Russkii Arkhiv

143-164

Authors: Valery V. Levchenko

The article contains 13 letters from the Russian scholar and emigrant F. Alexandrov to A. Florovsky. They help illuminate many aspects of the life of Russian scholars and emigrants in Bulgaria in the 1920s and 1960s. The correspondence reflects some aspects of the cultural and social events of the Russian diaspora. Amongst others, the discussion of issues of employment, adaptation, material improvement, etc. is of particular interest. The letters make it possible to supplement the biographical outline of the life of F. Alexandrov and A. Florovsky and gather new information for them, which were not previously mentioned in the biographical articles of the two correspondents. The many details of their pedagogical, scientific and private life can remarkably compliment the prosopographic portraits of the two scientists.

181-188

Authors: Igor G. Ivantsov, Igor V. Dubinin

Modern historical research on the history of everyday life in Russia during the Soviet period is a reflection of the “spirit of the times”. A certain rise in historical research at the beginning of the 21st century is characterized by the mass use, for this purpose, of various kinds of memories, private letters, other sources of personal origin, telling about the lives of individuals, communities, settlements in conditions of instability, various kinds of social upheavals, so characteristic of the Soviet period of Russian history, especially for its first half. It is in this case that written sources of personal origin are sometimes indispensable for the development of research on the history of everyday life, microhistory of communities and other areas. So, it is important to refer to the recorded memoirs of contemporaries, a certain fashion for which arose already in the second half of the 1980s. This article is based on one of such sources, about the history of the village Ubezhenskaya, Uspensky district, Karasnodar krai, in Soviet period viewed by its inhabitant, Nikolay Ivanovich Zotov, eyewitness of the epoch.

197-209

Authors: Vladimir E. Polyakov

Memories of the Crimean Tatars were rarely published in the Soviet times. Nowadays, memoirs are often published without scientific editing and commentaries. The memoirs of Z. Asanov, a witness to the tragic events of the Great Patriotic War and the post-war period are published for the first time. The author of the memoirs was eyewitnesses to the extermination of Jews in Yevpatoria, occupied by the German-Romanian troops. Later, together with his relatives and fellow countrymen, he was deported. Much attention is paid to the description of the life of the exile settlers in the conditions of the commandant’s regime, life in orphanages in Uzbekistan. Along with the difficulties he experienced, Z. Asanov emphasizes the atmosphere of mutual assistance and fraternal help from not only the Crimean Tatars, but also representatives of other nationalities – Uzbeks, Tajiks, Russians, with whom the fate brought him together.

224-232

Authors: Alla V. Shadrina

One of the least studied aspects of the life of society in the late Soviet and early post-Soviet periods is the time of the so-called “religious renaissance”, which was characterized both by an increased interest in religion and the Russian Orthodox Church, and by the return of churches to the everyday life of Russians. The handing over of dilapidated churches to believers became the reason for the beginning of the frequently long termed restoration processes. The published document, which is the memoirs of a participant in the restoration of the church in the khutor Susat of the Semikarakorsky district of the Rostov region, gives an idea of the unique and unparalleled in the south of Russia cases of the restoration of the church with the help of local authorities and large enterprises of the Semikarakorsky district of the Rostov region. The published source is a manuscript created in 2008 at the request of the dean of the Ascension Church, priest V. Minaev, who collected materials for writing a book on the history of temples in the khutor Susat.