In august, 2020 it was held the Belarus presidential election, which resulted in the aggravation of relations between Minsk and Brussels. The article reviews the international consequences of the election in Belarus, as well as its impact on the bilateral Russia-Belarus relations. The role of mass media in the hybrid conflict between Belarus and the West are specified. The author touches upon the sanctions with noting that imposing restric tions against Minsk has accelerated the Union State building. It is drawn a conclusion that A.Lukashenko’s room for political manoeuvre has diminished, that is why Moscow is able to realize its strategic plans.

The article covered the issue of transferring the Crimean region of the RSFSR to the Ukrainian SSR in 1954. The author emphasizes that the question of the reasons for the change by the Soviet leadership of the status and jurisdiction of the Crimean peninsula and the revision of the inter-republican borders is still far from its unambiguous decision. In 2014, the sixty-year period of Crimea and Sevastopol staying within the Ukrainian SSR was ended. The events under study in the 21st century are the subject of heated scientific discussions and pseudo-scientific speculations, and some political forces in Ukraine are actively discussing the issue of the political status of Crimea in their rhetoric. The article is based on documents from the funds of Russian and Ukrainian archives, and various published materials.

The article is devoted to the little-studied aspects of the history of the Great Northern War – the two Braunschweig Congresses (1713–1714, 1719–1721), convened to draw up a peace treaty between the belligerent powers. The initiative belonged to Austria which sought through its undivided mediation to achieve a peace that would meet, above all, the longterm interests of the Holy Roman Empire. These attempts were bitterly opposed by England and France who also claimed the mediation role and had their own views about the post-war European order. The situation was aggravated by sharp contradictions within the camp of Sweden's opponents and their intention to deprive Peter I of the legal reward for his military victories. As a result, the “concert” approach to the problem of a peaceful settlement proposed by Emperor Charles VI was rejected in favor of a series of separate agreements with Stockholm.

This article is about the relations of the Decembrists Matvei and Sergei Murav’ev-Apostols with his sisters: Yelizaveta, Yelena, Ekaterina and Anna, as well as with the sisters' families. The special subject of the article is the early stage of Hippolyte Murav’ev-Apostol's biography, it covers his childhood years, period of growing up, his attitude to his elder brothers and father. The article analyzes the correspondence of Matvei, Serguei and Hippolyte Muravyov-Apostolovs, both published and preserved in the archives. The article makes it possible to clarify the biographical, «family» context of the lives, military service and revolutionary activities of the famous Decembrists.

A variety of chancelleries was an integral part of the bureaucratic system of the Russian Empire. They drew up all the official papers, the final fate of many projects depended on the actions of their officials. Both contemporaries and researchers perceived such an organization of office work as a necessary evil. However, the offices themselves were far from homogeneous in terms of the level of the institutions they served, and hence in their functions and personnel. A special place among them was occupied by the State Chancellery, which ensured the work of the highest legislative advisory body of the Russian Empire – the State Council. The article reveals the features of the work and the formation of the personnel of the State Chancellery, which ensured its compliance with the requirements imposed on it. The author comes to the conclusion that the professionalism of the officials who made up the office was able to partially compensate for the shortcomings of the system.

The article analyzes the program documents of one of the groups of the inner-party communist opposition, the group “Rabochaya Pravda” (“Worker’s Truth”). The official party propaganda declared its members followers of A. Bogdanov and A. Bogdanov was accused of involvement in drawing up the program documents of the group and in leading it, which he himself reasonably denied. This article analyzes the documents of “Rabochaya Pravda” primarily from the perspective of the reception and transformation of Bogdanov's ideas in them. The author of the article comes to the conclusion that despite the presence of terminological coincidences and ideological borrowings, the members of the group were not fully followers of A. A. Bogdanov. However, some of their views are close to his ideas.

