast of the Black Sea in November 1836. Although the analysis of the Russian-British diplomatic controversy surrounding the incident has been undertaken in Russian historiography, it has not made use of original investigative material or official accounts of the perpetrators in the English-language press of the late 1830s. The use of historical computer reconstructions can significantly clarify both the “Vixen” Inquiry materials and correct the conclusions of some contemporary researchers who have addressed the political background of the incident. It also allowed the author to check the credibility of the investigative material collected between 1836 and 1837 as part of the original “Vixen” files. It also clarifies the political conclusions drawn by both Russian imperial authorities and British politicians, and corrects some of the assumptions of contemporary historians focused on examining the political repercussions of the case. The author also examines the conditions of the Russian blockade of the Black Sea coast of the Caucasus at the end of the 1830s. This is consistent with the aim of the study, namely to recreate a complete picture of the capture of the schooner “Vixen”. The latter was beyond the scope of previous studies. The study is based on materials from the Russian Navy State Archives (RGA VMF), as well as publications in British, American, and Australian newspapers. The author used the memoirs of the owner of the “Vixen”, James Stanislaus Bell, and the captain of the Russian ship, N.P. Volf, as additional primary source material. The study corroborates the conclusions that the “Vixen” incident was a premeditated provocation, but disputes the popular perception that the ship was actually carrying a cargo of weapons and gunpowder, as insisted on by the Russian side. The breach of the blockade by “Vixen” was a clear reconnaissance operation, which allowed the British to observe not only the technical inferiority of Russian ships in terms of modern requirements, but also the excessive bureaucratisation of the entire Russian Black Sea Fleet's management system. This gave British diplomacy, which had contested the terms of the Treaty of Adrianople, additional arguments for its diplomatic efforts.

In this article, the author examines the assessment of the Royal Navy’s command staff contained in official reports, correspondence, memoirs, and diaries of naval officers Mikhail Kedrov, Mikhai Smirnov, Gustav von Schultz, and Sergei Izenbek, who were official Russian representatives to the Grand Fleet during the Great War. The purpose of this article is to summarise the views of representatives of the Russian Navy on the traditions, general and professional culture of British naval officers, the level of their maritime, special and tactical training, the specifics of their mentality, service subordination, relationships in a naval environment, the ways of service and everyday life. Considerable differences in the professional qualities of the officers of the British and Russian fleets were noted, stemming mainly from the different principles of recruitment and training of the command staff, as well as the growing distrust of the British naval corporation towards Russia as an ally during the war. The author concludes that professional analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the Royal Navy's command staff significantly complemented and updated the image of the British ally formed in the Russian naval milieu during the Great War and in the years following, and contributed to a more balanced self-assessment of Russian naval personnel.

The author examines the evolution of the two main trends in French foreign policy between 1946 and 2022: the “Atlantic” and the “European”. Both of these trends emerged shortly after the Second World War and were subsequently intertwined in complex ways. In the Fourth Republic, in the context of the 'Soviet threat' and the need to solve the “German problem”, the “Atlantists” long had a dominant influence at the level of the elites. The “Europeanists”, who, in addition to economic integration, sought the military-political unity of the West European nations with France in the lead, did not oppose them, although objectively their efforts led to a weakening of “transatlantic solidarity”. The “Europeanist” projects were not successful, but at the same time the disappointment in the US over its position during the 1956 Suez Crisis and the Algerian War reduced the influence of the “Atlantists” in ruling circles. Ultimately, after the establishment of the Fifth Republic by Charles de Gaulle in 1958, the “Atlantic tendency” was reduced to a minimum, the “Europeanist” was limited by his demand to preserve the maximum possible national sovereignty. In the post-De Gaulle period, all the presidents of France sought, each in his own way, to simultaneously strengthen both tendencies. However, the increasing involvement of the country in NATO activities actually blocked the substantive promotion of “Europeanist” projects. The article shows how the convinced “Europeanist” E. Macron, who came to power in 2017, who sees an opportunity for France to pursue a sovereign policy only within the framework of the EU, transformed into a “power of Europe”, is trying to solve this dilemma by promoting the creation of a “European pillar” Alliance as a way to strengthen it. The further prospects of the “Europeanist” idea are assessed, as well as the chances of France for the realization of great claims in the hypothetical “power of Europe”.

The article, based on materials from various sources and studies in Russian, English, French, and Persian, considers for the first time in modern Iranian studies in Russia the place and role of youth in the socio-political life of Iran in 20th–21st centuries. This period of the country's history was marked by a consecutive modernization of all the foundations of the state and society, in which the author identifies three stages: the struggle for the restoration of sovereignty and choosing ways to renew the country (1905-early 60s); modernization via “revolution from above” (early 60s – 1979); systemic crisis, social explosion, change of the State system; continuation of modernization under external pressure (1979 – early 20s of the XXI century). Contradictions and conflicts generated by this long and uneven process stimulate mass involvement of the younger generation of Iranians in political struggle, where they generally choose the most radical ways of civic self-realization. They played a prominent, sometimes crucial part in major events of Iran’s modern history, such as the movement for natinalization of the Iranian petroleum Industry (1949–1953); engagement in several reforms of 1960s–70s; revolutionary actions that brought to an end the Iranian monarchy; the Iran-Iraqi War. The young people’s potential for political activism to a considerable extent is due to their large and steadily growing share of population and relatively high level of education and professional competence of many among them. The literate and active young people still remain both the main generator of opposition sentiments and а basic resource of Iran’s dynamic development.

