This article presents a review of the diary entries of Kaluga physician Mikhail Vasilyevich Ustryalov (1892–1944), the younger brother of the renowned philosopher and one of the ideologists of the «Smena Vekh» movement Nikolai Vasilyevich Ustryalov (1890–1937). The entries cover the periods of the First Russian Revolution of 1905–1907, the First World War and the revolutionary events of 1917–1918, and the Great Patriotic War (from November 1941 to August 1943). The entries, made in Kaluga, Moscow, and on the Southwestern Front, reflect the author’s perception of major political events, everyday life in a provincial town, and the situation at the front in 1917. Of particular interest are the entries made in Kaluga during the Nazi occupation in 1941 and in the first months after the city’s liberation.

It is known that the basis of the preparation of the leadership of Nazi Germany for the invasion of the Soviet Union was the development of the so-called “Eastern policy”, designed to differentiate the actions of the German military authorities and the civil administration in relation to Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Jews, and other ethnic groups who remained in the occupied territories. Although its main developer was Hitler himself, whose opus “Mein Kampf” served as the foundation of the Nazi ideology, the top leaders of the Third Reich, primarily Rosenberg, Goering and Himmler, who were part of the Fuhrer's inner circle, also had a significant influence on its formation. Secretly scheming against each other in the struggle for power, they also vied for the unspoken status of Hitler's first adviser in matters of “Eastern policy”.

The author, a former young lecturer at the Department of General History of the Crimean Pedagogical Institute, shares his experience of professional development and his vision of life at the Faculty of History and Philology. The author widely uses the memoirs of history students of that time. Of the featured stories, we will highlight three. The first is students doing agricultural work. The second is public and group sentiments among students during the Brezhnev era and the fight of state security agencies against dissent. The third is the decision of the board of the Ministry of Education of the Ukrainian SSR on the subject matter and content of the original plan of the author’s doctoral dissertation («Menshevik Historiography in Russia»).

The short period between the two Polish uprisings of 1794 and 1830, perceived in Germany as part of the liberation struggle of European nations against Russian tyranny for national independence, marked the emergence and development of German political Polonophilia as part of the liberal ideology of the first third of the 19th century. The chain of events – the adoption of the constitution by the Polish Sejm on May 3, 1791, the second partition of Poland (1793), the bloody suppression of the Kościuszko Uprising (1794), the third partition (1795), and, in particular, the 1830 uprising in the Kingdom of Poland – found a response in German political literature, manifesting itself in the form of sympathy for the defeated insurgents, as well as a reflection on the theme of unrealized constitutional reforms and the struggle for national independence. At the same time, it was a reaction to the rise of Russia in Europe and the fear of its territorial expansion further into German lands.

Using the example of the Cadet and Octobrist periodicals, the article examines the positions of the two leading Russian liberal parties of the early twentieth century on issues of public education. The author characterizes the October 17 Union as a "party of practitioners", concludes that the Octobrists were more successful than the Cadets in this area, and explains the reasons for this.

In the article, the author touches a number of issues related to the functioning of the occupation authorities in the Donbass during the Great Patriotic War. The article is based on unknown documents to the scientific community, stored in archival institutions of the Lugansk People's Republic, which are introduced into scientific circulation at the first time. The author emphasizes that the Nazi invaders formed a wide structure of the occupation authorities and administration. The author focuses on the fact that the main goal of the occupation policy of the enemy was the systematic destruction of the population and the robbery of the natural and material resources of Donbass.

The article is devoted to the study of the participation of a career diplomat, an employee of the central office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Empire, Nikolai Valeryevich Charykov, in the Russian-Turkish war of 1877–1878. Based on the archival materials of the RGIA, RGVIA, RGADA and TsGASO, as well as a set of memoirs by N.V.Charykov, the elements of his worldview, the motives for participation in the war, the events and results of the war in the representation and interpretation of N.V.Charykov, the system of interaction between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Military Ministry.

This publication of documents on awarding Russian émigrés with the highest Soviet government awards in 1965 and an introductory article considers the question of the influence of domestic and international contexts on this decision of the party leadership. The unique documents of the Russian State Archive of Contemporary History reflect both the interest of the Soviet intelligentsia in this action and of the state security agencies. As a result of the awarding, Russian emigrants, members of the European Resistance, were included in the Soviet pantheon of heroes and became a part of the official policy of memory of the Great Patriotic War. At the same time at the international level "award diplomacy" created an effective informational occasion for propaganda among anti-Soviet emigration.

In the article, the author highlights some issues related to the reasons for Ukrainian collaboration, and peculiarities of the search and trial by Soviet state security agencies to war criminals and collaborationist elements during the Great Patriotic War. It was based on unknown documents to the scientific community, stored in the archival institutions of Donbass, and various previously published materials of famous domestic researchers. The author emphasizes that the work of the Soviet state security agencies to establish atrocities and search of war criminals and Nazi accomplices proceeded systematically and highly professionally. The result of their activities was a fairly significant number of war criminals and collaborators found and put on trial. This work strengthened the faith of Soviet citizens in the inevitability and justice of punishment for the crimes committed by the Nazis and their minions.

The article deals, based on the archival documents and published materials, with the contribution of the well-known folklorist and literary critic Yuri Matveyevich Sokolov (1889–1941) to the development and formation of the Library of the State Historical Museum in the post-revolutionary period, and his activities as head of the museum library in 1922–1929, as well, as the circumstances of his forced departure from the Historical Museum due to the conflict with the Museum's management. A number of published documents are being introduced into scientific circulation for the first time.

This publication of the letters of G.V.Chicherin, the People’s Commissar of Foreign Affairs, to V.I.Lenin, the chair of the Council of People’s Commissars, sheds light on the mechanism according to which the early Soviet republic constructed its foreign policy. More generally, it also illuminates how the broader political system functioned in Soviet society during its formative period amid civil war and foreign intervention.

The published excerpts