While analyzing the Shusha declaration between Azerbaijan and Turkey the author centers around the key spheres of cooperation, which are specified in the document. He draws a parallel between the bilateral dialogue of the states and the cooperation within the Turkic Council. The author concludes that for Azerbaijan and Turkey the Shusha declaration is a significant step towards each other. It is also suggested that the declaration may become a basis for the further cooperation of all Turkic states. The article reviews possible consequences and risks for Russia in the light of growing assertiveness of Turkish foreign policy.

Tsarevna Sophia Alekseevna (1657–1704) ruled Russia for seven years (1682–1689). A contemporary assured that "there had never been such a wise rule in the Russian state": the country was enriched, enlightened with sciences and decorated with justice. The tsarevna relied on the reforms of her enlightened brother Fyodor, which went also seven years (1676–1682). But between their reigns lay a powerful uprising of Streltsy and soldiers in Moscow from the spring to the autumn of 1682, which almost crushed the noble state. In the course of it, a revolt of supporters of the old faith nearly brought down the official Church. It seemed a miracle that the tsarevna was able to overcome all this and return the state to peaceful life. She protected the economy and developed Russian trade, forever took away Kiev from the Poles, and from Constantinople – the Orthodox Church of Little Russia, Poland and Lithuania.

This article is dedicated to the memory of Princess Daria Lieven, who is called the first Russian female diplomat. Not an official diplomat, but rather a secret or behind-the-scenes diplomat, still an incredibly skillful and outstanding one. Accompanying her husband, Khristofor Andreyevich Lieven, a Russian diplomat in Berlin and London, she, thanks to her natural feminine charm, refined manners and wit, very quickly found herself in the center of attention of representatives of high European society. While with the help of outstanding charisma, acute observation and a mascuiline, cold and judicious mind, she received important information about the politics of European powers. Darya Lieven, by her own admission, served her Russian fatherland faithfully.

The article examines the reflection of the theme of childhood in China at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries in the pages of the journal «Vestnik Evropy» as an attempt by contemporaries to understand the national character of the Chinese. Changes in the “children’s world” in connection with the process of Europeanization are noted. At the same time, it is emphasized that traditional state and social foundations and spiritual and moral guidelines were preserved during the reforms. This ensured the viability of the centuries-old model of family education, based on the inseparable unity of generations.

This article examines the development of the strategies of interaction between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Empire and the Constitutional-Democratic faction during the period of the III State Duma (1907–1912). The desire of the diplomatic staff to cooperate with the deputies, including the oppositional ones, is especially evident during these years. Whereby, the article focuses not only on their interaction during the formal work of the lower chamber of parliament, but also on informal practices of cooperation, that had become an important channel of communication between the government officials and the public representatives. Thus, during these years public opinion begins to play a significant role in shaping the course of foreign policy of the Russian Empire.

The article is devoted to informal practices of interaction between the leader of the Union of 17 оctober, A.I.Guchkov, and key political figures, Prime Minister P.A.Stolypin and Emperor Nicholas II. The article examines the process and results of informal interaction, in which Guchkov saw a way to strengthen his own political authority and the party's positions. Despite a number of successes achieved, the failure of Guchkov's tactics in 1910–1911 marked the beginning of the decline of cooperation between the government and the Octobrists.

The article examines the assessments of the political and social activities of the Chairman of the Russian Provisional Government and leader of the Union of Zemstvos Georgy Lvov, reflected in the press of the Russian Diaspora in the 1920–1930s, the formation of which was a consequence of the October Revolution and the Civil War. The sources of the article are such periodicals of the White émigré as «Poslednie novosti», «Russkaia gazeta», «Dvuglavyi orel», «Vysshii monarkhicheskii sovet», «Russkaia letopis'», «Volia Rossii» and memoirs of contemporaries of Prince Georgy Lvov. The article examines the assessments by representatives of the White émigré of the work of the Russian Zemstvos and Towns Relief Committee of Russian Citizens Abroad, which maintained continuity in relation to pre-revolutionary Russian zemstvo, the first chairman of which was Georgy Lvov.

The son of King Irakli II, Alexander, was the leader of those who opposed Georgia's entry into the Russian Empire for three decades. Historical sources from 1799-1829 indicate that he was a prominent participant in military and political events in Transcaucasia. However, the image of Tsarevich Alexander Iraklievich did not occupy the same place in the memory of the Georgian people as Salavat Yulaev did in Bashkiria, Imam Shamil did in the North Caucasus, Tadeusz Kosciuszko did in Poland, and Leo Michelin did in Finland. The article examines the issue of the formation of state (national) pantheons, composed of images of those people who, according to the consolidated opinion, played the most important roles in the struggle for freedom.

