Russkaya Starina

133-145

Authors: Vladimir S. Velikanov

The Russo-Turkish war of 1768–1774 still has a lot of poor explored topics. One of them is the Turkish army. The majority of the documents gives estimate number of the Turkish troop and doesn’t provide any details on its real strength and composition. The article is based on Russian, Turkish and European materials, and gives an attempt to examine the strength and organization of the Turkish army at the beginning of the Russo-Turkish war of 1768–1769. It shows that the role of the classic Turkish troops (like yeniceri and sipahi) had significantly decreased, and they were replaced by numerous mercenary troops like levendi.

159-189

Authors: Leonid L. Smilovitsky

The article is devoted to the study of a rarely examined topic: the role of photography in wartime correspondence between the front and rear as a historical source. The state and citizen have different attitudes to photography. Photographs in wartime could simultaneously act not only as witnesses, but also as prosecutors. Soldiers and commanders and their families gave the photograph an exceptional value. The photograph was more valuable than the letters and must be kept. The photographs were taken on the road even when there was not enough time for the collections, their place was next to documents, money and a modest stock of things and provisions in hand luggage. Soldiers wore photos of relatives and friends in the pocket of their uniform at the heart or in a knapsack behind their backs. The coverage of the circumstances in which soldiers and Red Army commanders made and sent photographs to their homes, relatives, friends and neighbors and comrades in arms draw a true picture of military everyday life, provide the necessary details for understanding the behavior of a person in war, and reveal his inner world. The article is based upon data from letters and diaries of Soviet Jews – soldiers of the Red Army – which were collected in the archives of the Diaspora Research Center at Tel Aviv University over the last five years (2012–2018) and are herein introduced into academic circulation for the first time.

202-217

Authors: Maria A. Andrunina

The article discusses different compounds in the traditional notion of sacrum and typical relations between them on the example of cemetery concerned beliefs and ritual practices, using the data from Polesye region (Ukranian, Belorussian, Western Russian data). The portrait of graveyard as holy place is formed from the religious symbols existing in it (churches, crosses, sanctification of the land for new cemetery); the regarding the dead ancestors as holy forefathers, who always assist their living relatives in all kinds of troubled situations and the consideration of the cemetery as improper place for unclean dead burial (mostly suicidal and others), who habitually were laid on graveyard boundaries. In the other hand, cemetery is the place in between the world of living and the world of dead, where different types of ghosts and demons can be viewed, where all kinds of black magic can be performed, which drives to the place witches and other dangerous persons. The danger of cemetery for people is reflected in great number of taboos and rules concerning the place: for instance, to ask in the gates the spirits for permission to enter, not to visit the place before or after sun, never take anything from the place and so on. So, presented material shows that the notion of sacrum in Slavic traditional culture consists of Christian and pre-Christian layers, contains the ideas of supernatural, death, miracle and horror; the relations between two poles of cognitive field “supernatural” — sacrum and demonic — are formed by the way of turning unholy and demonic place into holy by the means of placing there sacred religious symbols (building of churches, crosses, putting to it “holy” toponymy) and by symbolic exploration of land, which demands finding the center, considered to be sacred; lining the boundaries which divide it from surrounding wild, demonic and thus dangerous land. This structure of sacred is mirrored in the organization of cemetery: it has the central holy place, which is church or main cross with honorable graves of respected forefathers around, it has boundary places there unclean, dangerous, demonic dead are traditionally buried, it distinguished from surrounding lands defied from symbolical meaning.

228-241

Authors: Anastasia V. Gazdanova

It is about almost nothing is known about Zakhariy Petrovich Valaev, the correspondent of the Ethnographic Department of the Russian Museum of Emperor Alexander III (EO RM) in 1906-–1907. This article attempts to reconstruct his biography and his family history. The fact that at the time of cooperation with the EO RM he was a student of the Moscow Imperial Technical School, we know from the correspondence of Z.P. Valaev with the keeper of EO K.A. Inostrantsev. It is preserved in the Archives of the Russian Museum of Ethnography. From this texts we know about Z.P. Valaev, as a collector of ethnographic objects of Ossetians, Kabardians and Balkarians for the acquisition of EO RM funds. The clarification of the biography of Z.P. Valaev is impossible apart from considering the history of his family and its closest associates. Therefore, the presented article discusses the life ways of his parents, brothers and sisters.