Digest of the Faculty of History
The book is devoted to the informal interaction between the elites of the Russian state – from Peter the Great to Catherine the Great – and those of the Cossack Hetmanate – an autonomous part of Russia since 1654. It also looks at Ivan Mazepa, his place in Peter the Great’s circle and the impact of his treason on the Ukrainian politics as well as Kirill Razumovskiy’s role in the overthrow of Peter III and the dissolution of the Hetmanate in 1764. Patrons, Servants and Friends. Russian-Ukrainian Informal Ties and the Governance of the Hetmanate in the 1700–1760s by the Laboratory of Editing Archaeography team is out.
The book is devoted to the role informal ties played in governance in modern history times, – explain the authors. In their study, they refer to the case of the Cossack Hetmanade. The research focuses on both formal and informal procedures the Ukrainian Cossack elites and the Russian ones followed to build their relationships. It asks how those processes influenced the Russian policy on the Ukrainian track and traces the evolution of the governance of the Cossack Hetmanade over more than 60 years – from Ivan Mazepa’s leadership till the abolition of hetmanship in 1764.
Particular attention is paid to the Cossack starshina, representatives of which were among the architects of the Russian policy on the Ukrainian track. The research is built on a variety of both published and unpublished sources from nine archives located in Moscow, Saint Petersburg and Kyiv. The authors made the most interesting and crucial ones available to all those interested in the history of Russian-Ukrainian relations through publishing them as a separate chapter. The chapter includes, inter alia, the correspondence between Hetman Ivan Mazepa and Aleksandr Menshikov, Peter the Great’s closest ally and favorite; the letter of Peter Tolstoy, Head of the Secret Office, to his son Peter Tolstoy
Plate А. “All this is one big game...”: Brunswick Diplomat A. A. von Cramm at the Court of Saint Petersburg (May – August 1739). St. Petersburg.: Nestor-Istoria, 2022. 248 p.
“All this is one big game...”: Brunswick Diplomat A. A. von Cramm at the Court of Saint Petersburg (May–August 1739) by A. Plate, Research Associate at the Laboratory for Studying Primary Sources, has been published by Nestor-Istoria Publishing House (Saint Petersburg). The research was supported by the Russian Science Foundation under the Informal Ties and Russian Governance in the 18th Century: Administrative Strategies and Social Practices Project (Project Lead – J. A. Lazarev).
A. Plate has shed light on the marriage of Anton Ulrich, Prince of Brunswick and a nephew of Emperor Charles VI, and Anna Leopoldovna, a niece of Empress Anna Ioannovna, an important episode of the Russian Palace Revolution era. This development was orchestrated by Count A. I. Osterman who was seeking to strengthen Russia’s position in the international arena and stabilize the situation within the country. This research – shedding new light on the functioning of informal ties withing the Russian court society – is based on unique German documents from the Lower Saxony State Archive (Wolfenbuttel Department). A. Plate is the first to publish the secret letters sent by Privy Counsellor August Adolph von Cramm to Brunswick Duke Charles I between May and August 1739 – the crucial time in the history of the complicated marriage project. The correspondence goes far beyond a dry narration of events. Cram writes primarily about speculations, negotiations, attempts to reach a compromise, rumors and plots.
The book is available for purchase, e.g. through
Zemtsov V. N. Napoleon in 1812: a Chronicle. Moscow: Political Encyclopedia, 2022. 639 p. : ill.
The book is a chronicle of life and activities of Napoleon in 1812.The main sources the study is built on is his recently published correspondence. No less than one third of it has become available for the first time. The documents from the French archives – the Defence Historical Service, the National Archives and the Diplomatic Archives – were key to this study. The author also referred to the materials held in the Austrian State Archives, Russian archives, periodicals and documents of primarily French origin.
The study is focused on the main character in the world drama of 1812, Napoleon, whose personality brings together global history and the subjectivity of the past. The author deals with subjective – personal, emotional and accidental – and objective – strictly limiting – rationalities in decision making. Thoroughly tracing Napoleon’s history and chronologically analyzing related facts – not speculations – the author reveals the logic behind what is usually called fate or external factors a person faces and tries to overcome. The book is an attempt to answer the questions key to the history of 1812: the chronology of events, reasons of war and its outcomes.
The book is available for purchase, e.g. through
Imangines mundi: Almanac of Modern and Contemporary History of the 16–20th Centuries. N 12. Germanics Series. Issue 1. Yekaterinburg : Ural State Pedagogical University’s Publishing Center, 2022. 220 p.
The first issue of a new series of Imangines mundi: Almanac of Modern and Contemporary History of the 16–20th Centuries is out. The issue marks the 60th anniversary of Nikolay Nikolaevich Baranov, Editor-in-Chief and Head of the Department Modern and Contemporary History at Ural Federal University. The issue is devoted to the two major strands of research that are harmoniously intertwined in the research conducted by Dr. Baranov and his followers. Those are the German world in the modern era and the left political liberalism. The Almanac may be of interest to historians, philosophers, culturologists as well as students and lecturers at secondary and higher education institutions.
Imagines mundi (“Images of the world”) is a collection of works issued by the Faculty of History of Ural Federal University (former Ural State University named after A. M. Gorkiy). It has the three series: Albionics, Balkans and Intellectual History. The almanac may be of interest to historians, philosophers, culturologists, PhD students as well as students and lecturers at secondary and higher education institutions.
The almanac is available online at elar.urfu.ru
The second issue of Izvestia. Ural Federal University Journal. 2022.
The second issue of Izvestia. Ural Federal University Journal. Series 2. Humanities and Arts will be out in June 2022. The issue is devoted to the five strands of research – A Ural City: Historical and Architectural Perspectives, Innovation in the Literature of the 20th Century, The Soviet Historical Studies, Memory Politics and Historical Memory and Art Forensics and Attribution. Moreover, the issue includes the paper by E. P. Alekseev that deals with the 100th anniversary of B. P. Pavlovskiy, a Ural arts scholar of great renown.
Among the authors of the issue are scholars from Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Simferopol, Voronezh, Kyakhta and other places. The papers devoted to the history of the Soviet
Historical Studies deserve special attention. The authors of those papers demonstrate that the Soviet Historical Studies were not monolithic despite the clear dominance of Marxism. The article by S. V. Kondratyev and T. N. Kondratyeva (Tyumen State University) concludes that even after the Russian Revolution of 1917 medieval scholars from Moscow did not use the Marxist concepts, even at the rhetorical level. O. V. Metel (Omsk State University) examines how Soviet scholars worked on voluminous “World History” in the 1930–1950s. This work was supposed to consolidate Soviet scholars – more than 100 of them were involved – and serve as a Soviet reader’s handbook, “weapon” against the “bourgeois historiography”. However, generation conflicts undermined the common concept and the huge volume scared readers away. The paper by T. V. Kush (Institute of World History, Russian Academy of Sciences; Ural Federal University) focuses on the engagement of M. J. Syuzyumov – Professor at Ural State University – in the work on the three-volume “History of Byzantium”. Interestingly, his overview piece on the role and place of Byzantium in World History was not included in the volume due to the criticism that came from scholars in Moscow. The concluding piece is authored by A. V. Chudinov (Institute of World History, Russian Academy of Sciences). It is devoted to the relation of M. Vovel (1933–2018), an established expert on the history of the Revolution of the 18th century and leader of the French left-wing historians, to his Soviet and Russian colleagues. The coldness he showed in the 1980–1990s was followed by friendliness as he became convinced that political and social shifts did not impact their scientific interest in the issues of the 18th century.
