The article considers an issue of changing the attitude of the Russian aristocracy to their urban possessions in St. Petersburg and Moscow in the context of the capitalist economy of 1890–1914. The study main attention is focused of the composition and value of that property, the nature of its use, the size and dynamics of the urban real estate income. The article analyzes the factors, primarily related to the favorable economic environment and the overall development of the industrial city space in the modern era, which contributed to a fairly successful adaptation of the large landowners from the aristocracy to the new economic realities. The research is based on the archival materials from the personal funds of the largest landowners of the Russian Empire that contain a detailed economic documentation on many urban possessions. The most important conclusions should be attributed primarily to the observed economic pragmatism of the aristocratic owners in relation to the housing complexes and urban areas. Along with spending heavily on their Palace residences in the capitals and maintaining their representative status, they started investing significant assets in other types of urban real estate – the apartment and commercial buildings. This allowed the aristocracy in the period between 1890 and 1914 to significantly increase their revenue from urban property, which, in terms of volume, ranked second after the income from agricultural estates. It can be stated that St. Petersburg and Moscow were then considered by the aristocracy not only as the centers of attraction due to the proximity of the Imperial Court and government institutions, but also as attractive objects for capital investment, the use of technical innovations and a comfortable private life.

The article was prepared with the framework of the contemporary historical studies of the Caucasus at the time of the region annexation and integration into the all-Russia Imperial space. The focus of the paper is on the key milestones of the military career as well as on the investigation initiatives of N.N. Zabudsky, the Major-General, who sets an example of a typical Caucasus military explorer of the 19th century. It reveals his role in the preparation of the military-statistical reviews of different Caucasus regions such as the review of the Stavropol Governorate (Gubernia) with its Caucasus Line Hinterland.

Basing  on  the  documents  kept  in  the  fund  of  the  Military-Research Committee  of  the  Russian  State  Military  Historical  Archives,  the  author investigates one of the first examples of preparing a historical research paper on the final stages of the Caucasus War – the paper to which Zabudsky was to  be  the  author.  She  characterizes  the  researcher  plans,  his  approach  to selecting materials as well as the reaction of the high command to his creative initiative.

The present work comes to the conclusion that such representatives of the Russian officer corps like Zabudskiy became active participants in the complex process of studying the Caucasus. Being under the influence of different circumstances, they shifted the focus of their research from checking up military statistics data to the regional history reconstruction attempts including the analysis of the events which they were participants to. The results of their scientific and practical investigations contributed to the formation of the empirical foundation for writing the official history of the Caucasus War and, in general, for the further development of the historical research on the Caucasus.

The purpose of the study is to show the role of friendly patronage in the promotion of fellow students in the Russian Empire at the beginning of the 20 th century. The career of Alexandr Vysokosov, a graduate of the Nikolaev Cavalry School, first a cornet of a dragoon regiment, then an official of Special Assignments in the Vladimir province and the Primorskii region is taken as an example.  Unpublished  documents  from  three  archives  were  used  as  sources. They are the attestation notebook and record of service – from the collection of  the  Russian  State  Military  Historical  Archive  (Moscow),  an  official  list – from the State Archive of the Vladimir Region (Vladimir), cases of recruitment and  dismissal –  from  the  Russian  State  Historical  Archive  of  the  Far  East (Vladivostok). The documents show that Vysokosov studied poorly and after graduation was unable to build either a military or a civilian career, and from 1903 to 1912 he was retired twice.

Thanks  to  the  help  of  a  classmate  and  friend  Vladimir  Lodyzhenskii,  in 1913  he  was  able  to  get  a  position  in  the  Primorsk  regional  administration. But in Vladivostok he was remembered only for his bribery, drunkenness and inappropriate behavior. And even the support of a friend – the vice governor – did not save him from the third dismissal, under Article 788 of the Charter on Service.

The article reveals the history of the formation, description, and use of the documentary systems preserved in France and Russia about the participation of Soviet people in the Resistance and the creation of their scientific and  reference  apparatus.  For  the  first  time,  historians  analyzed  Russian  and French  materials,  comparing  the  informative  value  of  the  French  and  Soviet documents  on  the  participation  of  Soviet  citizens  in  the  French  Resistance, evaluating their authenticity and reliability.

The  article  also  describes  the  integration  methodology  of  the  Resistance movement participants Database of the French Defense Ministry Archives and specifies  the  complexity  of  extracting  information  about  the  Soviet  citizens from  this  integrated  source.  Furthermore,  the  main  databases  created  by the Resistance Foundation are analyzed.

The authors demonstrate how these sources were used in the French and Russian historiography of the Resistance during various periods of Soviet history and the Franco-Russian relations. They also show the historian’s specific use of the Resistance movement participant’s memoirs. The authors provided the most relevant information about the training and learning material, about the  libraries,  museums,  and  archives  that  store  and  collect  these  documents; for the first time, recommendations are made – including the Russian-speaking researchers of the Second World War, as well as family history researchers – on how to work with their scientific and reference apparatus.

