The bibliography of Middle-earth, version 2

"Библиография Средиземья", обложкаThe second version of my bibliography on Tolkien has finally been printed on paper and is now available online as well.  After the first version was published, two of my colleagues sent me so much additional material that it took me almost one more year to finish the second version, but the number of references has increased from 2,500 to 3,100.  I’ve added, in particular, a lot of new literature into the section on the languages of Tolkien.  Besides that, the new version contains references to all the articles on Tolkien from the Anor journal.  An alphabetical index of the authors has appeared at the end of the book.

While I was working upon this version of the bibliography, it has become partly outdated because after 24 February, ProQuest closed their resources for Russian users in protest against Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.  I didn’t remove the references to ProQuest—partly because they may be useful for those colleagues who had to leave Russia, and partly in hope that the access will be restored after the war when Russia joins the civilized countries again.

As I had too much work with the second version, I didn’t manage to finish the English version of this bibliography yet, but I hope to publish it next year 🙂

The second day in the new reality

…had a surprising beginning. A strange man (pretending to be) from the police woke us up at a quarter past six this morning ringing at the door, to “warn” me against “taking part in unauthorized meetings and rallies”. (Actually all the oppositional meetings and rallies had been almost completely prohibited in Russia long before the invasion of Ukraine, officially due to the COVID-19 epidemic. The prohibition doesn’t cover pro-Putin rallies and other mass events organized officially by the authorities.) Two more persons came a half an hour later, they obviously didn’t know anything about the previous visitor. Of course we didn’t let them come in. I suppose they probably came for the first time yesterday afternoon: my mother preferred to ignore the calls from the door phone. Can’t say what was the reason for such a careful attention, because—to my shame—I’ve never taken part in any unauthorized events; will see how things turn out.

Not My War

On the twenty-second of June,
Exactly at four,
Kiev was bombed, and we were told
That the war had begun.

The war began in the fresh of the day
In order more people
to kill.
Parents were sleeping, their children were sleeping
When Kiev began to be bombed.

Legions of enemies were coming,
And nothing could stop them,
As soon as they came to the land of Ukraine,
Did they start to kill people…

It’s the beginning of a song that was born in the Soviet Union during the Second World War. The initial text was written right in the first days after the Nazy invasion, by Boris Kovynev (Kovan’), for the melody of a popular waltz Sinii platochek [Blue scarf] by Jerzy Petersburski. The piece quickly became a folksong, so the text has undergone further changes. The translation is mine, sorry for possible mistakes.

I first heard this song years ago and was always sure it was about the German aggression against the USSR. Now it has become a song about the Russian aggression against Ukraine. My God, what a shame I feel for my country today…

Bibliography of Middle-earth, version 1

Finally I have finished a “full-scale” bibliography on Tolkien. This is the Russian version of it, the English version is still in process.

The bibliography consists of two parts, part one “Primary sources” is designed not as a bibliographic list, but as an overview that describes shortly all the main components of the body of published works by Tolkien, mostly with references to the first printings; to make a full list of all the publications of his writings is already rather a complicated task. Part two “Research literature” is a traditional bibliographic list divided into topical sections. The list isn’t comprehensive, of course, but I hope it covers at least the most important books and papers. Materials published in Tolkien Studies, Journal of Tolkien Research, Mallorn are listed almost entirely, materials from Vinyar Tengwar and Parma Eldalamberon are also listed almost entirely (they include both primary and secondary sources). Articles on Tolkien from Mythlore and Journal of Inklings Studies are also put in the list. I only had to ignore the oldest issues of Vinyar Tengwar, Mythlore and Mallorn because available scans are of poor quality. I’ve also listed all the books from Cormarë series. The amateur publications are listed along with the professional ones.

I thought all of this would take me a half-year or a year, but it took me actually a year and a half. On the other hand, it fortuned that I made this bibliography right by the anniversary of Tolkien 😉

I hope the guide will be useful for researchers, especially for beginners. I’m going to add new information at least once a year. Will be grateful for any corrections or additional information 🙂

The Library of Congress


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01_6.10.2012

The Library of Congress is one of the biggest libraries in the world, its collections include more than 167 million items. Established in the early nineteenth century literally for the U. S. president, vice president and members of the both houses of the Congress, it’s now open for any adult readers including foreign citizens. The library is physically housed in three buildings at the very center of Washington, right in front of the Capitol. The oldest is the Thomas Jefferson Building, constructed in 1890–97. The second one, the John Adams Building, was constructed in the 1930s (opened for the public in 1939), after the Jefferson Building has run out of space. The James Madison Memorial Building was constructed in 1971–76 and opened in 1980; it’s the biggest one of the three buildings. It wasn’t enough either, however, so one more storage was built later outside the city.

All the three buildings are connected by underground passageways that is quite convenient. For me, the Jefferson Building is the nicest one, so all the photos are from there. The access to the entrance hall, by the way, is open for all the visitors; the library card is required only in the working area.

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05_29.03.2013

06_29.03.2013

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Rebel movement in the North Caucasus in the first half of the 20th century

M. M. Mints, “Povstancheskoe dvizhenie na Severnom Kavkaze v pervoi polovine XX veka”, Sotsial’nye i gumanitarnye nauki: Otechestvennaia i zarubezhnaia literatura: Referativnyi zhurnal. Seriia 5, Istoriia, no. 2 (2018): 109–117.

Download full text (PDF)

A review of two monographs and an article published in 2016 that deal with the history of the conflicts between the population of the North Caucasus and the Russian government (imperial, later Soviet) during the first half of the twentieth century.

