In February 2024, at the Center for Socio-Political History (a branch of the State Public Historical Library of Russia) The international conference "New facets of current problems of modern history" was held. A high bar for scientific discussion was set by the conceptual report of V.V.Zhuravlev, PhD, Professor, laureate of the State Prize of the Russian Federation in the field of science and technology. The researcher's vision of the problems of "metamorphoses of Russian modernization", the causes of arrhythmia of social processes, the role and place of reforms and revolutions in it, etc., is of interest to a wide range of readers. Responsible for the publication of L.N.Lazareva.

The article analyzes the process of genesis of the left flank of the Russian party system in the spring – summer of 1917. The outbreak of the Russian Revolution completely destroyed the old system of political parties based on Duma activity and Duma elections. There were two tendencies in the development of the Russian Social democratic movement – towards consolidation, unification into a single party and towards a split, the formation of a number of independent parties. By the autumn of 1917, the Social Democrats, separating and uniting, took shape into two opposing all-Russian parties – the RSDLP (united) and the RSDLP (Bolsheviks), as well as the RSDLP (internationalists), which took an intermediate position between them, and a number of small organizations, mainly national.

The article continues the analysis of the transformation of the left flank of the Russian party system in the autumn of 1917. At that time, the former leaders of the political process – the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries – gradually lost their positions, and in October they were completely removed from power, and they were replaced by the Bolsheviks and left Social Revolutionaries. Attempts to create a broader government coalition ended in the failure of negotiations under Vikzhel, and the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly further deepened the split between the Socialists.

The article continues the analysis of the transformation of the left flank of the Russian party system in the spring of 1918. After the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly, the government bloc of Bolsheviks and left SRS took shape and the division among the Social Democrats deepened even more. The Bolsheviks increasingly opposed themselves to them, adopting the name of Communists. Their alliance with the left srs proved to be short-lived. The RCP(b) formed a one-party government.

The centenary of education and the thirtieth anniversary of the collapse of the USSR actualize the search for the causes of what happened. In recent years, a number of monographs and collections of documents have been published (listed in the list for publication by L.N.Lazareva –1, 3, 4, 6), in which the economic theme occupies an important place. The idea of the round table, held on April 22, 2022 at the Center for Socio-Political History (to which the participants of the event express their sincere gratitude), was for the authors of these publications to present their vision of the connection of economic processes at all stages of the history of the Soviet Union with the collapse of the state. The initiative of the round table belongs to the State Public Historical Library, the Department of Modern History of Russia of Moscow State Regional Pedagogical University, the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art. The texts are published in the author's edition. Responsible for the publication D.V.Maslov, L.N.Lazareva.

Many people still believe that the history as the science has begun to change accents in its approach to analysis of the past exclusively due to heroic, self-sacrifice conduct of the Annals school representatives of the French historiography or due to efforts of only foreign historians and has started to become, in the first place, a sphere of human beings study and only later the study of society. Meanwhile the process of the history animation included efforts of many generations of foreign and Russian historians, philosophers and representatives of many other branches of social sciences. However, the paradox is that until recently we have known about foreign scientists more than about our countrymen. Today, with good reasons we may maintain that the picture of the Russian science achievements in respect of anthropological, social psychological approach to analysis of the historical past is dramatic and impressive. The task of this article is to disclose some important aspects of this historiographic process.

People are capable to remain themselves (in the best as well in the worst manifestations) in any situation. The “interest rules the world” axiom remains to be hard and fast even if it is applied to revolutionary epochs. The range of such personal, private interest manifestations on the part of representatives of various social strata and political forces of the society should be recognized as all-pervading one. This range embraces a great variety of manifestations, from a requirement of spiritual self-realization which is a far cry from petty or even big selfish or other “earthly” calculation to a conscious set of assumptions aimed at a hope that the revolutionary wave can raise people who joined it to the other, higher level of social stratification, in accordance with “the last will be the first” principle. Analysis of private interests’ structure, private interests’ content, quality and hierarchy of private interests, their complex intertwining and conflict in a revolutionary period in comparison with periods of evolutionary development allows making more detailed and more correct judgments in respect of extent to which a revolution can be considered as a painful social process which finally brings salutary results and to what extent revolutions can be considered as stages of “mass insanity” of desperate masses as it is fashionable to declare nowadays.