The second issue of Quaestio Rossica
The second issue of Quaestio Rossica – to be published in June 2022 – looks at the pressing problems of migration history and the relation between utopia and reality during the Soviet era and contemporaneity. The “Problema voluminis” section addresses the following topics: Anthropology of flight and forced migration: history and fates, The replicated Soviet childhood and The vitality of the imagined and the “harsh realities”. It is not only the historical period that unites these topics, but also the interplay between Soviet propaganda experiments and utopias with life choices the person of that time had to made. One of the sections features a discussion on the fate of village medicine in the pre-war USSR and looks at how it is portrayed in sources of different origin.
“The Hereditas: nomina et scholae section” is devoted to the fate of Soviet scholars S. B. Veselovskiy, a historian, and M. N. Kozhina, a linguist. They were united in their passion for science that became their fate, their whole life and their saving grace.
The Disputatio section focuses on the Soviet diplomacy, its ups and downs (the “Russian question” at the Washington Conference 1921–1922 and the Sоviet-French negotiations on the anti-German convention).
The Controversiae et recensiones section includes reviews of the following books: Dangerous Soviet Things. Urban Legends and Fears in the USSR by A. Arkhipova and A. Kirzyuk and the seventh volume of The Industrialization of Soviet Russia by R. Davies, M. Harrison and O. Khlevniuk.
“The Origines” section contains publication of the archival documents on the Secret Office under the leadership of A. I. Ushakov from the Petersburg Branch of the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
September 29– October 1, 2022
The international forum is devoted to theory and practice of source and document studies, archival research and history of public administration. It is focused on the use of information technologies in historical studies, archival work and documentation in public administration.
The main topics include:
Archival international forum is devoted to theory and practice of source and document studies, archival research and history of public administration. It is focused on the use of information technologies in historical studies, archival work and documentation in public administration.
The main topics include:
Contacts: Lyudmila Mazur LN.Mazur@urfu.ru daisconf@gmail.com
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October 20–21, 2022
Relevant for the international workshop topics include:
the status of refugees, displaced persons and indigenous small-numbered peoples in international law of the cold war period; the role international organizations played in solving the problem of refugees and displaced persons during the Cold War; international law and the maintenance of small-numbered peoples’ identity during the Cold War; political contradictions related to refugees, displaced persons and small-numbered peoples; the impact of political activity of refugees, displaced persons and small-numbered peoples on the cold war rivalry.
Contacts: Aleksey Antoshin alex_antoshin@mail.ru Yulia Zapariy julia.zapariy@mail.ru
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November 17–18, 2022
The year 2022 marks the 100th anniversary of the creation of the USSR, one of the defining events of the 20th century. The Russian Revolution and the establishment of the Soviet state were the pivotal moments in world history that deeply affected the history of most regions of the globe. The Soviet policy triggered fundamental shifts in international relations and led to the development of new principles of foreign policy and international relations. Historical perspective is key to understanding global and reginal issues on today’s agenda through analyzing change and continuity.
Contacts: Olga Porshneva histmemory.urfu@gmail.com
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September 13-18, 2022
The Faculty of History, Ural Federal University, is pleased to invite students and early career researchers to submit their applications to “International Early Career Researcher School on History”. The School is open to:
Research topics:
Contacts: Aleksandr Palkin at a.s.palkin@urfu.ru
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Regular meeting held on a bimonthly basis
The workshop provides emerging scholars with a platform for testing, discussing and promoting research ideas in the field of social sciences and humanities with a historical focus. The event brings together young scholars – second, third and fourth grade undergraduate and graduate students – willing to test original research ideas. Interdisciplinary studies and research on methodology in social sciences and humanities are given priority.
In the 2021–2022 academic year, the events were hosted on a bimonthly basis. They took place in October, December, February and May. The topics covered ranged from social and cultural practices and gender studies to the interaction between authorities and political cultures and reflections on war and society. Over the course of its four meetings in 2021–2022, the initiative provided an opportunity for 12 emerging scholars in history, international relations, philosophy and philology to present their research and receive constructive feedback.
In the 2022–2023 academic year, the workshop is expected to take place in October, December, February and May. Potentially relevant topics include but are not limited to various aspects of identity, modernization in the Russian and global perspective (the transition from agrarian to industrial society), digital scholarship in humanities and other areas broadly related to social sciences and humanities research.
The Organizing Committee places the workshop announcement on the website of Ural Institute of Humanities and other portals a month in advance. For updates, please join the Faculty’s group on VKontakte – vk.com/histurfu.
Contacts: Vladislav Ivshin +79827459098 mmseminar@mail.ru
We are proud to present the new, 48th volume of the annual peer-reviewed journal Antichnaya drevnost' i srednie veka (Antiquity and Middle Ages). The journal publishes articles and reviews on the history, literature, culture and archeology of the Eastern Mediterranean in the late Antiquity and Middle Ages. The Editor-in-Chief is Tatyana Kushch, the Head of the Department of Ancient and Medieval History of the Ural Institute of Humanities.
The new issue is dedicated to the memory of Margarita Polyakovskaya (1933-2020), professor emeritus of the Ural Federal University and Honoured Scholar of the Russian Federation.
The issue comprises 24 articles by Russian and international contributors, including Peter Schreiner from the University of Cologne. His article 'Joy, Sorrow, Wrath: Some Considerations over the Byzantine People’s Emotionality in Literary Sources' analyzes the accounts on treasons and violent deaths of emperors as described by several Byzantine historians. The study makes a special focus on linguistic and literary means that Byzantine historians used to reproduce people’s emotional reactions to such events.
Other contributors include scholars from the leading Russian research centres: Mikhail Bibikov (Institute of World History, Russian Academy of Sciences); Lev Lukhovitsky (Institute of Slavic Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences); Sergey Denisov and Viktor Chkhaidze (Institute of Archeology, Russian Academy of Sciences); Mikhail Gratsiansky and Yulia Mantova (Moscow State University); Evgeny Mekhamadiev, Dmitry Chernoglazov, and Arsen Shaginyan (St.Petersburg State University); Alexander Aybabin, Nikolay Alexeenko, Vladimir Kirilko, Vadim Mayko, Elzara Khairedinova (Institute of Archeology of the Crimea, Russian Academy of Sciences); Natalya Ginkur and Viktoria Nessel (State Museum-Preserve 'Tauric Chersonese').
