Отечественная история

Based on a wide range of sources and archival materials the article analyzes the position of the Russian publisher and publicist I. A. Arsenyev on the Polish issue on the eve of the Polish Uprising of 1863–1864. Arsenyev, seconded to Warsaw in 1861 to compile correspondences, was a journalist of a new format. He not only objectively recorded the events that contributed to the escalation of the Russian-Polish conflict, but after analyzing them, outlined his vision of the problem in a special note, which aroused interest in the highest government circles.

The paper regards the experiments of Russian Internal Affairs Ministry conducted alongside with drafting bills on local management of gubernia and uezd institutions supervised by N. A. Milyutrin. The author is a pioneer in introducing the archive materials which prove that General Governor Prince I. I. Vasil’chikov, being in charge of the reforms in Kiev Gubernia, acted in accordance with the directions of Internal Affairs Ministry.

The results of the work of the first Russian cooperative congresses, their composition and size are investigated. The decisions of the congresses, which determined the direction of development of agricultural, credit, consumer, industrial, creamery and processing cooperatives, are analyzed for many years to come. Special attention in the article is paid to the reaction of the authorities to their organization and to identifying the reasons for participation in political parties in cooperative congresses.

The article considers public and political stance of one of the respected thought leaders within the Russian “first wave” emigration, a front man of the Eurasian community, duke Nickolay Sergeevich Trubetskoy. His attitude to the key issues of state-building formed under the influence of radical societal transformation in Russia has been analyzed on the basis of different sources.

The article is devoted to the analysis of American observers’ views on the status of religion in the Soviet society in the 1930s. There were two different groups among them: engineers and workers who came to participate in the industrialization of the USSR, and professional journalists from the United States. Perceiving the socio-political processes that took place in our counrty often in different ways, the American observers agreed on one position.

At the turn of the 1920s and 1930s, the modernization program in the USSR took an accelerated character. In the “nomadic” regions of the country, it took the form of sedentarizing nomads along with collectivization. The completion of these processes, according to the authorities, was to solve not only the problems of modernization of the country, but also the problems associated with the presence of a “nomadic civilization” in the USSR, which was not controlled by the state and was unyielding to Sovietization.

This article discusses how in the period of «thaw» in the southern Urals in the Orenburg region and the Bashkiria the theme of the revolution of 1917 is risen in the cultural life. Through the analysis of the media a tendency of the Soviet government towards cinematic coverage of the events of the Great October is revealed. It is established that the appeal to these events in the 50s–60s of the last century were not accidental – a new society needed a «hero of the time».

In this article an attempt to review the Soviet fiction of the first half of the 20th century to reveal how the role of the commander M. B. Barclay de Tolly is estimated there at the epoch of the Twelfth year is made. As a result of the analysis of literary works of that time it is possible to state that views of the Soviet writers synchronously reflect all the aspects of the Soviet historiography: from semirecognition of qualities of a military leader Barclay and his merits in rescuing army (and objectively the country) to groundless defamation.

The article considers the process of introduction of the Institute of provincial prison inspection in the Ryazan province based on archival materials. The reasons and conditions of its establishment are shown. Some information about personal qualities and professional activities of the Ryazan province prison inspectors is given. The main directions and results of their work on the organization of staff structure of inspection, interaction with regional detention facilities, development of prisoners’ work and improvement of personnel are highlighted.

The article deals with the Soviet policy towards the former tsarist concessions in Iran in 1921-27. Despite the renunciation of the former tsarist concessions in Iran, the Soviet leadership de facto tried to control the disposal of the strategically most important of them: either through legal instruments or by force. The analysis of the existing sources on the problem demonstrates that at the heart of the policy there were the strategic interests of the Soviet state.