In February 2024, at the Center for Socio-Political History (a branch of the State Public Historical Library of Russia) The international conference "New facets of current problems of modern history" was held. A high bar for scientific discussion was set by the conceptual report of V.V.Zhuravlev, PhD, Professor, laureate of the State Prize of the Russian Federation in the field of science and technology. The researcher's vision of the problems of "metamorphoses of Russian modernization", the causes of arrhythmia of social processes, the role and place of reforms and revolutions in it, etc., is of interest to a wide range of readers. Responsible for the publication of L.N.Lazareva.

The idea that Moscow is the Third Rome, the heir to spiritual culture and the modern embodiment of the Roman and Roman powers, is so established that we consider the translation of the imperium to be undeniable, embodied in the borrowing of the wedding ritual of Russian autocrats from the basileus of Constantinople from the end of the 15th century. Having studied the sources, we were convinced that Ivan III and Metropolitan Macarius, who established the

wedding ceremony of the great princes and kings, did not think about the Roman and Constantinople heritage. It developed from the second half of the 16th century, and in fact, Tsar Fyodor Alekseevich turned to the Roman coronation scenarios in 1676. He established the rite of the wedding of kings, which demonstrated the continuity of their power from the Orthodox autocrats of the Second Rome.

The article examines the anniversary historical narrative about the Decembrist revolt, presented on the pages of the scientific journals of the 1920s. An analysis of the topics of research and the nature of scientific discussions made it possible to see that historians turned to many unstudied subjects, but were unable to contrast the pre-revolutionary “legends” with a new coherent concept of Decembrism. The formation of the historical narrative was influenced by the coexistence of different generations of scientists. Marxist historians supported the ideologically correct theory of Pokrovsky, studied the Southern Society, the Society of the United Slavs and Chernigov Regiment revolt, and “bourgeois” researchers, who did not move away from “liberal concepts”, continued to focus on studying the Northern Society and the revolt on December 14th.

During the administrative-territorial reform of the second half of the XVIII century. There was a process of not only creating a large number of cities, but also creating with them the infrastructure necessary for the execution of cities assigned to him administrative functions (city reform). Reformers who implemented this task on the ground were everywhere faced with a lot of difficulties. The need to look for funds and buildings. Administrators were constantly looking for a compromise between software requirements and the opportunity at their disposal. However, the infrastructure created at that time formed the basis of a modern management system and often continues to fulfill these tasks today. The work on the basis of archival documents analyzed the process of implementing plans for the reform of the city on the example of Moscow.

Based on the study of open sources and published materials, the author made an attempt to explore a number of features of the organization of information and analytical work of the special services in the Donbass in the 1920s – 1930s. It is based on documents unknown to the scientific community, stored in archival institutions of Donbass, and various previously published materials by famous domestic researchers. The emphasis is placed on the fact that the Soviet leadership managed to rationally build, as a result of competent organization of a system of work with secret employees, the Cheka-GPU-NKVD bodies in the Donbass in the very first years of Soviet power established effective work to monitor the situation in the region. This made it possible to quickly take appropriate response measures in cases of threats to state security.

The period of national liberation struggle for the restoration of Serbian statehood of the 19th century. traditionally occupies a special place in the study of the history of Russian-Serbian relations. Аlthough the political and diplomatic relations between Russia and Serbia in the first half of the 19th century has good scientific ground thanks to extensive research by Yugoslav (Serbian) and Soviet (Russian) historians, a number of aspects that are crucial for understanding of the evolution of the development of bilater al relations require additional study. One of these periods was bilateral relations during the years of the First Serbian Uprising in 1804–1813, which was essential for the history of Serbia as well as for the entire Balkan Peninsula. Within the framework of this work the author aims to touch upon only some key aspects of Russian-Serbian relations at this stage, focusing on the activities of the mission of the first diplomatic agent – Konstantine Rodofinikin.

The article is devoted to the organization of a specialized scientific reading room of the Historical Library – the Cabinet of the East and its role in the history of Russian Orientalistics. The Cabinet of the East was founded by the largest scientists, on whose initiative and plan it was created simultaneously as an information center, a reading room and a club to unite the disunited orientalists of Moscow. The organization of such an integrated unit in the Moscow public library system was the first experience in this area. The article uses archival materials and photographs published for the first time.

The article is devoted to contacts and interaction between Professor Pérenyi József (1915–1981), the eminent Hungarian specialist in Russian History, and his Soviet colleagues. The evolution of his perception of official Soviet historiography: from fascination after World War II to attempts to overcome the boundaries of the official Soviet narrative in the 1960s and 1970s. are analyzed. In this article the contacts of J.Pérenyi with B.D.Grekov, A.L.Sidorov, M.N.Tikhomirov, T.M.Islamov are studied. The contacts with the A.V.Florovsky, a Russian émigré historian from Prague, were woven into this context.