The issue also encompasses papers written by scholars of the Department of Ancient and Medieval History (UrFU). The article 'Late Byzantium in the Works of Margarita A. Polyakovskaya' by Tatyana Kushch presents the academic biography of Professor Polyakovskaya and the results of her studies on Byzantine history from the 13th to 15th century. The article by Alexander Kozlov 'Features of the Records Composition in the Continuatio Prosperi Hauniensis' describes the anonymous compilations written in Italy in the Late Antiquity period.The article 'Aims of the Byzantine Attack on Gallipoli in 1410' by Nikolay Pashkin discusses the reasons behind the Byzantine attack on the Turkish fort of Gallipoli. The article 'Image of St. George as Dragon-Slayer on the Seal M-8759' by Valery Stepanenko concentrates on the history of research of this unique Byzantine seal dating from the 12th century and its iconography.
In 2020, Quaestio Rossica released five issues in the hope of remedying, at least to some extent, the absence of face-to-face academic communication. The fifth issue (section Problema voluminis) showcases two main topics: 'Russia: The Polyphony of Cultural Meanings and Symbols' and 'Cultural Diplomacy in Era of Socialism'. While the former encompasses multiple symbols associated with Russia (these include houseware and house furnishings in Karelia, the Moscow Canon, the names of political parties and the work of Alexander Lobanov, a Soviet outsider artist), the latter deals with the communication between the key cultural figures of socialist countries.
In section Origines, two sources are published: the story of the Kievan Prince Izyaslav Yaroslavich in Ivan Yelagin’s book 'An Essay of Narration about Russia' and translation of the writings of an English merchant and traveller Jonas Hanway, in which he describes his impressions from meeting Vasily Tatishchev.
In section Disputatio, the publications summarize the research that concentrates on the Ural and Western Siberian regions. The first articles reconstructs the structure and status of the diaspora communities in Ekaterinburg of the 1720-1730s; the second article analyzes early ego-documents of Soviet specialists in Magnitogorsk Metal Works; the third compares the construction plans and building projects of industrial ‘giants’ in the Urals; and the last explores the use of pyrotechnology in Western Siberia at the turn of the 20th century.
The article in section Hereditas: nomina et scholae presents a case study of an unpublished editorial written by N. L. Rubinstein, an outstanding Soviet historian and historiographer, for the journal Voprosy istorii. This case illustrates a potential divide in the academic study of Ukrainian history in the USSR and the attempts made at its conceptual rethinking.
The first issue of the journal in 2021 will deal with the two crucial periods in Russian history: the Petrine epoch and empire-building of Peter the Great and the Civil War, which marked the end of the Russian Empire.
Section Origines continues one of the topics started in section Problema voluminis with the publication of a letter by the 'French consul' Janneau discussing the involvement of the military and diplomatic representatives of France in the Civil War in the Volga region in 1918.
Section Disputatio will present articles on Russian history of the early twentieth century, more specifically, the ideology behind the constitutional reforms that were being discussed on the eve of the 1905 Revolution; the national-territorial demarcation in Central Asia; and the accounts written by Italian authors about their travels to the USSR.
The Department of History in partnership with the Russian Society of Intellectual History are starting a series of online lectures 'CULTURE Of SPIRITUALITY VS. CULTURE OF RATIONALITY: INTELLECTUALS AND POWER IN BRITAIN AND RUSSIA IN THE ERA OF CHANGE (17TH-18TH CENTURIES)'. The lectures will be held on the last Friday of every month from February to November 2021.
The length of a lecture is 30 minutes.
26 March 2021 - How Geographic Maps of the Early Modern Period Changed Visions of the World, lecturer: Georgy Shpak (Institute of World History, Russian Academy of Sciences)
23 April 2021 - 'For Faith, Tzar and Motherland?'... Sacrifices Made by Russian People in the Time of Change, lecturer: Alexey Popovich (UrFU)
28 May 2021 Milton, Commonwealth and his View of Russia , lecturer: Matthew Binney (Eastern Washington University) (the lecture will be delivered in English)
25 June 2021 - The Power of Mammon: Money, Fraud and Corruption in Britain at the Turn of the Eighteenth Century, lecturer: Veronika Vysokova (UrFU)
30 July 2021 - Divide et Impera: Imperial Ambitions of British Botanists in the Eighteenth Century, lecturer: Yulia Shipitsyna
27 August 2021 - Love of Fatherland or the Last Refuge of a Scoundrel? Debates about Patriotism in Britain in the 13th Century, lecturer: Tatyana Kosykh (UrFU)
24 September 2021 - Ivan Yelagin (1725-1793) and his Book 'An Essay of Narration about Russia', lecturer: Sergey Malovichko (Russian State University for the Humanities)
29 October 2021 Long Way to Divorce: Obtaining a Divorce in Eighteenth-Century Britain, lecturer: Ksenia Sozinova (UrFU)
26 November 2021 Moral Values in Russia and Britain in the Age of Enlightenment, lecturer: Lorina Repina (Russian Academy of Sciences)
The project is supported by the Russian Science Foundation (project № 19-18-00186).
James M. White: Unity in Faith? Edinoverie, Russian Orthodoxy, and Old Belief, 1800-1918 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2020). This book offers a new perspective on the enduringly popular subject of Old Belief by looking at the previously untold story of edinoverie, those Old Believers who reconciled themselves with the Russian Orthodox Church. The book principally examines edinoverie through the lens of imperial diversity and the Russian Orthodox Church's struggle to accept those it had previously cast out. In the process of its century-long engagement with Old Believers through edinoverie, the Church itself was changed, as it was forced to provide a new and more expansive conception of Orthodox identity. The narrative also relates the lives of the edinovertsy themselves, both through the experiences of everyday believers and the fascinating biographies of some of its leaders, such as the charismatic elder Pavel Prusskii, the renegade priest Ioann Verkhovskii, and the firebrand reformer Simeon Shleev. As it unfolds through their eyes, the history of edinoverie is a complex and engaging tale of compromise, negotiation, and adaptation against the backdrop of a rapidly modernising Russian Empire.
A. M. Safronova. The First Foreign-Language Schools in the Early History of Ekaterinburg (1735 – 1750s). Ekaterinburg: Publishing House of the Ural Federal University, 2020. - 432 p. - ISBN 978-5-7996-3155-0
The book focuses on the history of the first foreign-language schools opened in Ekaterinburg on the initative of Vasily Tatishchev, government administrator of mining and manufacturing enterprises in the Urals and Siberia.
Tatishchev was active in establishing these schools, in recruiting teachers through the Cabinet of Ministers and Academy of Sciences, in ordering the necessary textbooks, and helped with other aspects of organizing schools.
