Using the example of the publication history of the “Karandash” magazine in the Saratov province (1906), the article considers the historical circumstances of the functioning of the satirical press in the administrative and legal space of the Russian province during the period of the first revolution. The paper analyzes the structure and content features of the satirical magazine, the publication of which was subordinated to the tasks of radical political agitation. Based on the newly identified, previously unpublished archival files from three collections of the State Archives of the Saratov Region, the vicissitudes of the “Heinrich case” (i. e., the trials that took place in 1907–1909 against K.E. Heinrich, the publisher of the “Karandash” magazine) were reconstructed.

The text of the article includes a commented publication of the fragments of the archival documents (the official correspondence of the press inspector, the prosecutor of the Saratov Judicial Chamber, of the Saratov governor; the judicial procedural materials of the Saratov Judicial Chamber). The records from the “Heinrich case” show the characteristic phenomena and the processes in the Russian society and the government institutions of the early 20th century: the clash of different systems of political and legal values; inconsistency between the government agencies, the censorship and the judicial system; a combination of lenient and acquittal court sentences with harsh administrative penalties; the general ineffectiveness of the administrative and legal measures against radical political agitation in the country.

The Russian Legion (1917–1918) was a unit of the disbanded Russian Special Brigades at the Western Front. The interest in that military unit has never faded since its creation. The Russian historiography of the Russian Legion is based on the Russian documents and the personal reminiscences of the participants. The results of the research carried out by the French scholars have not been translated into Russian.

The present studies the organization, history and the combat experience of the Russian Legion at the Western Front. The documentary sources are kept in the Historical Service Archives of the French Defense Ministry, located in the Château de Vincennes, Paris. Those documents have become available to researchers since 2014.

We introduce the sources of the General Staff of France into scientific circulation and raise the following questions in our study: the assessment by the French command of the combat qualities of Russian soldiers and officers; the differences between the Russian Legion and the Foreign Legion; the signing of the service contracts by Russian soldiers and officers after the Brest Peace Treaty between Russia and Germany; the post-war and post-revolutionary fate of Russian soldiers.

The publication is intended to attract all those who are not indifferent to the issue of the Russian Legion. The aim is to create a list of the participants of that unit.

The article considers the reliefs with the Roman legionnaires’ images on the Column of Marcus Aurelius as a source on the Roman weaponry and military tactics of the last third of the 2nd century AD. Traditionally in historiography, those images are not considered sufficiently representative due to the large number of the borrowings from other monuments of the Roman triumphal art. By analyzing the images of various legionary shields on the Marcus Aurelius Column and comparing them with other monuments of the Roman art of the last third of the 2^nd – early 3^d centuries AD, there were similarities found between them in representing the elements of the Roman military equipment. The Column images prove the use by the legionnaires of at least four types of shields with various shapes. It is also assumed that Roman soldiers could have used the shields of different shapes and types even within the same formation or the formation without any reference to a particular line of formation construction. In general, the reliefs of the column make it possible to challenge the conventional wisdom of the uniform armament of the Roman legions during the period of the Principate. Thus, the reliefs of the Column of Marcus Aurelius can be considered a valuable source on the military affairs of the early Empire era

This article examines the issue of religion in relation to the issue of public education in the Kyrgyz Inner Horde in the second half of the 19^th century. The inevitable introduction of Russian schools, which embodied the civic model of education, led to a competition between Islamic and civic education. Islamic education in the Kazakh steppe was initially based on the activities of Tatar mullahs. By the example of the document from the F.K. Girs’s Commission of 1873 and the information reflected in the publications by pre-revolutionary researchers A.E. Alektorov and A.N. Kharusina on school education and religious life in the Inner Horde, it is shown that, over time, the Tatar influence was recognized by the imperial authorities as undesirable and contrary to the goals of developing the civic-mindedness among the Kazakhs, to the unity with the Russian ethnic group and to the building of a united civil nation. In that regard, the projects of certain restrictive measures against the “Tatar education”, as well as protectionism in the trade sphere, began to be put forward. At the same time, two contradictory trends seem to be visible in the historical development of the Kyrgyz Inner Horde: on the one hand, it was the initiation of European education resulting in the construction of the schools with Russian language teaching, and, on the other hand, there was an increased introduction of Islam into the daily life of Kazakhs by Dzhanger Khan. The field of education needed constant care from the state and local authorities in order to carry out an effective acculturation policy among the nomadic aliens. One of the measures was seen in the increase of government schools practicing teaching in Russian with the inclusion in the curriculum of the native Kazakh language and the Mohammedan teachings.

