2020 Issue №4

The research focuses on the poorly studied process of a social system passing through a bifurcation point: birth and progress of a crisis — social collapse resulting in the disintegration of the society — recuperation via integration of a part of the disintegrated social structure into a new one. A fine example of such a process is given by the admission of a part of Rzeczpospolita (Grand Duchy of Lithuania lands) into the Russian Empire. Those events had a major impact on the ensuing historical path of Belarus, which makes it more urgent to be studied. Herein, we employ the institutional approach supplemented with the recently developed theory of institutional matrices. It is revealed that when a state is formed out of elements with essen­tially differ­ent institutional matrices, there becomes possible a transplan­ta­tional dysfunc­tion of institutions, which in turn can initiate a crisis, capa­ble, in case of a malfunctioning political system and disunited elites, of trig­gering a social col­lapse and (if there are interested «poles of power») the total di­sintegration of the society. The subsequent entry of its part into another social system constitutes one of the options of passing through a bifurcation point. Three stages of this process are distinguished: incorporation of the new lands into the administrative-territorial structure of the recipient state, rebuilding of the social stratification in the new lands, administrative and legal unification, and deep integration. It is shown that upon the admission of Grand Duchy of Lithuania lands into the Russian Empire some basic economic and sociocul­tural institutions were retained, which bears witness to the preservation of singular elements of the institutional matrix of the disin­teg­rated society even during its passage through a bifurcation point.

The article focuses on the publications of the Konigsberg Cyrillic printing house of the first third of the XVIII century. Its founder and publisher Vasily Korven-Kvasovsky, professor of mathematics at the University of Prague, be­came the author of calendars. Their target audience was the Orthodox popula­tion of different countries, primarily Russia. In total, he is established to have been the author of four calendars, three of which are printed in Königsberg. Two publications are studied in the article — calendars for 1727 and 1730. Copies of these publications are kept in the collection of the Russian State Li­brary. The bibliography of these publications is analyzed, the content is exam­ined, and copies of books are described. The analysis relies on source study, historical chronology, bibliography, book science. The Konigsberg editions of the Korven-Kvasovsky calendars are found to be original works which rely on the author’s knowledge in the field of calendar-chronological of his time that performed practical and educational functions. The calendar for 1727 included the original author's text of the "Home Healer", and the calendar for 1730 in­cluded the first chapter of the arithmetic textbook. Three copies of calendars from the collection of the RSL contain readers’ comments on the margins, their ex libris, which is a certain sign of the cultural value.