No 4 (2025)

The subject of this study is the initial stage of forming the national system of design and engineering organizations in the field of artillery. This period is fundamental in the process of establishing the principles of functioning of design bureaus within the system of scientific and technical organizations of the USSR. The stages of development of design bureaus (DB) of artillery specialization are considered, starting with the activities of the DB of the Special Artillery Testing Commission. The period of reorganization of artillery design bureaus, implemented at the turn of the 1920s and 1930s, when they were transferred from the jurisdiction of the People’s Commissariat for Military and Naval Affairs to the authority of the Supreme Council of National Economy, is characterized. A list of enterprises identified as the base for creating design bureaus is provided, and the contradictions of the first five years of their activities are determined. The complex of methods used included the processing of archival materials, historical-scientific analysis of foundational works, and comparative-historical methods. As a result of this research, using the example of artillery design bureaus, the main milestones in the formation of the system of design and research organizations that developed military equipment and armaments for the main branches of the Red Army or contributed to this activity were identified for the first time. Such organizations also existed under the Air Force, Navy, and others. An important conclusion is the indication that, in addition to design and engineering organizations, scientific research institutes operated within the same branches of the military, conducting research to find technical solutions that would enhance the effectiveness of the relevant types of armaments. The combination and coordination of the functioning of these organizations—design bureaus, research institutes, and test sites—established in the 1930s ensured the possibility of developing and setting up serial production of high-level weapon and military equipment samples of appropriate quality, many of which were groundbreaking on a global scale.

The article is dedicated to the analysis of the French intervention in southern Russia in 1918-1919, undertaken in the context of the end of World War I, the collapse of the Central Powers, and the escalation of the Civil War in Russia. The subject of the research is France's military-political strategies in the post-war period, its attempts to expand influence in the territories of the former Russian Empire, as well as the internal logic of decision-making within the French military and diplomatic leadership. Special attention is given to the interaction of French representatives with the Volunteer Army, the assessment of resources involved in the campaign, and the degree of realism of the developed plans. The work covers both France's strategic objectives and the practical difficulties in implementing them in the conditions of political instability, logistical constraints, and diplomatic contradictions. The goal of the research is to identify the political, military, and organizational factors that influenced the formation of the strategy of the French command and the reasons for the failure of the intervention. Methodologically, the work is based on the analysis of official documents, correspondence of the military command, and diplomatic telegrams that allow tracing the decision-making process and the contradictions within the French authority. A systemic approach is also applied, taking into account the political context and international interests of the Entente. As a result, it has been established that despite the declared aim of supporting anti-Bolshevik forces, the intervention had a largely economic-political character and was oriented towards restoring French influence and assets in the region. The French strategy suffered from a lack of coherence between the army and naval commands, resource shortages, unclear mandates, and troop demoralization. All of this led to the failure of ambitious plans, which were limited to control over coastal ports. The results of the work may be useful in researching France's foreign policy strategy, the history of interventions, and international involvement in civil conflicts. The conclusions of the article emphasize that the intervention, conceived as a means of influence, proved to be ineffective due to systemic management errors and a strategic overestimation of capabilities.

