Based on the study of archival materials, the article examines the structure of personal expenses of the biggest landowners of the Russian Empire in 1890–1914s. Significant sums of money that remained in the hands of the Russian aristocracy after spending on the development of the economy in the estates, on the transfer to bank funds and mortgage payments, were mainly directed to personal needs and the maintenance of Palace residences. The budgets of the biggest landowners also included expenditure items for charitable purposes. Personal expenses in the period under review were constantly growing, but retained their traditional structure. The aristocracy sought a balance between productive expenditure and the cost of maintaining its social status. Economic prosperity on the eve of 1914 allowed the biggest landowners to keep the usual daily way of life and compete with the new industrial and financial classes of the Russian society in demonstrating wealth. As it may appear, the increase in personal expenses of biggest landowners, especially against the backdrop of the breakdown in social ties with the fringe gentry and partly with the lumpen nobility, attested, among other things, to the benefits and advantages that the emerging “industrial era” brought to aristocracy.

The article attempts to consider one of the pages of the history of the Russian Orthodox Church in the United States of America, namely the judicial confrontation between the American Exarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church and the autonomous American Metropolis for the right to own the St. Nicholas Cathedral in New York, that went on for more than 10 years (late 1940s – early 1960s). The author tried to consider and analyze the positions taken in that process by the religious figures, Soviet authorities and official authorities of the United States and civil society, judges of various instances and lawyers, Soviet, American and world media representing the parties in court, as well as to understand why New York Cathedral and the trial for many years remained the focus of global attention. The author places particular emphasis on the court files that have not previously been published and, first of all, on the materials from the Fund of the Council for Religious Affairs (F – P6991) of the State Archives of the Russian Federation, as well as on the materials from the US Reference Fund (F 129) of the Archives of Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation. Moreover, the author paid attention to the American interpretation of the laws defining relations between the religious organizations and civil authorities in the United States.

The aim of the research is the reconstruction of the creative biography of Igor Smolitch, as well as the assessment of the significance of his heritage to the Russian historical science. The very figure of Igor Smolitch whose biography appeared a mirror-image of complex and ambiguous events in the history of Russia in the beginning of the 20th century is as relevant to the topic of the article as its historiographical issues. I.K. Smolitch, a Russian and a German scholar, wrote a fundamental work devoted to the Synod period in the history of the Russian Church which was published in Russia many years after its publication in Germany and was highly appreciated To date, no comprehensive study of the works and views of I.K.Smolich has been carried out in Russian and foreign historiography.The historical method as well as the traditional methods of source study used in the present work allowed to define the scope of the sources and to evaluate their importance for the analysis. The most significant for the research was the systematic approach the essence of which was the understanding of Igor Smolitch’s creative heritage as a complicated system composed of an array of separate elements that are diversely interconnected and mutually dependent.

Libri (Consuetudines) Feudorum (Books (Customs) of Fees) is a compilation of Lombard feudal customs, which was formed in the process of ius commune reception from the 12th to the middle of the 13th centuries. The text was incorporated into the fifth “volume” of the medieval Corpus Iuris Civilis (Code of Justinian). The article is devoted to the LF history in the Kingdom of Castile and Leon in the initial period of ius commune (Roman Justinian and Reformed Canon Law) reception in the Iberian Peninsula (from the 13th to the 14th century). Based on a study of manuscript sources from Spanish collections, it is concluded that the external design and content of the manuscript MSS / 392 from the collection of the National Library in Madrid is related to the activities of royal legists involved in the reform of Castilian law, including the compilation and editing of “Seven Partid” (Siete Partidas) by Alfonso X Wise. That is evidenced by the structure of the codex, which consists of quires compiled by different scribes, from the character of the marginal inscriptions and some other criteria. In the National Library of Spain (Madrid) the manuscript MSS/392 is connected with some other manuscripts (MSS/825, MSS/577, MSS/13325, MSS/2139,MSS/9015 and some others) the appearance of which were also due to the activities of the legists.

In the present article, an attempt was made to demonstrate a contribution of Jewish Enlightenment (Haskalah) activists to the development of the concept of Jewish female education in Prussia in the second half of the 18th century.
The author of the paper considers the educational activity of the Haskalah brightest representatives – Moses Mendelsohn, David Friedländer, Naphtali Herz Wessely and Marcus Herz. The author focuses on the main project by Jewish enlighteners – the reform of traditional Jewish education.
Modernization of Jewish women‘s education was an integral part of Haskalah educational strategy. Based on a set of personal and publicistic sourses, the author makes an attempt to reconstruct Jewish enlighteners’ views on the issue of Jewish women’s education under the conditions of general secularization of the Prussian society and the intensive growth of JewishChristian communications in the second half of the 18th century.
She also investigates the origins of Haskalah movement in Prussia. The paper analyzes such issues as the social and legal status of Prussian Jews in the indicated span of time, the emergence of philosemitic discourse among Prussian intellectuals.
The work deals with particular instances of the implementation of the concept of Haskalah secular female education and with some consequences of female involvement in public sphere.