The peoples of Central Asia experienced complex ethnocultural processes throughout their centuries-old history. Such a situation is observed in all Turkic tribes including the Katagans, who make up a part of the the Uzbek people. Analyzing historical sources, ethnographic, archeological, toponymic, linguistic, anthropological materials and field data, one can see that the Katagans were one of the most ancient Uzbek tribes. For a long time, the Katagans and their clans lived in the vast areas from the banks of the Amudarya River to Lake Baykal. That is why in historical sources they are recorded as Mongolian, Kazakh, Kyrgyz or Uzbek tribes. In fact, the Katagan tribe was formed over the course of many centuries due to the mingling of Turkic tribes living in Southern Siberia, Mongolia, Central Asia and Eastern Turkestan. And it indicates that the history of the Katagans is closely connected with the history of other Turkic peoples. At one time, world scientists expressed diverging views regarding the origin of the Kataghan genus. In different historical periods, the Katagan ancestors were called Sattagids, Bhattavaryans, Itagakans, Khatakins, Khuttalans and Khalajs. When the tribal union of the Katagans was formed, many tribes of the Bukhara Khanate joined it. The local Turkic tribes living in the Amudarya and Syrdarya basins played an important role in the formation of Uzbek Katagans. According to the tradition among the nomadic peoples, the Turkic population was called by the name of the people to which their ancestors belonged. The article provides information on the origin, location, and classification of Katagans.

The article considers as historical sources Soviet feature films of the 1960s – “As Long as Man Lives” (1963), “On Tomorrow’s Street” (1965). It deals with some aspects of the filmmaking, thereby treating feature films as full-fledged historical source for studying not only the history of cinema, but also the history of science and technology. To reconstruct the plan and the actual process of filming, the authors used the documents of fund No. 2944 from the Russian State Archives of Literature and Art (fund of the State Committee of the USSR Council of Ministers for Cinematography {Goskino SSSR} of the period from 1963 to 1992. The archival materials helped to vividly show how the USSR Goskino initiated and controlled the process of creating feature films. The most informative in that respect were the production reports and the correspondence with the management of film studios and art councils, etc. Methodologically, the article is based on the concept of the cinema-photo-phono-documents elaborated by V.M. Magidov. According to the above concept, Soviet feature films are considered to be an integral part of the cinema-photo-phono-document identity, in which the cinema, through visualization, content of the film frame and the montage specifics brings to the screen items of machinery, objects of industrial production and attributes of industrial development. By transferring the visual symbols into the field of historical research, there appears the need to interpret the director’s decisions and assess the authenticity of the depicted events.

The article is the review of the documents from the Fund of the RSFSR State Repository of Valuables which is stored in the Russian State Archives of Economics. The Fund consists of two inventories: the “documentary materials” and the “employees personal files” (509 files for the years 1920–1924), including the order copies of the RSFSR People’s Commissariat of Finance, the orders of the head of the Gokhran, the minutes of the personnel committees meetings, the information about the valuables, the correspondence with the People’s commissariats and institutions, the newspaper clippings and other documents. The article analyzes the keeping integrity and information potential of those archival documents, the degree of their introduction into scientific circulation, the history and completeness of the fund. Of particular interest among the fund’s documents are the registration records – the financial inventories and the valuables’ statements, demonstrating the volume and composition of the treasures received by the Gokhran. The fund documents make it possible to trace the change in the Gokhran’s registration records in the early 1920s. And the employees’ personal files allow studying the personnel composition of the institution: the origin, education, work experience, party membership. Also, the fund managed to keep the documents on the history of the Moscow loan treasury; there is some information on the prices of precious metals and the sale of the Gokhran valuables. The documents under discussion have partially been put into scientific circulation, and yet they require additional research.

