Issues of protecting the population from epidemics, organizing anti-epidemiological measures are always relevant and arouse wide public interest. In our country, significant experience has been accumulated in that sphere since the creation of the state quarantine service in 1800. The Crimean Peninsula, which became part of the Russian Empire in 1783, was an important logistics point for the development of domestic and foreign trade, where quarantine institutions played a significant role in preventing the outbreaks of infectious diseases and impeding their spread. The article deals with the study of the Crimean quarantines after the end of the Eastern War of 1853– 1856, in which Sevastopol turned out to become the main theater of combat. The documents stored in the Archives of the city of Sevastopol served as the main source complex. The goal was to characterize the materials deposited in the fund of the Sevastopol Quarantine Agency, revealing the challenges in the functioning of that institution in the second half of the 19th century. Along with the introduction of the previously unused archival data into scientific circulation, the possibility of studying the most important areas of activity for the quarantine service of the Sevastopol city administration has become one of the important research components, and its scientific novelty is driven by that possibility. Conclusions are drawn about the representativeness of the source complex and the prospects for further exploration of the history of regional quarantine authorities.

The article provides an analysis of the publications in the prerevolutionary Russian newspaper “Vladivostok” about the events of the initial stage of the Russian-German customs war (1892–1894). The author believes that the notes published in the newspaper shed light on the causes of the customs conflict between the two countries and the role played by Austria- Hungary in its development and transition to the “hot” phase. The newspaper “Vladivostok”, despite its political bias, contains many details and facts that have not been studied by the Russian and German national press and are important for historical science. Based on the information published in the weekly, comparing it with archival documents and other historical sources, including those of the German origin, the author analyzes the significance that the customs war had for the Triple Alliance, and also answers the question of whether it was a coalition war.
The article pays special attention to the participants in that war. Publications in the newspaper “Vladivostok” allow tracing the development of the trade conflict and its expansion due to the extension of the restrictive measures to the colonial possessions and the territories with a special customs regime.
The newspaper also sheds light on the socio-economic consequences of the customs war for the German Empire.

The article deals with the structure and regulatory framework of the All-Union physical culture complex “Ready for Labour and Defence of the USSR” (GTO) on the eve and during the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945. The study is based on the documents and materials (including previously unpublished) of the State Archives of the Russian Federation and the State Archives of the Krasnoyarsk region (Krai). The authors focus on the transformation of the GTO complex during the Great Patriotic War on the basis of the order of the All-Union Committee for Physical Culture and Sports under the USSR Council of People’s Commissars, No. 80-M of July 28, 1942. That order introduced serious changes in the content of the GTO complex as compared to the pre-war period. The article considers in detail the conditions of the tests that participants had to perform according to the GTO complex program, with the substitutions and additions introduced in 1942; the paper also discusses the normative criteria for those tests. The study concludes that the improvement of the structure of the GTO complex was prompted by the necessity to bring it into conformity with the wartime requirements, as well as with the system of compulsory military training (Vsevobuch).

Water is one of the leading and popular topics in environmental history. It very quickly moved from a purely natural category to a naturaltechnical and socio-economic category. In the life of any society, water acts as an element of productive forces, thus influencing the socio-economic development of both the country as a whole and its separate regions. In the second half of the 20^th century, water as a natural resource becomes crucial for the intensive development of industry and agriculture in the USSR. Its rational use and protection turn out to be not only strictly ecological-geographical, but also major economic issues. The article, on the materials of the fund of the Council for Studying the Productive Forces under the USSR State Planning Committee (deposited at the Russian State Archives of the Economy, fund 399, inventory 3) considers the issues of water use and the protection of water resources in the USSR in the 1970s – 1980s. The analysis of the materials of the fund on the use of water resources in the national economy and their protection allows one to judge the overall picture of water availability in the country as a whole and its separate regions, to consider the main issues associated with the uneven distribution of water resources and their contamination as a result of excessive anthropogenic load; the study also makes it possible to describe the achievements and issues of Russian hydrological science. The identified materials can be in demand at the present stage of socio-economic development of the country and can make an important contribution to the implementation of an interdisciplinary approach to the study and solution of water issues.