This article examines Stalin's ideological campaign to establish “criticism and self-criticism” as the basis for the existence of the dictatorship of the proletariat in Soviet society. In practice, it became a campaign to tighten the disciplinary regime of the emerging totalitarian system with one-party rule. For the first time, Stalin used special methods of intimidation on a large scale in this campaign through ideological manipulation, driving the public consciousness into an irrational fear of any criticism of authority. For the first time the satirical magazine “Crocodile”, published in large circulation, is used as a historical source to study the transformation of the Soviet society of the New Economic Policy into the Soviet society of the Stalinism epoch.

The review article considers one of the ideas of A. V. Karavashkin's book “Power in Medieval Russia. Semantic levels of polemical texts” (2021) are conventional models that interpret the relationship between the ruler-tormentor and his victim. The opposition of the martyr to the pagan tormentor is expressed in denunciation, the attitude of the martyr to the Christian tyrant is expressed in meek acceptance of death. A. V. Karavashkin traces the evolution of these two models, which manifested itself, in particular, in endowing the Christian tyrant with the signs of an apostate and in portraying the victims as accusers of his crimes. The article shows that the two models are combined in the New Testament narrative about the murder of Stefan the First Martyr and that in reality the figure of the Christian tormentor correlates with pagan kings and apostates in the monuments of the Borisoglebsky cycle. It is traced how Prince Andrei Kurbsky implements the paradigm of exposing the tormentor in his messages to Ivan the Terrible.

The text is based on the author's memories of a personal meeting in the summer of 1971 with L. N. Termen – physicist, inventor, musician, intelligence officer. The author reveals some details of the conversation that took place then with the legendary personality, in whose biography there are still many “blank spots”.

The article is devoted to the study of the allied-partner relations of the USA and the countries of Western Europe during the Caribbean (in the terminology of representatives of a number of historical schools - the Cuban) crisis. The involvement of new sources made it possible to prove that since the summer of 1962 the West German secret services were aware of the deployment of Soviet missiles in Cuba and warned the government of the Federal Republic of Germany about the impending aggravation of relations between the superpowers. In addition, the author analyzed the features of support for the Americans from the UK and France. The research novelty of the article is also due to the material, which examines the struggle of Switzerland for the minimum possible support for Washington.

The article reviews the European Union members’ positions on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict resolution in 2020-2021. The EU’s commitment to the dialogue between Armenia and Azerbaijan under the mediation of the OSCE Minsk Group is considered as a cornerstone of the European policy in the region. The factors foreclosing an opportunity to develop a common European approach towards the conflict are analyzed. It is concluded that the consensus can not be achieved due to the fact that pro-Armenian and pro-Azerbaijani lobby groups resort to such leverages as diaspora activities or drawing attention to the bilateral dialogue with one of the Caucasian republics. The significance of the Turkish factor for the Nagorno-Karabakh problem is emphasized. Despite the fact that today the EU treats the question as marginal, the author notes that the European involvement in the post-conflict regulation on the South Caucasus may be viewed as an opportunity to maintain the EU’s political influence in the region.

The article examines the views of V. P. Vorontsov (1847–1918) on the situation of handicraft industry and the discussion that developed around this issue between narodniks and Marxists. The subject of the dispute was the degree of development of domestic capitalism, the prospects for preserving the small-scale way of life and its use in creating an alternative model of the economy.

The article is devoted to the views and emigrant activities of one of the North Caucasian leaders of the first third of the 20th century A. Tsalikov, a socialist, theorist and leader of the All-Russian Muslim Council (1917–1918), the Muslim Socialist Party, and his emigrant activities.

This article examines Stalin's ideological campaign to establish “criticism and self-criticism” as the basis for the existence of the dictatorship of the proletariat in Soviet society. In practice, it became a campaign to tighten the disciplinary regime of the emerging totalitarian system with one-party rule. For the first time, Stalin used special methods of intimidation on a large scale in this campaign through ideological manipulation, driving the public consciousness into an irrational fear of any criticism of authority. Official satire was required (with caution and fear of a possible mistake) to express what was said by the leader of the party as if “between the lines”. The Crocodile magazine not only illustrated the “self-criticism” campaign, but also tried to adapt it in its own way to the perception of the mass audience.

