The theme of political repressions occupies a prominent place in modern national and foreign historiography. By now, the scale of the phenomenon, the structure of the contingent of the people affected by repressions has been well studied, and the details of the political struggle connected with that issue in the “top” party leadership of the Soviet Union are becoming more and more fully revealed. The issue of the reasons and the direction of the repressive actions of the authorities was touched upon (primarily, in the works of Yu.N. Zhukov). However, there are still many “white spots” in the field. Moreover, the implementation of the corresponding state policy regarding the specific republics, territories, and regions of the USSR demands more in-depth study.

By the example of one of the regions of the Soviet Union, the author reveals the background of the political events of 1937, related to the eve (the first half) and the initial period of the campaign of mass repressions. The main attention in the research is paid to the issue of the degree of guilt (or total lack of one) of the Soviet citizens who were subjected to repressions. The author considers the ratio of political and non-political charges brought against the defendants by the members of the Bureau of the Kirov regional Committee of the CPSU(b) and shows that the decisions of that body all too often combined the real basis of personal cases (accusations of corruption, poor management of entrusted objects, etc.) with far-fetched political “add-ons”. The management system of the Kirov region in the period under review was characterized by a high degree of centralization. The key link of that management system was the Bureau of the regional Committee of the CPSU(b); its minutes of meetings characterized by information density and a sufficiently high degree of reliability laid the basis for the present research.

The article for the first time publishes a reply letter of 1966 from L.I. Brezhnev to W. Ulbricht – the letter found in the Federal Archives of Germany. This document of 12 pages is marked as “secret” in which the author generally agrees to Ulbricht ‘s views. Brezhnev frequently quotes Ulbricht’s letter to prove his views on the international situation, economic and social issues. He systemically characterizes the facts, mentioned in V. Ulbricht‘s letter to him, defines the tactics of the political parties of the FRG, the ideological tactics of imperialist countries. Brezhnev provides a body of evidence to prove the impossibility of the unification of the two Germanys at that historical point. There is an aspect in the letter when Brezhnev speaks on his personal behalf, and this allows us to give a personal colouring to the whole letter. Brezhnev is very interested in Ulbricht ‘s proposal to head the military union of the socialist countries with the purpose to strengthen it, and he does not hide it. The strengthening by L.I. Brezhnev of the Warsaw Pact bloc provides him with a chance to take over Kosygin A.N. by popularity and to become the real leader not only within the USSR, but also among all socialist and democratic countries. That happened in 1972 when the USSR signed a first ever treaty with the capitalist world on the intermediate and short-range nuclear missiles – the INF Treaty.

The article attempts to consider the features of the electoral struggle of the main political parties of Canada in 2018–2019. Basing on the material of national and foreign historiography, as well as the media materials, the author pursues a comparative historical analysis of the contest for power of the Liberal, New Democratic and Conservative parties exclusively by reformist means and methods. This fact, according to the author, is the most important feature of the socio-political development of Canada, where the two parties, on a national scale, have been succeeding each other in power for a long time. The author of the article comes to the conclusion that the election rhetoric of the Conservatives and the Liberals is influenced by their former popularity with the Canadian electorate, which associates these political forces with the stable development of the state, as well as the actions carried out by them earlier in the field of domestic and foreign policy of the country.

The author emphasizes that the real high rating of the Canadian liberals is due to their rather successful domestic policy, in particular, the signing of the USMCA agreement with the United States and Mexico. The author highlights that the NDP, despite the next line-up change of the leadership, is still unable to politically challenge the Liberals and the Conservatives, and to gain power on a national scale.

The aim of this paper is to determine the axiological categories, that existed in the mentality of the Russian monkhood of the 14^th – 15^th centuries.

The research is based on the philosophical reflection on values viewed as a means of environment comprehension; the study also rests on cultural studies and Dmitry S. Likhachiev’s conception of the world perception duality of a medieval man. The author of the article views that the used research approach allows to clarify the issue pertaining to the values of the Russian monkhood of the 14^th – 15^th centuries. In particular, the author attempts to revise the conventional opinion, accepted in modern historiography, which concerns the question about the basic axiological categories of the monkhood in medieval Rus’.

The analysis of a broad range of sources of the 14^th – 15^th centuries, referring to the Russian monastic tradition, revealed that such axiological categories as “obedience” and “disobedience” underlie the dichotomy of “the good and the evil”. These categories were respectively considered to be the fundamental virtue and the sin inside the world perception of a Russian medieval monk. The intermingling of various images found in the Russian hagiography and edifying literature explicate the two key meanings of monasticism, monastic asceticism, which are combined within the value of obedience - serving God and saving the soul, achieving eternal rest.

The article covers the content and significance of the documents published in the British multi-volume edition entitled “Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919– 1939. First Series”, which was released by the Foreign Office after World War II. Those documents reflect all the variety and complexity of international relations in the period between the two world wars. For survey, the author selected the documents of the Paris Peace Conference and of some other summits convened by the Entente’s leading nations – the documents that manifest Poland’s hostility to Soviet Russia in 1919–1920. The documents also reflect a number of interrelated factors accounting for that hostility and, finally, Poland’s aggression against Soviet Ukraine, Soviet Byelorussia and Soviet Russia. The same documents, as shown in the article, reveal the varied and variable approaches of the ruling circles in Great Britain, France and Italy to the resolution of the “the Russian issue” as well as to using Poland as a means of “controlling” the Bolshevik Russia and the “containment” of the defeated Germany. The apparent value of the documents in question, as the author concludes, requires a solid archaeographical and source study of the multivolume edition of the “Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919–1939. First Series”. This is bound to benefit the ongoing research of the relations between Russia and Poland during the Russian Civil War.