The article is dedicated to the employment of women and minors in the chemical industry of the Russian Empire during the 1880s and 1890s, using the example of three provinces – Vladimir, Moscow, and St. Petersburg – in the context of the emergence of factory legislation aimed at regulating, among other things, the use of labor from the specified age and gender cohorts. Based on the factory and plant directories from 1884 and 1894, the article analyzes the factors influencing the dynamics of the share of adult men among all workers in chemical establishments – the level of mechanization, their age, specialization, location, etc. The selected provinces represent two industrial regions, the old (Moscow) and the new (St. Petersburg), which historians often contrast concerning the use of female labor, and the article examines the relevance of such an approach concerning the chemical industry. From a methodological perspective, the study relies on historical-genetic, comparative (diachronic), and systemic methods. The main conclusions of the article can be summarized as follows. The chemical industry of the Russian Empire in the 1880s and 1890s resorted to the use of cheap labor in significant amounts, regardless of which specific group of productions was concerned (there were exceptions, but they are overshadowed by key industries) and the level of mechanization of the establishments, which, according to several researchers, was supposed to decrease manufacturers' interest in it. One cannot speak of the effectiveness of factory legislation concerning the chemical industry, as both analyzed chronological cuts show an increase in both the number and share. Regarding several industrial sectors, historians consider this package of regulations as an element of the rivalry between the Moscow and St. Petersburg industrial regions, but in the case of the chemical industry, there can be no talk of serious competition, as the St. Petersburg province leaves Moscow far behind in key indicators – and, unlike the textile productions, for which the adopted regulatory acts were originally directed, it actively employs the labor of women and children.

The article deals with the process of "legalizing" runaway monastic serfs settled in the Simbirsk Uyezd (Volga region). They were recorded during the first revision (census) in the early 1720s, but contrary to tradition, they were not deported to their former residence. The formal opportunity for this was provided by Peter the Great's resolution of February 9, 1723: "where there are entire villages, or where half or a third, the runaway serfs are to be returned to their landlords with lands, and where less, they are to be deported as others". The subject of the research are the methods of "legalization": the legal formalization of newly emerged monastic land tenure as well as the duties imposed on the peasants by the landlords. The article also pays attention to the features of settlement of runaways and their descendants in the Simbirsk Uyezd. The research methodology is based on the comparative analysis of officer inventories and revision records of the first three censuses. With these sources we can discover settlements where runaway serfs and their descendants lived, and then we are able to reconstruct the emergence of these settlements. During the reconstruction, a cartographic method was used as all revealed settlements were localized on a map in the QGIS. The study revealed that most of the "legalized" monastic estates did not meet the criteria defined by Peter the Great's resolution. There were only 6 villages of total 50 ones where runaway serfs made up more than a third of the inhabitants. The ways of legal formalization of monastic land tenure depended on the landowner whose lands the fugitives settled in. On manorial lands it was formalized by a private law transaction, and in yasak villages it was nothing more than a share in the usage of common land. The land ownership of the Nizhny Novgorod Pechersky Monastery was based on the seizure of empty land by runaways that was not formalized by any official documents. Most of the returned serfs paid money dues to their monasteries. Meanwhile, de facto some runaways did not submit their formal landlords and did not fulfill any obligations towards them.

The article is devoted to the study of offenses committed by the Chinese population in the Russian Amur Region in the late XIX – early XX centuries. Relations between migrants and local authorities were very difficult. The fault of the emerging problems was most often the behavior of migrants and the wary attitude of the local population towards them. The work analyzes the circumstances that contributed to the commission of offenses among the Chinese. Particular attention is paid to the types of crimes common among migrants, and the reaction of local authorities to these phenomena. In sources of various types reflecting the events of the period under review, there is information about violations of Russian laws by the Chinese population. In turn, the complaints of the migrants themselves allow us to conclude about the attitude of the Russian authorities towards them. The study is based on an analysis of documents from the Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Empire, court materials and periodicals. The novelty of the work lies in the circulation of new archival sources on the problem. In the course of the study, the author comes to the conclusion that in the late XIX – early XX century. Chinese migrants, while adapting to living conditions in new territories, committed various kinds of offenses. Offenses committed by Chinese migrants ranged from minor misdemeanors involving violations of local norms and customs to more serious crimes such as smuggling, speculation, and even crimes against the person (murder, robbery, theft, etc.). The main reason for the commission of crimes by the Chinese was economic difficulties. This was aggravated by insufficient control of the migration process by local authorities, a shortage of personnel, a small local population, as well as non-interference in the affairs of migrants by the Qing government.