The book provides information about the age and social background of school students: for example, the German school enrolled children of administration officials of all state factories and was meant to train future managerial personnel. However, the majority of students in this school came from families of soldiers and factory workers. Contrary to national laws, attendance of the Latin school was declared obligatory for children of the clergy who lived in factory settlements and surrounding villages. This school also accepted children from other social estates and children of foreigners.
Apart from foreign languages, the school curriculum included mathematics, history, geography, the Christian doctrine, and other subjects. Children read ancient Greek and Roman authors. Students of the German school were also expected to acquire technical knowledge and professional skills necessary for the local professional occupations.
Schools played an important role in the development of Ekaterinburg as a cultural centre of the Russian province. Teacher K. Kondratovich translated texts from foreign languages into Russian for Vasily Tatishchev's magnum opus Russian History. Kondratovich also compiled dictionaries of the languages of various peoples who inhabited the Urals. With the help of other teachers, he also produced Russian-Latin-German and Latin-German-Russian dictionaries.
The collective monograph 'War, Politics, Memory: Napoleonic Wars and World War I in Anniversary Celebrations' was published by ROSSPEN Publishing House (Moscow). The research was supported by the Russian Science Foundation (project № 18-18-00053 'Politics of Memory vs. Historical Memory: Napoleonic Wars and World War I in Anniversaries'). The Editor-in-Chief of the monograph is the project's lead researcher, Olga Porshneva (Department of Theory and History of International Relations, Ural Institute of Humanities). The Editorial Board includes Vladimir Zemtsov (Department of Modern and Contemporary History) and Nikolay Baranov (Department of Modern and Contemporary History).
For the first time in historiography, a comprehensive approach is applied to study the problem of commemoration of Napoleonic wars and World War I. The book also reconstructs and compares specific practices of war anniversary celebrations in Western Europe and Russia. The research sheds light on how anniversaries can be used to construct representations of the past and to what extent. Provided that these representations do not contradict historical facts, they can be useful for creating a research-backed vision of national history and can underpin the corresponding politics of the past.
The contributors to the volume include Y.M.Galkina (Department of Modern and Contemporary History, UrFU), A.A.Postnikova (Department of World History, Ural State Pedagogical University), A.I.Golotina (Ural State Pedagogical University), and K.A. Pakhalyuk (Ural State Pedagogical University).
A team of researchers from the Ural Federal University have published a monograph 'The Concepts of Conflict and Concord in Russian Social Thought and Practice'. Although concepts of conflict and concord play a significant role in primary sources and in historiographic discourse, in research literature they remain a largely underexplored question. This book aims to fill this gap by presenting studies from an interdisciplinary team of researchers, who drew from a wide range of published and archival sources. The monograph comprises four large sections: international relations, religions, society and social thought. The articles in the first section discuss theories of war and peace in early Bolshevik thinking and Soviet press campaigns revolving around Sino-Soviet relations. In the second, the articles present examinations of confessional conflict in the Russian Empire’s Baltic provinces, Leo Tolstoy’s religious views, and Chuvash notions of ecclesiastical conciliarity. In the third, the analysis focuses on peasant-landowner relations during the reign of Alexander I and the phenomenon of revolutionary martyrdom in 1905. In the fourth, the concepts of barbarism and civilization in 18th-century Russian historiography and modern debates surrounding toleration are put under the spotlight. The monograph offers the first comprehensive examination of the role played by concepts of conflict and concord over three centuries of Russian history.
The symposium is aimed at offering a broad interdisciplinary panorama of the current research on Russian emigration of the 1920s-1940s.
The symposium will be held on 1 April.
The comprehensive objective of the symposium suggests the following range of topics for discussion:
The organizing committee plans to conduct two more online symposia in 2021 (preliminary dates: 2 July and 26 November). The series of symposia will build an international platform facilitating international dialogue and exchange of opinion and research results. The papers will be published in symposium proceedings.
Languages: Russian and English
Deadline for application submissions: 8 March 2021
The conference will be held as a part of the International Convention hosted by the Ural Institute of Humanities and will embrace a wide range of topics including but not limited to:
Submission deadline: 15 April 2021. Please send your applications to the following e-mail: conference.urfu.2021@gmail.com
Sixth Conference ‘Slavic World and Contemporary Challenges’ (15-17 October, 2021): Call for Papers
Tomsk State University, Ural Federal University and editorial boards of journals 'Rusin', 'Quaestio Rossica', 'Izvestia. Ural Federal University Journal. Series 2. Humanities and Arts' are pleased to invite proposals for the Sixth Conference 'Slavic World and Contemporary Challenges'.
The conference will be held in Ekaterinburg at the Ural Institute of Humanities of the Ural Federal University.
Conference topics:
The languages of the conference are Russian and all Slavic languages, English.
The Ural Institute of Humanities is proud to announce a call for papers for the international seminar People of the Cold War World: Refugees, Émigrés, and Displaced Persons'. The seminar will be held on October 29, 2021
The workshop is planned in the following areas:
We plan to prepare a collective monograph based on the results of the seminar.
Applications for participation in seminar (full name, academic degree, position, contact information) and abstracts of reports, the subject of which is related to one of the sections of this monograph (no more than 1,000 characters), please send by October 1, 2021 to the addresses: alex_antoshin@mail.ru, julia.zapariy@mail.ru
The Department of History is delighted to announce a call for papers for the conference '130th Anniversary of the Franco-Russian Alliance: Problems and Challenges of Bilateral Partnership'.
The conference will be held on 3-4 December 2021.
The conference will have a hybrid format combining face-to-face and virtual (via Zoom) modes.
We invite contributions addressing the following topics:
Authors wishing to contribute to the conference should submit their paper proposals to histmemory.urfu@gmail.com latest by 1 July 2020. Please include into your proposal the names of the author(s), their academic degrees, positions and organization affiliations, the topic and abstract of your paper (200 words).
Papers presented at the conference will be published in the form of conference proceedings indexed in the Russian Science Citation Index.
The Russian Science Foundation awarded its grant support to the project of UrFU scholars 'From the Alliance to the Pact: Franco-Russian/Franco-Soviet Relations between the 1890s and 1930s' (the lead researcher - Yulia Galkina, Cand.Sc. (History), from the Department of Modern and Contemporary History).
From the events of the first half of the twentieth century a new world order emerged and to a great extent these events engendered numerous subsequent conflicts within and between modern nations. While the international relations in this period were less than stable, military and political alliances between the states were of paramount importance. The joint project of UrFU and MSU scholars focuses on the Franco-Russian relations, their development and influence on the global political situation from the 1890s to the 1930s.
