Vol 18, No 3 (2019): TRANSNATIONAL ЕXCHANGE

The present article investigates the implementation of the 1775 provincial reform on the territory of the Kharkiv namestnichestvo (viceroyalty). The provincial reform entailed a restructuring of the entire system of local government. These issues are of particular interest in contact zones, territories with heterogeneous populations, where social structures and administrative units of diff erent historical origins coexisted. One of these is the territory of Sloboda Ukraine, where until the opening of the Kharkiv namestnichestvo in 1780, the uezd division, characteristic of territories occupied by Russian colonization, was combined with the Ukrainian regimental structure that dated back to the second half of the 17th century. On the basis of maps and lists of settlements dating from the 1770s-1780s, the author reconstructed the maps of the administrative division of the territory of Kharkiv namestnichestvo before and after the reform. Before the reform the lands were organized in four regiments ( polks ) and seven districts ( uezds ), all with clearly defi ned boundaries. At the opening of the namestnichestvo , 15 uezds were created; the boundaries changed greatly, but each of the uezd centers preserved a signifi cant part of the land that had been associated with it earlier. The article demonstrates that after the reform, 13 of the 15 uezd towns were former regimental towns and villages. This seems to refl ect the gradual increase in infl uence of the Sloboda Cossack elite, which by this time was seeking recognition of its noble status and becoming the dominant social force in the region.

On the basis of archival sources and materials taken from periodical press, the authors investigate the history of the Persian diaspora in Ossetia. The article discusses the causes of Persian migration to Ossetia, which began in the second half of the 19th century; their settlement and adaptation processes; and mechanisms of intra-ethnic consolidation. The authors identify the means Persians used to adapt to the economy of the host society, in particular by fi nding economic niches in industry, craft, trade, and domestic services, and analyze their integration into new economic forms of urban lifestyle. Ethnic entrepreneurship emerges as the foundation of Persian community life. The article investigates the diaspora’s infrastructure, including the Persian Consulate, a Shiite mosque, the Persian school Navruz , the charitable society Himmat , and several other institutions. In general, for most minority communities the place of worship becomes the focus point of intraethnic consolidation and preservation of national identity, especially when the community is not simply ethnic but rather ethno-confessional. In the Persian community, however, the main regulatory and communicative functions were performed by the Consulate. The authors argue that the prominence of the Consulate resulted from the uncertain status of the mosque, from the fact that Shiite worshippers came from various nationalities, and from the confl icts among them. The authors examine the degree of preservation of traditional Persian culture in festive and ceremonial life, community behavior, and relations with the motherland. They identify how the Persian community integrated into the socio-cultural environment of poly-ethnic Vladikavkaz through trade relations, everyday contacts, and other means.

The authors consider the problem in which extent did the Bolshevik authorities allow a coverage of Russian émigré life and work in France, under conditions of ideological confrontation and censorship. The present study is based on materials of Soviet literary and socio-political magazines such as Book and Revolution and Krasnaya Nov’ of the fi rst half of the 1920s. These journals off ered chronicles of events, literary reviews, information in special sections (‘In the West,’ ‘Relations with Russia,’ ‘Russian literature and art abroad,’ and particularly in the section ‘France’) that off ered a fairly complete picture of cultural events in France and activities of Russian émigrés in the country. Characteristic was the reproduction of large fragments of works authored by emigrant authors, which acquainted readers with the development of emigrant thought of that time. The article concludes that with regard to the fi rst half of the 1920s, we can speak about a kind of dialogue between the Russian intelligentsia in France and that in Soviet Russia. This communication was not always politicized and often remained in the fi eld of literature and art theory. In those years the cultural life of France in general was subject of constant attention. It is argued that most publications on French literature and art were free from ideology, thereby continuing the tradition of pre-revolutionary cultural relations between the two countries.

This article discusses Nicholas Roerich´s travel to Ceylon as part of his Central Asian expedition of 1923 -1928, which is a less-known episode in the biography of the artist and thinker. Roerich’s stays in India, Bhutan, Manchuria, China and other countries are already well known, but his visit to Ceylon has not yet been subject to research. One important question pertains to chronology: while Roerich´s diaries establish that he was on the island in 1923, his letters from December 1923 indicate that at the time of writing he was in India. Solving this issue is one purpose of this article. On Roerich’s map of his Central Asian Expedition, Ceylon is marked as a point of stay, yet without specifying the particular places of his visit. This article reconstructs the route of Nicholas Roerich’s trip to Ceylon during which he established contacts and spiritual ties with representatives of religious and secular circles of this island. The present study is based on Roerich´s documents of personal origin, as well as on visual materials from the cycle ‘Ashram’ that the artist created during his visit to Ceylon.

On the basis of previously unstudied archival documents this article reveals the multifaceted and multidimensional activities which the country’s top leadership as well as the leaders of the Middle Volga (Samara) region and Ulyanovsk district (from 1943 renamed Ulyanovsk region) unfolded for mobilizing work force for the military industry of Ulyanovsk region. In the shortest possible time, just within one year, under conditions of shortage in housing, production areas, raw materials, and skilled personnel, they managed not only to redirect practically all industrial enterprises in the city of Ulyanovsk and the Ulyanovsk district towards the war eff ort, but also to integrate several dozens of evacuated enterprises, to provide them with production areas, and to accommodate thousands of employees as well as their family members. By the summer of 1942, all these enterprises had started to work at full capacity; they considerably increased deliveries of all things needed at the front, thus making a considerable contribution to ensuring a radical change in the course of the war in 1943. The authors conclude that this success resulted from the eff ective work of central and local authorities, as well as of the directorates of the defense enterprises, in the fi eld of training of highly skilled specialists. New vocational schools were set up, in addition to technical schools and production classes at general schools. Moreover, successful measures were taken to motivate the youth for highly productive work. The authors emphasize that the heads of the enterprises organized eff ective training directly at the workplaces. The work with production staff was accompanied by well-organized ideological and educational work at the enterprises which in due time allowed to prevent provocations aimed at disrupting the military production in this critical period of the war. In particular, the article points to the successful management of the textile industry and cloth factories for increasing labor productivity and establishing labor discipline in teams.

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