The article reconstructs the strategies of the interaction between the editorial offices of the newspapers “Moskovskie Vedomosti”, “Grazhdanin”, and “Novoe Vremya” with the Main Directorate for Press Affairs (GUDP) from 1894 to 1899. It examines the unsuccessful attempt to appoint V.A. Gringmut to the post of head of the GUDP while simultaneously granting him control of “Moskovskie Vedomosti” in 1896. The study's materials demonstrate that in response to appeals to the GUDP from the editor of “Moskovskie Vedomosti”, V.A. Gringmut, and the publisher of "Grazhdanin", Prince V.P. Meshchersky, concerning the removal of imposed restrictions, the Minister of Internal Affairs, I.L. Goremykin (often with the sanction of Nicholas II), made decisions favorable to these conservative publications. Particular attention is paid to the informal practices of interaction between editors and censors, as well as to the relationships between the publisher of "Novoye Vremya", A.S. Suvorin, and the heads of the GUDP, E.M. Feoktistov and M.P. Solovyov. The article touches upon the issue of the “Novoe Vremya” editorial office disclosing sources of information published in the newspaper concerning sensitive aspects of policy in the Far East. The claims of various government departments regarding the content of articles in "Grazhdanin" and "Novoye Vremya" and the GUDP's reactions to them are separately analyzed.The methodological foundation of the study is a systems approach, which includes comparative analysis and the use of internal documentation and official correspondence of the GUDP, periodical materials, published and unpublished personal documents of leading political figures, publishers, and editors of newspapers and magazines as sources. The scientific novelty of the work is determined by the need for a comprehensive study of the mutual influence of domestic policy and journalistic activity covering it, within the context of an underdeveloped legal system and growing crisis phenomena in public administration at the turn of the 20th century. The outcome of the work is an attempt to reconstruct and conduct a comparative analysis of the mechanisms of informal communication between publishers and editors of periodicals with the GUDP, and to determine the degree of state involvement in journalistic activity. The conclusions drawn from the research indicate the prevalence of informal practices in the relationship between the conservative press and the MDPA in the second half of the 1890s, and also emphasize that the formally existing legal norms were applied selectively to conservative publications during this period.

The article explores the speculation of securities on the stock market of the Russian Empire in the early 20th century as part of the mechanism of price formation and the coordination of interests among banking syndicates, industrial capital, and private players. The article reconstructs a typology of market participants: "capitalists" (long-term investors), professional speculators, and the "public," differentiated by their appetite for risk, investment horizon, and behavior discipline. Speculation in late imperial Russia was an integral mechanism of market functioning: it ensured the circulation of securities, and the actions of the state and banks directly influenced the investment climate and the structure of interests in the capital market. Speculation supported high market liquidity. The article systematically demonstrates that professionals in trading considered the psychological climate in their investment practices: the level of stock market excitement, the mood of the trading public regarding specific securities, and the perception of the innovativeness of companies. The research relies on the approach of behavioral finance: price dynamics is interpreted as an expression of collective expectations, excessive optimism/panic, along with rational factors. The source base includes professional treatises on speculation (A. A. Vasiliev, 1912), journalistic writings by market participants (I. P. Manus, 1905), and materials from the Moscow State Archive (fond 143, Moscow Exchange Committee). It is shown that risk-free state funds served as the benchmark for assessing other assets, and discrepancies with them and the state of the money market directed capital flows between "risk-free" and more profitable securities. Through industry examples (securities of railway companies), the institutional features of issuing securities (stocks and bonds) are illustrated. Methods for assessing the investment attractiveness of securities prevalent in the financial practices of the period are described. The practices of targeted support for the quotes of government bonds by states are examined; markets perceived the stability of public funds as a key element of financial stability and increased trust in policy. The research approaches of behavioral finance turned out to be a productive methodological foundation for analyzing materials on the history of the stock market.

