The state customs policy of Russia aims at promoting economic growth, and the activities of its customs agencies have become increasingly important in light of the “sanctions” imposed by several anti-Russian member states of the world community. For centuries, the Crimean peninsula has been and remains a strategically significant region across Russia’s southern borders, serving as a point of convergence for the economic and commercial interests of the European and Middle Eastern nations. The scientific reconstruction of the history of the existence and activities of customs agencies in Crimea provides insight into their functions, the specifics of their organizational structure, and areas of operation. The thematic collections of the State Archives of the Republic of Crimea, which keep materials on the history of the establishment and development of the customs services in the Taurida province, are not in demand within the scientific community and have been poorly studied. Many documents deposited in those collections have not yet been introduced into the scientific discourse. The article, based on archival materials, analyzes the activities of the Taurida province customs agencies aimed at preventing smuggling and the entry of prohibited goods into the territory of the Russian Empire. There is also an assessment for the effectiveness of customs officials’ efforts to combat smugglers.

On the basis of the unpublished documents from the funds of the National Archives of the Russian Federation and the Manuscript Department of the National Library of Russia, the article considers the interaction on the issue of administrative reforms of Finnish Governor-General N.I. Bobrikov with Emperor Nicholas II and with Minister and State Secretary for the Grand Duchy of Finland V.K. Plehve. It analyzes the positions of the official St. Petersburg and the Finnish Governor-General on the Finnish issue. There is also a reconstruction for the process of interaction between Nicholas II and N.I. Bobrikov on the development of a government policy in Finland. N.I. Bobrikov’s desire to develop and pursue an independent policy in Finland faced cautious opposition from the supreme authorities, who sought to stabilize the situation after the publication of the unpopular manifesto on February 3, 1899, which narrowed Finland’s autonomy in the field of legislation. But, at the same time, Nicholas II and V.K. Plehve took an ambivalent position: impressing upon Bobrikov the need for careful action, they supported some his proposals. It is concluded that Bobrikov’s lack of experience in civil administration has negatively affected his relations with the Finnish institutions and socio-political circles. The inability to manage by command put Bobrikov in a deadlock and pushed him to request in St. Petersburg the permission to expand powers and use emergency methods.

The article raises an issue of the participation of Soviet citizens in the construction of the monuments dedicated to V.I. Lenin. Using the example of the All-Union competition for the construction of monuments, the author considers the projects of ordinary Soviet citizens, abundant in images and symbols, and explains their meaning. It is emphasized that the emergence of such images is due to the influence of the ideological clichés on the designers’ consciousness. In addition, the paper presents the examples of the erected monuments created by workers: those structures were made on their initiative, their artistic projects and with the funds collected from their income. Despite the fact that the foundations of the cult were laid during the life of V.I. Lenin, it actively developed only after his death. The monuments dedicated to Lenin began to spontaneously appear in the country – they were created by self-taught workers. Often unpretentious, made of improvised materials, they demonstrated sincere public involvement in the ongoing mourning event. However, the authorities soon banned the creation of images of Vladimir Ilyich without their prior approval. Thus, the monument construction which started as a free creative impulse of the masses turned into the manufacture of the same type figures. The monument production was industrialized. However, despite such restrictions, the citizens found an outlet for their creative imagination – the construction of pedestals. The Soviet citizens created original pedestals for the sculptures ordered from the official suppliers. Thus, in Novosibirsk, the bust by V.V. Kozlov was placed on a small architectural structure that served as a library and a tribune for holding rallies and marches. The monument was named the “Monument-Mausoleum”, which refers to another trend in architectural construction in the first years of Leniniana – the desire of the people to build in a city, if not a real one, but still their own mausoleum.

Basing on the use of a substantial set of published sources, the article considers the major approaches of the official power structures to understanding and representing the Soviet past.

In the first half of the 1930s, the Party Central Committee and the Council of People’s Commissars paid a special attention to the issue of upgrading historical education, first in the Communist Academy and then in the country’s schools. It was The History of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks): Short Course, published in 1938, that turned out to be the ideological “peak” of the research in assessing the Soviet period of history.

During the Great Patriotic War, all the ideological constructions of the party and state apparatus, pertaining to the Soviet subject matter, passed the strength test.

After Stalin’s death, already at the 20th Congress of the USSR Communist Party, important theoretical conclusions, based on historical experience, were drawn on the transformation of socialism into a world system, the possibility of preventing world wars, and others.

Later, the Party discourse of Soviet history was built up with regard to the thesis about the entry of the Soviet Union into the period of the extensive construction of a communist society. However, that strategy set out in the third-Party Program has never been implemented.