The article deals with the policy of the Russian Federation towards Chechnya in 1994. The Russian-Chechen negotiations reached an impasse. Moscow categorically refused to recognize the independence of Chechnya, as D.Dudaev insisted. In the spring of 1994, the Kremlin actually refused to consider him the legitimate president of Chechnya. In the summer of 1994, taking advantage of the deepening internal political crisis in Chechnya, the Russian leadership decided to use the policy of the "half-power option". Its essence was the overthrow of Dudaev by the forces of the Chechen opposition, which relied on the help of Russia. In November 1994 this policy has completely failed. The Russian-Chechen negotiations in early December 1994 ended in failure, after which it was decided to conduct a full-scale military operation against Dudayev.

The article examines the participation of the Russian Orthodox Church in the Soviet ideological campaigns in 1945-1953. The differences between the church’s approach towards the ideological campaigns in domestic and foreign policy are being identified. It is made a conclusion that in domestic dimension the Russian Orthodox Church participates in mobilization campaigns, while in foreign dimension it was involved both in mobilization and repressive campaigns. The author analyzes the distinctions between the Orthodox and the Soviet lines in such issues, as the construction of communism, the concept of the Soviet patriotism, Stalin’s cult of personality, the antagonization of West and the struggle against colonialism.

The image of Grand Duke Alexander Yaroslavich Nevsky (1221–1263) was formed and approved in modern society by literature and, in part, by art. Scientific data allow us to judge that this image differs from historical reality in many aspects, and first of all it concerns the prince's confrontation with the West. But do comprehensive scientific studies make it possible to present the true pages of the prince's life and the features of his personality as vividly as it is done in literature and art? The article positively answers this question by recreating the key scenes of Alexander's struggle with the Crusaders in the light of modern scientific knowledge.

The publication of a documentary publication devoted to the cultural policy of late Stalinism will summarize the long-term research work led by Professor V.V.Zhuravlev, Doctor of Historical Sciences, on the publication of documents, characterizing the set of key features of the “Stalinist” catching-up modernization. In the collection, “Stalin's economic Legacy: plans and discussions. 1947–1953” The compilers included sources characterizing the search for a theoretical basis for a long-term development strategy of the country. At the next stage – in the collection “Social policy in the USSR in the postwar years. 1947–1953” – the “Stalinist" model was considered in the context of the post-war reconstruction of the country. The task of the new stage was to identify the features of post-war cultural policy through the prism of its conceptual foundations and practical implementation mechanisms.

The article analyzes the perception of the Decembrists in Russia in the 2000s: in media publications, speeches of politicians and public figures. It describes the events and celebrations associated with the Decembrists that took place during this period. It is noted which politicians and public figures associated themselves with the Decembrists and in connection with what such associations were made. It is concluded that by the early 2010s the preconditions for the formation of a new ideology had already appeared, according to which the notion of “Decembrist” acquires a negative coloring.

The economic and educational activities and scientific views of the outstanding agrarian of the late XIX – early XX century I.N.Klingen are considered. The article notes the significant contribution of I.N.Klingen to the synthesis of advanced agricultural science and agricultural practice in Russia, as well as to the development of agricultural education and domestic agronomy in general.

The article is devoted to the ideological reasons for the creation of projects and the construction of communal houses in the 1920s in a Soviet country. The article describes how the predecessors of scientific communism – Campanella, Thomas More, Fourier and others – imagined the city-commune. The article analyzes the architectural and planning ideas of the first years of Soviet power, the architects' rationale for the advantages of collective organization of settlement and life, and explores attempts to create new types of housing and public institutions, taking into account the specific historical conditions and tasks facing the country.

The role of S. S. Uvarov, the president of the Academy of Sciences, and later the Minister of Public Education, in the process of creating and at the initial stage of the work of the St. Petersburg Archeographic Commission is characterized in this article. The concept of “Orthodoxy, autocracy, nationality” by Sergey Semenovich Uvarov had a significant impact on the structure of the commission and its activities. In many ways, the Archaeographic expedition of P. M. Stroev and the publication of the results of its work, and then the regular Commission for the publication of Russian sources, are the result of Uvarov's patronage. On the one hand, Uvarov directly interfered in the organizational and scientific activities of the Commission. On the other hand, this intervention guaranteed the constant, systematic and regulated publication of sources on Russian history.

This article is about human rights journalism of the Perestroika period is given on the example of the samizdat magazine Glasnost by S.I.Grigoryants, published in 1987–1989. The publication and the attitude of the Soviet government towards it are compared with the underground collections of human rights defenders that were published in the 1960s – 1980s and were actively persecuted by the KGB. The purpose of the article is to trace whether the beginning of perestroika and the announcement of glasnost influenced the human rights journalism of the last years of Soviet rule.

This article examines jazz journalism in the modern media space, its main sources, development and forms. The main objective of the work is to identify the characteristic features of modern jazz journalism and determine its specificity.