A decade and a half ago author has already addressed problems of the Imperial Russia’s first State Duma historical fate. The social acuteness of these problems under conditions of that time directly correlated with processes of elaboration of the land reform in the Russian Federation principles that stirred the society as a whole, with adoption of the RF Land code (2001) and of the Law “On agricultural lands turnover” (2002). The time which elapsed since the early 2000s did not lower the researchers’ interest and social-practical interest to the profound investigation of the first in the Russian history representative institution emergence. The Duma had legislative functions and boldly claimed its rights to the primacy and independence of the monarch’s willfulness and of the dictate of the executive power subdued to the monarch. Why did the first try fail? Why that attempt did not inaugurate the beginning of the serious dialogue between the power and the society on a wide range of issues including the most urgent problem, the land problem? The land problem is still urgent. Moreover, it is still hot, burning issue. For the time is incapable to annul the indisputable, absolute justice of the thesis set forward by P.A.Stolypin: “The land is the precondition and guarantee of our future power, the land is Russia”.

This article analyzes the documents of the International Economic Conference held in Moscow in April 1952. The authors clarify and enhance the common point of view on the formation of foreign policy doctrine of late Stalinism. In addition, the published documents are a clear illustration of pragmatic solutions of current problems of internal and foreign policy of the Soviet government. The reader gets a rare opportunity to «see» the events in a historical context by the «eyes» of their members, which is especially relevant in the context of modernity.

For Russia World War I turned out to be not just a precursor but also a powerful detonator of fateful events of 1917. The tenth wave of revolutionary impulse generated by hardships of those ragged years did not stop upon destruction of the autocracy’s fundamentals that had seemed hard and fast just a few years ago. The impulse went much further and smashed down age-old fundamentals, traditional order of the state and popular life. And resulted in another war, even more fearful and bloody civil war. A century after beginning of these earthshaking events that shattered the whole country and the whole world we are bound to revisit them and to understand them in the perspective of the present-day problems and challenges. To do that we have, in the first place, call from not-being, to revive, hear and perceive adequately voices of people who had endured hardships and consequences of that war now commonly called «the forgotten war».

The author considers processes of the pivotal for Russia’s historical destiny events of 1917 as seen by eyes of contemporaries, masters of the Russian satire and humor compared, predominantly at the level of subtext, with events of the 1990s. The latter presents phenomena that are in many ways recognizable and comparable in their external manifestations, even though they have absolutely different roots. The author intends this article in the first instance for those who in learning of the past and present are disposed to broad historical comparisons in identifying «chromosome set» in fabric of events and phenomena of the Russian history. The essence of this «chromosome set» consists in certain algorithm of reiterated and unique, inimitable features in behavior of the historical process subjects. The author thinks that if a researcher moves along this approach he/she may, with some degree of conditionality and metaphoric usage, speak of presence of the Russian historical process «genetic code» which reaches the mental level. In the particular case examined by the author this code implies that feverish pulse which the Russian history acquires when modernization shifts prove to be intertwined with pre-modernization and counter-modernization phenomena. In result of such combination both revolutionary leaps and systemic reforms begin with the inflated hopes and loud overoptimistic declarations and then turn about to be a social and, moreover, civilizational back rush.

The article is dedicated to the problems of the place and role of transitional ages in the interior of the world history. Written in a free manner of a historian’s thoughts, it is based on the data of the collective work «The transitional ages in the social aspect. History and the present» (publishing house «Nauka», 2003). The book united the works of the 28 specialists — historians who specialize in different countries and times from Antiquity and the «great migration of folks» (the 4th-7th cent.) to the second «great migration», caused by the disintegration of the USSR. The concept of a transitional age is studied in the article as a complicated, many-sided inner contradiction. It is a very contrasting phenomenon of the «recoding» of a social system from one condition into another. There is an inner logic behind its individual unique demonstrations — the logic of the development of transformational processes. According to the authors opinion it can be called the «genetic code» of the social transit.