No 3 (2024)

In the article the author examines the origin and development of the research interest of the British historian Arnold Joseph Toynbee (1889–1975) in ekistics, the science of the formation and evolution of human settlements. It describes the circumstances of his meeting and cooperation with the Greek architect Constantinos Doxiadis, the originator of this science, and analyses three of Toynbee’s books written in the course of this collaboration, which have not yet attracted much scholarly attention so far. Toynbee tried to combine the view of the city offered by ekistics with his own historical ideas and his interest in human geography. The author demonstrates that for Toynbee the city is part of the general civilizing process, a general historical phenomenon – both horizontal and vertical – and it is this view of the city that is the least developed aspect of world urbanism. Toynbee makes a number of interesting observations, showing how patterns of urban life developed in antiquity, have been transmitted in time and space, appearing in different areas of the globe, and have been partially transformed under the influence of world processes, especially colonialism and globalization. The author concludes that Toynbee’s observations on the relationship between tradition, modernization, and colonization in the structure of cities, on the specificity of imperial cities, on the peculiarities of creating an urban environment in the space of the modern megacity and Ecumenopolis may have a certain potential for future urban studies.

In the eighteenth century, an entertainment industry grew in England, including educational games such as playing cards, puzzles, and board games. The educational aspect implied that the game was not only a way of entertainment, but also a source of knowledge. The author examines the image of the Russian Empire shaped by British games of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He gives special attention to the problem of the player’s interaction with the game reality, analyses the implicit properties of geographical spaces, which manifest themselves when, depending on the characteristics of the “place”, the player is asked to perform a certain action. The author divides the games of the period under review into three types, namely card games, board games designed as geographical maps, and board games with an individual playing field and booklet. He concludes that, regardless of the game format, the traditional early modern division of Russia into Asian and European parts was reflected in its image in all the games under consideration. The European part of Russia, as a rule, was described in the same tones as other regions of Europe. Asian Russia could be endowed with a variety of qualities. In some games it could be described as inhabited by ignorant nomadic tribes of Tartaria, in others – as frosty and deserted Siberia. Sometimes these characteristics were combined, but it is clear that the fragmentation into the “European” and “Asian” worlds presented in British educational games influenced significantly the formation of identification patterns among British youth of the Georgian era.

The author examines the political history of the eighteenth-century Russian Empire and its relations with members of the royal family from the Holy Roman Empire. Based on the study of unpublished sources, mainly in Austrian and Russian archives, as well as published Russian, British, and French sources, he presents a new interpretation of Peter III’s relations with members of the House of Holstein. The research aims to answer the following questions: What role did Peter III’s “German kinsmen” play at the St. Petersburg court and in the administrative system of the state? What impact did their actions have on the Russian elite’s perception of the Tsar’s rule? Did Peter III’s personnel policy, which favoured the Holstein dynasty members for key positions in the state apparatus, differ from the previous practice of Russian monarchs? A detailed analysis of the sources eads to the following conclusions: Peter III’s Holstein relatives exerted considerable influence on the policy of the St. Petersburg court, occupying key positions in the military and political establishment of the Russian Empire in the early 1760s. At the same time, most of them did not speak Russian and did not try to adapt to their new cultural environment. The behaviour of some “Holsteinites”, as well as the preferential treatment they received at the expense of members of the royal family and St. Petersburg nobles, caused an extremely negative reaction in Russian society, contributing to the growth of hatred towards the Germans. Peter III’s decision to surround himself with relatives from Central Europe was reminiscent of the reign of Anna Ivanovna, whose closest confidants were of non-Russian origin. On the other hand, Anna Ivanovna’s cronies came from different parts of the Holy Roman Empire.

