The article, based on the documents from the Archives of Foreign Policy of the Russian Empire and the legislative acts, examines the creation, competence, composition, and activities of the diplomatic office in Port Arthur. It was established in August 1899 and functioned initially under the chief of the Kwantung region, and since 1903 – under the Governor of the Far East. The author focuses on the position of a diplomatic official in Port Arthur. He belonged to the department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but directly reported to the highest official of Kwantung. Russian diplomatic offices existed in many border governorates of the Empire and were engaged in ensuring the implementation of the foreign policy powers of Governors-General and Governors, as well as in resolving border issues with the neighboring states. Based on a comparative analysis of the status of the Port Arthur diplomatic office with the position of similar structures under the Governors-General of Russia’s inner peripheral regions, it is concluded that although they operated within similar organizational and legal frameworks, the very establishment of the post of a diplomatic official in the exclave of Russia was an innovation for administrative practice. Russia’s participation in the military conflicts in the Far East, the inclusion of Manchuria in its sphere of influence, the formation of a governorship in the Far Eastern region – all of that combined had a defining impact on the scope of competence, personnel, activity pattern and the funding volume for the diplomatic office in Port Arthur. The loss of the Liaodong Peninsula and the subsequent abolition of the governorship led to the disbandment of the Port Arthur diplomatic chancery.

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. It analyzes the structure and content features of the satirical magazine, the publication of which was subordinated to the tasks of radical political agitation. By using the newly identified, previously unpublished archival documents from three collections of the State Archives of the Saratov region, it also reconstructs the vicissitudes of the “Heinrich case” (the trials that took place in 1907–1909 against K.E. Heinrich, the publisher of the “Karandash” magazine).
The text of the article includes a commented publication of the archival documents’ fragments (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 materials from the “Heinrich case” show the characteristic phenomena and the processes in the Russian society and the government institutions of the early 20^th century: the clash of different systems of political and legal values; inconsistency in actions 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 mid-1930s domestic policy was associated with the struggle against the “counter-revolutionary Trotskyist opposition.” At that time, history professor N.N. Elvov worked in Kazan. He was “exiled” there in 1932 after being accused of “smuggling Trotskyism.” In that regard, choosing the main victim of the new wave in political repressions was obvious. The location of the “anti-Soviet attack” also turned out to be no coincidence: despite the fact that Nikolai Naumovich taught at many universities in Kazan, the promotion of his investigative case began at Kazan State Pedagogical Institute, which was the only university in the Volga region where specialists in history and social science were trained, and where they gathered the best representatives of the scientific intelligentsia, including those famous figures from the prerevolutionary school.
The article, based on a comparative analysis of the materials from the regional and central periodicals, considers in detail the process of unleashing a political and ideological campaign at the time of mass repressions in the national republic. The author demonstrates the direct dependence of the regional authorities’ decisions on the official position of the Central Committee of the All-Russia Bolshevik Communist Party. The research is founded on the principles of historicism, objectivity and complexity. The hermeneutic method of analyzing historical sources made it possible to interpret their content taking into account the political and ideological conditions of the actual reality, the social status and age of the participants in the events. The presented results may be of interest to the specialists studying the development of Soviet historical science under Stalinism.

The main goal of the Soviet power in the system of physical education was the upbringing of comprehensively developed builders of Communism who possessed high moral qualities and physical perfection. Physical education became a matter of national importance and solved the tasks of political education, preparation for effective work, created the conditions for the formation of a sense of collectivism, promoted workers’ organized rest. Mass spread of physical training, especially among young people, influenced the public health and the establishment of healthy habits and hygiene.
Komsomol organizations played an active part in promoting healthy lifestyle and advocating the importance of physical education and sport. The issue was also discussed theoretically – both in terms of fighting for the health of young constructors of communism and for the “automation” of work in industrial enterprises. Physical exercises helped to develop the skills of coherent, clear production work. The Central Institute of Labour and its founder and director A.K. Gastev paid much attention to the scientific organization of work and the role of physical culture in it. The principles of rhythmic activity were developed and applied in theatrical practice by V.E. Meyerhold.
Mass “sportization” of the country was implemented through the founding of sports organizations, holding physical culture parades and contests. Considerable importance was also given to the creation of favourable conditions for physical activity and sports: by building throughout the whole country, sports grounds, fitness houses, stadiums. The present article is an attempt to show the scope of the construction of sports facilities in the 1920s – 1930s and to consider the most interesting, from the point of view of the author, stadium projects – those that were implemented or just left on paper.
The research is based on the archival sources and the publications of the Soviet architects – the contemporaries to the events discussed.