The article analyzes the documents on the servicemen of the USSR Armed Forces demobilized after the end of the Great Patriotic War, which are kept in the funds of the State Archives of the Astrakhan region. The documents contain the information about the soldiers discharged in July 1945–1946 to the reserve in the Astrakhan region in the first-third order, who were the most numerous among the six waves of the demobilized. The papers encompass the information about the activities of the authorities in the reception and accommodation of the arriving soldiers, the assistance in finding employment and other support. The records show the dynamics of the number of the demobilized in 1944–1946, reveal their contribution to the migration process and to the provision of the Astrakhan region with labour resources. As far as their form is concerned, the documents represent the correspondence between the party representatives and the state authorities, the meetings’ minutes, resolutions, reports, and also the statistical information, certificates and analytical notes. Their analysis makes it possible to reconstruct the return and transition to peaceful life of the demobilized servicemen. The identified documents are being introduced into scientific circulation for the first time and will stimulate further research on the topic of the former war participants in the Astrakhan region. To date, that issue has never been investigated.

The article analyzes a new monograph by N.Yu. Bolotina, A.Yu. Kononova and M.O. Bolotina “Peter the Great in the family circle. Research and Documents” (Moscow, 2023), published for the anniversary of Peter the Great. For the first time, the book reconstructs the family history for one of the most remarkable rulers of Russia, relying on a huge complex of historical sources, primarily archival documents. In great detail, the research recounts all the most important events in the personal life of the tsar, draws up the characterological and psychological portraits of his family members reveals the peculiarities of Peter I’s relationship with the relatives, traces the internal family conflicts and their origins. The book provides the answers to many specific questions about the biographies and genealogy of the Romanov dynasty of the late 17^th – first quarter of the 18^th centuries. The study defines the exact dates of the persons’ lives, reveals the naming traditions, presents the story of childhood in the royal family, shows the level of education and describes the circumstances of life. The book also contains a current publication of more than 300 different sources, many of which are introduced into the scientific circulation for the first time. Another important part consists of the consolidated list of the epistolary heritage of the Peter I’s family; it contains almost one and a half thousand records, including unpublished letters. The book contributes immensely to the study of the dynastic and family history of the house of the Romanovs and will certainly rank among the largest scientific monographic studies of the Peter the Great era.

The article analyzes the scientific reference publication “Prisoners of war of the First World War. An inter-fund name index to the metric books of the temples of the Omsk region (1914–1920)”. The work was prepared as part of the book series “Open Archive”. Based on the study and analysis of the act records of the metric books kept in the Historical Archives of the Omsk region, biographical information was collected with the search data for the documents on the military personnel of the German and Austro[1]Hungarian armies who were prisoners of war in the Omsk region in 1914– 1920. The publication presents the data from the civil records of the metric books of the Omsk Ecclesiastical Consistory, the Omsk Roman Catholic Parish Church, the Omsk Evangelical Lutheran Church and the Synagogue of the Omsk Jewish Society. Turning of the authors’ team to the study of the church documents for understanding the social and political processes seems justified in connection with the special role of the religious factor in the military revolutionary period. The publication contains detailed biographical data, and a personal search record is compiled for each person. It is noted that the procedure described by the Omsk researchers can be adopted by other archival institutions. The analyzed church records open up new opportunities for studying the specific pages in the history of the First World War and expand the possibilities for biographical (genealogical) search.