The article is devoted to Sh.I.Shagiakhmetov, one of the first Social Democrats in the Russian Empire, representative of the Tatar nobility, Muslim intelligentsia. The attempt was made to analyze his biography and socio-political activity before 1917 and in the conditions of the Great Russian Revolution of 1917. Particular attention is paid to his political journalism, his contribution to the Muslim movement, his role in the formation of the self-determination of the Turkestan population.

In the USSR there were precise official ideological attitudes to the implementation of physical recovery of the people in to the Soviet everyday life. However, dissemination of the physical education was not at the best level. Despite the activity of VSFK, Glavpolitprosvet, Proletkult, proletphyskults, trade unions, Komsomol and other organizations, the spreading of PE in the USSR in 1920-s did not happen efficiently.

The abridged version of a chapter taken from recollection of Natalia Menchinskaya, an architect and a writer relates peculiarities of atmosphere and creative life in a major architecture and designing institution, “Giprovouz” where the author worked for 30 years. Like major part of similar institutions, “Giprovouz” ceased to exist upon the perestroika.

Very short leadership of the General Secretary of the CPSU Konstantin Chernenko, which continued a little more than a year and crowned the stagnant-gerontocratic period of the USSR, was filled with historical symbolism. Leadership of Chernenko was indicated a very clear message: the Soviet socio-political system built by Stalin for a strong authoritarian leader, is not able to function normally and it begins to degrade with the weakening of the Supreme power in the country. Unfortunately, the ruling elite was unable to adequately respond to this and other challenges, it failed to implement the correct reform of the state and establish a constructive dialogue with society. This fatal failure was most clearly manifested in the years of Gorbachev's perestroika, which caused predetermined catastrophic finale of the USSR.

The article deals with the old Russian literary culture taken as the aggregate of techniques and speech-and-behavioral tactics that had been developed in the early days of the East Slavic art of writing. The 17th century as transitory period in the Russian culture history was distinguished with the unprecedented innovativeness. The South Slavic influence was replaced with the West Slavic influence and a stream of new translations including translations of secular fictional texts gushed in the Russian literature. Conventional symbolic and pragmatic ways of the reality cognition was replaced with scholastic rationalism. Yet traditions remained to be respected and significant. The long-established archaic still asserted itself. The connection with conservative literary custom was wide-spread and universal. This thesis is proved by examples of three famous monuments of the transitory period literature: “The Life of Yulianina Lazarevskaya”, “The Latukhinskaya genealogic book” by Tikhon Makar’evski and the epistolary heritage of Patriarch Nikon.

The article is devoted to the formation of the social movement in Russia, its modes and practices. In the article the social movement was defined firstly in the historiography. The authors distinguished the phases of the social movement and characterized them. They paid attention to the contemporary historiography situation and projected the perspectives of the further researches.

Love novels by Mark Krinitski (1874–1952), a bright representative of the Russian Modernism, in the Soviet times were designated as dime fiction that were deprived of any sense but entertainment. The post-Soviet literary historians inherited such characterizations uncritically. Meanwhile these books had no trashy content from the start. For Krinitski narrated not only about love, not about conjugal fidelity or infidelity, not about preservation of family and household pillars but about lack of individual freedom in man-female relationships, about love in which the patrimonial elements that stifle the love. These novels put philosophical issues of the ultimate freedom and therefore all love stories in one or another way relate not only the high feelings but the violence over these feelings. The strong man cult was a peculiar Modernist cult. However, this speculative cult was just a project of the family and society transformation and their conversion to new societal grounds. The strong man cult made a call for the man who had become the initiator of love liberation from the oppression of custom and patrimonial mode of life.

With reference to considerations on peculiarities of contemporaries interpretation of the Russian history tipping point connected with the World War I the author draws the attention to perception of patriotism problem prior to 1917 and afterwards, to various interpretations of Bolshevism as a political phenomenon. Characterization of schism deepening among the culture celebrities includes analysis of A.Blok and other so called “intellectuals-turncoats” social and political positions. The author puts the question whether it is possible to understand “acceptance” of October as the complete approval of Bolshevist ideology. Furthermore, the author substantiates the conclusion that the power of observation and insight of writers immersed in the life of new Russia allowed them in some instances to define the vector of the Soviet state and society development with a greater accuracy than that was done by ?migr?-changers of landmarks and Eurasians.