The article is devoted to a comprehensive analysis of the socioeconomic situation and the political climate in the Perm province in the last third of the 19th century. It uses unique sources, such as the reporting documents of the Perm provincial gendarmerie department. The main source used is the “Political reviews of the localities” compiled by the provincial gendarmes for the top management. These documents contain not only an assessment of political sentiments, but also a detailed analysis of the economy, social structure, and life in the province, as the gendarmes considered socio-economic issues as the root cause of political stability.
Based on the materials of the Perm Provincial Gendarmerie Department, the article examines in detail the economic specifics of the region, including the development of mining, agriculture, and crafts, as well as the social composition of the population. Special attention is paid to the evolution of the labor movement: from the local and short-lived unrest in the 1870s and 1880s to the widespread, organized strikes of the 1890s, which were caused by the economic crises, reduced wages, and the heavy tax burdens. The work fills the gap in the study of regional history by demonstrating how the gendarmes assessed the social processes and the potential threats to the state order. It is concluded that the gendarmes acted as professional analysts whose reports allow us to reconstruct a holistic picture of the province’s life and the origins of social tension.

The paper analyses the public reaction to the reception of the zemstvo deputation headed by Prince S.N. Turetsky by Emperor Nicholas II on June 6, 1905. The article examines the zemstvo movement as an important phenomenon that allows one to study the development of the public sphere, the mechanisms of communication in society, and the transformation of the political institutions in Russia. It is emphasized that the decree to the Senate of February 18, 1905, which allowed the subjects to send petitions with the proposals for improving the state structure, was perceived by the society as a call to formulate its political wishes. Numerous public meetings and zemstvo congresses in the first half of 1905 served those purposes. The deputation to the Emperor was one of the episodes of such public activity. The article shows the diversity of the reactions in the press: from furious condemnation by both the extreme right and the extreme left journals and newspapers, to active support by moderately liberal ones. The author concludes that numerous letters of gratitude to S.N. Turetsky, from the representatives of all the layers of the Russian society at the beginning of the 20th century, spoke about the inclusion of the broader population in public communication.

The article examines the problematic relations between the South Ore Trust and the Harriman Concession regarding the sale of manganese ore in foreign markets in 1926-1928. The study is based on the documents and materials from the Central State Archives of the Moscow Region. Attention is paid to the history of the creation of the South Ore Trust and the Harriman Concession, as well as to the location of the main deposits. The annual production and export targets for manganese ore for both companies, the practice of the further revision of the production volumes, and the results of the work carried out have been studied. The article provides the data on the planned investments and the technical equipment issues at the mines. It identifies the main sources of conflict between the mining companies. The article examines the solutions taken to resolve these conflicts. The paper also assesses the position of the government agencies and their representatives regarding the South Ore Trust and the Harriman Concession. It explores the reasons and stages of the liquidation of the Chiatura Concession in Georgia. Based on the results of the work, it was concluded that the main problem in the relationship was the lack of clear rules and joint agreements between the South Ore Trust and the Harriman Concession regarding the organization of the export of Soviet manganese.

The article raises the issue of the interaction of Soviet physical culture and sports with foreign organizations in the 1920s. During that period, the international relations in the area were based on the idea of contrasting working-class physical culture with bourgeois sports, aimed, in accordance with the point of view of the Soviet leadership, at “enslaving” workers and distracting them from the struggle for the World revolution. Therefore, the main focus of international work was on the relations with the European workers’ organizations and unions, which were built with the active involvement of the Red Sports International (RSI), established in 1921 in opposition to the Lucerne Sports International (LSI), an international workers’ organization that declared peaceful coexistence with the bourgeoisie. The author analyzes this process using the documents of the Supreme Council of Physical Culture and the RSI, and also the periodical press materials. Special attention is paid to the 1928 All-Union Spartakiad, to the way it was held, to its results and significance for Soviet physical culture and the Red Sports International. The author comes to the conclusion that the successful holding of the competition confirmed the correctness of the international policy for the Soviet sports leadership and raised the status of the RSI as an international workers’ sports organization, which led to the aggravation of confrontation in the international workers’ sports movement.

