The article considers the hostilities in the Tula direction in October – November 1941 in the general context of the Moscow battle. Planning an operation to seize Moscow, the German command assigned the main role in the offensive to tank armies, which were supposed to break through the defenses of the Soviet troops on the strategic flanks, to encircle the Soviet capital. In the southern Tula direction the 2nd Panzer Army advanced, striving to occupy an important industrial center – Tula at a go. Having broken through the defenses of the Soviet 50^th Army, the enemy reached Tula at the end of October. All attempts to take the city by storm have failed, and the enemy decided to change the plan of action, which was finally thwarted by a counterattack by the troops of the Bryansk Front. In the second half of November 1941, the German command made a last attempt to take Moscow. The general concept of the operation remained the same – the encirclement of the city by tank armies. The 2nd Panzer Army was used to some tactical success in the Tula direction, but all attempts to develop it into an operational one were stopped by the Soviet troops. Thus, the successful defense of Tula became one of the factors in the disruption of the German plan to capture Moscow and prepared the conditions for the Red Army to launch a counteroffensive.

The article is the first attempt to consider the efforts of the CPSU committees and state institutions of Astrakhan region to organize the fight against cholera epidemic in July – September 1970. It is based on previously unknown documents from the State archives of Astrakhan region. The authors focus on the activities of emergency counter-epidemic commissions as provisional administrative bodies with emergency powers and on the implementation of quarantine measures. The quickly established system of emergency counter-epidemic commissions starting from the regional level to the village council was an efficient mechanism to successfully tackle all financial, logistic, administrative, medical and other issues concerning the fight against the cholera epidemic and the implementation of quarantine procedures. The progress and results of the fight against the epidemic revealed a high level of Soviet medicine and free healthcare system as well as the ability of government and party authorities to quickly mobilize, set up provisional emergency bodies and facilitate the implementation of their resolutions. The involvement of practically all the staff of regional institutions of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and units of the USSR Internal Troops and the resolute combat against quarantine violations resulted in the localization of the cholera outbreak and its fast elimination. A special role in overcoming the cholera epidemic was played by explanatory work among the population, which was carried out by the well-established in Soviet times the party and state apparatus of propaganda and agitation.

By the example of the “Christ and the woman the work of taken in adultery” (“Christus und die Ehebrecherin”) painting, the article considers the role of German painter Lucas Cranach the Elder and his workshop in spreading the Reformation ideas. The choice of that specific artwork stems from the painter’s frequent usage of that biblical plot and from many variations which have survived to the present day. The authors intend not only to compare the different periods of Cranach’s creative activity but also to reveal, with the help of the iconological method, the context and the main motives which influenced the transformation of his works. To characterize one of the most important factors – the religious context of the early Modern times – the authors refers to the quotations from the Lutheran interpretation of the biblical story about an adulteress, based on Martin Luther’s sermon of 1531. They also do not overlook the third-party sources of inspiration, that belong to the pre-Reformation period or have no connection with the Reformation at all. Therefore, the article tries to define the peculiarities of Cranach’s works of art and to find the intersection point between the well-established canons of art tradition and the visualization of the new protestant principle of the “sola gratia” (“only grace”).

The Soviet-German writer Andreas Saks (1903–1983) is known as an atheist, an activist of anti-religious propaganda in the 1930s carried out in the Republic of the Volga Germans, and as an author satirizing the religious superstitions of people and the vices of clerics. Applying the biographical approach of intellectual history the author of the article reconstructs A. Sack’s literary and social position on matters of church and religion. As sources for that the author uses Sack’s anti-religious humorous stories as well as his unpublished reviews of the works by Astrakhan novice writers where he expresses his views on the church, clerics and religiosity. There is a conclusion in the article that in those anti-religious works Andreas Saks remained tactful and delicate as he derided the religious superstitions of individual people, mostly, from an older generation who were baptized before the October revolution of 1917. Theomachism and the insulting the people’s religious feelings are not found in his works. It may reflect the Soviet Germans’ “cultural resistance” to the antireligious and anti-clerical campaigns waged by the communist authorities, to the closures of churches and repressions against the clerics in the 1930s. On the other hand, that reflects the writer’s understanding of man’s religiosity as “a complex existential issue” and his realization of big difficulties in “an ideological fight” against church and religion.

