Comprehending what is happening is an irrevocable human ability and responsibility. Moreover, this is the duty of the authorities. The current government is doing a poor job with this task: decades of negative selection to power, when they got there not for their abilities and skills, but for various other reasons, are reflected. As a result, the government proved to be inadequate and disproportionate to the challenge of the coronavirus. To overcome the crisis caused by the coronavirus epidemic, you need to fight myths with all your might, and even more so not to generate them. The measures taken must be minimized and brought in line with objectivity, as well as their capabilities. It should be strictly forbidden to pull someone's projects under the coronavirus disaster, whether it be the destruction of families, the digitalization of everything in the world, or whatever else. Decisions should be made in an effort to minimize the number of ALL possible victims, not just coronavirus victims.

The article is devoted to the organization of tsar Nicholas I’s trip through Russia and its influence on the activities of provincial officials. The article focuses on the activity of local administrations during preparation processes for the arrival of the emperor. The provincial authorities had always reacted immediately to the news of an upcoming trip. Among priority tasks there were road and bridge maintenance, preparing post stations and horses, city beautifications, and restoring order to government offices. An urge to ready a decent reception and to represent a province in a best way had a favorable effect on the state of local government, it accumulated activities of officials and also made them to remember their duties and, at least by what it looked like, put in order territories which they were to oversee. At the same time, an excessive zeal of certain officials and the desire to please the emperor often turned into an abuse of power.

Focusing on noble female entrepreneurs as factory-owners, this article explores women as active subjects of entrepreneurship and it attempts to study their practices as a right to independent ownership of property. According to the «Register of Factories in Russia for the Years 1813 and 1814», in 1814, business-women owned 165 industrial enterprises, and noble owners run 46% of them. An analysis of «The List of Factory-Owners and Manufacturers of the Russian Empire for the Year 1832» shows that noblewomen owned 241 enterprises out of 484 (or 50%), belonging to women. The share of women among factory owners grew from 4.4% in 1814 to 9.1% in 1832. The parameters of noble women properties, influence, and style of management are examined using detailed prosopographical data. The author concludes that in a noble economic unit centred on the manorial estate, industrial enterprises were one of the elements of infrastructure.

In article, the author considers relationship between the leader of the White movement in the south of Russia general A.I.Denikin and the government of the self-proclaimed Mountain Republic at the beginning of 1919. White refused to recognize sovereignty of the Mountain Republic but guaranteed them broad internal self-government. The Mountain Government insisted on recognition of independence and non-interference to internal affairs of the republic. Parties did not succeed to reach a compromise, and negotiation process came to a standstill. In May 1919, the Volunteer Army liquidated the Mountain Republic. It was tactical success of White Guards, however strategically they considerably weakened their positions, having involved in the wearisome armed opposition with the Caucasian mountaineers.

In the third and final part of the article the authors came to the conclusion that the Russian-Swedish tensions had not played a major role in the origins of the Great Northern War. It was initiated by other states with long-standing claims against Sweden that resulted in permanent conflicts. Although Russia was not going to constantly put up with its lack of access to the Baltic shores and wanted at least to regain its native Northern lands lost to the Swedes in the early 17th century it had to wait patiently until the right time. The propitious moment might have come much later than 1700 if not for the signing of a long-cherished peace treaty with Turkey. This saved tsar Peter from the threat of war which would have made him postpone the revenge over Sweden indefinitely.

The article is devoted to the international activities of the economist and sociologist, academician A.M.Rumyantsev (1905–1993). Based on new materials from the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the various stages of his biography are highlighted: the period of a sharp career take-off in the 1950s, the time of a boom in Soviet sociology in the 1960s and his participation in this process, the academician’s fell down during the Brezhnev stagnation of the 1970s. Archival materials allowed to analyze the Rumyantsev’s point of view on the prospects for the development of Soviet-British relations and the role of science and culture in this process, his participation in the work of the European Center for the Coordination of Research and Documentation in the Social Sciences, his perspective on economic reforms in Yugoslavia in the 1970s. Thus, a large-scale picture of the participation of the Soviet academician, the «intelligent Marxist», as his contemporaries called him, in transnational intellectual exchanges of the Cold War period is created.

The article analyzes the participation of the centrist liberals in the election campaign to the Second State Duma (January–February 1907), as well as the activities of their representatives in this Duma (February 20 – June 2, 1907). The author notes the special activity of the leaders of the Partiya mirnogo obnovleniya in January-February 1907. Attention is drawn to the fact that the ideas of the centrist liberals were popular in the Russian province. At the same time, the author identifies a set of reasons that did not allow them to strengthen their positions in the second Duma. Nevertheless, it is noteworthy that the left-wing radicals (V.I.Lenin), as well as the Cadets and Octobrists, treated the centrist liberals as their political competitors.

M.M.Speransky and A.D.Pazukhin, the developers of important reforms, went down in history with opposite signs: one is the “great reformer”, the other is the creator of the “counterreforms”. The author of the article sees the reason for such a different assessment not in the results of their activities, but in the socio-political climate prevailing in post-reform Russia and the specific perception of the reforms themselves.