The article considers the issue of designing the flag for the first Russian ship “Eagle/Oryol”, built by decree of Tsar Alexey Mikhailovich from 1667. The designing of that flag is in the context of the formation of new state symbols and visual representation of power at the end of the War with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. It took place in the late 1660s and early 1670s. At the period, a new version of the state coat of arms, a new coat of arms banner, and then new versions of the title coats of arms were created. An image of a double-headed eagle on the ship “Eagle” ensign (warship flag), perceived as the national flag of Russia, was the most important identifying feature of the ship’s ensign. The color scheme of the flag was not so important and it was determined in 1668. It consisted of three colors – red, white and blue. In historiography, the opinion took hold that the above first Russian flag consisted of four parts formed by a straight cross. However, such a version is not sufficiently confirmed by sources. On the contrary, it can be assumed that the flag of the ship “Eagle” was similar to the Dutch one. Whether they managed to sew the image of a double-headed eagle on its cloth is an open question.

The article deals with the bureaucratic procedures for the adoption of a new Statute on military service in Finland, the discussion of the text and the search for ways to issue the Statute by-passing the current legislation on the procedure for adopting laws in the Grand Duchy. The author focuses on roles of the Minister of War A.N. Kuropatkin and Nicholas II in the process. It is shown how the personal ambitions of representatives of the Russian bureaucracy influenced the preparation of the Statute. It is concluded that the inability to adopt the Statute in accordance with the current legal norms led to the publication of the Manifesto of 1899, which negatively affected the relations of the Russian Empire with Finland .Based on the analysis of correspondence between A.N. Kuropatkin and E.V. Frisch, it is shown what significance the Minister of War’s ignorance of legal issues had when adopting the Statute. E.V. Frisch’s attempts to return the Statute adoption process to the previous legal framework were not successful. It is considered how the position of Nicholas II accelerated the adoption of the Manifesto on February 3, 1899. A conclusion is made that the bureaucratic approach to solving the issue affected the development of the conflict with the Finnish Parliament.

The article considers the attitude of representatives of the top bureaucracy to the draft of the State Duma, developed by a Special Council chaired by the Minister of the Interior A.G. Bulygin in 1905. Particular attention is paid to the high officials assessments of the dignitaries of the place and role of the Duma in the system of state administration of the Russian Empire, the arguments that officials cited in favor of its convocation. It analyzes intellectual context of the emergence of the “bulyginskaya duma” (“Bulygin Duma”) project is analyzed, which largely determined the breadth of the actual, not declared powers of the people’s agency. The research is based on unpublished documents from the funds of state institutions, as well as materials from the personal funds of officials and public figures. The article shows that, despite the legislative nature of the Duma, it had to have significant powers. The electoral system, which was proposed and defended by the high officials, was originally modeled in such a way as to avoid the triumph of the estates principle. The monarch’s open opposition to the people’s agency was considered a politically short-sighted move, which indicated a limitation of his power. The results of the study allow considering the government policy in 1905 not as an untimely response to public demands, but as a conscious strategy for systemic political reforms.

World War I, as a total conflict, was accompanied by various manifestations of the barbarization of hostilities. One of the topical issues of the world confrontation is its impact on the ecology of the region of military conflict. Written on the basis of archival materials for the first time used in studying, the article traces the policy of the military leadership on the use of water resources during the war. Various plans and measures for flooding areas in the system of passive and active defense in different points of the theater of military operations are analyzed: in the defense of fortresses, construction of barriers on rivers to prevent their forcing, attempts to use river barriers for flooding of entire cities. The work studies the reasons for the successes and failures of such plans. In particular detail it does so in the context of the plan to flood the rivers of Polesye, which was the largest reservoir of water resources in the western borderlands of Russia in a strategic region of historical confrontation between Russia and its western neighbors. The article concludes that there was a serious disagreement between the military and civilian authorities on the issue of the detrimental effects of river flooding to the agriculture, population, and ecology of the area, including in the postwar perspective, which forced the military leadership to adopt a moderate defense plan for swamping the area. In the course of using water resources, the Russian army managed to avoid the barbarization of military actions, including flooding large contingents of the enemy, limiting itself to moderate measures of impact on the ecology of the region and remaining within the limits of humanity, as far as total war permitted.

The article is analyzing the organization of the off-hours time for employees in higher education institutions of Saratov in the 1920s. Based on original sources, the author reveals the main types of leisure of the teaching staff. In the period under review, a lot of the old, traditional still existed in the nonprofessional activities of lecturers, which, due to objective reasons of that time, underwent some changes. Since leisure remained an integral part of private life, it was impossible to completely abandon it, although in comparison with the pre-revolutionary period there was less and less space for it. The issues of the spiritual world, views on the surrounding reality, reflections on the life path of life and credo – all that faded into the background, the lecturers had to solve the acute issues of a half-starved existence, and sometimes to wage an actual struggle for survival. When comparing the leisure of scientists and the working class people, there is a difference in their quality content and in specific types of pastime. The main attention is focused on considering the factors that influenced changes in the forms of spending free time by scientists during the 1920s.
The article notes a strong influence the politics upon the non-academic life of the University person, stressing the deteriorating living conditions.