Using the example of the 383rd Rifle ("miner") division, the article examines the socio-psychological aspects of such phenomena as mass heroism and mass desertion demonstrated during the defense of Donbass in the autumn of 1941. The problem is analyzed in the context of the socio-economic and political state of the USSR, the Ukrainian SSR and the Donetsk region in the pre-war years and in the first months of the war, in-cluding the evacuation.

Another fragment of memoirs is devoted to the difficult post-war period, when the author studied at the Yalta Agricultural College. The text contains a number of everyday details, conveys the spirit and mood of those years in the perception of a young man, describes an industrial practice in one of the collective farms in the Sudak region. Much attention is paid to the people who influenced the formation of the author's personality. Some storylines are devoted to his friends and the difficult fate of his father. The author holds the idea that common intellectual interests contribute to both personal friendship and creative development in adolescence.

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.

The article analyzes the prerequisites and consequences of the signing of the Khasavyurt Agreements on August 31, 1996 between the Russian Federation and Chechen separatists. By the summer of 1996, the war in Chechnya had reached an impasse, Russian troops were unable to inflict a decisive defeat on the enemy and gradually lost their strategic initiative. The capture of Grozny by Chechen militants demonstrated the obvious weakness of the federal forces and forced the Russian authorities to make serious concessions. The signing of Agreements, which represented a well-known compromise, made it possible to end the fighting and “ freeze” the conflict. However, the parties were unable to create an effective mechanism for their implementation, which did not allow the conflict between the federal Center and the Chechen Republic to be finally resolved at that time.

Mobilizing society for the implementation of the project of “building communism”, the leadership of the USSR, headed by Khrushchev, sharply intensified the fight against the underground production of scarce consumer goods, as well as illegal buying and reselling of foreign currency, jewelry, antiques, imported clothes and shoes. The fate of the arrested organizers and participants in such a business, as well as the officials who “covered” it, was decided at trials that took place in the early 1960s. in Moscow and other cities. Since there were many Jews among the main defendants who were sentenced to death, there was a certainty in the West that these trials were anti-Semitic. However, this version contradicts the real facts, which is proved in this рaреr.

Lyubov Pisarkova and Anna Goryacheva publish a document from the Russian State Historical Archive (the fund of the Economic Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs), which contains information from the late 1880s on the number and class composition of urban vowels of 612 Russian cities where the City Regulations of 1870 were in effect. These data make it possible to study the composition of provincial and sheading city dumas at the regional level; compare the state of urban public administration in different provinces; get an idea of the level of economic development of Russian cities, taking into account their administrative status.

The article analyzes the views of V.P.Vorontsov (1847–1918) on the state of handicrafts in the 1870s–1880s. His attention was drawn to specific issues: handicraft production and cooperation, the sale of handicrafts, commercial and industrial capital, credit for artisans, their work at home, the quality of handicrafts, the connection of crafts with agriculture. The study of statistical data led Vorontsov to the conclusion about the stability of traditional forms of production to destructive capitalist tendencies.

The article analyzes the process of genesis of the left flank of the Russian party system in the spring – summer of 1917. The outbreak of the Russian Revolution completely destroyed the old system of political parties based on Duma activity and Duma elections. There were two tendencies in the development of the Russian Social democratic movement – towards consolidation, unification into a single party and towards a split, the formation of a number of independent parties. By the autumn of 1917, the Social Democrats, separating and uniting, took shape into two opposing all-Russian parties – the RSDLP (united) and the RSDLP (Bolsheviks), as well as the RSDLP (internationalists), which took an intermediate position between them, and a number of small organizations, mainly national.