The fact that cross-border forms of civic activism in Arab countries during the “Arab Spring” are similar is commonly attributed to their socio-cultural commonalities, which provide markers of their identities. The manifestation of this interaction, in the author's view, is the phenomenon of an implicit civil society that draws on the hidden springs of Islamic culture, but that functions in a completely different way. The author's attempt to describe it in this article using the example of Yemen includes three aspects: as an active participant in the watershed events of contemporary Yemeni social history; as a centre of civic strategies that fundamentally differentiate it from religious and political groupings; and as a mechanism for adapting the indigenous cultural identity of a society to new ideological environment. The article spans the period from its emergence at an early stage of modernisation in a deeply archaic society united under British colonial rule in the first third of the twentieth century, to its culmination in the early twenty-first century. The article is based on publications examining relevant cases from different historical and cultural regions of Yemen. Early examples include the “Nadi al-Islah al-Arabi al-Islami” Club in Aden and the Irshadist Movement in Hadramaut extremely active at the turn of 1930s when the national intelligentsia started to reach prominence and managed to convert reformist narrative from the religious frames to the public discourse. They have elaborated the number of tools inherent also to the modern implicit civil society performances like educational work through clubs, preference to dialog between rivals, high attention to maintaining the continuity of cultural traditions, etc. The recent diversity of this phenomenon is illustrated by the experience of the “Shabab al-Mumin” Club, founded in the mid-1990s in the Saada Governorate of northern Yemen, as well as the spontaneous urban youth committees that emerged during the 2011 uprising, which channelled a huge wave of social activism into peaceful activity. The aim of the article is to explore the phenomenon of implicit civil society using a descriptive method. The practical significance of the proposed approach lies in a better understanding of the reasons for the heightened permeability of the boundaries between civic and political activism so characteristic of such societies.

The author examines the milestones in the emergence and development of the “February 20” movement (F20M) in Morocco during the Arab Spring, which had a profound impact on the social development of the Middle East and North Africa. The level of F20M’s cooperation/rivalry with Islamic parties/associations and reactions of Moroccan state to creation of a center of political mobilization of youth beyond its control is also evaluated. The analysis demonstrates the large set of political, legal and propaganda tools used by Moroccan Alawite monarchy to present the F20M as increasingly incompatible with all the set of traditional Moroccan values. The opposition of F20M to the King’s administration and its ambition to promote liberal democratic ideas in Moroccan society led this association to existential crisis. F20M’s message became inconsistent and less relevant when the King Muhammad VI systematically responded to social demands. Hasty implementation of the new Moroccan Constitution and parliamentary elections, which took place in November 2011, gave chance to the Justice and Development Party not only to enter the government, but to take a significant place in political life of the country. This skilful and moderate ‘Islamic policy’ framed F20M’s image as extreme and composed of fringe radical/revolutionary groups. So, this civic initiative was led to decline in the second half of 2012 – early 2013. A sec-ondary finding of this paper is that policy repressions combined with smearing campaigns turned the young reformists to radical opposition to the throne and helped to reproduce the soft authoritarian regime.

The article focuses on the issues of political regime transformation in Algeria after the overthrow of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika. Describing the dynamics of Algerian political life, the author points out that the country's current regime can be characterised as hybrid and authoritarian. Nevertheless, the prospects for its further evolution remain unclear. The author opines that these prospects would be determined by the ability of the system to overcome the alienation between the public and the authorities. With this in mind, two key linking mechanisms need be analysed: electoral and direct political participation. When analysing electoral processes, the author compares the events and results of the 2002, 2007, 2012, 2017 and 2021 parliamentary campaigns, concluding that the mutual distrust between the public and the government constantly affects the social life of Algeria. Looking at direct forms of participation, he focuses on the “Hirak” Movement, which made the 2019 power transition possible. Indication of its specific traits shows why it did not facilitate the creation of a new social contract. The author concludes the article with the assumption that the alienation between the government and society has not been overcome because Algerian political culture was formed in the colonial and post-colonial periods. The article’s methodology is based on the hybrid regime and social orders theories. Furthermore, the author uses the typology of political parties proposed by Maurice Duverger. The sources and materials used for the study include official documents, media publications and results of the author’s field research.

In this study the author examines the main stages and social characteristics of the women's rights movement in republican Iran, which has generated an active controversy between the authorities and the society over the last three decades. This polemic disagreement was triggered by the legal status of the Iranian woman enshrined in the Constitution. Human rights activists with significant religious and social status, insisting on the right of Muslim women to be represented in the highest echelons of state power, were the first to join the debate. At the turn of the 1990s and 2000s, this initiative was taken up by secular activists advocating civil and individual rights for Iranian women. All have made extensive use of a specialised, women-oriented press and, since the early 2000s, the Internet and social media, as well as NPOs/NGOs existing in different regions of the country, in their struggle. Acting along the same lines of the women's rights movement, secular and religious activists represent autonomous segments of civil society. The content of the print and electronic media, television programmes and literary works, used for the first time as a source for the study, forms the basis of the research.