The author of the essay* tells about the main milestones of more than two hundred years old historiography of the Egyptian campaign of 1798–1801, undertaken by the French land forces and navy under the general command of Napoleon Bonaparte, identifies the prerequisites that made such an audacious military enterprise possible, highlights the vicissitudes of the Egyptian and Syrian campaigns of Bonaparte’s Oriental Army, analyzes the motives of the decisive rejection by the local population of the values of the French Revolution, planted by the occupation administration, and establishes the reasons for the final catastrophic outcome of this expedition. The history of the Egyptian campaign is considered by the author in the general context of the evolution of international relations caused by the French Revolution and by the active expansion of revolutionary France. In his opinion, Bonaparte’s Egyptian campaign, which had as its main goal to undermine Britain’s position in the Middle East and Asia, led to exactly the opposite result than the one its initiators had hoped for: the British managed not only to stay in this region, but to gain dominant influence there, whereas France, having spent on this adventure large human and material resources, turned out to be almost completely displaced from there for some time.

The article draws on a unified corpus of historical feature films released in the twentieth century and centred on a single subject, namely the story of Joan of Arc (1412?–1431), the heroine of the Hundred Years’ War. In modern historiography (études johanniques) such comprehensive studies practically have not yet been conducted: researchers prefer to analyze each film separately, thereby missing possible connections and intersections of their creators’ ideas. In this article, the author aims to examine the extent to which these films conform to one of the most important principles of historical drama, that is, the principle of authenticity, which requires that the daily life of a particular historical era be portrayed on the screen with the utmost accuracy. These observations lead the author to conclude that, in most cases, realism is not a priority for the makers of films about Joan of Arc. Rather, their task is to follow the current historical moment in which a particular screenplay is conceived and implemented. At the beginning of the twentieth century, on the eve of the official canonisation of the Maid of Orleans (1920), the films about her had a distinctly hagiographical character, but over the following decades their semantic load kept changing, ranging from criticism of the European judicial system to criticism (or exaltation) of the existing political system.

The author scrutinizes the development of civil society in the early republican Turkey focusing on the models of its interaction with the state in the context of Kemalist revolution, namely the large-scale reforms of the 1920s and 1930s aimed at building the “New Turkey” as a modern secular nation-state. He analyses various manifestations of grass root civic activity in Turkey in the 1920s and 1930s. In doing so, it focuses on the rural population’s reaction to the Kemalist land and taxation reforms. The article contributes to the exiting literature in two following ways. First, it challenges the existing assumption that the rural population of the early Republican Turkey sporadically protested against only the most visible cases of social injustice. It also suggests counterarguments to the thesis that at that time the center and periphery had their own socio-political dynamics isolated one from another. Second, the article introduces to the reader a wide range of Turkish sources (e.g., “public columns” in the main periodicals of that time, petitions published in the yearly books of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, party inspectors’ reports stored in the fund of the Republican People’s Party). An analysis of the data presented in these sources and its comparison against already known historical facts form the article’s methodological framework. The author explains the key social contradictions about the land question. He further on defines the main forms of systemic grass root civic activity and the structural elements of the Kemalists social basis on the periphery. The main findings are that in the 1920–30s the rural Turkey witnessed both legal and illegal forms of resistance. The absence of a full-scale working formal state structure on the periphery made the Kemalist state curbing this resistance by using patron-client networks centered on the figures of “aga”, the wealthy local landlords and merchants.

In this article, the author charts the evolution of US Korea policy after the failed attempts to establish a unification dialogue between the Republic of Korea and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and the reduction of the US military presence on the peninsula in 1974–1980. In 1973, The United Nations Commission for the Unification and Rehabilitation of Korea (UNCURK), which the Americans had supported for decades, ceased operations. The question of the fate of the United Nations Command loomed large. On the whole, in 1974–1980, the Americans did not reduce their military presence in Korea. At the same time, diplomatic support for negotiations on this topic and participation in maintaining the inter-Korean dialogue on the status of the ROK and DPRK in the UN and scenarios for possible unification of the country were quite effective. The Americans managed to prevent destabilisation in South Korea even in the face of a sudden change of power following the assassination of Park Chung-Hee. Simultaneously, the necessary international structures, such as the ROK/US Joint Forces Command, were put in place. Moreover, US diplomats managed to preserve even such a relic of the Korean War as the UN Command. At the same time, the issue of Korean unification had by this time become an instrument of political manipulation by all countries concerned. Under these circumstances, unification could not be achieved by diplomatic means alone.

