Abstract This essay explores the circumstances which led the Russian painter Vasilii Maksimov to compose an unusual group portrait in the early months of 1864. The work was painted shortly after fourteen students withdrew from the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg and formed a cooperative association known as the St. Petersburg Artel of Artists, a commune spearheaded by the painter Ivan Kramskoi. Shortly after these events, Maksimov would join an Artel of artists established by the Academy graduate Pёtr Krestonostsev. Few scholars discuss this Artel but exploring the ways it mirrored collective ideals for artistic practice then prevalent in Paris sheds light on how homosocial networks of support rose to the fore in this historical moment. Maksimov’s 1864 group portrait records the productive conflict that resulted from artists’ desire to work with one another through discourse and collaboration in both eastern and western Europe in the period.

Drawing on fresh archival sources – a type-written appeal submission launched by a Soviet advocate in a move to overturn his client’s sodomy conviction in 1969, and a handbook for advocates with guidelines on how to defend individuals accused of sodomy, published in 1977 – this article will shed new light on how sodomy cases were handled by the police under Brezhnev and how advocates sought to overturn sentences in these cases. The article will demonstrate that quashing sodomy convictions on appeal was a challenging task for Soviet advocates. It will also seek answers to the following questions: What arguments did Soviet advocates use to defend their clients in sodomy cases? What were the authorities’ responses to these arguments? And what challenges did investigators face when dealing with those accused of sodomy?

In this first-rate monograph, Cornelia Soldat confirms earlier impressionistic assertions that the portrayal of Ivan iv as a tyrant and the Muscovites as barbarians in German-language pamphlets (Flugschriften) written as propaganda during the Livonian War (1558–1582), are simply projections onto the Muscovite discourse of the motifs of the anti-Ottoman discourse that originated in the fifteenth century after the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Therefore the pamphlets have no value whatsoever for the study of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Muscovite history. These conclusions have wider significance for the interpretation of the historical reliability of two other source genres beyond the scope of Soldat’s monograph, Livonian chronicles and defector German travel accounts written by Germans who served Ivan iv but then fled Muscovy to write scurrilous denunciations of him as a tyrant.

This article examines one of the standardized procedures implemented by Stalin and his supporters during the New Economic Policy to professionalize policy processes in central party agencies. Stalin and his supporters in the Secretariat and Organization Bureau relied on informational studies generated by officials in the Organization-Assignment Department of the Central Committee Secretariat (Orgraspred) to assess both the results of major political campaigns and the quality of local party administration. This article draws attention to this practice by examining two case studies. The first was a 1924 investigation into the poor health of party activists and officials sponsored by the Orgraspred, which appeared to confirm opposition claims about the separation of the party leadership from the working class. The second recounts the findings reported by three of Stalin’s allies in the Organization Bureau – Molotov, Andrei Andreev, and Nikolai Antipov – following extended personal tours of Tambov, Tula, Kursk, Ukraine, the Urals, Siberia and the Far East in support of the “Face to the Countryside” campaign. A careful review of the standard procedures these case studies exemplify suggests that common beliefs about the apolitical nature of the Stalin faction that formed during the years of factional struggle require revision.

The article talks about the Russian Revolution Centennial which produced a wave of events, conferences, publications, and memorials aimed at producing new paradigms, explanations and thoughts on preserving and shaping memory. It also discusses about the afterlife of the Revolution, and also about the Fascism, de-colonialization, War, the Cold War and the color Revolutions.

In the 1570s two military serving men in the Novgorod lands, Grigor’ii and Fedosei, sons of Boris Bachmanov, submitted a series of petitions to state secretaries in Moscow. The petitions, initially containing the brothers’ requests for pomest’e lands for themselves and then displaying their dispute over the manner in which the lands had been divided, provide insight into the personal lives of pomest’e-based military servicemen, the operations of the pomest’e system, and features of the system debated by scholars.

The Ethiopian Church, established in 330, is the second earliest “national” church created on the model of Emperor Constantine’s conversion of the Roman Empire. Today Christianity comes in numerous variants. But Ethiopia’s church alone privileges Mosaic tradition as the bedrock of its theology. The rational for this is “The Glory of Kings,” a book inspired by 1Kings10: 1–13. It tells how a Queen of Sheba (Ethiopia) visited King Solomon in Jerusalem, and that their son brought the Ark of the Covenant to her capital. The Ethiopian Church identifies this site as the Church of Mary of Zion in Aksum. To this day it maintains that the Ark (in Ethiopian, the tabot) remains there in an adjacent chapel. Most important of its Mosaic traditions is that a church is not a church without a copy of the tabot on its altar. But historical explanations of when and how these traditions, and even the “Book of Kings,” came into being are beset by controversy owing to the dearth of contemporary sources.

Muscovite society during the reign of Ivan iv was hierarchical. Each social class stood in a position of superiority or inferiority toward every other social class. However, each social class also had its own hierarchy of sub-classes. This article examines the internal social pyramids of elite lay society, the dynasty, the boyars, the princes, the gentry, and the secretaries. It concludes that by the sixteenth century, Muscovite society already possessed a complex and sophisticated social structure.

The text presents a new interpretation of the Old Rus’ Primary Chronicle through the lens of I. Wallerstein’s and A.G. Frank’s World(-)System Theories, combined with social constructivism and historical anthropology, which will allow the author to elaborate on the utility and advantages that this concept offers for the large-scale study of pre-modern literature.