That largely determined the elaboration and widespread propaganda of the developed socialism concept in the Soviet society of the 1970s. The article analyses the documents which characterize the concept. Since the country’s development has degraded over the years, after L.I. Brezhnev’s death that concept was removed from the official political discourse.

The article deals with the legendary genealogies of the Roman aristocratic families. Among them the Fabii were the prominent clan in the political life of the Roman Republic. One of their genealogies goes back to Hercules and guarantees them a divine origin, the other presents them as the companions of Remus and connects the family with the most ancient festival of Lupercalia and the foundation of Rome. Both genealogies at first had nothing in common and developed irrespective of each other until their separate details stopped being interpreted as parts of independent tales in the works of Late Antiquity authors. The origin of the Fabii from Hercules is considered in the paper against the background of the other Roman families’ genealogies, which go back to the Trojan and Greek heroes and the Gods. It is well known that in the I century B.C. there came into being the literary genealogies of the families belonged to the Roman political class, but the starting point of that process goes back to the earlier period, namely, the end of the 4th –beginning of the 2rd century B.C. The Fabii had their own historian – Quintus Fabius Pictor, who made efforts in order to present his ancestors’ activities in the most favourable way. But it is unfair to make him responsible for the reconstruction of his family history from the ancient times. The composition of the legend about Hercules as the forefather of the Fabii was launched at the end of the IV century B.C. and was connected with the political activity of Quintus Fabius Rullianus. To that very time we can also refer the birth of the legend which connects the Fabii with Remus and with the Rome’s foundation tale.

The article provides an analysis of the anti-colonial uprisings that occurred in the German colonies in Africa from the late 19^th to the early 20^th centuries. Africa is the region where the most important colonies of the German Empire were located, and where the largest uprisings against the colonial authorities took place. The author studies the methods of consolidating the German colonial authorities, including both peaceful initiatives and brutal actions using colonial troops. Particular attention is paid to the study of the main causes, the course of events and the consequences of those uprisings, as well as their further impact on the structure of the colonial administration. There are characteristics of each rebellion, along with the social and economic inequality, the cultural and religious context, and the communication of the colonial administrations with the indigenous peoples. The author also analyzes the reaction of the German colonial authorities to the uprisings, the methods of suppressing them and the consequences for the inhabitants of the regions. The article highlights the key leaders and movements that united the ethnic communities in their struggle against the colonial authorities. The methods of suppressing the uprisings by the German colonial troops are studied, as well as the measures aimed at preventing possible rebellions.

The Fascist State in Italy had a consistent programme for the development of advertising, advertising institutions and the use of propaganda methods, strengthening not only the state machine of influencing the population, but also resolving the problems of developing the profession of an advertiser (or a “technician” in the therminology of the 1920s-1930s). The author touches upon the issue that started to be discussed again in the recent works of the Italian and British authors – the suppression by the Fascist State of the certain spheres of state and society functioning. The institutional retrospective is combined in the article with the history of knowledge about the links between the commercial and the political: the relationship between the emerging advertising profession and the regime; the foundation of the National Fascist Syndicate, “The Agencies and Houses of Advertising”, and its publication, the magazine La Pubblicita d’Italia; the research on advertising and propaganda carried out in the 1930s; the results of the professional congresses and the development of international exchanges between professionals. The Fascist means of communication in Italy, their origins and development, the identification of the new perspectives on the issues addressed will provide a theoretical and methodological assistance in the process of their identification in the context of contemporary realities.

The article analyzes the identified set of sources, which record the information on the military activities of B.P. Rezukhin, an associate of Baron R.F. von Ungern-Sternberg in 1905–1917. The study considers B.P. Rezukhin’s stay in Mongolia and at the fronts of the First World War, highlights the episodes of his activities that have not previously become the object of study in historiography. When evaluating the information on the first stay of B.P. Rezukhin in Mongolia, the author identifies the problematics that have not been reflected in detail in the sources, as, for example, Rezukhin’s service as part of the convoy of the Russian Consulate in Urga. His military service during the First World War is recreated mainly on the basis of the archival sources, which have been introduced into scientific circulation for the first time. When working with those sources, the context of their creation was revealed, the information recorded in them was analyzed, and basing on that, a conclusion was made about Rezukhin’s moral qualities and his commanding abilities. The study resulted in a comprehensive assessment of B.P. Rezukhin as a military figure at different time-periods periods. The most significant impact in shaping him as a commander had his stay in Mongolia in 1911–1914 and participation in the First World War. In Mongolia, Rezukhin gained his first experience in commanding units, got acquainted with the specifics of the region and the Chinese tactics of warfare. Participation in the First World War gave the experience of a partisan detachment command. Those abilities turned out to be useful for him during the Civil War.