The article tells about the character and state deeds of Tsarevna Sophia Alekseyevna (1657–1704) and her “comrades”, as their closest colleagues and assistants were called in the 17th century. The starting point of the study was the historiographic legend about the love affair of the Tsarevna with the politician Prince V.V. Golitsyn (1643–1714) and the administrator F.L.Shaklovity (c. 1645–1689), told by Prince B.I.Kurakin in Paris in 1723–1727. The first part of the article told how the Tsarevna stopped the uprising of the best regiments of the new Russian army in the spring and summer of 1682 and suppressed the revolt of the Old Believers, achieving pacification by organizing dual power of state structures with the rebels. Here we will examine Sophia's measures to eliminate the rebellion and overcome its consequences by the compromise government (1682‒1689), in which Golitsyn and Shaklovity played the main role.

The article examines the most important processes in international relations and domestic politics of Petrine Russia – the process of legalizing Catholic church-building. It clarifies the chronology and circumstances of Catholics obtaining the legal right to make Church buildings in Russia, and studies the nature of the laws adopted in this field. Russian Catholics received permission to have permanent temples in the early of 18th century, and it was legally issued at least five times. At the same time, the Russian authorities, fearing increased interference by Catholic countries in the internal life of Russia, have not confirmed the freedom of Roman church-building by special legislative acts at the internal level. The author found out that the issue of the legal sanction of Catholic temple construction in Russia, 17-th and 18-th centuries, remained primarily a foreign policy issue.

This article attempts a biographical reconstruction of the artist's life with reference to his painting V. I. Lenin in Smolny (1930). I. I. Brodsky (1884–1939) and his work are presented against the backdrop of the terror of the 1930s, the ideological collapse of the fine arts, and the artist's personal success. The diaries of P. N. Filonov (1883–1941) make it possible to see I. I. Brodsky from an unusual perspective not only as the founder of the whole direction of the so-called socialist realism in the fine arts of the Soviet Union, but also as a man with his own thoughts and feelings

The article is devoted to the problems of the formation of cooperative associations in the USSR in the 1920s. With the end of the civil war, the objective need to restore and establish the activities of cooperation urgently required economic science to analyze the place and functions of cooperation in the national economy of the country. The discussions around the question are analyzed – does Soviet cooperation belong to the socialist type of enterprises or not? The place of cooperative property in the economic system of the Soviet state is analyzed, the tendency in the formation and development of the idea of less maturity of cooperative property compared with the state is considered.

It is known that the basis of the preparation of the leadership of Nazi Germany for the invasion of the Soviet Union was the development of the so-called “Eastern policy”, designed to differentiate the actions of the German military authorities and the civil administration in relation to Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Jews, and other ethnic groups who remained in the occupied territories. Although its main developer was Hitler himself, whose opus “Mein Kampf” served as the foundation of the Nazi ideology, the top leaders of the Third Reich, primarily Rosenberg, Goering and Himmler, who were part of the Fuhrer's inner circle, also had a significant influence on its formation. Secretly scheming against each other in the struggle for power, they also vied for the unspoken status of Hitler's first adviser in matters of “Eastern policy”.

Based on little-known and unknown to the general scientific community documentary complexes of the State Archive of the Russian Federation, as well as materials of regional archival institutions, the author highlights attempts to clarify the Russian-Ukrainian inter-republican border in 1928–1944. The author emphasizes that during this period, the actualization of the process of Russian-Ukrainian demarcation no longer had the same severity and intensity inherent in the first half of the 1920s and was exclusively peaceful in nature. Nevertheless, both republics once again decided to turn to economic and ethnographic factors as key arguments in order to adjust the line of the Russian-Ukrainian inter-republican border. At the same time, it should be recognized that the reasons for such changes were quite compelling. However, the result was only a minor adjustment in September 1944 of the border line in favor of the Ukrainian SSR on the border of the Rostov and Voroshilovgrad regions.

The autobiographical essay focuses on the fate of a child who lost his mother and was effectively adopted into the family of his grandmother and aunt. The narrative begins with the history of two families on the maternal and paternal lines, which had peasant roots and reached the level of the urban middle classes in post-reform Russia. The childhood of the grandson of the heads of these families is associated with his place of residence, the city of Yalta in the 1930s. This time of childhood was cut short by the war in 1941. The author recalls it in different aspects of life: the appearance of the city, the social environment, everyday life, etc. The essay pays attention to the religious issue and interethnic relations. An important factor in the child's formation was his entry into the world of books.