The researchers are going to compare the Franco-Russian rapprochements in the 1890s and the Franco-Soviet cooperation prior to the outbreak of WWII; they will also assess the similarities and highlight the differences in the foreign policies of both countries, which sought to support each other in their struggles with common foes. The comparison of Franco-Russian and Franco-Soviet relations will create a deeper understanding of the changes brought about by WWI and the 1917 Revolution to the practices of interstate cooperation and of the international challenges that affected both societies and their political elites. The Franco-Russian and Franco-Soviet relations between the 1890s and the 1930s may be treated as an example of interstate alliance that managed to overcome deep-rooted contradictions in this turbulent period. The failure to maintain this alliance to a great extent shaped the course of both world wars as well as the whole configuration of international relations in the twentieth century.
The project outcomes will include two monographs on Franco-Soviet relations between 1917 and 1924 and on military, political and diplomatic relations between the USSR and France in the 1930s.
The findings of the first two years of research will be presented at the international conference '130 Years of the Franco-Russian Alliance: Problems and Challenge of the Bilateral Cooperation' in 2021.
The project of young Byzantinists from UrFU won a grant of the Russian Science Foundation. The project title is 'Ethno-Religious Minorities of Late Byzantium: Problem of Integration and Isolation'.
Lead researcher: Natalia Zhigalova, Cand.Sc. (History), from the Department of Ancient and Medieval History.
Project executor: Tatiana Belorussova, PhD student of the Department of Ancient and Medieval History.
The aim of the project is to investigate the relations between the Greek population and various non-Greek ethno-cultural and religious groups (Slavs, Jews, Latins, Turks) inhabiting the territory of the Byzantine Empire from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries. The researchers seek to identify the mechanisms of integration of these ethno-religious minorities into the state and social structures of the Late Byzantine period and the ways these groups preserved their religious and cultural identity. The study will also describe the role of ethno-religious communities in the economic, political and social life of the Empire in the thirteenth-fifteenth centuries.
The researchers are planning to conduct a comprehensive study by putting the above-described research problem into a broader geographical context: while the previous studies focused predominantly on Constantinople, this project will explore the status and life of Jewish, Latin, Turk and Slav diasporas in such regional centres as Thessaloniki, Mystras, Patras, Monemvasia, and Bursa. The study will draw on a variety of documents such as registration records, Byzantine narrative sources, decrees of the Venetian Senate and Ottoman tax records, many of which have not been investigated before in relation to this topic.
The research findings will be presented in a series of publications in peer-reviewed journals indexed in international databases and at Russian and international conferences, including the International Congress of Byzantine Studies.
The third issue of the Journal of the Ural Federal University (Series 2 ‘Humanities and Arts’) continues a series of publications devoted to the history and culture of the Old Believers movement. This special section presents the new results and insights produced through the joint effort of scholars from the Ural Federal University, Polish universities and universities of Baltic states. Their research deals with the regional histories of the movement and brings to light new sources for comparative analysis of local cultural traditions.
Irina Pochinskaya, the Head of the UrFU Laboratory of Archeographic Studies, analyzes the formation of regional centres of the Old Believers movement by focusing on the case of Glazov uezd of Vyatka guberniya. Irina Pochinskaya shows how migration flows of Old Believers affected the development of these regions.
One of the leading specialists on the history of the Old Believers in Poland Prof. Zoja Jaroszewicz-Pieresławcew from University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn discusses the personality of Ignacy Jan Wysoczanski, a famous twentieth-century maverick. The article is based on the materials of Polish archives and discusses behavioural patterns characteristic of this personality type, capable of realizing its potential most fully in the periods of social turbulence. For Wysoczanski, Prof. Jaroszewicz-Pieresławcew argues, the Old Believers movement became a platform for self-realization.
Nadezhda Morozova, the lead researcher of the Centre of Written Heritage, Institute of Lithuanian Language (Vilnius, Lithuania), presents an in-depth analysis of 'The Origins of the Orthodox Monastic Tonsure...', a unique examples of the Old Believers' writings of the 1870s. The article describes the structure and other significant features of this manuscript and shows the differences between its two editions. The principles behind the work of the manuscript's author and editor are explained.
Natalya Anufrieva, the senior researcher of the Laboratory of Archeographic Studies, investigates the development of textual and visual components in the apocryphal manuscript 'The Passion of Christ'. Special attention in the article is given to the illustrations. The article also describes the three visually distinct versions of the manuscript, which were revealed through the analysis of the nine copies found in the Ural book archives.
A new collective monograph 'Mesolithic Monuments of the Gorbunov Peat-Bog' was published by St.Petersburg publishing house 'Nestor-Istoria'. This book resulted from joint efforts by researchers from the Ural Federal University, Institute of Archeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow State University, Institute of Ecology of Plant and Animal Life of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Nizhny Tagil State Social Pedagogical Institute and Sverdlovsk Regional History Museum. One of the contributors was Lyubov Kosinskaya from the Department of Archeology and Ethnology of the Ural Institute of Humanities (UrFU).
The monograph summarizes many years of multidisciplinary research exploring Mesolithic monuments and artefacts of the Gorbunov peat-bog in the Middle Trans-Urals. These findings are significant for further studies of the history of material culture, economy, and way of life of the people inhabiting the forested areas of the Trans-Urals in the Mesolithic period.
The study of Mesolithic camps of the Gorbunov peat-bog showed that the settlement of the Middle Trans-Urals occurred not in the Late Mesolithic Period, as it was previously believed, but in the Early Mesolith. The camp site Beregovaya II (literally the 'shoreline' camp site), where for the first time in the Middle Trans-Urals excavations exposed four cultural layers in peat, one underneath another. The earliest layer (9-10 thousand years BC) dates to the same period as the famous Shigir Idol, while the latest (late 7th millennium BC), to the beginning of the Neolithic Period.
There is evidence that Mesolithic people successfully adapted to the environmental conditions of the region and developed what can be considered an optimal subsistence strategy, which remained virtually unchanged throughout the Mesolithic and Early Neolithic periods. This strategy was based on fishing, hunting ungulates (mainly moose) as well as other animals and fowl. Depending on the season and local conditions, Mesolithic people changed the sites of their base camps and hunting or fishing stations. The study of the layers of the Mesolithic and Early Neolithic periods brought to light the continuity of the bone and antler industry and provides evidence of the existence of a local early Neolithic culture in this region.
A new monograph ‘ARTIFEX PETERSBURGENSIS. Crafts in St. Petersburg in the 17th-early 20th Centuries (Administrative-Legislative and Socio-Economic Aspects)’ by Andrey Keller, Dr.Sc.(History), senior researcher of the Laboratory of Studying Primary Sources, is published in the book series ‘Library of Quaestio Rossica Journal’ (‘Aletheia’ publishing house).
Since the guilds had been institutionalized by the decrees of 1721-1722, craftsmen of St Petersburg played an important role in Russian history. Because the guilds usually included both Russian and foreign craftsmen, they provided an opportunity for the transfer of technologies, skills and practices.