The development of information technologies contributed to the large-scale transformation of human civilization, influenced all aspects of society, including reconstituting the strategy for the development of archives as a public institution. The communication function of archival institutions and departments came to the fore from the shadows. The article uses the experience of the archival service of the Sverdlovsk region as an example to consider one of the channels of interaction between archivists and the external environment – the corporate publication “Arkhivnye Vedomosti”. The content analysis of all the issues of the publication allowed assessing the newspaper’s contribution to the overall corporate strategy of the regional archival service in terms of openness to society. It was revealed that over the 23 years of its existence, the publication has repeatedly changed its typological characteristics, demonstrating the changes in the communication strategy of the Sverdlovsk archives. New approaches required special competencies from archivists: the professionalism of the authors from among the archive employees increased, the genre range of the newspaper and its functions expanded. Having evolved from an organization newspaper to an image periodical, the “Arkhivnye Vedomosti” today remains a stable channel of communication, preserving the format of departmental press, bringing to the forefront the function of informing the readers about the current and future activities of Sverdlovsk archivists.

Gregory Oreshkin, head of the Main Headquarters Operations Department of the All-Russian militant organization of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries (Internationalists) Party hold a lifelong grudge against Ya.M. Sverdlov, Chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, leader of the Bolshevik Party Central Committee’s Secretariat. On July 6, 1918, the day of the assassination of the German ambassador to Soviet Russia Wilhelm von Mirbach and the beginning of the Socialist Left rebellion, Oreshkin commanded the leftist Socialist-Revolutionaries (SR) squad, which, by order of the Chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, was included in the armed guard of the Bolshoi Theater during the V All-Russian Congress of Soviets. Sverdlov, in a conversation with Oreshkin, under the pretext of providing security, asked Oreshkin and his combatants to urgently arrive at the meeting of the Left SRs. After Oreshkin and his squad left the Bolshoi Theater building, the entire faction of the Left SRs of the Congress was arrested.

Gregory Oreshkin has only recently become the object of historians’ attention; no biography of him has yet been written. The present article, based on the published sources and the materials of the Central State Archives of Moscow, is an attempt to partially correct the indicated historiographical gap.

The purpose of the article is to consider documentation management as a field of study, an attempt to assess the state of modern scientific documentary knowledge, and share my vision of its development. Documentation management originated as a scientific discipline, but today it has already become a full-fledged science, which is a cognitive and social activity that includes the object of activity, the subjects of activity, the means of activity and its result in the form of the product of activity, which is new scientific knowledge. Documentation management studies documents. However, the modern practice of documenting and using documented information requires the inclusion in the object of documentation of such forms of its presentation as records and data. The subject of scientific documentary knowledge is the professional scientific community. The means of documentary research, along with the technical, technological, and software tools, include methodology as a way of substantiating scientific knowledge. In the methodology of documentation management it is advisable to apply, along with the informational approach, the societal and activity-based approaches, which makes it possible to expand the understanding of the document as a social phenomenon. The multidisciplinary nature of the document as an object of research contributes to the creation of knowledge that is not integrated with classical documentation management and is not verified by the practice of documenting a social reality. Therefore, modern interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary and multidisciplinary knowledge about the document must undergo a certain qualified selection in order to be included in the scientific discipline and the science of documentation management. In general, interdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity and multidisciplinarity seem promising for the further development of documentary studies.

This article deals with the scholarly and professional path of Vladimir Nechaev (1874–1941), an underappreciated but influential figure in the Russian archival and museum practices of the early 20th century. Based on the documents from his personal archive kept at the State Historical Museum of the Russian Federation (Fond 480) and other Russian repositories, the study outlines Nechaev’s contributions to the development of archival and museum practice. Special attention is given to his role in founding the Archival Museum in Petrograd, his work with the Central Archives of the RSFSR (Tsentrarkhiv), and his participation in the Soviet-Polish Joint Commission implementing provisions of the Treaty of Riga of 1921. The article traces Nechaev’s transformation from a military lawyer to the director of the first Russian institution combining archival and museum functions. His ideas on the integration of archives, libraries, and museums into a unified system for preserving cultural memory are shown to be methodologically innovative and remain relevant today. Nechaev’s biography is highlighted within the broader sociopolitical changes of his time, and his archive is recognized as a key resource for understanding the history of cultural institutions and on the memory of events in the 20th century.

The article considers the history and organization of the State Archival Service of the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic (Transnistria) at the present stage, as well as reveals the main principles of the organization of archival affairs and the formation of the Archival Fund of the Republic.

The main principle of organizing archival affairs in Transnistria is the principle of centralization. A distinctive feature is the combination of two functions – documentation management and archives administration – within the activities of the State Archival Service.

