This article examines the underlying causes of the emergence of the Kurdish conflict in Iraq. It analyzes the key ethnic, social, political, and economic causes that have led to growing tensions between Iraq's Kurdish population and the central government in Baghdad. The article explores the main stages of the formation of the Kurdish movement led by the Barzani clan, as well as the reasons for divergences between Barzani and Talabani. The conclusion is drawn that the Kurdish movement in Iraq was the result of growing internal contradictions at the root of Iraqi statehood.

The article examines the situation when the mass-circulation magazine Crocodile published a rather strange drawing depicting the “united opposition” as a dysfunctional part of the overall construction of socialism. Such a drawing, without political context, looks deliberately simplistic and unconvincing. A comparison of this drawing with the events of the October plenum of the Central Committee of the VKP(b) shows that such a depiction corresponded fully to the complex political game waged by the Stalinist group in the Central Committee of the VKP(b), interested not in publicly exposing theoretical differences with the opposition, but in demonstrating the simple and understandable logic of the masses – the opposition simply does not want to build socialism. All the theoretical postulates about the impossibility of building it in a single country, without a world revolution, must have looked like empty talk, and that is all.

The article examines the informal practices of relations between representatives of the state apparatus and of the business sphere. The study is based on a complex of letters of the Buldakov merchant family. Contents of letters from provincial officials to the chief director of the Russian-American company M.M. Buldakov to see how communication developed between business and government, also allowed to highlight the typical behavior of different categories of officials. The article examines examples of establishing trusting relationships and confrontation. The conclusion is drawn that bribes and monetary rewards for services could not always ensure the loyalty of officials. An important role in the system of informal relations was played by the development of patron-client ties.

In Russia, in the XIX – early XX centuries, salon dance practice reached its culmination in its development. Balls as a form of leisure have become an integral part of everyday life not only of the aristocracy, but also of other social strata of Russian society. Throughout the 19th century, the choreographic language of ballroom dance was still being updated in France, and then spread to other European countries, but at the end of the century there was a radical change of orientation, and European ballroom dance began to rapidly “americanize”.

St.Petersburg Kunstkamera stored besides other rarities presents of Russian monarchs. Following this tradition Alexander I handed over to the museum a unique clock, made by naval lieutenant E.S.Ovtsin during his leisure time. Its mechanism did not require winding up, had a rotating dial, sliding on a glass plate, and a fixed hand in the form of cupid. The fate of that extraordinary object in 20–21 st centuries remains a mystery.

This article is devoted to the reconstruction of the scientific discussion of 1955–1956, connected with the accusations of S. L. Utchenko, a Soviet antiquity researcher, by a group of young Czechoslovak historians in plagiarism. The authors of this article do not set the task of bringing in verdict a of Utchenko’s guilty. The purpose of this study is to get closer to understanding the mechanisms of (not)resolving such conflicts, and in addition to try to understand the specifics of personal and business communications between Soviet and Czechoslovak scientists, to give a look how contacts were established between them within the framework of the formation of the intellectual field of “socialist science”. This episode is not just a curious incident from the history of scientific ties. It is indicative in that it demonstrates examples of the existence of disputes, discussions and conflicts in the scientific environment, and also outlines the facets of scientific ethics.

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 from the memoirs of F.A.Pisarkov (1917–1991), the author of the memoirs of the Great Patriotic War published in 2017, give an idea of the life of the population of Donbass in the rapidly changing economic and political situation in the country. The author's early childhood memories are connected with the famine of 1921 (then the family lived in the Orenburg province, since 1923 – in the Donbass). Then a description of life during the NEP period with an abundance of food and goods, which in the late 1920s ends with a general shortage and the introduction of bread cards. The situation stabilizes by the mid-1930s, when the cards were abolished, and the Sunday bazaars in the abundance of goods reminded the author of the bazaars of the mid-1920s. The memoirs contain many vivid sketches that characterize the life of the population and its attitude to state politics.

A fragment of the memoirs of O.V.Volobuev, Doctor of Historical Sciences (born in 1931), is dedicated to the events experienced by him and his family during the Great Patriotic War. The author verifies his own childhood impressions, referring to the memoirs and diaries of contemporaries who, like him, were in occupied Yalta at the end of 1941 – beginning of 1942. The following (until the summer of 1945) dramatic circumstances of life in the Ukrainian village of Novo-Ivanovka are also described. The war period is characterized by O.V.Volobuev as an important stage in personal development.