The article considers the transformation of political violence in the Late Roman Republic by the example of the murder of the Gracchi brothers and its coverage in the works of Graeco-Roman historians. The analysis of the murder of the Gracchi brothers allows us to pose and consider the issue of the transition of the Roman Republic to an increasingly active use of political terror against internal opponents. The assassination of the Gracchi brothers intensifies the conflict tendencies in the republic, the old forms of conflict resolution cease to work, and after the death of the Gracchi brother’s violence becomes an acceptable form of solving political crises. The author analyzes the specific circumstances of the assassination of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus and concludes about the change in the nature of violence in the Roman Republic: political terror was gradually moving towards increasing regulation of violent acts and their increasing scale. From the indiscriminate terror to which Tiberius’ supporters were subjected, the transition is made to a more regulated and less chaotic persecution of his brother Gaius, whose supporters were also prosecuted by the law. Eventually, those trends formed a coherent “enemy” concept that was most clearly reflected in the terror of the proscriptions of the 1st century AD.

During the 19^th and the first half of the 20^th century, there were cases when the issue of the relations of the Orthodox Church believers, the Russians people, with the indigenous ethnic groups of the Baltics, and then with the Catholics of the Swordbrothers Order and the Livonian Order, was quite acutely discussed by historians. The process of conversion to Christianity of Livs, Latgalians, Zemgli, Curonians (Latvians’ ancestors), Estonians, their cultural, commercial, military and diplomatic ties with the surrounding peoples and missionaries from the West and East, formation of national statehood among those peoples were the topics that were actively considered at the above time not only by the representatives of historical science. The issue turned out to be relevant for ethnographers, archaeologists, geographers, as well as for the representatives of journalism, propaganda and the politicians of Russia (USSR) and of a number of neighboring states. The principles of objectivity and historicism, which are necessary in the interpretation of those events, provide the reader and researcher with an opportunity to understand more deeply the origins of acute contradictions and the complexity of the relations between the Russian-speaking and the titular citizens of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, as well as between Russia and the Baltic states.
The analysis of the sources and reference material allows us to conclude that despite the complexity of the relations in the Middle Ages, the Russian princes and the Church hierarchy of the North-East (Vladimir-Suzdal) land adhered to a balanced and stable course. The Russian Vladimir-Suzdal princes, unlike the feudal elite of the Russian North-West and Russian West regions, pursued a policy of forming alliances of the Novgorodians and Pskovians with the Estonians and supported Estonians in the fight against the Western conquerors. Peaceful missionary endeavors were far from alien to them.

Based on an extensive set of materials deposited in the funds of the Museum of History of V.I. Vernadsky Crimean Federal University (Simferopol), the biography of a native of Crimea, a graduate of Crimean State Pedagogical Institute named after M.V. Frunze Teyfuk Amitovich Abdul, a participant in the Great Patriotic War, has been reconstructed. Numerous documents and photographs from the family archive, transferred to the University History Museum by his descendants in 2010, are used, including an autobiography compiled on December 1, 1944, shortly before his death, as well as the surviving correspondence of Teyfuk Abdul from the war period. Thanks to the documents found in the Central Archives of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation (Podolsk), the combat path of the Hero is traced, with an emphasis on his feat of arms during the forcing of the Dnieper in 1943, for which he was awarded the title of the Hero of the Soviet Union. During the military actions, he was also awarded the Order of the Patriotic War of the 1st and 2nd degree and the Red Banner Order. Extracts from the award documents are provided, testifying to his courage and heroism. Letters from the front of Teyfuk Abdul, addressed to his mother, brother and sisters, are used as a meaningful historical source.

