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Viktor Danilov et Alexis Berelowitch, Documents of the VChK-OGPU-NKVD on the Soviet rural world, 1918-1937. A team of Russian, Italian and French historians is working since 1993 on police reports of the OGPU bearing on villages (zemsvodki), preserved mainly in Central Archives of the Federal Information Service. The objective of the present article is to give an idea of the nature of these documents (zemsvodki, obzory, dokladnye zapiski, etc.), of the subjects they deal with (famines, tax collections, requisition of grain in 1928, collectivization, deportation of "kulaks"), of the various types of information sources (statistical data, incidents, statements repeated by informers, raw documents : tracts, letters). The introduction defines the problem of the use of this type of archives and of the contribution of these documents to the historiography of Soviet peasantry.

Hierarchy Versus Precedence : The Russian Case Whereas the importance of hierarchy in traditional society is widely recognized, little has been written, as yet, on the way it was implemented in practice. This article tries to demonstrate that the gap between the ideal order of oratores, bellatores, laboratores, and social reality, was filled by the rules of precedence. The Muscovite hierarchie order is infered from the Confirmed Charter (1613), in which the global picture of society occurs sixty-six times. But even the most detailed descriptions (twenty-nine terms) are still unable to dictate, e.g., the actual order of signature for the Zemskij Sobor members. The order of precedence is more in keeping with everyday realities: thus, important noblemen like the bojare rank higher even than the abbots of the five or six best convents. The ideal hierarchy is still less effective when it cornes to the sorting out of noblemen of identical rank: most of the precedence disputes (1613-1620) at the Russian Court, are fought over that very issue. Last but not least, precedence order and conflicts are used, by the Russian nobles, as means to vindicate a parallel order, which is at odds with the official hierarchy.

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