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”.