The formation of the Archival Fund of the Republic is based on the national principles of provenance, historicism, comprehensiveness, complexity, and indivisibility of archival collections, while applying the modern principle of political neutrality.

At the same time, the archives of Transnistria serve the State and the Fatherland, since the network of the state archival bodies has become part of the state civil service of Transnistria, and all personnel are classified as state civil servants.

The article considers the stages directly related to the main milestones of the creation, formation and development of the statehood of Transnistria: from the foundation in the 1990s of the central body for managing archival affairs of the Republic – the Archival Department under the Government of the Pridnestrovian Moldavian SSR to the State Service for the Management of Documentation and Archives of the PMR.

The article deals with the study of the propaganda posters created during the Great Patriotic War and kept in the State Archives of the Saratov Region. The paper considers the importance of those visual sources for studying the formation of historical memory and socio-political consciousness in Soviet society. The authors note that the posters of that time, in addition to performing propaganda functions, played an important role in updating cultural memory and strengthening national identity, using the images and symbols of the Russian historical heritage. Besides, the authors emphasize the need for a thorough study of the archival collections that contain a variety of materials, including posters, slogans and other visual sources. The article incorporates a brief analysis of the methodology for studying the issues that historians face in identifying and classifying the Soviet propaganda posters, taking into account the interdisciplinary approach to their study. The paper reveals the importance of the propaganda art as a tool for shaping public consciousness, and emphasizes the need to use it not only as illustrative material, but also as an individual research object. The authors conclude that the poster art was an important element in preserving the historical memory and cultural identity of the people and contributed to the cohesion of Soviet society during the war. The examples of the provided posters illustrate their artistic value and their impact on the morale of the citizens during the conflict, and demonstrate the connection between historical and cultural memory.

The article considers the Russian State Military Archives (RGVA) as an invaluable resource for the study of military history. The Archives keeps rare categories of documents, which form the factual basis for research, reveal the social and cultural context of military events, and enable the analysis of military historiography.

Particular attention is paid to the “especially valuable” and unique documents of the Archival Fund of the Russian Federation, preserved within the RGVA’s main archival collections. The article emphasizes the influence of these documents on the development of military historiography in Russia, including the enrichment of knowledge, the creation of new research directions, and support for memorial work. Unique documents reflecting the lives of historical figures and significant events in the history of warfare are provided as examples, as well as personal collections keeping information about the lives and activities of individuals, families, and public figures.

It is noted that the archival materials not only reveal the chronology of events but also allow for the reconstruction of historical truth, which is particularly important in the context of the contemporary attempts to distort it. In conclusion, the article underscores the importance of protecting the historical truth about the Great Patriotic War, a matter to which the President of the Russian Federation, V.V. Putin, pays special attention. The role of the RGVA’s dedicated staff in preserving and transmitting historical knowledge, as well as the importance of the continuity of generations of archivists, is also highlighted.

The article describes the main stages of the history and formation of the audiovisual archives of Uzbekistan, starting with the creation and commencement of work in 1929 of the Central Archive’s photo department, and then the Central State Archives of Ciine-photo-phono Documents of Uzbekistan (now the National Archives of Film, Photo and Audio Documents of Uzbekistan, NA KFFD U). The status of the National Archives was assigned to the former CGA KFFD on September 20, 2019, and in 2023 it celebrated its 80th anniversary. The article, in particular, briefly describes the creation in 1943 of the Central State Archives of Film, Photo and Audio Documents of the Republic of Uzbekistan (CGA KFFD RUz), and shows its work (including the period of its merger in 1959–1974 with the Central State Archives of Uzbekistan and also its later restoration, starting with 1974, as a separate archives in a new specialized building), The paper defines the audiovisual materials kept in the National Archives of Uzbekistan and their nature (covering the funds of personal provenanse), as well as those accumulated in some other archives of Uzbekistan. The film and photographic documents, kept in some other archives of Uzbekistan, and, primarily, in a number of regional repositories of the Republic of Uzbekistan, are also touched upon – the audiovisual materials kept in the State Archives of the Ferghana region, the State Archives of the Tashkent region, the State Archives of the Syrdarya region, the State Archives of the Surkhandarya region, the State Archives of the Samarkand region, the State Archives of the Namangan region, the State Archives of the Navoi region, the State Archives of the Jizzakh region, the State Archives of the Bukhara region, the State Archives of the Andijan region. The article also singles out a few areas of work of the National Archives of Film, Photo and Audio Documents of Uzbekistan in the modern period. As well as it specifically names some personal funds of film, photographic and audio documents that were transferred to the Archives.