Vol 23, No 4 (2024): THE FIRST WORLD WAR IN THE DESTINIES OF THE PEOPLES AND REGIONS OF RUSSIA

Within their article, the authors consider the influence of church-religious and secular charity in the ethno-confessional environment of the Urals under the ongoing conditions of the First World War. Through their research, they have shown that there was clear interaction between the government and society in this regard, and that cooperation by representatives of ethno-confessional groups of the Urals were instrumental in helping the front, the needy, and the victims of the war. The institutional forms and social practices characterizing church-religious and secular charity in the Urals are considered from the perspective of the actor themselves, revealing the role of both collective and individual participants. The contribution of ethno-confessional public organizations of the Urals to the development of charity is also clearly shown; its main directions are characterized. The role of the Orthodox Church structures and congregations, Muslim and other ethno-confessional communities, women's associations, and individuals in wartime charitable activities is further considered as well. While the specificity of church-religious charity in the ethno-confessional environment is revealed, this charity included: material assistance, moral support to those in need, as well as measures aimed at solving social issues and maintaining stability in society. The authors, through their research, they have shown that through conditions of war, that the functions of previously existing charitable organizations expanded and that new ethno-confessional structures of charitable character appeared which responded to the challenges of the emergency period. The authors conclude that the ethno-confessional charitable organizations regularly interacted with local governments, public and state institutions, interactions which increased the effectiveness of their activities in the region during the period of the war.

The author examines the issues of the creation and functioning of the mobilization mechanism of institutions and resources of the Orthodox dioceses of the North-West Territory of Russia to provide assistance to the Imperial Russian Army, and to meet the needs of the rear and refugees in the period from the beginning of the war to the fall of the monarchy. The article analyzes the peculiarities of the position of the Russian Orthodox Church in the dioceses of specifically the North-West Territory of Imperial Russia. These peculiarities were due to the tense relations of the Western Russian Orthodox people with Polish Catholicism, which manifested itself in religious and ethnic conflicts and contradictions within the area. The article examines the process of creation of diocesan mechanisms of assistance to the army and the rear, which were based on above on the hierarchically organized system of church authority and discipline, and from below on the patriotic initiative of the Western Russian clergy, monastics, and laity in church institutions and Orthodox brotherhoods. The article analyzes the changes that occurred in the religious and moral state of the Western Russian flock under the influence of the proximity of the Western Front, along social changes in the rear. The author comes to the conclusion that during the war years as a result of patriotic mobilization in the Western Russian dioceses of the Russian Orthodox Church, a kind of military "alliance" was formed between of the Church and the state which was based on common ideological-religious and national-patriotic values of protecting the tsar and the Fatherland.

The author examines the struggle between the United Kingdom and Russia for the possession of railway concessions in Persia. On the Russian side, one of the participants was Nikolai Notovich. He opposed Russia's concessions to Britain and advocated for the intensification of Russian policy in this area. Over time, his views on the most profitable routes for the construction of railway tracks for Russia changed in accordance with the international situation, the balance of power between the main actors, and the 1907 Russian-British agreements on the division of Persia into spheres of influence. The latter led N. A. Notovich to the idea that under the new conditions it is no longer sensible to build a through road across Persia to the coast of the Persian Gulf or the Indian Ocean. Instead, he advised to focus on developing the railway network in the northern regions of the country, which would contribute to the growth of economic, political and cultural influence of Russia.

The authors have explored alimentary practices (obtaining, preparing, cooking, consuming foodstuffs) in the context of gender relations, social history of women and everyday life of women in non-capital cities of the USSR in the late 1950s - early 1960s. The main sources of their work are: personal documents (unpublished diaries and memoirs), materials from recipe books that were in almost every home at that time, information from periodicals (magazines), archival materials from the funds of the State Archives of the Volgograd Region and the Center for Documentation of the Contemporary History of the Volgograd Region, and specific office documents - reports of inspections of district committees of people's control and confirming facts of abuse in the sphere of public catering. The main source is unstructured oral biographical stories or “women's oral story,” which preserved an emotional assessment of the difficulties experienced at that time. In the anthropology of Soviet everyday life, the gender aspect plays an especially significant role, since the ordinary and inconspicuous things in everyday life are better captured and preserved by women's memory; women's everyday life differed significantly from men's due to the greater burden of household chores. The authors conclude that despite the social policy of the Soviet state aimed at freeing women from household chores, the patriarchal idea of the role of women in the family turned out to be stable phenomena and can be traced throughout the Soviet period, including the “thaw.” Moreover, across the period there was the formation of a special type of Soviet gastronomic culture, simplified in terms of recipes, a form simplicity which provided time and energy for women's activities outside the home.

The Jewish policy of the Soviet leadership was inconsistent, cautious, ambivalent, and it was based primarily on practical considerations and specific circumstances. Suspicious, distrustful or wary attitudes towards Jews on the part of non-Jews were widespread throughout the entire Soviet period. However, as a rule, this was not the result of official antisemitism, Russophobia or any ethnophobia in its pure form. Jews were discriminated against in the pre-war period, primarily due to the fierce struggle for political power at the top, and in the post-war period - due to the transition of a significant part of the Jewish diaspora into opposition to the Soviet regime and a continued desire to emigrate. Everyday anti-Semitism came into conflict with the philo-Semitic policies of the leadership; there was no consistency between the intensity of political repression and the extent of Jews’ participation in government. In 1926-1935 (during the all-Union party-state campaign against anti-Semitism, aimed at protecting Jews), Jews were subjected to more repression than in 1948-1953 (during the all-Union party-state campaigns against cosmopolitans and nationalists, directed largely against Jews). At the same time, with the representation of Jews in power structures in 1920-1945 grew, and in 1948-1953 (the “dark years” of Soviet Jews), they remained statistically overrepresented in management and the elite. The author concludes that anti-Semitism was not a principle of Soviet national policy which was not fundamentally anti-Jewish but was fundamentally opportunistic; this policy did not exclude Jews from public life, or from the elite and management of society, but, on the contrary, it had the goal of effectively using the fruits of their human capital in the interests of the state.