Studying the achievements of archival science in different countries, we come across personalities it is impossible to imagine that field without. Sir Charles Hilary Jenkinson, the world-famous archivist and paleographer of the early 20th century, is that very person in the British archival science. The article presents Sir H. Jenkinson’s activities at the Public Record Office, where he started working as an ordinary clerk, then was in charge of various departments, introducing a lot of changes and innovations, and retired as Deputy Keeper. Particular attention is paid to the enormous contribution he made to the development of the British archival science, creating fundamental works, lecturing at universities, inspiring the development of many scientific societies. His most famous work is undoubtedly “A Manual of Archive Administration”, first published in 1922. However, both before and after the appearance of that kind of a seminal “guidebook” in Anglo-Saxon archival theory, H. Jenkinson produced a number of equally important works, which are also mentioned in the article. In addition, the article considers the attitude of the Russian archival community, particularly that of I.I. Lyubimenko, a historianarchivist, to Jenkinson’s major work, and also provides a small comparison of two great archivists – Sir Charles Hillary Jenkinson and Theodore Roosevelt Schellenberg.

The article reveals the experience of developing the classifiers and reference books of the national electronic document management system of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Classifiers of reference information are necessary for digital encoding and automatic reading by an electronic system of various data about the documents: the types, correspondents, authors, their positions, the nature of the issues described, the types of institutions and organizations, their divisions, the applicants’ status, the reasons for requests, the measures taken, the types of execution control. The article presents seven stages of the development of classifiers: 1) formation of an expert panel; analysis of the international, interstate, national and departmental classifiers and sampling of the state bodies that will be most applicable to the being established Unified Electronic Document Management System; creation of the first working versions of the classifier structures and reference books and their distribution to the state bodies for examination; creation of the software tools and instructions to fill the classifiers; 2) distribution to the central state bodies of the software and instructions on how to staff the substructures; 3) analysis of the classifiers itselves to verify coverage of all the necessary issues; 4) finalization of the classifiers; 5) protection of the latest versions of the classifiers and reference books; 6) implementation of the classifiers and reference books in the Unified System; 7) creation of a software mechanism for updating the system classifiers’ content.

The article presents the results of the research of the archival funds of the Oryol region related to the elimination of the consequences of the disaster (LPA) at the Chernobyl NPP (ChNPP) in the radioactively contaminated areas (RZT), in order to create an electronic archives – a repository of the documents on overcoming the consequences of the Chernobyl disaster in the Oryol region and on the social protection of the affected population. It studies the documents of the executive authorities stored in the funds of the State Archives of the Oryol region related to the LPA at the Chernobyl NPP in the Oryol region. The authors analyze the most important documents from Funds R-1591 “Office of the Governor and the Government of the Oryol region” and R-4010 “Committee for the elimination of the consequences of the Chernobyl disaster of the Administration of the Oryol region of the EMERCOM of Russia”, related to the measures on overcoming the consequences of the Chernobyl disaster at the RZT of the Oryol region. On the basis of the selected documents, a repository of archival documents of Funds R-1591 and R-4010, relevant to the LPA at the Chernobyl NPP in the Oryol region (for the period of 1986–1998), was created. The repository contains the following data: on the construction of houses for the IDP (internally-displaced persons) families and on the provision of housing for the participants of the LPA at the Chernobyl NPP; on the conducting of incoming radiation dosimetry of the products arriving and sent outside the region; on the social protection of the citizens exposed to radiation as a result of the Chernobyl disaster; on the organization of recreation for the children living in the RZT; on the work on the rehabilitation of the RZT and the improvement of medical care for citizens. The documents and files found in the State Archives of the Oryol region enable both researchers and the citizens affected by radioactive contamination to obtain the necessary information on overcoming the consequences of the radiation disaster in the Oryol region and on the measures taken for the social and radiation rehabilitation of the citizens living in the RZT. The results of the research can be used to assess the effectiveness of the measures used in the rehabilitation of the territories contaminated with radionuclides. The present has a distinct heuristic aspect, since its goal is to form an electronic archive of the documents pertaining to the overcoming of the consequences of the Chernobyl disaster in the Oryol region and for the ensuring the social protection of the affected population.