The article is devoted to the political projects of Russian émigré in 1920–1930. Its representatives tried to analyze their experience in Russia. Either they did their best to offer their vision of the future of Russia and Europe. Their way of thinking was non-standard and quite wide that helped them to define the challenges of the times and show the tendency of law and state evolution.

Sundials are the most ancient scientific instruments, but their earliest examples made in Russia and stored at museums are the ones made in the 18th century. The article is devoted to the sundials presented at the exposition “The first astronomic observatory of Academy of science” at МАЕ RAS (Kunstkamera). In the introductory part of the article the author tells how and why sundials became an important object by the beginning of the 18th century and why portable varieties gained popularity. Further the history of their usage and improvement is under consideration, as well as inviting foreign masters and appearance of Russian ones. Special attention is paid to each of the exhibits of Kunstkamera as a unique object, giving us a chance to study the history of science and technique.

The article deals with the history of origin and attempts to implement the idea of A.A.Bogdanov about the Proletarian University as one of the means of mastering the proletarian culture by working class. After the revolution of 1917 proletarian universities were organized not only in Moscow and Petrograd, but also in many provincial towns. However, they were quickly closed down. Party and state leaders felt that the declared intention of the organizers of the Proletarian University to bring up a new man and train new leaders from the proletariat itself means, in fact, in the near future, that they will be replaced by a new generation of leaders – independent ones who are able to think and analyze and not only repeat slogans.

The study is based on comparative analysis of the programmatic work of the German physicist Georg Friedrich Parrot “A Look at the Present and the Near Future”, as a conservative manifesto that marked the beginning of the formation of the new Russian messianism doctrine and the first attempts to broadcast it to the peoples of Europe on the eve of the foreign campaign of the Russian army 1813–1814.

In conditions of the modern information wars the patterns of origin and functioning of various images and symbols are of great interest for the researches. The article deals with the Soviet caricatures devoted to subjects of the foreign policy of late 1940s – early 1960s, which were inspired by common citizens of the USSR. Their content is disclosed in the context of general trends of development of imagery and symbolism of the visual satire of the Cold war times. The paper elicits the specific of perception of international agenda depicted by amateur satirists and evaluates their contribution to the creation of enemy image.

In the case of Anatoly Sharansky, as in a drop of water, the final stage of the history of the Soviet Union was reflected. When in the 1970s this activist of the Jewish movement challenged the communist empire, it was still strong enough to withstand all threats, including internal one. But by that time, it had largely lost its former repressive potential and could no longer punish opponents of the regime so mercilessly as it had been under Stalin. Only thanks to the softening of the Soviet system after the death of the dictator, Sharansky managed to survive, although, of course, this would never have happened had he not had the courage and inner psychological strength necessary to survive in the harsh conditions of camps and prisons. The decisive moment was that in the future this liberalization intensified more and more, ending with perestroika. And if this development turned out to be fatal for the Soviet system, then for Sharansky, on the contrary, it was salutary, allowing him to gain the upper hand in the confrontation with it.

The publication analyzes the documents of the Central Committee of the CPSU(b), reflecting the reaction of workers to the increase in ration prices in September 1946 and the mechanisms of public opinion management used by the Soviet government.