Based on the sources from the archival and museum fonds of the Republic of Crimea introduced into scientific circulation for the first time, the article considers the formation and development of the underground patriotic organizations of the city of Simferopol, of the Simferopol, Krasno-Perekopsky, Ak-Sheikhsky (Razdolnensky) and Larindorf (Pervomaisky) regions of Crimea. The focus of the article is directed to the issue of the functioning of the Crimean underground organizations and groups, practically unknown in Russian historiography. The scientific novelty of the research lies in the fact that it is largely based on the unpublished materials stored in the fonds of the State Archives of the Republic of Crimea, the Archives of the City of Sevastopol, the Municipal Archives of the Razdolnensky district of the Republic of Crimea, the Feodosiya Museum of Antiquities, the Krasnoperekopsky Local History Museum. A thorough analysis of historical documents allowed the author to prove that the underground anti-fascists, led by M.A. Koroban (Koraban, Karaban) and I.P. Kondratov, carried out active reconnaissance and sabotage activities on the territory of occupied Crimea, organized the collection of weapons and ammunition, released Soviet citizens and prisoners of war from the Nazi captivity, and were able to establish close contacts with the Crimean partisan movement, as well as with the state security agencies. All of the factors listed above played an important role in the liberation of Crimea from the Nazi invaders in the spring of 1944.

The article deals with the consideration of an urgent topic of modern archival science and source studies – the definition of electronic historical sources (hereinafter – EHS), their features and repositories (archives), which carry out the acquisition, description, storage and the possibility of using EHS in the long term. In the preamble, the author formulates the definition of EHS and lists their key characteristics that distinguish this type of sources from the analog historical sources. At the same time, the author emphasizes that the very concept of EHS is much broader than the concepts of “an electronic document” and “an electronic archival document”, and can be extended to any objects created in a digital environment. In the main part of the article, in historical retrospect, the emergence and development of specialized repositories, departments of archives, museums and libraries keeping electronic (digital and digitized) heritage are considered. The author states that by now three types of EHS archives have been formed: archives of machine-readable data, archives of machine-readable (electronic) documents and web archives. Each type is provided with a brief description, and there also are examples of currently functioning or already re-organized foreign and national EHS repositories. In conclusion, it is resolved that a long-term archival storage and use of electronic historical sources as a source base for historical research will require a serious modification of the methodology of archival science and source studies and necessitate adequate changes in the professional requirements for archivists and research historians.

In the article, the author continues to analyze the features of documentary historical memory as one of the types of historical memory. The paper considers three aspects related to the historical memory formation (as an arbitrary and involuntary memorization of what is happening in the process of regulation with the help of a reality document), to forgetting and oblivion of documentary memory.
The article attempts to identify the determinants affecting the completeness and the reliability accuracy of the document’s memorization of what is happening, connected with the mental and social characteristics of its author, as well as other motives that guide him when creating a document, regardless of whether the latter belongs to a particular class of records. Thus it explains the issues related to the reliability of documentary evidence of documentary historical memory.
The author considers the transformation of a document into a documentary historical source and in this regard tries to explain how, in the process of such transformation, on the one hand, there is a final forgetting of a part of documentary memory in general, and on the other – a temporary forgetting of documentary historical memory.
Special attention is paid in the article to the issue of forgetting documentary historical memory as a phenomenon associated with its irreparable loss under the influence of various force majeure circumstances and in cases of deliberate liquidation. Meanwhile, the author scrutinizes, for the first time, the interpretation of oblivion that developed in Russian archival practice, and evaluates the decisive break with that practice – the break implemented through the legislation of Catherine II.

The development of archival science in the UK is inextricably linked to the name of Hilary Jenkinson and his “Manual of Archive Administration”, which was published in 1922. Many of the principles he described in his work are considered unique contributions to archival science. However, some researchers note that there was “archival life” before Jenkinson, that many ideas did not only exist, but they had already been developed. Having been published, they were available to the public. So, this article deals with those personalities who formed the British archival theory in the late 19^th and the beginning of the 20^th century. One of them was Hubert Hall, who was not only H. Jenkinson’s contemporary, but also worked with him at about the same period at the Public Record Office (PRO) from 1906 to 1921. Besides, H. Hall lectured at the London School of Economics (LSE), and after his lectures and seminars many students, mostly women, were employed as historians, researchers and archivists. They made a significant contribution to the development of British archival theory and practice.

The article deals with the analysis of the documents stored in the fonds of the Russian State Military Archives and related to the management of the train of ataman G.M. Semenov, the commander-in-chief of all armed forces of the Russian Eastern border land, and his personal guards who served on the train from April to October 1920. The main aspect of this work is documentary. The example of a small unit shows the entire set of the official documents that regulated and were used in the management process. The article notes the compliance of the specific composition of the identified documents with the system of the military documentation of the pre-revolutionary period, characteristic of the “white” armies. Attention is also drawn to the use, in the preparation and execution of the documents and while working with them, of the normative acts issued before the Great Russian Revolution of 1917, thus demonstrating the adherence to the traditions of the Russian Imperial Army in the field of letter-writing and office work. Regulations, instructions, orders, commands, reports, memos, etc. allow studying the activities and the life of such a military unit as a personal security guard and the train on which the commander-in-chief of all armed forces of the Russian Eastern border land, made trips to the front.