The editorial board is beginning to give its readers an introduction to a set of materials that in these times are exceptionally significant: a collective monograph that examines the construct of “Ukrainism.” The authors of the monograph assert that the construct of “Ukrainism” is a political, ideological, religious, and ultimately, a dark metaphysical project that the West is systematically developing in order to bring about Russia’s demise. This project has been underway in Ukraine for a long time; but over the past few years, it has become especially blatant, and its scale has grown to unprecedented proportions. Crimes against Ukraine’s Russian-speaking population are being committed that are no less brutal than those committed under Hitler. This monograph addresses such questions as: “How did this become possible?”, “What forces were involved in this process?”, and “What ideas has Ukrainian Nazism been cultivating over decades and centuries?” In this issue, you will find the beginning of the preface by S. E. Kurginyan, previously published in the first volume of the monograph Ukrainism: The Relevant International Game.

The article examines two political proposals addressed to the Soviet authorities in 1945. As examples of political adventurism and utopian scheming, these plans lacked concrete details and offered no tangible benefits to the USSR. Nevertheless, the mere fact that they were submitted to the Embassy of the USSR to France reflects both the shifting foreign policy image of the Soviet Union and the unique nature of 1945 as a transitional period, marked by the gradual formation of the Yalta-Potsdam system of international relations. The study concludes that the Soviet diplomacy employed varying response models to these proposals, which were shaped by the Soviet leadership’s foreign policy objectives in the early post-war era

The article traces an unusual life trajectory of Russian peasant Vassily Bourov who became a protégé of all-powerful Over-Procurator of the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church Konstantin Pobedonostsev and came as an Orthodox missionary to America. This relationship between an obscure psalm reader and one of the pillars of the Russian Empire serves as a prism into the life of Russian clergy in America and Pobedonostsev’s own role as a curator of the Aleutian and Alaskan diocese who played an active part in its activities. The Over-Procurator reveals his unexpected side of a caring benefactor of the Russian clergy in the United States.

The article examines the unenviable fate of the ranks of the Separate Corps of Gendarmes in the Grand Duchy of Finland. Few in number and without any administrative support in the region, the ranks of the Finnish Gendarme Administration became the bogeyman of the Finnish intelligentsia and people; subjected to attacks, they had no opportunity to defend their interests in court. Moreover, they often did not find support even among the ranks of the Russian administration and military officials. All this not only made it extremely difficult to carry out service, the results of which were very contradictory, but also served as a demonstration of the weakness of the Russian government.

The author of the article carried out the systematic analysis of the journals of this institution the highest authority for certain chronological periods (1737 and December 1740 ‒ November 1741) in order to establish quantitative data on the following attributes: thematic categories of Senate case files, state bodies-sources of the Senate agenda and state bodies-addressees of its outgoing documents. The values for these parameters allow us to clarify the true role of this higher institution in the governance of the empire. As a result of the study, the conclusions were reached that the structure of the Senate’s functioning during the indicated intervals was similar to the system of its activities, which was characteristic of one of the last years of Peter the Great’s reign (1723), and in some important respects at the period of the regency of Anna Leopoldovna, the “Governing” body even surpassed the indicators of that time.

This article presents a review of the diary entries of Kaluga physician Mikhail Vasilyevich Ustryalov (1892–1944), the younger brother of the renowned philosopher and one of the ideologists of the «Smena Vekh» movement Nikolai Vasilyevich Ustryalov (1890–1937). The entries cover the periods of the First Russian Revolution of 1905–1907, the First World War and the revolutionary events of 1917–1918, and the Great Patriotic War (from November 1941 to August 1943). The entries, made in Kaluga, Moscow, and on the Southwestern Front, reflect the author’s perception of major political events, everyday life in a provincial town, and the situation at the front in 1917. Of particular interest are the entries made in Kaluga during the Nazi occupation in 1941 and in the first months after the city’s liberation.

The article discusses the impressions of foreign students (representatives of China) studying at Lomonosov Moscow State University and MSU-PPI (Shenzhen, China) about A. S. Pushkin's fairy tales "The Tale of Tsar Saltan", "The Tale of the Priest and His Workman Balda", "The Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish" and "The Tale of the Golden Cockerel". Foreign students begin to study the work of the Russian poet at high school in their homeland. In summary, the students' reviews agree as follows: it is difficult to read fairy tales in the original version in Russian, it is also difficult to watch the animated version of the fairy tale, it is much easier for them to read the text translated into Chinese, especially since there are quite a lot of translation options.