The article is devoted to the study of the evolution of the forces and means of combating armored vehicles during the Soviet-Finnish War and to the research of their assessment by the Red Army command. The article provides the data on the structure of the Finnish anti-tank defense. The use of the armored vehicles and anti-tank artillery of the Red Army is described. The speeches by the Soviet commanders at the conference dedicated to the results of the Soviet-Finnish War are cited.
Grounded on the experience of fighting in Finland, the Red Army command noted that the anti-tank guns remained the main means of combating armored vehicles. The Finnish army built its defense on the basis of engineering antitank devices: anti-tank obstacles, ditches and scarps. Besides, the enemy infantry armed with hand-held anti-tank weapons was capable of inflicting significant losses on the attacking tanks if it was possible to cut them off from the infantry. Finally, the decisive factor in overcoming the anti-tank defenses was the interaction of the armored vehicle crews with the infantrymen and the escort artillery crews.
The article is based both on the historiography devoted to the SovietFinnish War and on the unpublished materials from the Russian State Military Archives, Fund 34 980, “Collected documents on the Soviet-Finnish War”.

Based on a comprehensive analysis of the identified set of published sources, the article examines the leading historical processes of the disintegration mechanism of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU).
At the turn of the 19th – 20th centuries, V.I. Lenin and his followers, leaving to the party the leading political role in the revolutionary struggle, avoided turning the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP) into a major element in the state economic mechanism.
After the October Revolution, faced with enormous economic difficulties, the leaders of the Bolshevik Party repeatedly called for the inadmissibility of the replacement of government activities by party organizations.
Stalin’s leadership began the process of transforming the party structures into the governing bodies of the Soviet economic machinery. In concurrence with this, the party apparatus grew into a fully-fledged regulatory authority operating on the basis of the nomenclature principle of leadership. The democratic beginnings in the activities of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (VKPb) were winding down.
The period of the first five-year plans was marked by the search for optimal management methods: the sectoral structure of the party bodies was adjusted. As a result, during the Great Patriotic War, the absolute dominance of the state in the economy led to a coherent and efficient functioning of all its elements.
In the second half of the 1950s and early 1960s, the efficiency of the national economy of the USSR decreased, and the intervention of the CPSU in economic affairs intensified.
The second half of the 1970s and the first half of the 1980s were marked by a technological backwardness of the USSR vis-à-vis the world’s leading economies, which was directly linked to the growing degradation of the party leadership in certain regions of the country. The named historical processes shaped the dissolution mechanism of the CPSU.

The article considers the correlation between the concepts of a “common cause” and the vision of nationhood among the German Navy League’s (1898–1934) members. The chronological framework covers the period from the League’s foundation in 1898 until the beginning of the First World War. The League’s sense of community was based on the common goal sharing, which was important for the security of the German Empire – creation of the up-to-date navy. Formally, the League was not a political organization, and that caused the certain restrictions on the usage of the propaganda tools. The main point of the propaganda was, therefore, cultivation of the sense of community among the members. And so, the content of that propaganda was not enough definite and it was poorly controlled by the center, which led to the lack of solidarity and unity. Eventually the idea of “our fleet” came from the inside of the organization that could be considered as a bright manifestation of the pre-war militarization of the society. Creating the nationhood based on the interpretation of building a great German navy as a “common cause” is essential to the comprehension of the radicalization of the German Navy League and the understanding of the roots of disagreement between it and the Imperial Naval Office (Reichsmarineamt).

The article, based on the material from the “Orenburg Diocesan Gazette”, examines the evolution of the image of the Orenburg province in the post-reform period through the lens of the church agenda. It is emphasized that the official part of the periodical constructed the image of the diocese as an orderly hierarchy, where every action, from the ordination of a priest to the construction of a church, was part of a broader program of education and improvement. The multifaceted image of the Orenburg province was also shaped by the unofficial part of the “Orenburg Diocesan Gazette”, which created an image of the region as a space for dialogue, where the civilizing role of Orthodoxy did not negate respect for the traditions of the non-Orthodox believers, but rather sought to integrate them into the broader Russian cultural landscape. The article also focuses on the evolution of the region’s image, from a peripheral territory to a part of the empire. The authors conclude that this evolution reflects the overall logic of imperial policy, which shifted from perceiving the peripheries as “foreign” territories to gradually integrating them into the unified empire.

