The years of adolescence, youth and early youth of Prince  Alexander Nevsky are practically unknown or known only to a narrow circle  of historians. This topic is of considerable interest and has become the subject  of discussion at the regular XXIXth International Educational Christmas  Readings: “Alexander Nevsky: West and East, the historical memory of the  people.”  

Prince Alexander was a representative of the second generation of the  “Big Nest” baby birds – of Yuri Vsevolodovich, the Grand Duke of Vladimir[1] Suzdal. In his adolescence, Prince Alexander went through a difficult school  of government in Veliky Novgorod. Together with his elder brother Theodor,  he went through a difficult time of hunger, pestilence, disease and helped the  Novgorodians cope with the consequences of these hardships. After the untimely  death of Prince Theodore in June 1233, the young 15-year-old Prince began  to rule alone in Novgorod the Great, pursuing the policy of the Grand-Ducal  Vladimir-Suzdal dynasty in the North-West of the Russian land. In 1234, at the  age of 16, Prince Alexander received his first baptism of fire. During the Mongol[1] Tatar campaign to Europe in 1237 – 1242 and the crusading encroachment on  the lands of Pskov and Novgorod, he pursued the political course adopted by his  father Yaroslav Vsevolodovich, the Grand Duke.

This article raises the problem of the international activities of the  Cadet Party from 1906 to 1917. During this period, the Cadets were at the head  of the foreign policy activities of the State Duma from the first to the fourth  convocations. Firstly, the reason is that the cadets had a developed network  of personal and professional contacts with Western politicians and journalists;  secondly, they formulated their own vision of foreign policy, and were also  ideologically close to the political elite of England and France. The Cadet  Party used its international authority in two directions: on the one hand, this  increased the party’s authority within the Russian society; on the other hand, Russia was drawing closer to its allies in the Entente. In this rapprochement, it  is not so much the geopolitical aspect that is important as the establishment of  horizontal ties between the societies of these countries, which allows building  long-term friendly relations. This was the main feature of the activities of the  Cadets – they did not have government powers, their activities did not lead to  the conclusion of agreements, but it influenced public opinion both in Russia  and abroad.

The article is dedicated to the texts of the complaints of prisoners and their relatives about an unfair conviction during the NKVD “kulak” operation. They are stored in the investigative cases of the repressed Muscovites in the State Archives of the Russian Federation. The complaints have a three-part structure with the “true” (according to the complainants) motives of conviction (slander, actions of the investigator), arrest reasons and their relationship with each other, and the arguments proving human innocence. The author analyses the differences in the understanding of the reasons of repressions in the texts of the prisoners and their relatives. The convicts realized a clear connection between the social origin and the fact of arrest, their relatives did not consider that reason to be significant and believed that labor merits were more important than the origin. Their petitions are more biographical, the convicts themselves paid considerable attention to the explanation of each official charge. The relatives more often believed in the “mistakes” of the NKVD while conducting arrests, the prisoners explained the repression as a revenge of the colleagues or neighbors. The mass terror was only intuitively recognized by the complainants; they transferred the responsibility for it onto ordinary citizens – the “snitches” and investigators who fabricated the cases.

The article is devoted to the history of the existence of a unique historical source of personal origin – the “Diary of Prince D.M. Volkonsky”, created for more than thirty years by a representative of the Tula branch of the Volkonsky princes. The daily records allow us to trace the everyday life of a Russian aristocrat, the author’s subjective reaction to contemporary events, and are also a valuable source for studying the first third of the 19th century. Originally consisting of 42 notebooks, the “Diary” has not been fully preserved. Today, divided into parts, it is stored in three archives – the Archives of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Russian State Archives of Literature and Art, and the Department of Manuscripts of the Russian National Library. The article deals with the part of the source that was deposited in the Archives of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Fund 646 of the “Editorial Board of the journal ‘The Voice of the Past’” and covers the period from 1812 to 1834, with time gaps. Despite the fact that the text of the document was referred to by S.P. Melgunov and A.G. Tartakovsky, only the war period of 1812–1814 was introduced into scientific circulation, the most famous part of which was the publication: “The Russians at Danzig”. Its use in subsequent research makes it possible to supplement the existing sources of official origin and the sources of a memoir nature.