The article is based on the study of the biography of Khairi Gimadi (Gimadutdinov Khairutdin Gimadievich), the famous Tatar historian, Candidate of Sciences in History, Senior Researcher of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in the specialty of “History of Tataria”. He worked as Senior Researcher at The Institute of Language, Literature and History of the Kazan Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences (IYALI KFAN USSR), and later as Head of the History Sector. Kh. Gimadi’s scientific activity took place under a tightening ideological control over the activities of the national intelligentsia in the context of the famous August (1944) Resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. Contemporary researchers often refer to his works, especially when describing the events associated with the mentioned Resolution. But specialized works on the study of the biography of Kh. Gimadi still do not exist. The article presents the results of the scientific research related to the study of the biography of the Tatar historian, the most valuable of which were the memoirs of Kh. Gimadi, stored in the personal archive of his children. The sources contain the information about the parents, the native village of Khairutdin Gimadievich; the rural life is also described. The most part of the story is devoted to the period of famine in the Volga region and to the children homelessness in the 1920s. The materials of the article will be useful for regional and Russian historians studying the development of Russian science and the Soviet everyday life.

The article considers the background to the First All-Belorussian Conference of Archival Workers of May, 1924, and the part which was played in its convocation by historian-Slavicist Vladimir Ivanovich Pitcheta, the MGU professor and concurrently the Chief Inspector of the Central Archives of Russia, who was appointed President of Belarusian State University in the summer of 1921. The author carries out a comparative analysis of the issues discussed at the Russian and Belorussian archivists’ conferences and comes to the conclusion that they significantly coincide. At the same time, the paper indicates the issues that were debated at the Belarusian conference; those issues were of particular concern for the newly formed state archival service of Belorussia and were primarily organizational in nature. The most relevant among those were the issues related to the restitution to Belarus of its archives that were evacuated during the First World War to the Eastern regions and that were mainly kept in the archives of the RSFSR. The conference resolution on the subject contributed to the adoption by the USSR Central Executive Committee on September 18, 1925, of the regulation that stated the approval of the petitions of the Belorussian and Ukrainian supreme legislative bodies; the petitions concerned the restitution to those republics of the archival materials kept on the RSFSR territory and subject to the transfer to the places of their provenance. The participants of the conference agreed with the opinion of the BSSR Central Archives that it was not appropriate to establish the USSR Central Archival Administration since that move was not justified by any necessity and only posed a danger to the interests of Belarus. The membership of the conference, as well as the plurality of views on the main issues discussed, clearly distinguished that scientific forum of the Belorussian archivists from the Second Meeting of Archival Workers of Belarus – the meeting that took place three years later and that demonstrated the first stages in the developing of a new command and control system in the sphere of archives.

The article considers the goals and mechanism of the seizure of church valuables from the temples of the eastern counties of the Moscow province. It is noted that the propaganda campaign to raise funds for famine relief in the Volga region began long before the mass requisitions. The immediate removal of valuables from churches was preceded by a campaign to form public opinion in favor of the decision of the authorities. In addition, Patriarch Tikhon, whose authority was very high, called on believers to provide all possible assistance to the hungry. Fundraising immediately started in all parishes. In the donation lists, in addition to the money and precious metal items, there were awards and even 11 pounds of rye. However, despite the willingness of the clergy and parishioners, in response to Patriarch Tikhon’s call to help the hungry and to voluntarily hand over to the Pomgol the church utensils that are not used in everyday worship, the authorities organized the seizure of valuables through the use of force. The archival documents cited in the article indicate that, among other things, the objects necessary for worship services, as well as the elements of the decorations of the Gospels (corners, locks) were seized from churches, and that was perceived by believers as sacrilege. The material is based on the archival documents of the Central State Archives of Moscow and the Central State Archives of the Moscow region.

The October Revolution of 1917 in Russia had a great impact on art in general as well as on its practical aspects. The clothing, in particular, underwent a remarkable transformation. Due to shortages, on the one hand, and the change of ideals, on the other hand, the official “high fashion” initially had almost died out and later was reborn in the new forms that reflected the new requirements. Mass production, preference for simplicity and ease of manufacture to the detriment of the uniqueness and emphasized aesthetics – those were the main tasks in that area. And especially unexpected with such an approach can be considered the victory of the costume collection of Nadezhda Petrovna Lamanova’s dress collection at the “International Exhibition ofModern Decorative and Industrial Art” in 1925 in Paris was quite unexpected. Nadezhda Petrovna was a fashion designer of an aristocratic background and had formerly the status of the Emperor’s court supplier. She was not only able to change the style dramatically but also to create such an indigenous collection that even the sophisticated French panel of judges highly commended the national tint and the functionality of her work. The article gives an account of the life and creative activity of the fashion designer and we also reviews the documentary heritage of Nadezhda Petrovna Lamanova at the A.A. Bakhrushin State Central Theatre Museum.