The subject of the research article is the adaptation of philological categories "intertextuality" (connections between texts) and "polygenre" (genre heterogeneity within a text) as methodological tools of historical science for the analysis of textual sources. The study focuses on how the application of these categories allows for the deconstruction of the "monolithicity" of historical documents (using the example of the memoirs and scientific article by T. E. Lawrence), revealing in them borrowings, insertions from other works, or microtexts with different genre nature (for example, a scientific article within memoirs). The aim of the study is to demonstrate that the use of the proposed categories will enable historians to more accurately determine the authorship of text fragments, reconstruct the history of the source's creation, assess the reliability of information, and identify authorial strategies through the lens of genre conventions. The research employs comparative-textological analysis and genre attribution based on linguistic criteria. The foundation of the methodology is the adaptation of philological concepts of intertextuality (R. Barthes, J. Kristeva) and polygenre (D. K. Karsliyeva, E. A. Andreeva, V. I. Khomyakov). The study offers a systematic adaptation of the philological categories of "intertextuality" and "polygenre" into historical source studies as a new methodological tool. The novelty lies in the following: 1) demonstration, using the genres of memoirs and scientific articles, of the possibility of developing criteria for genre attribution of beyond phrase units (purpose, functions, structure, terminology) for historians; 2) consideration of two types of heterogeneity within sources – insertions from other specific and complete works (using the example of the inclusion of the military-scientific article by T. E. Lawrence in his memoirs) and "organic" polygenre (microtexts of different genre nature, such as a geographical essay in the introduction to the memoirs). The main conclusions are as follows: these categories are effective for deconstructing the "monolithicity" of sources, reconstructing their "archaeology" (sources of fragments, stages of creation), and identifying author's strategies through genre conventions. This allows for a shift from intuitive analysis of the text's attributes to a reflective plane, opening up prospects for reinterpreting historical research.

The article examines the relationship between emperor Aurelian (270–275 AD) and the Roman Senate, which by the 3rd century AD had lost its leading political role but retained significant political and economic influence. Special attention is paid to Aurelian’s measures aimed at consolidating and centralizing power, which directly affected the interests of the senatorial class and the capital’s aristocracy as a whole. The study analyzes the emperor’s dual strategy -combining repressive measures (executions, purges) with attempts to maintain dialogue with the aristocratic elite (consultations, appointments of senators to key positions). A key focus is the circumstances of Aurelian’s assassination during preparations for a campaign against Persia, in which, according to ancient historical accounts, senators played an active role. The research is based on an analysis of classical narrative and numismatic sources, supplemented by modern scholarship. Comparative-historical and critical methods are applied. The article argues that the strengthening of imperial power inevitably led to conflict with the Senate, which predetermined the brevity of Aurelian’s reign. At the same time, it significantly revises traditional portrayals of Aurelian as an excessively brutal and authoritarian ruler. The study demonstrates that Aurelian sought peaceful coexistence and compromise with the capital’s nobility. His reign vividly illustrates the tension between the necessity of strong imperial authority in the 3rd century AD and the aristocracy’s struggle to preserve its privileges. Aurelian’s assassination resulted from a complex interplay between senatorial opposition and military elites. The circumstances of the subsequent election of Tacitus as emperor in Rome provide evidence of the Senate’s active involvement in the conspiracy.