The monograph discusses the concept of craft in comparison with the adjacent concepts such as ‘artistry’, ‘art’ and ‘science’. It is shown that the space of the craft workshop in the period of proto-industrialization was not limited by its walls but could run close by the factory or manufacture or even overlap with it not only in theory, but also in practice. The book traces the evolution of the institutions of apprenticeship, craft training, self-governance and social security. The author reinterprets the significance of crafts in St.Petersburg in the context of the intellectual tradition of narodnik economists, which leads him to reconsider the role played by craft production - small and medium-sized enterprises - in the city's economy and to reveal the reasons behind the flourishing of crafts not only in the period of manufacture development but also during the Industrial Revolution. The author also envisions how crafts and small forms of production can propel economic growth of the future and contribute to the realization of the goals of sustainable development and green economy.
Two Figures of German Liberalism
Nikolai Baranov, Dr.Sc. (History), the Head of the Department of Modern and Contemporary History, published a monograph 'Between Bismark and Bebel: German Left Liberalism and its Leaders' (UrFU Publishing House). The book deals with one of the most important pages in the political history of Germany. To some, the phrase 'German liberalism' may sound like an oxymoron; in fact, even for professional historians it often appears as a terra incognita. Nevertheless, the author argues, Germany did have a liberal tradition of its own, which survived despite the devastating blows it suffered in the first half of the twentieth century.
The book analyzes representations of German political liberalism in research literature and provides an overview of the approaches applied to the study of this phenomenon in Russian and international historiography. In particular, the author examines the life and views of the key figures of political liberalism in the Kaiser's Germany - Eugen Richter and Friedrich Naumann. Despite some striking differences in their personalities and biographies, they have one thing in common – they both played a major role in German liberalism of the first half of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries.
Richter, now all but forgotten, was a contemporary of Otto von Bismarck and his relentless opponent. First as a leader of the Progress Party and later, the Free-Minded People's Party, his whole life Richter waged a two-front war – against the Conservatives and Social Democrats.
During his life and after his death, Friedrich Naumann enjoyed a well-established reputation and was seen as a 'patron saint' of German liberalism. A true man of the Wilhelmine Era, he started as a Lutheran pastor and ended up as a liberal imperialist. In his book Mitteleuropa (1915), Naumann advocated German leadership in Central Europe. He also worked for bringing liberalism and workers movements closer to each other, on the one hand, and tried to wed the ideas of democracy and empire.
For the first time, this paper brings together these two historical figures, who sought to formulate and realize a liberal alternative to the Kaizer's state based on the recognition of the unconditional value of freedom.
The first volume of a four-volume edition was published, devoted to the characteristics of the primitive fortified settlements of the Stone, Bronze, and Early Iron Ages of the forest belt of the Ural-West Siberian region. Senior Researcher at the Center for Archaeological Research Ural Institute of Humanities at Ural Federal University, Dr. Victor Borzunov published the monograph "The Neolithic and Chalcolithic Fortified Settlements of the Northernmost Eurasian Taiga" in the publishing house of the Ural University. The study was supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research grant "The Urals and Western Siberia in an archaeological retrospective: the most important discoveries, rhythms, phenomena and paradoxes of development" (scientific supervisor of the grant: Doctor of Historical Sciences Olga Korochkova).
The main goal of the four-volume edition is to outline a general concept of the genesis and development of the most ancient fortified settlements in the forest belt of the Urals and Western Siberia, the northernmost regions of Eurasia and the world, where such sites had been discovered.
Based on the study of 1,054 archaeological sites of the Neolithic era located at the forest belt of the Urals and Western Siberia, the author identifies areas of distribution of original artificially and naturally protected settlement objects - cape and coastal settlements, large timber-earth fortified dwellings, mountain "fortresses", bastion fortifications, isolated "island" villages.
The first volume examines the natural and climatic conditions, social prerequisites and reasons for the genesis of northern fortified sites, the fate, and place of "primitive taiga fortresses" in the general system of origin and development of the oldest "fortified villages", "quasi-cities" and "proto-cities" of the Old World. An innovative concept of the phased distribution of the idea of a fortified settlement from the Middle East region and adjacent areas is proposed. Seven "waves" of the spread of fortified objects in Eurasia are outlined in the Prehistoric era and the period of class formations (IX / VIII millennium BC - III / V centuries AD).
The author analyses the most ancient fortifications and their prototypes of the North of Eurasia dated to Neolithic and Eneolithic (VI-III millennium BC) and their individual and general characteristics. The peculiarity of the North Eurasian region consists of the fact that fortified centers appeared in the societies of primitive taiga fishermen-hunter-gatherers who were not familiar with the producing economy. These tradi
Prof. Alexey Antoshin from the Department of Oriental Studies of the Ural Institute of Humanities and Dmitry Strovsky from the School of Communication of Ariel University (Israel) published a monograph 'Emigration and Repatriation of Soviet Jews in the 1960s and 1970s and the Reflection of these Processes in Press'.
The monograph was approved for publication by the Center for Israel and Jewish Studies (Department of Oriental Studies, Ural Institute of Humanities), headed by Prof. Vadim Kuzmin. The book deals with the topic that has always attracted much attention both in Russia and in Israel — the lives of Soviet Jews during the Cold War and détente in the 1960s and 1970s.
The authors place the main emphasis on the representations of Jewish emigration from the USSR in the popular emigre, Soviet and American print media. This problem remains almost unexplored in Russian and international research literature. The authors analyze the publications on the so-called 'Jewish theme' inNovy zhurnal,Posev,Izvestia, TheNew York Times, The Washington Post and some others and recreate the atmosphere in Soviet and American societies during the Cold War as well as that of Russian immigrant communities in different parts of the world. The vast empirical data the study is based on enables the researchers to move beyond the traditional frameworks in dealing with the social moods and sentiments of the détente period in the 1970s. This monograph provides a deep insight into the development of the media sphere as a part of the political landscape in the 1970s.
‘Culture is only a thin apple peel over a glowing chaos’ (Friedrich Nietzsche) - this quote opens the third issue of Quaestio Rossica, already accessible from our web-site. This issue focuses on the complex relationship between the chaos of the surrounding world and fragile culture. The first section of the journal entitled 'Repressions in People's Fates and in the Fate of a Nation' discusses the transformation of repressions into a special kind of institution and shows how this transformation leads to the loss of the pro-state effect of repressive punishments.
The second section 'Russia and Abroad: Ideas and Images' continues one of the journal's central themes - the relationship between Russian and foreign cultures seen as an act of overcoming the difficulties of understanding between Russia and the Other in the broad sense of this word.
This theme can also be traced in the section 'Origines', which presents the second part of a large-scale study of the early diplomatic and dynastic contacts between Russia and France in the 16th century and includes a letter from Henri III (previously it was mistakenly attributed to Henri IV) to Tsar Feodor.
The theme started in the previous issue is continued by the article on the falsification of historical documents about World War II. The same section ('Conceptus et conceptio') contains the study of the social role of state and government in the context of contemporary European historiography.