This part of the memoirs is devoted to the time of studying the author at the historical faculty of the Crimean Pedagogical Institute. The essay considers the age composition and life orientation of provincial students, the preparation of historians for professional activities, life in the conditions of post-war residence in the hostel. Individual characteristics of teachers and students especially highlighted in the text are given. In the section “Strokes to portraits”, in particular, we are talking about two talented scientists – seismologist B. V. Kostrov and chemist E. A. Günner who, simultaneously with the author, were students of the Pedagogical Institute. Student everyday life is associated with reflection on sociopolitical life with the country.

This article examines the milestones in the consolidation of the role of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the interaction between the United States and the islamist organisation. The paper analyses key aspects of Washington's policy towards Cairo during the Arab Spring and after Hosni Mubarak's ouster. The authors consider the specifics of Egypt's domestic politics under Mohamed Morsi and American strategy. The article concludes pragmatic nature of Washington's actual cooperation with the Muslim Brotherhood.

The article continues the analysis of the transformation of the left flank of the Russian party system in the autumn of 1917. At that time, the former leaders of the political process – the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries – gradually lost their positions, and in October they were completely removed from power, and they were replaced by the Bolsheviks and left Social Revolutionaries. Attempts to create a broader government coalition ended in the failure of negotiations under Vikzhel, and the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly further deepened the split between the Socialists.

From the fund of the Special Commission to investigate the atrocities of the bolsheviks under the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces in the South of Russia, stored in the State Archive of the Russian Federation, the author selected folders devoted to the situation of religion and the Orthodox Church in the regions where Soviet power was held for some time in 1917–1919 before the arrival of the White Guards. These folders were examined for information about the murders of representatives of the Orthodox clergy: clergymen, psalmists, monks and novices. It is shown that according to the documents of the Commission a relatively small percentage of clergy died by violent death in these regions, which does not allow us to speak about the mass nature of the red terror against the clergy, much less about the «church genocide».

This part of the memories is a five–year accumulation of teaching experience in general educational institutions of various types: a seven-year school at a sanatorium orphanage, a city seven-year school, an evening school for working youth. The professional formation of a history teacher is described in connection with the life of a young man in the Khrushchev era: everyday life, episodes of moral choice, political events in the country (the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU, etc.). The essay characterizes the comrades and friends of the author, hjlcndtyybrb (E.Korolevsky et al.), Crimean writers and poets (A.Nikanorkin, S.Slavich, S.Suponitsky). Students of the school of working youth from an anti-tuberculosis boarding house for war veterans and from among "people with bizarre fates" are also mentioned.

This article is devoted to the analysis of the visit of Academician Mikhail Nikolaevitch Tikhomirov in Paris in the spring of 1957 in the context of the history of the formation of Soviet-French scientific relations during the Thaw. On the basis of archival sources, the circumstances of the invitation of the Soviet scientist are reconstructed. The great role in this process of Fernand Braudel and leading by him the VIth section of the Practical School of Higher Research is concluded. In this article the chronology of Tikhomirov’s visit was described, analyze his meetings with French scientists, as well as with Russian émigrés was made. The conclusion on the great symbolic significance of Tikhomirov’s visit is made. His lectures in French in the Sorbonne symbolized the overcoming of the gap in the sphere of personal and business contacts of historians, which actually disappeared in the late 1920s.

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 examines the key stages of developments in Egypt after the revolution of 2011 and after the military coup of 2013. It analyses the steps taken by M. Morsi's government, which led to a new wave of destabilisation in the country and the subsequent military coupled by A. F. al-Sisi. The authors examine US approaches to Cairo against the backdrop of the revolutionary events in the country, taking into account Egypt's geopolitical and strategic importance in the Middle East and B. Obama's officially declared commitment to democratic values.

The article is devoted to the problem of interaction of national movements of previously repressed peoples (Soviet Germans, Crimean Tatars, Meskhe-tian Turks) and the Soviet state in the second half of the 1960s – early 1980s. Particular attention is paid to the position of the republican ruling eth-nic elites (Kazakh, Ukrainian, Georgian) on the implementation of the requirements of national movements. It was their position that had a serious impact on the attitude of the Brezhnev leadership to the issue, did not allow satisfying the demands of the movements and carrying out a full-scale rehabilitation of these peoples.