This article is dedicated to a comparative analysis of the investment activity of the United States of America and the Russian Federation in the critical infrastructure of the South Caucasus from 2010 to 2025. The author examines energy, transport, and digital corridors as tools for consolidating the influence of great powers and applies panel regression and event-study methods to identify the relationship between "investment shocks" and armed incidents. It has been found that an increase in the share of American capital by 10 percentage points is associated with a 4.2% decrease in the number of clashes, whereas a similar increase in the Russian share leads to a 3.9% rise in conflict. The article offers a three-scenario forecast until 2030 and recommendations to reduce infrastructure risks. It employs panel regression with fixed effects, event-study for key infrastructure "shocks," the Mann-Whitney test, and Markov switching scenario modeling, which allowed for the identification of a causal relationship between the structure of investments and armed incidents. The scientific novelty of the research lies in the fact that, for the first time in the South Caucasus, three types of infrastructure—energy, transport, and digital—are integrated into a single panel database, where each object is digitized by quarters from 2010 to 2025. This has empirically shown that the "structure" of the investor, rather than just the amount of capital, determines the dynamics of conflict: a 10 percentage point increase in the share of the USA statistically reduces the number of armed incidents, while a comparable increase in the Russian share, on the contrary, increases the risk of clashes. The work also identifies an institutional factor: DFC loans with an ESG filter tend to be more resilient to sanction shocks than intergovernmental loans from the Russian Federation. Scenario Markov modeling demonstrates that the launch of TANAP-2 and the Digital Silk Way can reinforce a "US-lead" regime, while the completion of the northern segment of the "North-South" corridor increases the likelihood of a "RU-lead." The findings deepen the understanding of geoeconomic competition, confirming its direct impact on security, and form practical recommendations for diversifying corridors and reducing path dependence.

The purpose of this article is a historical study of the contribution of the Berdyansk Zemstvo, an innovative body of public self-government in post-reform Russia at that time, to solving administrative, economic, and socio-cultural issues of the county and the entire Tauride province, and to developing skills to involve the peasantry, merchants, and the mixed class in local government. The subject of the study was the analysis of the results of changes in the local government system in terms of taking into account the needs of people living in the territory of the county and the city. The author examines in detail the contribution of his predecessors to the source study and historiography of the issue. Special attention is paid to the practical significance of the research, which is seen in the use of specific historical knowledge about approaches, methods and algorithms for solving economic and social problems by zemstvos in state and municipal management of the region's development at the present stage. In the study, the author uses a number of specific methods of historical analysis: the actualization method, which involves taking into account past historical experience and predicting its use in modern regional development management; a statistical method in which the author examines the mention in the local press and statistical collections of data related to the study of problems of local self-government in Berdyansk county. The main conclusions of the study are the provisions that, based on the example of the history of the Berdyansk Zemstvo, we can talk about significant progress in solving managerial tasks at the local government level; about gaining experience that is still in demand today in various areas of public life. The author's special contribution is to examine the activities of the Berdyansk Zemstvo in the last third of the 19th century in the development of the county from various perspectives: enriching the practice of local government; the nomination and implementation of valuable initiatives aimed at the development of the city

The subject of this article is the gradual dismantling of the higher communist education system that took place in the USSR in the 1930s. During the period of profound reorganization (and liquidation), the vast majority of leading centers of "Marxist science" underwent changes: the Communist University of the Toiling East (KUTV), the International Lenin School (MLS), the University of the Toiling People of China, and others. The Communist University of National Minorities of the West (KUNMZ), which provided educational training for Soviet and foreign students in 17 European languages, was no exception in this regard. In 1936, according to a resolution of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, the university was disbanded. In this article, relying on significant archival materials (funds 529 and 531 of the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History), the author examines the circumstances preceding the liquidation of national communist universities. Methodologically, the work is based on the comparison of various types of historical sources (office documentation, party documents, personal origin sources) with the aim of a comprehensive reconstruction of objective historical reality. The author's main contribution to the study of the topic is the reconstruction of specific historical events that affected the activities of communist educational institutions in the second half of the 1930s: the transformation of communist universities into higher agricultural schools in 1932, the exclusion of national communist universities from the list of all-Union educational institutions, university audits by the Central Control Commission, and so on. The author has thoroughly analyzed the preconditions that led the Soviet leadership to the decision to reorganize the process of training national personnel: changes in the vector of foreign policy, the desire for unification of the educational process, deep changes in the national policy of the communist party. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the reconstruction of poorly studied aspects of the activities of communist universities and the introduction of a significant body of unpublished materials into circulation.