The author deals with views of E.A.Preobrazhensky, one of the Bolsheviks' leaders, on the genesis of the Soviet bureaucratic ways and styles, red-tape, and measures needed for the overcoming of the red-tape, and on reasons of the Soviet power’s bureaucratic degeneration. The author notes that, according to Preobrazhensky’s conception, the bureaucracy dominance was a regular result of the state (non-commodity) Socialism, the effect of the centralized economy and not a result of cultural and historical backwardness of Russia as, for instance, V.I.Lenin supposed. According to Preobrazhensky, the basic character of the red-tape required unprecedented efforts the Russian Communist Party had to employ in order to neutralize this phenomenon. Preobrazhensky called for the following measures: membership in the Party had to bring no economic advantages, penalties for misdeeds committed by the Party members should be more though than penalties for similar misdeeds committed by other citizens etc.

The article is devoted to one of the Bolshevik leaders, prominent economist, theorist of the Left opposition within the All-Russian Communist Party of Bolsheviks in the 1920s Evgeni Alekseevich Preobrazhenski (1886−1937). Virtually forgotten in the present day Russia Preobrazhenski is widely known in the West as the person who co-authored «The ABC of Communism» with N.I.Bukharin, creator of «the original Socialist accumulation» concept and of a number of innovative works («The New Economics», «The theory of the falling currency», «The sunset of the capitalism» and others). E.A.Preobrazhenski is considered as the «ideal type» of the Russian revolutionary of the clerical ancestry (according to L. Heimson's typology). The author investigates reasons, motives, and main stages of an Orthodox priest’s son conversion in a revolutionary Bolshevik and some aspects of the Orthodox Christianity and Marxism problem. The article is a magazine variant of the preface and the first chapter of the monograph on E.A.Preobrazhenski's social and political activities and proceedings (at the present time the author is still working on the monograph, which is dedicated to the 125th anniversary of Preobrazhenski' birth).

The memory about the Great Patriotic war of 1941−45 and its heroes was sacred in our country. So much the worse that in the course of 'reform' history of this war has been subject to desecration, abuse, and defamation. Publications have appeared where it is argued that the well known examples of heroism and courage of the Soviet people are mere fictions produced by the Stalinist propaganda. Therefore, it is important to examine the total mass of information on the war and to avoid suppression of some secondary details of the heroes' biographies. For authors of the abusive books mentioned above use these minor facts are as their principal data for their distortions of the history. Familiarization with archive data on Natasha Kovshova and Masha Polivanova who names are not so widely known as Zoya Kosmodem’yanskay and Aleksandr Matrosov cannot leave anybody unimpressed. Their heroic deed is but one example of heroism manifested by the Soviet people on the battlefields of the Great Patriotic War.