The article briefly shows the formation history and provides an overview of the library of A.A. Zimin, who was the famous scientist, one of the largest experts in the history of Russia in the Middle Ages. The library has been received recently by the Central State Archives of the Moscow Region. The library has been collected by A.A. Zimin for several decades eventually reflecting a wide range of his scientific interests, as well as hobbies. It accumulates the works of many prominent Russian historians, contains a unique collection of Russian chronicles and other documentary publications, which are valuable sources for studying various aspects of the history of Russia. There is a large number of works devoted to the most famous monument of Russian literature – “The Word about Igor’s Regiment”, in the study of the origin of which A.A. Zimin has been engaged for a long time formulating his point of view on this problem. There are also many publications of a bibliographic nature, works on source studies, historical geography, faleristics, diplomatics, and other auxiliary historical disciplines. Among the books related to the scientist’s personal hobbies, there are many works on the history of domestic and foreign cinema. The inscriptions on the books and the ex-librises are of considerable interest. Upon completion of the archival processing of the received collection, the researchers, when they turn to it, will be able to find answers to many questions that interest them.

The article considers the archival materials and the printed resources related to the major milestones of the professional biography of I.G. Lezhnev, the writer and editor of the “Russia” magazine. The ideological work of I.G. Lezhnev 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 this 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 has ended up in the closure of the “Russia” magazine and the case of deporting its editor I. G. Lezhnev “beyond the USSR” are revealed in the documents stored 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. Having researched the information in the documents of the I.G. Lezhnev fund in the Russian State Archives of Literature and Art, the author of the present article analyses the professional duties of I.G. Lezhnev – the staff member of the Trade Mission of the USSR in Berlin. The article provides an overview of the resources connected with I.G. Lezhnev’s return from Germany to the USSR, and of the essential role of his “extended membership application” for joining the Party, of his autobiographical and repenting “The Notes of a Contemporary” which in many ways became life-defining for his author; attention was also drawn to his work in the “Pravda” newspaper and other milestones of his life. For the first time, the documents from private collections have been perused – those detailed materials pertaining to the publication in the USSR of Lezhnev’s book “The Notes of a Contemporary”.

The article examines the history of collecting documentary and cultural heritage since 1917 and the participation of archives, museums and libraries in the creation of the Archival Fund of the country. In the 1920s and 1930s, archival institutions were established through the efforts of outstanding representatives of Russian culture. At the same period, the structure and activities of the museums created earlier in the Russian state in the 18th – 19th centuries were improved. The new museums that had been opened in various regions of Russia received rescued archival funds, collections and occasional papers. It is shown that during this period there was a discussion about the differentiation of the concepts of an “archive”, “library” and a “museum”. The present work reveals the difficulties in the interaction between museums, libraries and archives in the process of saving the cultural heritage of the state and arranging archival documents; the article also discusses the problems and complications in the formation of the State Archival Fund of the USSR. During this period, the development of normative and methodological documents regulating the main areas of work on the description and registration of records received by state repositories contributed to a more efficient use and publication of the documents stored in the state archives. It is noted that museums and libraries had problems connected with the description of the archival documents accepted for storage, with record keeping and the creation of the finding aids for them, as well as with the possibilities of effective use of the papers. The documents of the manuscript departments of museums and libraries have become part of the unified archival heritage of Russia and, together with the state archives, they now provide information resources for conducting various kinds of historical research.

In the article, the author examines the history of the creation of the Party Archives and its activities, carries out research on the impact of the changes in the socio-political, national and state structures of the country on the development of the Party Archives. The chronological framework covers the period from December 12, 1920, the date of the joint meeting of the Communists of the Kalmyk region, which elected the district committee of the RCP (b), up to the liquidation of the Party Archives of the reskom of the KASSR, associated with the adoption of Presidential Decree no. 169 of November 6, 1991 “On the activities of the CPSU and the CP of the RSFSR”, which announced the termination of the activities of the CPSU and the CP of the RSFSR on the territory of the country. The activities of the Party Archives since December 1943, a tragic date in the fate of the Kalmyk people – the liquidation of the Kalmyk ASSR and the deportation of the Kalmyk people to the eastern regions of the country until 1957, a significant date – the restoration of the autonomy of the Kalmyk people, have not been touched upon because on the territory of the liquidated republic, the regional committees of the CPSU and the Komsomol and a number of district committees have ceased to exist.