The article examines the possibility, relevance and the complexity of processing annual reports of collective farms. The geography of the study covers the northern regions of the Bashkir Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, which belong to the forest zone. The article contains the maps and diagrams of the distribution of Bashkiria’s territory by soil zones. The article raises the issue of the information potential of collective farms’ annual reports. The main areas of the statistics reflected in the reports, including the data on the household plots, are shown. The problem of the extreme breadth of explicit information in the annual reports is indicated. The high density in the chronological distribution of the annual reports and their value for building informative dynamic series are revealed. The representativeness of the preserved annual reports of the collective farms was assessed using a selective method and a study of the inventories of the collective farms of the BASSR. On the basis of the materials from the collective farms of the Mechetlinsky district, the paper discusses the issue relating to the representativeness of the collective farm sample with preserved reports. Difficulties in unifying the information of the annual reports of different years have been revealed, in particular, the complications in data transformation, in combining the indicators into a single whole and splitting one indicator into several others. At the conceptual level, the ways to optimize the transfer of data into a machine-readable form are proposed. The annual reports with a regional formulary have been introduced into scientific circulation, and the formulary’s methodological and statistical shortcomings have been noted. It was concluded that the preserved archival material is sufficient to create a database. This research can be applied to the quantitative study of agriculture in the USSR and the BASSR in the 1930s.

The article is devoted to the analysis of I.D. Koval’chenko’s critical remarks on R.W. Fogel’s concept of counterfactual propositions. Being the pioneers in the field of the cliometric approach in the 1950–1970s, these economic historians were the apologists of quantitative methods in historical science. Fogel, the author of the concept, had been the director of the program for studying the long-term development of the American economy at the National Bureau of Economic Research since the second half of the 1970s. Koval’chenko was a specialist in the field of theory and methodology of historical science. He had been the Chairman of the Commission on the Application of Mathematical Methods and Computers in Historical Research at the Department of History of the USSR Academy of Sciences since 1968.
The discussion between the two scholars unfolded in a space of international scientific meetings and personal contacts that took place in the second half of the 1970s against the background of detente in the relations between the USSR and the United States, more precisely – in its final stage. The article presents the main provisions of the concept of counterfactual propositions and gives some of Fogel’s views on historical science. The paper also introduces Koval’chenko’s criticism, its theoretical and methodological foundations, which are within the framework of the mono-methodological research practices of the philosophical doctrine of Marxism-Leninism. The central point of the discussion is the issue of the theoretical foundations of modeling historical processes – goal setting, capable of legitimizing the initial statements on which the model is based.

Currently, historiography features the scholarly works that offer a fragmented understanding of A.S. Matveyev, whose personality attracts modern researchers in terms of the development of specific, narrow fields or who is only indirectly mentioned during the study of the reign of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. The purpose of this article is to analyze A.S. Matveyev’s professional and personal characteristics, as well as to develop a comprehensive understanding of his contribution to the foreign policy processes and the socioeconomic development of Russia in the second half of the 17th century. The author concludes that Matveyev’s approach to achieving his goals was rational, pragmatic, and, accordingly, effective, as demonstrated repeatedly during the suppression of the political crises in the country, and also in the course of the implementation of innovative technological solutions for the development of the economy, science, and culture. The article places particular emphasis on Matveyev’s pioneering work in many areas, such as: providing strong basis for the establishment of the Russian intelligence school, laying the foundations for human rights activities, introducing new protocol and ceremonial rules, launching the country’s first theater and the prototype of ballet, developing the play genre, establishing one of the first pharmacies, etc.

The article is devoted to the description and analysis of the previously unpublished manuscript by A. I. Denikin, “The World War: Russia and abroad”, found by the author in the Bakhmeteff Archive of Columbia University in New York, USA. The manuscript is typed on a typewriter and contains many handwritten corrections made by General Denikin himself. It includes the analysis of the causes and the course of the Second World War on various fronts from its beginning in 1939 until early 1945. Special attention is given by A. I. Denikin to the role of the Soviet Union in the war and the responsibility for the beginning of the conflict not only of Nazi Germany but also of the Western powers. He also writes about the reaction of the Russian émigré community to the war, the split among its ranks between those who supported the Germans and those who refused to do so. The General writes about the formation by the Germans of the military units from the Russian prisoners of war, the creation of the “Russian Liberation Movement” and the “Russian Liberation Army”, as well as about the Cossack units and their leaders, about generals Vlasov and Krasnov. The book contains a wealth of factual material, the correspondence of prominent émigré figures, periodical publications, and the numerous evaluative judgments of A. I. Denikin.