Gennadii Kurenkov, From conspiracy to secrecy: protecting party-state secrets at RKP(b)—VKP(b), 1918–1941

An unpublished translation of my review for Gennadii Aleksandrovich Kurenkov, Ot konspiratsii k sekretnosti: zashchita partiino-gosudarstvennoi tainy v RKP(b)—VKP(b), 1918–1941 gg. [From conspiracy to secrecy: protecting party-state secrets at RKP(b)—VKP(b), 1918–1941] (Moscow: AIRO-XXI, 2015).

The original review in Russian was published in Istoricheskaia ekspertiza no. 2 (2017), 258–262.

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The Great Fatherland War in Contemporary Historiography (in Russian)


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My collection of abstracts published in 2015.  One of the first books printed at my Institute after the fire.  Initially we were going to show the current situation in historiography, but so many publications have appeared in recent years that we had to limit our work to a relatively small set of the most interesting books standing out for their subjects or research methods. As a result, most of materials in the collection are based on works of Western historians who still much more often use various methodological innovations than their Russian colleagues. Yet there are also abstracts of several Russian books that deal with some insufficiently explored aspects of the history of the Soviet Union in the Second World War. We used almost no works on history of military operations or of the Red Army as, in spite of their importance, they are not so interesting from the viewpoint of methodology. Instead, we devoted special attention to publications that deal with ‘non-military’ subjects and investigate a human dimension of the Second World War, its long-term consequences and historical context.

The contents of the abstract collection:

  • Foreword
  • Preddverie i nachalo Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny: Problemy sovremennoi istoriografii i istochnikovedeniia [The eve and the beginning of the Great Fatherland War: Problems of recent historiography and source criticism] (Abstract)
  • David M. Glantz about the Red Army in World War II (Joint abstract)
  • A. B. Orishev, V avguste 1941 [In August 1941] (Abstract)
  • The Blockade of Leningrad (Joint abstract)
  • Karel C. Berkhoff, Motherland in Danger: Soviet Propaganda during World War II (Abstract)
  • D. D. Frolov, Sovetsko-finskii plen, 1939–1944: Po obe storony koliuchei provoloki [Soviet-Finnish Captivity, 1939–1944: On Either Side of the Barbed Wire] (Abstract)
  • Jörn Hasenclever, Wehrmacht und Besatzungspolitik in der Sowjetunion: Die Befehlshaber der rückwärtigen Heeresgebiete, 1941–1943 [Wehrmacht and the Occupation Policy in the Soviet Union: The Commanders of the Army Groups’ Back Areas] (Abstract)
  • Igor’ G. Ermolov, Tri goda bez Stalina: Okkupatsiia: Sovetskie grazhdane mezhdu natsistami i bol’shevikami, 1941–1944 [Three years without Stalin: Occupation: The Soviet citizens between the Nazis and the Bolsheviks, 1941–1944] (Abstract)
  • Bogdan Musial, Sowjetische Partisanen, 1941–1944: Mythos und Wirklichkeit [The Soviet partisans, 1941–1944: Myths and Reality] (Abstract)
  • Evacuation and the Rear (Joint abstract)
  • V. N. Krasnov, I. V. Krasnov, Lend-liz dl’a SSSR, 1941–1945 [Lend-lease for the USSR, 1941–1945] (Abstract)
  • Irina V. Bystrova, Potselui cherez okean: ‘Bol’shaia troika’ v svete lichnykh kontaktov (1941–1945 gg.) [A kiss across the ocean: the Big Three in the light of personal contacts, 1941–45] (Abstract)
  • Anna Krylova, Soviet Women in Combat: A History of Violence on the Eastern Front (Abstract)
  • Soviet Jews in the Years of War and Holocaust (Joint abstract)
  • A. Iu. Bezugol’nyi, N. F. Bugai, E. F. Krinko, Gortsy Severnogo Kavkaza v Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine 1941–1945: problemy istorii, istoriografii i istochnikovedeniia [Mountain-dwellers of the Northern Caucasus in the Great Fatherland War 1941–1945: problems of history, historiography and source criticism] (Abstract)
  • Warlands: Population Resettlement and State Reconstruction in the Soviet–East European Borderlands, 1945–50, ed. Peter Gatrell and Nick Baron (Abstract)
  • The Veterans of World War II in the Soviet Union (Joint abstract)
  • The Significance of World War II for the History of the Soviet Union and the Post-Soviet States (Joint abstract)
  • Notes on Contributors

Download the full text (PDF, 3,4 Mb, in Russian).

Klingle Road—a ruined street in Washington, D.C.


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Klingle Road is a small street in Washington, D.C., just near Macomb Street where I lived in 2012–13.  By now, it has been already repaired and transformed into a walking root, but eight years ago it was out of use and even closed to motor traffic.  The cause was that the main part of the road lies in a ravine, so that it used to be flooded by water and mud from the slopes after every heavy rain.  At the same time there are no houses at Klingle Road itself, all the nearest buildings look to other streets.  If I hadn’t been shown this street at the beginning of my stay in Washington, I would probably haven’t even noticed it at all.  The street is not too long, surrounded by nice and comfortable residential areas.  Its eastern end leads to Washington Zoo.  To see such a ‘secret’ small area of desolation at the heart of a big city was especially surprising.

Klingle Road

On 26 January 2013 I finally managed to take a photo of snow in Washington.  The previous days, it fell in the morning and melted away while I was having breakfast 😉

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