The article considers the documents related to the work of the Gzhel Ceramic School in the first half of the 1920s. This period became one of the defining stages of the development of art and industrial education on the territory of the distribution of the oldest folk art craft in the Moscow province. The Gzhel Ceramic School of the People’s Commissariat of Education, which began its activity in the autumn of 1918, was the successor of the drawing classes opened here in 1899 by the Imperial Stroganov Central Art and Industrial School. The analysis of the School’s work allows us to ascertain the leading role of the state in the formation of art and industrial education, a characteristic feature of the development of which in those years was the search for optimal organizational forms of training, aimed at mass training of master ceramists in combination with their general secondary education. In the first post-revolutionary years, the development of handicraft production in the places of the traditional existence of folk arts and crafts was an important area of activity for the Soviet republic. In the 1920s the products of folk crafts were one of the few goods produced in the RSFSR that were in demand abroad, which made it possible to consider it as a means of obtaining foreign currency. In addition, the development of crafts, which employed a significant number of workers in imperial Russia, seemed to be one of the ways to level the social tension associated with unemployment in the regions that had previously been distinguished by the relative prosperity of the residents. The article notes the role of the School’s management and the teaching staff in its educational, economic and awareness-raising activities.

The author of this article, historian-archivist, archival scientist and archaeographer Sergey Vasilievich Chirkov (1947–2020) passed away shortly before the scientific conference “Archives and War; Memory of the Past, and Historical and Documentary Heritage”. It was organized by the Department of History and Organization of Archives Administration of the Russian State University for the Humanities where he worked as an assistant professor for many years. Sergey Vasilievich was planning to participate in the conference with his report about the Great Patriotic War materials based on the private collections and funds of the Central State Archives of the Moscow region (CSAMR). Elena Alekseevna Chirkova, his widow, reworked his paper into a scientific article, which is presented in this journal. The article is devoted to the analysis of the documents from the personal fund of Lieutenant-General of Artillery Ivan Semenovich Strelbitsky. The fund contains unique historical sources which were presented to the Central State Archives of the Moscow region by M.M. Strelbitskaya, the widow of the General. The unique resources incorporate biographical materials, award documents for orders and certificates for medals received during the war, memoires, epistolary heritage. There is also a great number of photographs in the fund: mainly group photographs of soldiers and commanders of the units and subunits that General Strelbitsky served with.   

The article provides a review of the book “Front-line Astrakhan. Hospitals. Astrakhan, 2021”. The author of the article analyzes both the positive and the negative aspects of the work. It is worth emphasizing that the book is devoted to one of the promising subfields of research in the history of the Great Patriotic War – the everyday life of the front-line and of the military rear.

The publication is a comprehensive research of the activities of the hospitals located in Astrakhan and the Astrakhan region during the war. Compilers acquaint the reader with the main aspects of the daily occurrence of the medical personnel of the hospitals and the wounded soldiers and commanders of the Red Army. The reviewed work contains numerous memoirs of both the medical workers and residents of Astrakhan, and it allows the reader to plunge into the hard and heroic days of the hospitals.

Another important aspect, considered in the publication, is the patronage assistance provided to the hospitals by enterprises and ordinary citizens. It involved millions of people, especially children and adolescents. Corporate assistance played an important part in the psychological rehabilitation of the wounded Red Army soldiers. It is also necessary to note the illustrative material, the peer-reviewed works, which in fact represent additional sources for the research of the front-line and the military rear routine.

This research will be interesting to everyone who is keen on the history of the Great Patriotic War.

The review on the textbooks of the associate professor of the Ural State University S.I. Tsemenkova is devoted to moral and ethical problems: the textual coincidences in her textbooks with the works of her predecessors – scholars of the Moscow State Institute for History and Archives – Institute for History and Archives of the Russian State University for the Humanities (MGIAI – IAI RSUH). The proofs of Tsemenkova’s plagiarism are presented. There is a rhetorical question arising: can such a teacher be demanding with students if she herself is a plagiarist?

It is noted that the behavior of the members of the Department of Records Management, Archival Science and the History of Public Administration of the Ural State University is surprising in this situation. They have not carried out a scientific examination of S.I. Tsemenkova’s textbooks and recommended them for publication. In particular, the textbook “History of Russian Archives: the 20th – the beginning of the 21st centuries”, published in Yekaterinburg, at the Publishing House of the Ural University in 2019, is not only based on the monograph “History of the Fatherland and Archives” (M.: RSUH, 1994) by T.I. Khorkhordina, but entire pages were copied verbatim from her monograph.