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This text is, above all, a grateful testament to a local saint's continued liveliness. It is a new hagiography, a story of a woman who gave away everything—her house, her money, her possessions, and even her name—who wandered homeless, and who has helped people resolve desperate situations ever since. Retelling the fragmented stories of how people asked for her intervention, and of how, through their actions, new mycelia of power grew on the ruins of the Soviet socialist state, I hope that this essay helps opens a loophole: a space between naïve faith and sociological faithlessness in which we might understand today's miracles without crushing them by the secular objectivist gaze. Looking through this loophole, this essay retells some of stories I heard about the Soviet collapse and about how people survived it: about gleaning the planned economy's rubble, chance connections, personal ties, Divine Providence, fast fortunes, and the enclosure of fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a first-hand report of a participant and leader of a number of underground initiatives within the “refuseniks’” community which aimed to encourage Jewish studies. These underground initiatives involved seminars (scholarly as well as public), excursions through Jewish historical sites, and the publication of a samizdat journal. In short, these initiatives sought to recover and disseminate knowledge of Jewish history and culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, Ann Komaromi reads late Soviet Jewish culture in Leningrad in terms of the “two worlds” Jewish activists negotiated: official and unofficial, Soviet/Russian and Jewish, present and past, etc. While the public rhetoric of the struggle for Soviet Jewry suggested dramatic binaries of death and salvation that resonate with the eschatological extremes of the “Petersburg text,” Komaromi argues for a more prosaic approach to the imaginative and cultural project of reconstructing Jewish identity by people in this context. The article features the recollections of former Jewish activists taken from interviews and memoirs to reveal the range of endeavors in which they engaged, including Hebrew learning and teaching, seminars, demonstrations, Jewish soccer teams, local history walking tours, unofficial book collections, and ethnographic expeditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses the materials of the Drezdensha affair, a large-scale investigation of "indecency" in St. Petersburg in 1750, to explore unofficial sociability among the Imperial elite, and to map out the institutional, social, and economic dimensions of the post-Petrine "sexual underworld." Sociability and, ultimately, the public sphere in eighteenth century Russia are usually associated with loftier practices, with joining the ranks of the reading public, reflecting on the public good, and generally, becoming more civil and polite. Yet, it is the privately-run, commercially-oriented, and sexually-charged "parties" at the focus of this article that arguably served as a "training ground" for developing the habits of sociability. The world of these "parties" provides a missing link between the debauchery and carousing of Peter I's era and the more polite formats of associational life in the late eighteenth century, as well as the historical context for reflections on morality, sexual licentiousness, foppery, and the excesses of "westernization". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the March 1, 1881 bombing assassination of Russian Emperor Alexander II by members of the group of domestic terrorists called People’s Will (Narodnaia Volia) during the period he was residing in the winter palace in St. Petersburg, Russia. After his death, items associated with his murder were displayed in public spaces and became objects of interest and tourism. The article considers English-language travel writings of dark tourism by American, British, and an Italian which detail the pervasiveness of political violence in Europe and Russia in the 19th century, often using explosives.