The section 'Disputatio' traditionally encompasses miscellaneous themes that may have no direct connection to the issue's topic - it includes articles on Soviet diplomacy, the phenomenon of monarchist counter-revolution and the photographic works of Vladimir Arsenyev.
The issue is completed by the section 'Controversiae et recensiones' with reviews of publications on the relationship between Russian and foreign cultures. The final review, which weighs the pros and cons of anniversary article collections, is worth of special interest.
The research team led by Prof. Dmitry Redin starts to work on the project 'Ekaterinburg in 1733: Historico-Anthropological and Architectural-Spatial Reconstruction', supported by the grant of the Russian Science Foundation. The project is hosted by the Laboratory for Studying Primary Sources (Ural Institute of Humanities, UrFU) and is aimed at creating a 3D historico-archeological reconstruction of Ekaterinburg accompanied by reconstructions of the anthropogenic space - systems of individuals and social groups in their everyday interactions in the spatio-architectural, communicative, manufacturing, administrative, military, confessional, medical, educational and daily life spheres.
The project seeks to produce a reconstruction that will be equal in scale and accuracy to similar international projects of ancient and medieval European cities. It is aimed at studying the mechanisms and channels of interaction between people and their environment, technologies, and social institutions shaping the daily life and evolution of society, that determine the relevance of the expected results. The project's outcomes will also have a vast array of possible practical applications in digital humanities, urban studies, development of innovative educational programs and public history programs, in educational tourism, and in projects aimed at revival and preservation of historical and cultural heritage.
In the first year of the project, it is planned to analyze the origin, status-related characteristics, and spatial localization of the main social groups inhabiting of the early eighteenth-century Ekaterinburg. The research team will describe the hierarchy of groups within the urban community and process the corpus of written sources (descriptions of the urban area) and visual materials. These data will be further used for a 3D digital reconstruction of the city: the first of the architectural objects to be rendered digitally will be the Ekaterinburg fortress, its housing, administrative, and manufacturing infrastructure.
Despite the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the International Demographic Unit (IDUN) at UrFU continues its work, including international research collaborations. In 2018, the team of the project 'Evolution of Ethno-Religious and Demographic Dynamics in Mountainous Eurasia' organized the second international conference entitled 'Nominative Data in Demographic Research in the East and the West'. The conference involved leading European scholars from Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Spain, Poland, Germany, Austria, Romania, Estonia, and Hungary. The international historical demographers have retained retain their collaborative ties with the Ural Federal University: this year the university’s journal ('Izvestia. Ural Federal University Journal. Series 2. Humanities and Arts', indexed in Web of Science and published in Russian) for the third time presents the thematic section 'Nominative Sources in Demographic Studies: East and West' based on the conference participants' papers.
The international contributors to the section include Mark Gortfelder (Estonia), Hilde Sommerseth (Norway), Evelien Walhout (Netherlands), and Gunnar Thorvaldsen (Norway/Russia). Their articles discuss important topics in contemporary historical demography studies. Mark Gortfelder, a junior scholar at Tallinn University, focuses on the case of Estonia to test the hypothesis about the connection between fertility and mortality decline, which constitutes one of the key aspects of the demographic transition theory. In this respect, Estonia is of special interest since, in this country, fertility rates were among the lowest in Europe as early as in the late nineteenth century. In his article, Gunnar Thorvaldsen, one of the leading European historical demographers and the IDUN research supervisor, considers a largely underexplored topic – internal migration in twentieth-century Norway, including the country's demographic losses in World War II. Yet another remarkable aspect of this article is that for the first time in the research literature, it shows that what has always been referred to as the 'forced resettlement' of communities and specific professional groups by the Nazi occupants in Norway was actually nothing but deportation. In their article, Hilde Sommerseth and Evelien Walhout address one of the most widely discussed problems in contemporary demographic history – the creation of a universal classification of death causes, which would allow comparative analysis of historical disease data with the modern data. Sommerseth and Walhout discuss the case of the port of Trondheim, the third-largest city in Norway. Their methodology was also adopted by UrFU scholars Dmitry Bakharev and Elena Glavatskaya, whose article deals with Ekaterinburg at the turn of the twentieth century, embedded in the historical-demographic international context.
Sustainable and productive cooperation over the years gives us hope that it will not only continue but could also be expanded and encourage other research centers and groups to collaborate.
In April 2020, a documentary about the Shigir Idol premiered on the Russian TV channel 'Kultura'. Sergey Koksharov, the Head of the Archaeology and Ethnology Chair, and Svetlana Savchenko, alumna of the History Department and the principal researcher of Sverdlovsk Regional History Museum, participated in making this film.
The film tells the story of the unique object of prehistoric culture, which was extracted from a peat bog of Shigir Lake, 70 km north-west of Ekaterinburg, 130 years ago. The idol remained in a perfect state thanks to the excellent preservative qualities of peat. For a long time, historians believed that the Shigir Idol dated back to the Bronze or even later Iron age. However, the radiocarbon analysis proves that the larch the idol is made of belonged to the Middle Stone Age or the Mesolithic Period.
The idol, thus, is the most ancient wooden sculpture in the world. In 2017 Ekaterinburg hosted the international conference 'The Great Shigir Idol in the Context of Stone Age Art in Northern Eurasia' while the journal Quaternary International has made the Shigir Idol a focus of its special issue (to be published in 2020). The attention international academic community bestowed on this object since its real origin date was discovered illustrates the importance of this archaeological treasure.
Sergei Koksharov believes that the idol is an ‘amalgamation of Ice Age Paleolithic artistry, which is known to us primarily from cave paintings in Europe and in the Urals, and art of the Middle Stone Age - the Mesolithic Period'. As the temperatures got warmer, people’s world outlook changed dramatically. These changes were reflected in art, such as painting and sculpture, which now depicted not only hunting animals, the most common theme, but also men. The carvings on the Shigir Idol include many anthropomorphic depictions in various forms.
Yakov Lazarev, a researcher from the Laboratory for Studying Primary Sources, and Vladimir Velikanov, a specialist on the military history of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, have published a book 'Tsarist Voyevodas and Garrisons in Ukraine, 1654-1669' (publishing house 'Ratnoye delo'). The authors analyze how the Russian state established military and administrative control over the territory of Malorossiya (or ‘Little Russia’), which became a protectorate of the Russian tsar in 1654. The study describes the changing functions and numbers of Russian voyevodas (military commanders) and garrisons in Ukrainian cities and towns.
The authors bring to light the economic, political and social mechanisms and resources used by the tsarist state to maintain its control over this restive region and, for the first time in historical science, reconstruct the whole picture of the Russian-Ukrainian relationships in this period. The evidence shows that the Russian state was from the very beginning dependent on local estate groups (soslovnye korporatsii), in particular the Zaporozhian Registered Cossack Army (Voisko Zaporozhskoye reestrovoye), in maintaining military, administrative and fiscal control over the Ukrainian territories, which explains why Russian garrisons in the region were so small in numbers and why voyevodas had limited powers in relation to local inhabitants. This leads the authors to make the following key point: the real reason behind the consecutive failure to build a Cossack state was not the fact that Ukraine was under the sovereignty of the Russian tsar or the heavy pressure on the part of Moscow.