The declined interest of the Soviet leadership in the church’s activities in the late 1940s led to the fact that the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) was compelled to demonstrate its own significance. The struggle for peace, in which the church took the international peace movement’s position, became one of the most important directions of the ROC activities. The article reviews the key aspects of the church’s participation in the struggle for peace on the basis of papers of the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate. The general distinctive features of the church’s rhetoric are being identified. It is made a conclusion about the transformation of the church’s approach toward the coverage of the international developments and the convergence of the church and state lines.

The article continues the analysis of the transformation of the left flank of the Russian party system in the spring of 1918. After the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly, the government bloc of Bolsheviks and left SRS took shape and the division among the Social Democrats deepened even more. The Bolsheviks increasingly opposed themselves to them, adopting the name of Communists. Their alliance with the left srs proved to be short-lived. The RCP(b) formed a one-party government.

The published excerpt from the diaries of N. D. Androsova, which cover the year 1919–1932, describes the internal experiences and external difficulties that a representative of the former intelligentsia, a young lady who survived requisition, seals, diseases, hunger and lack of money, had to face. The selected passage – the very beginning of the diaries-illustrates the deteriorating life in the capital in 1919. The author writes about prices, news, rumors that will be of interest to cultural scientists, historians of everyday life and specialists in gender studies.

This article examines one of Stalin's most important ideological campaigns, which allowed him to gain full power in the Bolshevik Party and to build a cult of personality in the country. In this struggle could not do without propaganda. The magazine “Crocodile” actively participated in the restructuring of Soviet society, accustomed to live under the conditions of the NEP, for the transition to a new state – a state of civil war in the construction of socialism in one country. “Opportunism” as a purely partisan concept expands to define the situation in a different way: anyone who resists the building of socialism, even passively, – by his human shortcomings – is an opportunist, any citizen and nonparty including. This semantic expansion of the notion of “opportunism” created the conditions for the formation of the terrorist power, it was the “ground” for the soon to come Big Terror.

Max Ringelmann at the beginning of the 20th century argued that threduction in productivity per individual rise when the number of people involved in a workgroup increase. However, in the last decade, accelerated technological development has had a strong impact on labor relations. The old relationship between employer and employees is outdated. Individual agreements are replaced by collective agreements. Based on the analysis of some indicators of the development of labor relations (the rate of labor productivity, collective bargaining coverage), it turns out how the “Ringelmann” effect is effective in a digital society.

Russia-West relations, including Germany as one the country’s closest counterparties, are of great scientific interest. The article focuses on the evolution of Russia’s perception in German doctrinal documents and in A. Merkel’s speeches. Germany-Russia ties are unstable, encompassing both positive and negative connotations. The task to assess Russia’s image in German official sources is relevant. The methodology includes quantitative and qualitative methods. Content-analysis and mediametric analysis were used to assess Germany’s “aggressiveness index” towards Russia. Comparison method was chosen to compare the 2006 and 2016 German White Papers, as well as to trace the evolution of the Chancellor’s speeches. In the conclusion the outcomes on the dependence of Russia’s image in the official strategies of Germany and its leader’s speeches on the situation on the global arena are presented.

It is complicated to evaluate the role of foreign specialists in Russian modernisation and the transfer of European knowledge and technologies into the country’s metallurgical and armament industries. For almost three centuries, these industries were marked by a symbiosis of state protectionism, private initiative, foreign entrepreneurship, and the interaction of heavy and light production. To understand the economic and acculturational processes involved, it is essential to compare the experience of industrial regions in Russia and Western Europe. Small independent craft workshops developed as alternatives and supplements to mass factory production. Analysing the interrelation of Russian and European experiences can clarify the role of foreign entrepreneurs and specialists in Russian heavy industry while also demonstrating the positive or negative role of the state.