The article considers the reasons for foreign tours of the Moscow State Symphony Orchestra’s headed by V.B. Dudarova in the 1970s, the specifics of those tours, as well as their results both from the point of view of popularizing symphonic music and from the point of view of popularizing Soviet ideology abroad.
Among the most important reasons for the organization of the first foreign tours by the Moscow State Symphony Orchestra of V.B. Dudarova in the 1970s, one can mention the active participation of the orchestra in numerous Soviet festivals, competitions for young performers, the preparation and performance of new works by Soviet composers, the expansion of the repertoire of performed musical works, the work with foreign conductors, Also the participation of V.B. Dudarova as a guest conductor in foreign tours with other orchestras, the musical community positive reviews and reports on the work of the orchestra as well as increasing the status and prestige of the orchestra in the general range of symphony orchestras of the USSR.
The organization and conduct of foreign tours in the Polish People’s Republic and the GDR included the briefing, the development of a concert program, which provided for concerts in several major cities with a developed musical culture, as well as in the capitals of the countries selected for the foreign tour. In addition to the concerts themselves, the organization of the tour included a meeting of the Orchestra’s direction with the cultural intelligentsia of the People’s Republic of Poland and the GDR after each of the concerts, advertising concerts and the orchestra’s work in the media of the People’s Republic of Poland and the GDR, selling souvenirs and recordings of the orchestra. Thus, the concerts of the Moscow State Symphony Orchestra conducted by V.B. Dudarova were only a part, or rather one of the instruments, of the national program of Soviet propaganda and the maintenance of a favorable image of the USSR abroad.

.This article deals with an issue of the court-martial functioning in Mexican state of Yucatán in the middle of the 19^th century. The political violence, a very characteristic of the epoch, in Yucatán scaled up with a start of the ethno-social conflict between the government and predominantly Indian population of southeastern part of the state – the Caste War (1847–1901). For the juridical practices the constant political conflicts, domination of the Army and military men in public life meant broad simplification of judicial procedures, often executed by officer corps. One special place for the middle of the 19^th century was the fortress of Bacalar, which controlled the border with British dominions in Belize. It was one of the crucial points for importation of contraband into Yucatán peninsula, and if before 1847 it had been mostly civil goods, with the start of the Caste War, Belizean entrepreneurs actively participated in supply of rebels with armament and munitions. They were contrabandists of such kind who were captured on September 13 of 1849 in the border outpost in Chaac upon the Río Hondo.They left behind themselves the “Four Sisters” boat case – the document that shed light not only on the details of simplified court procedures in the 19^th century Mexico but also on various details of wartime daily life in that remote fortress.

This article focuses on the study of the characteristics of the sociocultural policy of the Mexican state in relation to the indigenous population in the 1910–1920s – a period of revolutionary transformations and the building of a “new type” society in Mexico. During the Mexican Revolution, the “Indian question”, along with the work and agrarian question, became a key point in the policy of the revolutionary governments. The importance of the popular education issue in Mexico in the first post-revolutionary years was determined by the fact that three quarters of the population did not have access to the state education system, as well as by the existence of numerous ethnosocial groups, territorially and culturally separated from each other and the rest of the country.
It should be emphasized that the 1910–1920s were marked by the genesis of numerous theories of the unification of Mexican society and the integration of the native population, as well as by the introduction of modern, experimental teaching methods (in particular, the rationalist and socialist school), the purpose of which was to translate into reality the Revolution ideals and build a new Mexican society.
The policy of integrating the native population of Mexico was carried out through numerous educational projects, which include the “cultural missions”, “Indigenous Student House”, “House of the People” and others.
Analysis of archival materials related to the preparation of the first «cultural missions», as well as the functioning of educational institutions designed to educate the indigenous student, made it possible to identify the characteristics of the socio-cultural integration of the rural population of Mexico during the above period.

The article assesses the influence of the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 on the emergence of ideological and political trends among the representatives of the Russian emigration. In the absence of any opportunity to influence the situation in which Russia found itself in 1917, the emigrants decided to focus on the analysis and study of the experience of the revolution and the Civil War, as well as to discuss possible options for the development of events and their impact on the future of the country. The author considers such trends of emigrant political thought as smenovehovstvo and eurasianism, the common idea of which was the realization of the need to accept the Bolshevik revolution and its results in order to preserve the unity and power of Russia. Special attention is paid to the collections of articles “Change of Milestones” and “Exodus to the East”, which marked the beginning of the emigrant ideologies under consideration, as well as to their authors, who attempted to comprehend the role of the Russian intelligentsia in the new political and economic conditions. In addition, the article examines such trends among representatives of Russian emigration as “returnism”, the cult of personality and the world revolution.
Studies of the history of eurasianism and smenovehovstvo allow to conduct a more in-depth study of the life and activities of the Russian Diaspora in the 1920s – 1930s, as well as to present the diversity of the processes of the ideological and political heritage of the Russian emigration of the first wave in Czechoslovakia.