During the years of relative peace and stability (after 1668), the Cossack elite were mostly preoccupied with their own interests and agendas (transfer of power, self-enrichment), which was detrimental to their military and mobilization capabilities. Until Peter the Great’s military reform, while the Cossacks engaged in skirmishes with nomadic peoples, this trend had not been so evident. It was only during Catherine II's reign that the declining mobilization and military potential of the Ukrainian Cossacks resulted in the revision of the special status previously enjoyed by the Hetmanate. A significant role in this process was played by the geo-political concerns of the Russian ruling elite and regional administrators (about the 'unstable' Crimean Tatars). These questions will be addressed in the next volume of the book.
A new book 'Sanctuary of the First Metallurgists of the Middle Urals' was published by Olga Korochkova, Vladimir Stefanov and Ivan Spiridonov, archaeologists of the Ural Institute for the Humanities. Their research was supported by the grant of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research.
In the book the archeologists describe the findings of their excavation, which uncovered a unique site dating back to the early Bronze Age. It was named the sanctuary of Shaitan Lake II and was listed among the top ten field discoveries by the Shanghai Archaeology Forum (SAF) in 2013. The sanctuary gives us a key to understanding the transition from the Stone Age to the Paleometal Period. During this transition we find the beginning of metal use and metal-processing technologies among hunters and fishermen in the Middle Urals. As the Middle Urals territories were integrated into the networks of West-Asian/Eurasian metallurgical province these dramatic changes brought about new forms of mytho-ritual practices.
The discovery of this archeological site makes a substantial contribution to our knowledge of the Bronze Age in Eurasia. The evidence shows how this original production centre evolved in the Trans-Urals, a mountainous and forested region, rich in native copper and oxide ores.
Common skepticism that communities who dwell in the regions with scare resources for food production are capable of technological innovation is proven false. It is now clear that these communities developed a culture that was open to productive dialogue.
The authors describe the factors, mechanisms and potential of technological innovation in the region where resources for food production are scarce while mineral resources are abundant. The reconstructed model of development of this production centre located in a forest area provides a vivid illustration of the diversity of adaptation strategies people of preliterate cultures used in the high latitudes of Eurasia.
The book summarizes years of excavations and studies, involving students of UrFU's History Department.
In 2020, the Laboratory of Archeographical Studies is planning to publish three monographs.
The first monograph will continue the series of publications devoted to the comprehensive analysis of regional traditions of the Cyrillic book culture and will discuss the Cyrillic book tradition of Vyatka region. The study relies on the Kirov and Udmurt book collections of the Laboratory, encompassing about 600 volumes, and provides their full description and texts from the most interesting manuscripts.
The second monograph will focus on the minor centres of the Ural Old Believers and their role in the history of the region, in particular their most significant settlements that existed in the Urals from the eighteenth to the early twentieth century. The monograph will comprise nine chapters on the history of the Old Believer movement in the settlements and villages surrounding metallurgical plants (in Visimo-Shaitansk, Chernoistochinsk, Staroutkinsk, Revda, Verkh-Neivinsk, Byngi, Laya, Verkhny Tagil, Nizhnyaya Salda) and two skits (in Shartash and Urma volost). The region's history is filled with life stories of ordinary people, yielding surprising new insights about those periods.
The third book entitled '...Punishment for the Sin is Death and Eternal Life is God's Gift...' discusses the understanding of the meaning of life in traditional culture by focusing on the Old Believers' worldview reflected in their literary heritage. This monograph seeks to shed light on the Laboratory's unique collection of manuscripts and its researchers' most important findings while making them also accessible to a wider readership.
The team of the research project ‘'Culture of Rationality' vs 'Culture of Spirituality': Intellectuals and Power in Britain and Russia in the Period of Change’, supported by the grant of the Russian Science Foundation, would like to announce a call for papers for the international seminar 'Ideas and Values in the Time of Change (17-18th Centuries)'. The event is jointly organized by the Ural Federal University and University College London (School of Slavonic and East European Studies) with the support of the Russian Society of Intellectual History.
The seminar involving Russian and British researchers will be held on 10 July 2020. The focus of the seminar is the comparative historical approach to the study of practices of Russian and British intellectuals and their influence on the government and society in these countries during the systemic crisis of the 'transition period'.
There will be three roundtables:
The seminar will be held on-line. To register for the seminar, please write to the following e-mail: IntellectualsAndPower@yandex.ru.
A group of UrFU historians led by Prof. Olga Porshneva are now working on the project 'Memory Politics vs. Historical Memory: Napoleonic Wars and World War I in Anniversaries’. On 20 October 2020, as a part of the project, UrFU will host the international seminar 'Memory of the Napoleonic Wars and World War I: Institutions, Mechanisms and Commemorative Practices'.
Researchers and doctoral students are invited to join the seminar.
Papers addressing but not limited to the following topics are expected:
Submission of paper proposals (not more than 200 words) and the authors' bio (name, degree, position, organization) are welcome. Please send them to the conference secretary Yulia Galkina, e-mail: histmemory.urfu@gmail.com. Submission deadline: 1 July 2020.
Tomsk State University, Ural Federal University and editorial boards of journals 'Rusin', 'Quaestio Rossica', 'Izvestia. Ural Federal University Journal. Series 2. Humanities and Arts' are pleased to invite proposals for the Sixth Conference 'Slavic World and Contemporary Challenges'.
The conference will be held in Ekaterinburg at the Ural Institute of Humanities of the Ural Federal University.
Conference topics:
The languages of the conference are Russian and all Slavic languages, English.
The Ural Institute of Humanities is proud to announce a call for papers for the international seminar on the problem of refugees, émigrés and displaced persons during the Cold War. The seminar will be held on 30 November 2020.
The Cold War is not only the period of confrontation between the two superpowers, international crises and nuclear arms race. In fact, the Iron Curtain affected the conciousness of individual people, their mindset and behaviour patterns. People of the Cold War period often had to make uneasy choices and take life-changing decisions in the most extreme conditions and circumstances. Sometimes, as a result of such decisions, they were forced to leave their homes, flee their countries and stay in refugee camps. The seminar focuses on such figures of this period of geopolitical tension as refugees, 'displaced persons' and émigrés.
The seminar is seeking submissions related to the following topics:
Languages: English, Russian.
The seminar will be held on-line.
To participate in the seminar, please send your personal details (name, degree, position, contact information) and abstracts (not more than 1 thousand characters) to the following e-mails: alex_antoshin@mail.ru and julia.zapariy@mail.ru. Submission deadline: 1 October 2020.
Created / Updated: 1 June 2020 / 23 June 2022