The article deals with the main themes, subjects and images, that formed over the decades the problematics of the Balkan question in the interpretation of Russian pre-revolutionary journal satire. The traditions and novations in Russian satirical drawings that created the images of Turkey, it’s repressive politics in the Balkans and the images of Balkan peoples in their struggle for national liberation are analyzed on the historic material of two acute Balkan crises (1875–1878 and 1912–1913).

The article analyzes textbooks on World and Russian history written by Lev Mikhailovich Sukhotin (1879–1947) for children of Russian emigrants in Yugoslavia. Author developed traditions of educational literature, laid down by V.O.Klyuchevsky and P.G.Vinogradov. His textbooks were aimed at preserving cultural identity in the younger generation and at adapting them to conditions of emigration.

The important question of land ownership and economic activity of noblewomen in the Russian Empire in the post-reform period is considered for investigation of the economic aspects of the women’s history. The decades of the 1860s – 1890s were selected for study, because according to research by academician N.M.Druzhinin’s, this epoch was the time of “ the victory and strengthening of capitalism with simultaneous conservation of numerous feudal remnants”. The article considers several aspects of female noble land ownership in the Nizhnii Novgorod province such as the size of land property, the marital status of female landowners, the line of inheritance, the entrepreneurial activity of noblewomen. The research focuses on the comparison of decades of the 1860s and 1890s as periods, mostly provided with primary archival data.

The centenary of education and the thirtieth anniversary of the collapse of the USSR actualize the search for the causes of what happened. In recent years, a number of monographs and collections of documents have been published (listed in the list for publication by L.N.Lazareva –1, 3, 4, 6), in which the economic theme occupies an important place. The idea of the round table, held on April 22, 2022 at the Center for Socio-Political History (to which the participants of the event express their sincere gratitude), was for the authors of these publications to present their vision of the connection of economic processes at all stages of the history of the Soviet Union with the collapse of the state. The initiative of the round table belongs to the State Public Historical Library, the Department of Modern History of Russia of Moscow State Regional Pedagogical University, the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art. The texts are published in the author's edition. Responsible for the publication D.V.Maslov, L.N.Lazareva.

The article examines the views of a prominent right-wing monarchist figure, Comrade Chairman of the Russian People's Union named after Mikhail Archangel N.D.Obleukhov about the current state and ideal of the state structure of Russia, set out in the program article «Tsarist Autocracy as a bulwark of people's freedom and equality», published by him under the pseudonym P.Ukhtubuzhsky in three issues of the daily right-wing monarchical newspaper «Russian Banner» in December 1915. As a key feature of N.D.Obleukhov's article is determined its target audience – the broad strata of the population, to whom the author seeks to convey the ideals of the monarchical state system. It is noted that the ideal way of government in Russia N.D.Obleukhov characterizes as «a widely and harmoniously developed people's self-government with an autocratic Tsar at its head». As a specific feature of N.D.Oblekhov's views stands out his use of the concepts of «people's monarchy» and «monarchist populists», which clearly demonstrate the desire among some Russian monarchists in the pre-revolutionary period for broad popular self-government, combined with unlimited sole power.

The article is devoted to the return of an eminent smenovekhovets Nikolai Ustryalov from Harbin to his homeland, to the conditions of his life in Moscow and its cooperation with the Soviet press. It mainly focuses on the articles of N.V.Ustryalov, written on request of the editorial offices “Pravda” and “Izvestia” – about the constitution, Pushkin and Herzen. The author analyzes the subject matter of the publications, he reveals its’ problems and connection with the era being experienced, and he also notes Ustryalov’s desire to convey to the authorities and compatriots the ideas and values that he considered relevant. The conclusion is formulated about the importance of the last articles of N.V.Ustryalov as journalistic documents reflecting the lines of the era and the personality of the author.