This article suggests that marriageable young upper-class women can be taken as indicators of the longue durée of the ancien régime mentality and the stepwise advancement of the bourgeois mentality. This is so because of factors that made such women particularly prone not to break with established conventions. Source materials in this analysis are taken from contemporary non-fiction texts in which 19th-century St Petersburg and Helsinki serve as the scenes and in which marriageable young women feature as the protagonists or objects of appraising gazes. It is suggested that the differences emerging around the mid-19th century between the two societies with regards to the habitus and education of upper-class girls and marriageable women can at least in part be explained by different institutional settings vis-à-vis land, labour and the status of the bourgeoisie. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article challenges traditional interpretations of the 1868 Declaration of St Petersburg banning explosive bullets and the 1899 Hague Declaration forbidding expanding bullets as humanitarian agreements. A review of the legal terms of these arms control agreements and diplomatic correspondence provides evidence that Britain sought to harness advanced technology to overcome manpower deficiencies in imperial and European warfare. In 1868 Britain wanted to avoid restrictions on the employment of advanced technology in imperial wars, while at the Hague Peace Conference in 1899 a similar rationale was advanced to mask a desire to use advanced technology in European wars. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article explores the 1824 flood in St. Petersburg by focusing on the state response to the flood that presented it as a tragic and natural outcome of constructing a city in a harsh environment. Paternal care elicited support for the regime. However, conquest of nature was central to the autocratic authority and the flood challenged that authority. Granite embankments were the primary symbol of power over nature, yet they failed to stop rising waters in 1824. Engineers offered modern solutions to replace embankments, but granite was essential to the architectural facade even as the population lost faith in granite’s ability to protect the city. The urban and environmental perspective demonstrates the limits of autocratic authority. Tarnished by the flood, the state solicited modern solutions that remained unfulfilled. Ultimately, cost and alteration of the imperial façade proved too much of a price to bear to prevent flood. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article presents a multinational and multireligious character of St. Petersburg since the founding of the city to the collapse of the Soviet Union. An ethnic and cultural mosaic was also an important feature in other centers of Russia, including Moscow and Odessa, as well as forming part of the national capital of the Russian Empire in Warsaw, Riga and Tallinn. St. Petersburg is a city but of a symbolic and unique character. It is the subject of literary impressions and creative inspiration for generations of artists. In addition, St. Petersburg -- Petrograd -- Leningrad was the capital of a multinational and multireligious Russian Empire, Soviet Russia, and since 1918, it was the second most important city of the Soviet Union. The author's intention is also to present the history of St. Petersburg -- Petrograd -- Leningrad, as seen through the prism of the history of national minorities living in it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As Russia prepares to formally commemorate the 100thanniversary of the beginning of World War I by unveiling a memorial to its ‘heroic dead’ in Moscow next year, this article will examine the role of one of its, until comparatively recently, long-forgotten heroes, who played a significant role in the organization and development of the country's air defense system, Major-General G. V. Burman. Not only will the article throw light on the activities of one of the more significant former Tsarist officers who played an important role in the defense of both the Russian Empire and the young Soviet republic, but the article will also open a new chapter in the analysis of the creation, organization, and role of the air defense system of one of the major combatants during the First World War. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Histories of chemistry in eighteenth-century Russia have often ignored or downplayed the scientific character of chemical sites, treating the chemical laboratory of M.V. Lomonosov in St. Petersburg's Imperial Academy of Sciences as the definitive site of Russian chemistry. This essay surveys a variety of Russian medical, military, and academic institutions as chemical sites, and suggests that dividing them up as scientific or non-scientific sites, as Lomonosov sought to, is unhelpful, as many were integrated and engaged in connected enterprises. A case study then shows how the setting of Russian court society provoked competition within the network of Russian chemical sites. Competition led Lomonosov to urge a sharp division of labour between chemical artisanry and chemical science, forging a distinction that historians of Russian chemical sites have often reproduced subsequently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the results of a field study carried out within the framework of the project “Family Heirlooms and Jewish Memory,” which resulted in the organisation of an exhibition at the State Museum of the History of Religion in St Petersburg. On the basis of interviews collected from the owners of the heirlooms, the article examines relations between owner and object, as well as the practices of storage and the presentation of such things. These practices are defined as a particular channel of existence for family memory, which plays an important role in the construction of Jewish identity on the basis of ancestry. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the history of diplomatic relations between Ossetia and Russia. According to the article, a group of Ossetians, also called an embassy, traveled to St. Petersburg, Russia, in late 1749. The article states that the embassy was comprised of representatives of several Ossetian noble families including Zurab Magkati, Eba Kesati, and Sergey Alguzazri, and describes their journey to St. Petersburg. The article examines the actions of the Ossetian embassy while in St. Petersburg, particularly their negotiations concerning unification with Russia, external security, and resettlement. It also reviews the official imperial reception of the Ossetian embassy. The article also describes Russian missions to Ossetia in the mid-16th century prior to the Ossetian embassy's arrival.

