Urszula Cierniak

Personal diaries written in French by young women in the first half of the nineteenth century attracted attention of researchers such as Philippe Lejeune, Elena Gretchanaïa, Catherine Viollet and Irina Savkina. They all believed that very few texts which could be classified as spiritual diaries had survived in the archives of that time. An example of such a rare, well-preserved collection of diaries are ego-documents of a Russian aristocrat, Elisabeth Galitzin (1795–1843), who, after converting from Orthodoxy to Catholicism, began to record regularly her inner state and experience of the value of faith, which lasted from 1815 until her death. This article focuses on the texts preceding Galitzin’s joining the Society of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. They are the part of nineteenth-century works discussing the conditions and motivations for the conversions of Russian women to Catholicism. They also provide unique material for a further in-depth research into Russian spirituality during the described period.

Medical staff taking care of prisoners and deportees is a very distinct group of people. As history shows, this profession was taken either as an act of free will, or of coercion. The 19th century exhibits examples of voluntary, unlimited devotion towards the prisoners, as for instance, of doctor Friedrich Haass. However, in the 20th century, during numerous deportations of the Russian intelligentsia to the labour camps, often the boundaries of a doctor-prisoner status got blurred, and the medical professionals were recruited from the people deprived of freedom, and they were forced to undertake medical duties towards co-prisoners. Anne Applebaum in her book Gulag describes the conditions of doctor’s work in Soviet labour camps. The image presented by the author is complemented by the memories of the doctors, who on the one hand were saving others and themselves from the danger of death, but on the other were striving to protect all from losing human dignity and the temptation to reject the highest humanistic ideas, in accordance with which they wanted to accomplish their mission.

This paper will be an attempt to outline various approaches of the medical professionals towards prisoners, as well as problems of penitentiary medicine during times of deportation. It will be based on the 19 ^th century testimonies about doctor Friedrich Haas, and modern autobiographies of Borys Lesniak I came to you ( Я к вам пришел ), and Nina Savoeva I chose Kolyma ( Я выбрала Колыму ). They are the people and the authors little known today, although many Slavian prisoners (e.g. Varlam Shalamov, Eugenia Ginzburg and a modest Polish priest Wojciech Darzycki) survived due to their disinterested help. Unnoticed by historians of literature, texts by Lesniak and Savoeva invariably constitute evidence of the struggle against the brutal political system, and show the strength of human spirit and the heroic sacrifice of medical professionals during the time of trial.

First lubok pictures are said to have appeared in China. Initially they were drawn by hand, later the method of stamping a picture cut in wood, on a birch bark or leather was applied. With time metal matrices started to be used and the pictures themselves were painted. Lubok was first introduced in Europe around the 15th century. Around the mid-17th century first printed pictures called “friazhskie” (foreign) began to appear in Russia. Then this type of art started to be called “funny cards”. In Russia the term “lubok” denotes lithography, graphics printed from wood engravings (xylography) as well as pictures drawn by hand by folk artists and by renowned artists. This paper presents the sources and history of the Russian lubok. They are described in terms of ideas and values which lubok pictures express and which have been close to the Russian society since the 17th century up to the present time.

When analysing Russian literature and social thought of the nineteenth century, it can be easily observed that the works can manifest one of two tendencies prevalent in those times: Occidental or Slavophil one. Russian Catholics have been so far recognised as the representatives of the former because of their positive attitude towards Western Europe and its religion.

The focus of this article is on the four immigrants permanently living in France, members of the Jesuit Order – Ivan Gagarin, Ivan Martynov, Yevgeniy Balabin and Paweł Pierling. Their perception of Slavic matters, the Slavs and their religious problems allows them to locate their ideas in relation to the views of Slavophiles and Occidentalists. Russian Catholics do not deny the influence of other Slavic cultures and broadly understood Orthodoxy on Russia, or the cultural heritage of Western Europe – the Old Russian past is a reason for pride and belief in the significant importance of Russia’s national culture. Contrary to the Slavophiles, they propose that Russia should become Catholic power to fulfil a great civilisational mission towards the West. The article discusses Russian Catholicism as the third trend in the Russian culture of the analysed period, which is closely related to the aforementioned tendencies but it does not fully overlap with any of them.