Many studies have recently focused on the tragic events in the Balkans from 1991 to 1995. The Yugoslav crisis researchers examined various aspects of the crisis, including its causes, stages, and consequences, as well as Russia’s Yugoslav policy at the time. Nevertheless, neither domestic nor foreign authors have provided in-depth coverage of the Yugoslav crisis in the Russian press. The issue of the “image of the other”, particularly in crisis situations, has taken on a wide range of, often asymmetrical, configurations, and it is becoming increasingly relevant for preserving humanity’s long-term development. Examining it can help one gain a better understanding of the media’s role as the most important communicator in interethnic dialogue. In this paper, we will examine articles from four Russian newspapers with opposing political views, namely “Pravda”, “Rossiyskaya Gazeta”, “Nezavisimaya Gazeta”, and “Izvestia” on international sanctions imposed on Yugoslavia at the time, and the country’s situation between 1992 and 1995. We will examine its perspectives on the sanctions, its causes, and consequences. Journalists from four Russian newspapers reported on events in the Balkans in the first half of the 1990s, analyzed the consequences of international sanctions and took into account important factors of the Yugoslav crisis such as the role of the Western countries in the conflict, Slobodan Milošević's political ambitions, and etc. Some journalists have taken an openly pro-Serbian stance, criticizing not only the US and Western European policies towards Belgrade, but also the “inactivity” of the Russian diplomacy, although the majority of them have showed restraint in their assessments of the Balkans situation. They portrayed Yugoslavia as an isolated country by informing their readers about the reasons for imposing sanctions, its nature, and Western policy toward it.

At present, security environment in East Asia is becoming increasingly fraught, characterised by the growing strategic rivalry between the US and China. Meanwhile, Japan is faced with the challenge of formulating such a foreign policy approach that would both ensure its national security and avoid further escalating the US-China conflict. In these circumstances, it is of interest to examine the views of Japanese Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio (2009–2010) on Japan’s foreign policy and its role in the international community. This article analyses Hatoyama’s attitudes and rhetoric within the context of Japanese political elites’ longstanding search for alternatives to the Yoshida Doctrine, which underpinned Japan’s grand strategy throughout the Cold War. While the Prime Minister’s attempts to modify Japanese diplomatic approach have often been considered incoherent or “naïve”, the author argues that, drawing partially from the concepts pertaining to Japan’s role on the international stage that were introduced in the 1990s, Hatoyama consistently advocated the formulation of a new strategy. While admitting that some of Hatoyama’s proposals were not well-thought-out and went beyond the political mainstream, the author posits that he pursued the same goal as previous Japanese leaders, namely achieving balance in Japan’s relations with the US and China. The parameters of Hatoyama’s strategy were different from both the Yoshida Doctrine and the emerging course towards a more robust security policy, which was fully implemented under the second administration of Abe Shinzo (2012–2020). This strategy was based on Japan’s proactive role in upholding global stability through non-military means, reducing its dependence on the US, deepening integration in East Asia, and achieving friendly ties with China. The objectives of this article are to analyse Hatoyama’s political philosophy, identify the similarities and differences between it and other key contemporary foreign policy initiatives, as well as examine the Prime Minister’s approach towards foreign-policy making. The sources include Hatoyama’s speeches and writings as well as a range of academic literature devoted to analysing his foreign policy with an emphasis on the works of Japanese scholars.

In this article, the author explores the problems of collective farm construction in the north-west of the RSFSR. The purpose of the article is to introduce into the academic circuit a set of ego-documents, reflecting household and economic peculiarities of everyday life of the Leningrad region peasantry during the period of continuous collectivisation. The study draws on the texts of two industrial practice diaries of Leningrad branch students of the Communist University of National Minorities of the West for December 1929 – January 1930, which are part of a set of similar documents identified in the Russian State Archive of Social and Political History, previously unknown to researchers and not reflected in the historiography. The texts are prepared for publication according to the accepted archeographic rules. The publication of the diaries’ contents is intended to familiarise the academic community with this type of historical sources and to show their information potential. Student diaries make it possible to expand the source base of research in the field of the history of everyday life in the Soviet rural areas and the Bolshevik cultural revolution. These documents can also be used in prosopographical studies on the lives of political workers and educators of the 1920s–1930s.