An essay is presented that discusses the city of Saint Petersburg, Russia in light of utopian ideals attributed to Asian cities by the philosopher Plato in his dialogue "Republic." Plato's views are interpreted in light of the article "Utopia, the City, and the Machine" by Lewis Mumford in the book "Utopias and Utopian Thought," edited by Frank E. Manuel. Other figures noted include the Russian ruler Peter the Great and the philosophers Thomas More and Gottfried Leibniz.

Winning in the battle for jobs is two-fold: making gains in jobs and relief, and making gains in the development of anti-racist revolutionary class consciousness. Marxists and institutionalists have shown theoretically that unemployment is endemic to capitalism. The global experience of the 20th century validates this view. Efforts to ease the negative social effects of unemployment can modestly and temporarily assist distressed unemployed workers and their families, but only when there is a significant grassroots mobilization-at both local and national levels-to struggle for such improvements. Communist organizers have often been the most effective leaders of struggles against unemployment and its effects by relying on mobilizations of unemployed, employed, and unionized workers. Communist organizations have often combined efforts to win 'survival' reforms (i.e., attempts to keep unemployed workers' heads above water) with agitation and education about the need to end unemployment permanently with socialist and/or communist revolution. Two examples of these struggles are described: the Unemployed Council of St. Petersburg in 1905-06 and the unemployed councils initiated by the Communist International (the Comintern) during the early 1930s, with an emphasis on the U.S. experience. Lessons for today's global struggle against unemployment are drawn from these earlier experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although legitimately associated with a crisis of faith and the rapid spread of atheistic-socialism, the revolutionary period 1905-1918 in St. Petersburg/Petrograd can and should also be understood as one of unprecedented religious experimentation and spiritual growth, even among the working classes. Rejecting overly simplistic notions of “secularization” and de-Christianization, this article offers a necessarily fluid and pluralistic portrait of Petersburg religious culture, the contours of which were shaped by tensions between rural and urban practices, popular and official institutions, and competing notions of the sacred and the profane in the city’s increasingly diverse marketplace of beliefs. It examines the new and varied demands that working-class believers voiced with respect to the role of the Orthodox faith and Church in their lives and investigates urban Orthodoxy as it was “lived,” including changes and continuities in religious practice, sacramental life, icon worship, and pilgrimage. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article reassesses the myth of the heroic homecoming and successful reintegration of Red Army veterans returning to Leningrad after 1945. Soviet propaganda created an official version of demobilization, which presented veterans as exemplary citizens who returned to civilian life with relative ease. This myth created the impression that ordinary Leningraders welcomed home returning veterans as heroes. Throughout the twentieth century the demobilization of mass conscript armies generated tensions and difficulties. Across Europe the experience of demobilization in the wake of industrialized warfare created resentment, disaffection and anger. In contrast to official myths, Leningrad's veterans were little different from their counterparts elsewhere. Reports based on veterans' letters intercepted by the military censor reveal that many exservicemen were deeply resentful of the reception they received in postwar Leningrad. The frustrations of demobilization were blamed on 'rear-line rats', a term of derision for officials believed to have shirked front-line service in favour of safer administrative jobs. These problems were not imagined by disaffected veterans. Other documents confirm that corruption and bureaucracy were widespread problems. Despite these simmering resentments, the myth of a successful demobilization has remained remarkably durable and continues to be accepted by historians and the general population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article describes salient features of Saint Petersburg's geography during the Tsarist and Soviet eras. The patterns of population change in the city over time is explored. The results of a questionnaire survey of central city residents in 2000 and 2004 are then analyzed to construct a schematic model of the city's social geography during the three major periods of its economic and political history.

Focuses on the history and commemoration of the siege of Leningrad in the Soviet Union. Relationship between personal memory and official commemoration; Political meaning of war memorials and official monuments; Accounts on the life of Ol'ga Berggol'ts during the revolution; Role of women in the revolution.

In this article, the author reflects on his love of Saint Petersburg, Russia, due to its connection with Russian history since the 18th century. He describes various tourist attractions associated with the city's history and the 1917 Russian Revolution, including the Winter Palace, the Tauride Palace, and the Smolny Institute. The Hermitage Museum and the Cathedral of SS Peter and Paul are also discussed.

Provides an overview of the book "St. Petersburg, 1703-1825," edited by Anthony Cross.