The annual programme of the NP/NP for 2021 is looking as follows:
«The Government Inspector» (1/2021). In this issue, we propose to continue the discussion that we started earlier about the features and patterns of development of the Russian Empire (2/2019 - “A Map of Homeland”). The authors are going to focus on the reports of governors (governor-generals, viceroys) of the Russian Empire and materials of senatorial audits. These clusters of documents contain factual and statistical material that is still largely unexplored by historians, that represent the Romanov Empire in all its diversity. In Russian historiography, certain traditions of studying these sources have developed. At the same time, some aspects of their content were not addressed. In particular, no attempts were made to compare them using examples of various macro-regions of Russia at the end of the 18th – 19th centuries. Governor reports and senatorial audits contain information on the forms and methods of control of regional administrations by the center, on communicational channels between the capital departments and governors, and on their competitive opposition. They provide an opportunity to trace the process of formation and evolution of the governance characteristics in the provinces and outskirts of the Russian Empire. These and other subjects are the focus of the issue. The name of the issue is an allusion to the famous work of N.V. Gogol and is a metaphor for the contradictory interactions between imperial institutions, filled with conflicts and mutual misunderstandings. On the other hand, it is also a metaphor for the revision of the established scientific ideas about the potential of the selected sources.
«I Have Come to Give You Freedom» (2/2021). The novel by V. Shukshin, the name of which gave the title to our issue, was devoted to the Razin's movement - either the anti-feudal “peasant war” or the “Cossack rebellion” - and his leader, Stepan Razin, either "a thief and a traitor ... and a murderer", or a "dashing ataman" whose feats were celebrated in the bandit songs. The Will, understood as active freedom, as the right to act in accordance with one's desires and aspirations, is one of the key concepts of the Russian worldview. However, active freedom is also one of the main intellectual and political fetishes in the history of humankind. We plan not to limit ourselves to the “rebel age” in Russian history and Stenka Razin’s comrades. The focus of our interest is the entire repertory of religious, intellectual and social movements, appealing to freedom as the main value - from the ancient "slave rebellions" to the countless contemporary "emancipations" and irredentist projects. Also, the issue is about the people who make up the human dimension of these movements - from ideologists and leaders to ordinary "inconspicuous" participants. In addition, of course, it is about the contexts - temporal, regional, and sociocultural - that determine originality and similarity of the events and make them a fact in the history of humanity.
«War of the Worlds» (3/2021). Herbert Wells' "War of the Worlds" was chosen as the literary allusion of the issue. We propose to abandon the established Soviet connotation of the war of the worlds as a confrontation between the capitalist and socialist camps and present it as a metaphor for the pivotal moment in the history of humanity, the clash of civilizations. Like Herbert Wells, who witnessed the destruction and disappearance of Victorian England, the world that we know is disappearing in front of our eyes, and humanity is on the verge of a “new normality,” which still requires reflection and interpretation. Within the framework of the issue, we expect to start a discussion about historically given vectors and global trends in international relations, special features of the decision-making process within the framework of coexistence of traditional and non-traditional actors, strategies and mechanisms of cooperative actions in the context of global uncertainty that the modern system of international relations is experiencing. The focus of the issue is the transformation of ideas about the "center" and "periphery" in international relations alongside the axes West-East and North-South, the behavior of actors in the new political "environments" and the digitalization of international relations in general. We also hope to discover the outlines of that “new normality” that could serve as a representation of the new system of relations.
«The Man. In the case?» (4/2021). The issue is devoted to the anthropological dimension of socialist and post-socialist societies. The questions what was a "Soviet man" and how the “socialist type of personality” is reproduced in the post-socialist era are continuing to interest generations of scientists. In the academic writings the idea that the ideological confrontation between the USSR and the countries of the West, especially during the Cold War, predetermined the worldview of a modern man was widespread. In this historiographic tradition, a person in a socialist and post-socialist society appears to be practically identical to the Chekhov's "man in the case" - a closed person who is wary of the outside world. At the same time such a narrow understanding of the socialist personality puts researchers of Russian history in a difficult position, because Soviet people - by citizenship, education and self-consciousness - were involved in a wide variety of forms of activities, not necessarily corresponding to the officially recognized features of the “socialist type of personality”, and have a lot in common with the modern type of personality. During the Cold War many Soviet people had a craving for fashion, Western pop and rock music, alternative scientific theories and eastern martial arts, abnormal sexual identities and practices, had a keen interest in international life and persistent adherence to the religious rituals. In this issue of the New Past, we invite researchers to discuss issues related to the formation of a socialist man and socialist society in the context of the Cold War, which include not only ideological and political confrontation, but also new forms of communication through the Iron Curtain and the emergence of the global knowledge society. We also expect a discussion about the "closeness" and "openness" of socialist societies, as well as the discussion about the place and role of “socialistic” in the modern world.