The quasi apparent anti-historicity of Byzantine hagiography is manifested as in unconcretizing the described objects and phenomena and in the corresponding uncertainty of dating and attribution of the monuments themselves. At the same time the hagiographic narrative in its sense is aimed to resolve the task of historicization of an action that proves the uncommonness, sanctity, moral and spiritual greatness of the hero. It is characteristic that hagiographers like to stress their own participation in his deeds. The principle of “autopsy”, maintained in hagiography, helps to prove the reality of what is happening, even the most unusual, at first glance, miracles.
The attention of the Lives to the events of everyday life, private life, to the individual details of the usual daily ritual, often ignored by chronicles and monumental stories, is characteristic. Beyond the stereotypy of hagiographic images in the Lives, one can often catch portrait characteristics of representatives of completely different social strata, socio-psychological descriptions of such categories as holy fools, beggars, hermits, and other individuals or outsiders. The most peculiar in hagiography seems to be the function of time. Time is neither cyclic, as in histories and biographies of classical antiquity, nor linear as in medieval annals and historiography. The nature of temporal revelation is as iterative (the events of modern history are as if repetition or copy of the Biblical history) so sudden. The hagiographic space is full of features of teratomorphism, whether in the desert, the wilds or in the deserted mountains. Thus, the historical approach to hagiography is expressed indirectly, in accordance with the genre etiquette, the socio-psychological and historical conditions of medieval mentality. The historicity of hagiography seems to be characterized mainly as an “apocalyptical historicity” (from the Greek. “apocalypse” – revelation, discovery).

The city is an important center of social life. In different historical periods of time, the role of cities was changing, as well as the city image in the picture of the world and in the society system of values. The study of the city image is one of the urgent tasks of urban studies, as well as the entire humanitarian knowledge with the involvement of various historical sources. The article sets out a task of studying the city image using the example of textbooks for teaching literacy (Primers) as books that form the initial picture of the human world. To that end Karion Istomin’s illustrated Primer was chosen. It was first created in handwritten form to teach the children of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. In 1694 it was published at the Moscow Printing Yard. Boards for that all-engraved edition were made by the engraver Leonty Bunin. A Рrimer is a combination of verbal and visual information. For the first time in it an important feature became the illustrative series was important, which was supposed to help the student in mastering letters of the alphabet. Each page of the Primer consisted of pictures with captions and a poem. They interpreted words that began with or included the letter being studied. Among the illustrations by Leonty Bunin, images of the city and city buildings occupy a significant place.
As a result of the study of verbal and visual information about the city and the urban environment, the following images of the city are distinguished in the article: the city as a sacred space; the image of a city as a geographical marker (depicting parts of the world through the creation of different types of cities);image of city’s architecture (buildings for the residence of townspeople, churches, outbuildings, protective and the fortification structures); the city image as a symbol of the native land. It was important for the formation of a picture of the world among youths starting to learn to read and write. Through the visual-verbal series of the image of the city, children formed a certain perception of the urban environment, urban space – different and multifunctional.

The authors make an attempt to analyse on the basis of Hayden White’s theory of historical narrative historiosophical prerequisites for the formation of the cult of personality in the soviet biographies of V.I. Lenin published in 1924–1956. The basis of texts is a plot structure, implying, on the one hand, the existence of immutable laws of historical development, which humanity is forced to obey, and, on the other, a person who is able to learn them through the bitterness of defeats and put them at his service. The explanation of the facts of the historical narrative takes place by using two types of formal argument: Mechanism, which emphasizes the laws of historical development and the role of the masses in the historical process, and organicism, which gives high priority to V.I. Lenin himself and the party he created. The authors conclude that the articulation of the plot structure and types of formal argument embodied in the biographies becomes a prerequisite for the formation of the cult of personality. The latter implies the construction of an image of a person capable of transforming the reality, according to the concept of historical development that dominates in the party political historiography.

The article deals with the history of the creation and activity of the Documentalistics Commission which functioned between the 1960s and 1980s under the Scientific Council on the Complex Problem of Cybernetics. The Commission’s activities are related to the formation of documentalistics as an independent scientific discipline, its object is presented by large documentary systems, the use of new technologies in the processes of collecting, processing, searching, storing and using information. The author focuses on the transformation of the Commission’s research directions throughout the entire period of its existence. In the first years of the Commission’s work, the issues of the information classification and the use of new technological solutions in working with documents (punch cards and microphotoreproduction) were prevalent. The heyday of the Commission’s activities is associated with the work on the creation of the unified documentation systems and all-Union classifiers of information for the automated control systems. The interdisciplinary nature of the Commission’s activities influenced the subject of documentalistics and the organizational form of its existence. Despite the fact that by the end of the 1980s the Documentalistics Commission had virtually ceased to exist, documentalistics as a scientific direction had a huge impact on the development of records management and archival studies in Russia.