The article is devoted to the analysis of such historical source as the anti-English propaganda treatises created in France in the first half of the 15th century. Their emergence was caused by the political and event environment of that period – the resumed Hundred Years War, the civil war of Armagnacs and Bourguignon, the “occupation” of Normandy by the English, the split of the kingdom into several independent parts, the treaty of Troyes on the unification of England and France into the “dual monarchy”. The authors of the treatises are generally government employees: secretaries and notaries of the French kings, members of Parliaments (in Paris and Poitiers), the Chamber of Accounts in Bourges and other institutions of power. Being the conductors of “official” ideologies due to the positions held, they completely shared those ideas and convictions which were stated in their works – a circumstance which was rigidly taken into account when analyzing such a phenomenon as “propaganda”. The audience of polemists was presented by all sectors of society, and the treatises had a wide circulation. The proof of that conjecture, apart from the direct reference to the public to whom the treatises were addressed, is the language of those works, their style and form, the existence of stereotypic images. The treatises are considered as the instrument of propaganda in the context of book culture development in France of that period of time.

The article attempts to examine the attitude of Russian society to the heritage of the universal Prussian scientist, the great traveler Alexander von Humboldt. Based on the study of his biography, the present work shows that from his youth Humboldt sought to investigate the natural environment and did not fit the common Prussian trend – to make a career primarily in State service. Alexander von Humboldt got interested in the East after his journeys to South and North America, but managed to achieve his dreams only in 1829. It’s the Russian expedition of Alexander von Humboldt that became the factor of the distribution of his heritage within the scientific and educational space of Russia in the middle of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. An important achievement is the translation into Russian of the most essential works of the great scholar: “Pictures of Nature”, “Cosmos”. The article, on the basis of archival documents, discusses the dramatic fate of the Russian translation of Humboldt’s “Central Asia” written to the outcome of his trip to Russia. The revolutions of 1917 prevented the completion of the translation of that work, which, until now, is presented in only one volume in the Russian language.

Russian ethnic German writer Andreas Saks (1903–1983) played a big part in the development of the Volga German Autonomous Republic and also German culture in the 1920– 1930s. Before the Great Patriotic War, he headed the Republic’s Union of Soviet Writers but as the war broke out he was forced to move to Siberia together with other German habitants of the Republic. During the war and post-war years of Stalinism he went through repression, the expulsion from the Bolshevik party and the USSR Union of Writers, endured forced labor in the hardest physical and moral conditions. In the late 1950s during de-Stalinization and the “Thaw”, Andreas Saks was reinstated in the CPSU and the USSR Union of Writers. He was also allowed to move from the Krasnoyarskii Krai to the city of Astrakhan. The article covers his public and cultural activities during his first years back in Astrakhan (1964–1966). The hitherto unknown archival documents from the Astrakhan Writers’ Organization were used as a source for the article. Their analysis shows that Andreas Saks has always remained faithful to his socialist ideals. He pursued his own strategies for coping the psychological trauma inflicted upon him by Stalinist violations and repressions, and for consolidating his position as a Soviet writer.

The year 2019 marks the second centenary of the birth of the outstanding 19th century Russian archivist Nikolai Vasilyevich Kalachov (1819–1885). A historian, lawyer, academician, senator, initiator of the provincial archival commissions in Russia, an innovator in archival studies – this nobleman from the Saratov province was a tirelessly dedicated collector and а keeper of domestic archives. N.V. Kalachov was the most prominent founder of archiving science in this country. His abundant personal collection is kept in the Saratov Region State Archives. The appearance of those precious documents in Saratov was an outstanding event in the activity of the Saratov Archival Scientific Commission (SUAK, an abbreviation in Russian, Saratovskaya Uchenaya Arkhivnaya Komissiya). Kalachov was to introduce the Commission to the public, but his premature death prevented that from happening. Kalachov’s widow donated his personal archives to the Commission, and to the 25th anniversary of his death those materials were brought from Kalachov’s Estate in the Saratov region to SUAK. Grigori Grigorievich Dybov Jr. (1868–1920), a Saratov notary, played an important part in that scientific expedition. This article discusses the milestones in Kalachov’s biography, portraying him as an eminent public figure, it mentions some of his early works in the 1830s. The fragments of those documents – translations, diary entries and essays – are quoted for the first time.

The article presents an analysis of the book by V.G. Buhert, a famous Russian archivist. The book is devoted to the history of the formation and activities of the Land Surveying Chancery Archives (the Central Land Surveying Archives) which existed from 1768 to 1939, as well as to the Chancery’s structure and the subject matter of its documents. Starting with the second half of the 18th century, the Russian authorities began carrying out the land surveying procedure. As a result, valuable documentary material was accumulated in the Land Surveying Chancery – cartographic records (schemes, maps, collections of maps), text documents (land plat books, notes on economy issues), etc. At present, the documents are kept in the Russian State Archives for Ancient Acts.
It is pointed out that on the basis of detected documents the author of the book managed to restore some little-known information about the acquisition, registration and the description of archival sources, as well as about the fate and fortunes of the Archive’s workers.
The reader of the book gets to learn about the destinies and the activities of the researchers and ordinary workers of archives who laboured for the benefit of archives and for the development of archival science. Many of them contributed not only to the improvement of a concrete archives, but also to the progress of other Russian archives.
It is highlighted that the author worked out a specified method of detecting and exploring archival records. Successively using contemporary research methods, V.G. Buhert tackled the tasks of the systemically integral, historical and archival character.