This article examines the theoretical and practical aspects of archival work, particularly with the documentary collections from the ministries and departments transferred to the Central State Archives of the National Economy (now the Russian State Archives of Economy) in the early 1960s. Previously, archival practice in the USSR, involving the selection of the vast tracts of documentary materials, had not yet encountered such a task. This was due to the relatively closed nature of departmental archives, which, for nearly forty years, had pursued their own policies for the selection and storage of archival documents. The study and scientific processing of those documentary collections by archival staff predetermined the further development of scientific and methodological work in the field of archival work, both in economic documentation and in the field as a whole. The results of their work were detailed in the reports and articles, which provide comprehensive information on the state of recordkeeping and archives within the departments. Working on-site, archivists not only arranged the ministries’ archival collections but also posed and addressed new theoretical problems. Thus, the issues of document funding, systematization, acquisition, and appraisal were subsequently reconsidered and revised.
Methodological manuals were compiled for departmental records management departments and archival repositories, along with the instructions on records management and compiling file nomenclatures, as well as the lists of the documents subject to the transfer to state custody. It was the resulting role of those studies that allowed Soviet archivists to strengthen the theoretical foundations of archival science.

This article presents the analysis of the documentary and epistolary heritage of Orenburg and later Saratov civil governor Egor Ivanovich Baranovsky (1821–1914), stored in his personal fund in the United State Archives of the Orenburg region. For the first time in Russian historiography, this set of sources provides an opportunity to touch upon the little-known, in some cases practically untouched in science, facts from the life of the “red” governor. The sources under consideration make it possible to shed light on the circumstances of the official’s personal life, to supplement his biography with new details. The documents from Baranovsky’s personal fund characterize his public service in the gubernatorial posts during the development and implementation of the abolition of serfdom reform, provide information about his resignation, and allow us to analyze the social circle of a regional official of the era of Great Reforms. These sources make it possible to trace the historical and biographical reconstruction of the governor’s life after the end of his public service, provide information about his commercial and charitable activities, as well as about one of the largest enterprises of his life – a trip around the world through the Suez Canal. The conducted research allows us to more accurately imagine the life path of one of the most prominent regional officials of the mid-19th century.

This article is a review of the textbook “General History of Archives”, published in the first half of the 2020s. It was written by a team of authors under the guidance of prof. T.I. Khorkhordina, Doctor of Sciences (History), Head of the Department of History and Administration of Archives at the Faculty of Archival Science and Records Management at the Institute for History and Archives of the Russian State University for the Humanities. The structure of this manual is organized by region. Each chapter is devoted to the history and archives administration in a specific country. In preparing their texts, the authors relied on the international regulations regarding archives and records management, as well as on the scholarly works and textbooks devoted to the development of archives administration in Europe and, to some extent, in Asia.
These sources and research papers have not only been used in preparing the chapters but are also presented in the form of the lists that conclude the teaching material. All chapters wind up with the questions that fully reflect their content and are so designed as to provide control over the students’ knowledge. The review also states that the authors of the textbook have successfully utilized the opportunity to move away from the subjective approach to the analysis and interpretation of the facts – the approach which, for many decades, has been predetermined by the application of, first, a formal and then a liberal-Western methodology.
The article notes the prospects for developing the textbooks on the general history of archives. On the one hand, these prospects lie in the expansion of the range of the countries selected as the subjects of study, characterized by the systems of information law distinct from the RomanoGermanic one. On the other hand, they are associated with the opportunity for a more in-depth analysis of international experience in addressing the methodological challenges that Russian archivists still face. These challenges primarily concern the computerization of all stages of work with archival documents, from their acquisition and organization of storage on electronic platforms to the creation of conditions for fruitful access to them from a research perspective. The main conclusion of the review is that, in terms of structure and content, the prepared textbook can be considered the most comprehensive publication on the general history of archives currently available in the world. In acquiring methodological and practical knowledge, the manual will be equally useful for archivists and the specialists in the field of history of foreign countries.