The article considers the archival materials and printed sources related to the major milestones of the professional biography of I. G. Lezhnev (1891–1955), the writer and editor of the “Russia” magazine. I. G. Lezhnev’s ideological  work  in  the  first  part  of  the  1920s  connected  with  the  issuing  of «Russia» –  the  magazine  which  belonged  to  the  «Smena  Vekh»  ideological project can be understood through his publications in that magazine, his letters to N.V. Ustryalov published by M. S. Agurskiy, as well as through the resources in the Russian archives. The sequence of events that ended up in the closure of the “Russia” magazine and in deporting its editor, I.G. Lezhnev, “beyond the boundaries of the USSR” are revealed in the documents kept in the funds of the Russian State Archives of the Social and Political History and the Central Archives of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation. Following the information provided by the documents of the I.G. Lezhnev’s fund in the Russian State Archives of Literature and Art, the author reviews the professional duties of I.G. Lezhnev – the staff member of the Trade Mission of the USSR in Berlin.

The  article  reviews  the  sources  describing  I.G.  Lezhnev’s  return  from Germany  to  the  USSR,  the  essential  role  of  his  ‘extended  membership application’  for  joining  the  Party,  his  autobiographical  and  repenting  “Notes of  a  Contemporary”  which  in  many  ways  defined  the  future  of  their  author; much attention is also drawn to his work in the ‘Pravda’ newspaper and other milestones of his life. The present paper for the first time, analyzed the documents from  the  private  collections,  connected  with  the  publication  of   Lezhnev’s “Notes of a Contemporary” in the USSR.

The article analyzes the role of Austrian and Hungarian researchers of the 19 th – 20 th centuries in studying the history of the Ottoman Empire. It is noted that the earliest publications of the Ottoman documents were made in the first half of the 19 th  century. The orientalists J. von Hammer-Purgstall, A. Geway and A. Vambery made a significant contribution to the search for and use of archival documents during this period.

In the first half of the 20 th century, the Turkish scientists, with the active assistance of several European Orientalists, such as I. Karachon, P. Wittek and L. Fekete, began to reveal the contents of some Ottoman archives and systematize the documents. As a result of the activities of these researchers, a new stage was set in the study of the Ottoman history, diplomacy, and paleography, as well as in the development of archives administration in Turkey.

The  author  concludes  that  the  publication  of  the  Ottoman  documents, which contain valuable information about the socio-economic and political life of all the peoples of the Empire, contributed to the further scientific interest and analysis of the Ottoman documents. The studies conducted by the AustroHungarian  scientists  revealed  that  the  archives  of  Turkey  contain  a  large number  of  valuable  materials  that  are  important  for  studies  in  the  history  of the Turkish people and the peoples of the Arab countries, the Balkans, Iran, the Caucasus and all the countries that were under the Ottoman rule.

The  publication  of  documentary  materials  reflects  the  history of the organization and conducting of the retreat of the units of Admiral A.V. Kolchak’s  Eastern  Front  and  the  evacuation  of  civilian  refugees  from  Omsk and  other  cities  in  Siberia  in  November  1919 –  January  1920.  The  article considers the issues of the technical condition and operation of the TRANSSiberian railway and, in particular, the functioning of the rolling stock. Those aspects for the history of the Civil War in the East of Russia to this day remain poorly studied. Evidence is provided on the state of the military, refugee and civil  trains,  and  about  the  situation  of  passengers.  Consistently  and  with the  involvement  of  documentary  material,  the  stages  of  the  preparation  and implementation of evacuation measures are described, and the reasons for the failure of planned decisions are analyzed. The article presents evidence on the consequences of full-scale disaster with the railway accident that became part of the Civil War history in Siberia. The materials from the State Archives of the Russian Federation that have not been widely used in scientific research and have not been published yet, as well as some previously published documentary evidence, were used. The study of that aspect of the Civil War history in Siberia allows to get an idea of not only the military, but also of the political importance that the TRANS-Siberian railway played in the absence of developed transport communications in the East of Russia.

The  article  is  a  kind  of  analytical  reminiscence  concerning Alexander  A.  Zimin,  an  outstanding  historian  whose  sphere  of  research  was medieval Rus’.

The  paper  combines  the  elements  of  personal  reminiscences  with  some features  of  historiographic  narration  concerning  Zimin’s  analysis  of  the Russian 15^th century feudal wars in its contrast with official Soviet historical thinking during Zimin’s life.

It deals with Zimin’s understanding of the relatively short period of Russian 15 th century feudal wars as one of the crucial periods of the civilizational as well as social, civil and cultural history of this country.

The author tries to reconstruct one of his last conversations with Alexander Zimin (summer 1978). According to prof. Zimin, the complicated collision of the two Russian socio-cultural archetypes – “landowners” and “peasants” – is one of the focal issues of Russian history as a whole.

The paper pays special attention to A.A. Zimin’s half-hidden interpretation of the whole story of the Russian intelligentsia from the Pre-Petrine as well as Post-Petrine times up till now.