Libri (Consuetudines) Feudorum (Books (Customs) of Fees) is a compilation of Lombard feudal customs, which was formed (mainly at the University of Bologna) in the process of ius commune reception from the 12^th to the middle of the 13^th century. The text was incorporated into the fifth “volume” of the medieval Corpus Iuris Civilis. The article is devoted to the LF history in the Kingdom of Castile and Leon in the initial period of ius commune reception on the Iberian Peninsula (from the 13^th to the 14^th cen.). In the process of studying manuscript sources from Spanish collections (the National Library (Madrid), the Royal Library of the Monastery of St. Lawrence in Escorial, the Library of the chapter of the Cathedral of Toledo), most of them revealed characteristic marks indicating the use of manuscripts in the teaching of civil (property) law. However, despite the known facts of the similar use of codes containing the “Book of Feuds” in the Bologna and in a number of other medieval universities, there is no evidence of such practice at the universities of Castile and Leon: characteristic manuscripts are contained only in Italian manuscripts that appeared in Spain later than the 14^th century; the only manuscript of LF undoubtedly made in Castile (from the collection of the Capitular Library of Toledo) has no marginalia of the “university” type.

The article provides information on how the Moscow branch of the Archive of the USSR Academy of Sciences worked in 1942. The branch remained the only operating archival institution in the system of academic institutions and organizations, since the Archive of the USSR Academy of Sciences in Leningrad under the conditions of the city blockade could not fully carry out scientific and methodological management of archival affairs. Despite the limited number of employees, the department made every possible effort to search, ensure safety, recording, scientific and technical processing of documentary complexes and scientific and methodological management of the archives of institutions and organizations of the USSR Academy of Sciences, as well as to identify documents necessary for use in the defense purposes and restoration of the national economy. We must also pay tribute to the responsible executives of the USSR Academy of Sciences, who ensured the evacuation of most archives of academic institutions in the northern and southern regions of the country, which made it possible to safeguard their preservation. The dedicated work of the scientific archivist A.N. Prokofieva, who from October 1941 to April 1942 was engaged in academic archival issues, deserves special attention. The information presented will allow expanding the source study base on the history of academic archiving as an integral part of the history of archival affairs in the USSR during the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945.

This article deals with both the implicit and the explicit factors in the historiography that led in the 20th century to the failure or success of the National Archives model in the countries of the former colonies or provinces of the European empires (Morocco, Senegal, Vietnam, Lebanon, Poland, Estonia, Finland, Bulgaria) whose archival theory and methodology were at different levels of development.

On the material of some books and articles on the history of the national archives, scrutinising national laws and decrees and taking into account institutional reports, the author found several criteria that should necessarily be met to ensure the success when creating efficient national archives. The author argues that the effectiveness of the National Archives is set in the existence of the network of local institutions subordinate to it, of the organs that prepare and implement the methods and the national policy of archives as well as the regular and representative acquisition of the most important documents on national history and in their wider communication.

The most important criteria are the previous existence in the country of central or ministerial archives, the transfer of methodology and essential elements of theory as well as organizational skills from the metropolitan country to the local authorities and the creation during the years of independence or the previous existence during the colonial period of local skilled bodies of archivists.

The author attempts to find out if the international archival cooperation or the information, regulation, methodical and normative document exchanges prove to be useful and effective in order to create national archives and what the best frame to organize the latter is.

The article presents a review of the monograph by S. Sadovnikov “ ‘Voina uchastvuet vo mne...’. Comprehensive exploratory research as the basis for the reconstruction of the biographies of the participants in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945” (M., 2017). The author of the article analyzes the main provisions of the monograph, reveals its positive and negative sides. It should be noted that S. Sadovnikov is an active participant in the search movement and the peer-reviewed monograph incorporates his experience of the many years of working experience in the field of integrated exploratory research.

The book under review is devoted to a new promising area of studying the history of the Great Patriotic War – reconstruction of the front-line biography. The research presents both the theoretical aspects of the above line of study and the practical recommendations for the reconstruction of the biographies of the Red Army worriers. It should be noted that in his work S. Sadovnikov introduces the author’s algorithm for reconstructing the front-line biography, in which the analysis of archival documents and materials plays an important part.

Another topic covered in the monograph is the issue of memorialization in the history of the Great Patriotic War. Thereat, the role of modern information technologies in preserving the memory of the war is especially emphasized. In particular, the most promising and dynamically developing projects in this area are considered to be the following: the site of the OBD “Memorial”, the project “Podvig naroda (The Great Deed of the People)” and the portal “Pamyat’ naroda (The Memory of the People)”.

This work would be appealing to everyone who is interested in the history of the Great Patriotic War.

The article presents the analysis of a new collective monograph “History of Documents in Russia in Personalities and Destinies”, which is concerned with the development history of national personal documents of official origin The publication was prepared by joint efforts of experts in records management, state and administrative law from both Ulyanovsk State University and the Institute for History and Archives of the Russian State University for the Humanities. The authors recreated the historical outline of the national documents development basing on the sources found in the capital and regional archives of the Ulyanovsk Region. The book features the analysis of the archival sources on the basis of which the lives of the people from various classes of the Russian Empire, citizens of the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation are revealed. The information presented in the monograph is hardly known and it contributes significantly to the research in the history of documents in Russia. The scientific publication outlined the prospects for future research in the field of records management. Published to mark the 100 th anniversary of the Archival Service of the Ulyanovsk Region, the monograph became an important contribution to studies of the history, records management and archival science, jurisprudence, genealogy, civil law and deserves attention of the general public. The article analyzes the contents of the monograph. The originality of the compositional structure chosen by the authors, as well as the high educational and scientific value of the book are emphasized.