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.