Abstract: The article is devoted to the history of studying the events of the defense of Tsaritsyn during the Civil War within the framework of the publishing project "IGV", implemented in the 1930s on the initiative and with the active participation of M. Gorky. Based on the documents of the editorial secretariat, which are currently stored in the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History, it was established that a team of three authors was responsible for writing the corresponding section of the multi-volume work: professional historians, students of M.N. Pokrovsky, G.E. Meerson and E.B. Genkina, and a direct participant in the events, one of the military leaders of the Red Army I.F. Tkachev's army. The work of each of the team members is characterized. It is shown what role participation in this project played in the biographies of the authors. The writing of the history of Tsaritsyn's defense is analyzed in the context of the political, cultural, and intellectual processes that determined the development of historical science during the establishment of the totalitarian system in the USSR. As the study showed, writing a work on the history of Tsaritsyn's defense in 1918, sustained in the spirit of the cult of personality, but possessing formal signs of scientific historical research, was an important task, the solution of which was followed by people who held senior party and government posts in the Soviet Union in the 1930s. Two of the three authors who did not show Due to their diligence in this work (G.E. Meerson and I.F. Tkachev), they were arrested and shot. For G.E. Meerson, the failure to write the defense of Tsaritsyn could have been a decisive factor that determined his fate. E.B. Genkina, having managed to successfully complete this work, became a recognized authority in the community of Soviet historians.

Abstract: The subject of the study is the initial stage of the history of the School of Mathematical and Navigation Sciences as one of the first Russian secular technical educational institutions. Attention is focused on those aspects of the formation of the School that had not previously been the subject of special research by historians. Based on the complex of documents of the Armory Chamber identified and introduced into scientific circulation, it is analyzed which disciplinary and offenses the first students of the school committed and why. Analyzing the specific court proceedings conducted in the Armory Chamber on the fact of these violations, the authors show how extracurricular and educational work with students was organized.
The role of Leonty Magnitsky, an outstanding Russian scientist, mathematician, author of the first fundamental work on arithmetic, in organizing educational work with navigation students, is being clarified.   The research was carried out using traditional methods for historical research, special attention was paid to the identification and introduction into scientific circulation of clerical sources on the chosen topic. As the study showed, the students of the School of Mathematical and Navigation Sciences came from various estates and regions of the Russian state. Once in Moscow, many of them found themselves in a social environment that was not familiar to them, faced temptations that were difficult for them to resist. In this regard, the teachers of the School, and first of all Leonty Magnitsky, paid great attention to educational work among students. An active group of schoolchildren was formed, who, on the instructions of teachers, monitored the behavior of their comrades. For the revealed violations, the perpetrators were severely punished in public. Extracurricular work contributed to the formation of a unified system of values, instilling interest in learning, instilling discipline, and eliminating vices among students. It has become an important factor in achieving the main goal for which the School was established: to train navigation specialists necessary to create a navy in Russia in the shortest possible time.

Abstract: The article presents an analysis of historiography devoted to the biography of J. Broeckell, an engineer who in 1697 supervised the construction of the first shipping canal, which was supposed to connect the Volga and the Don through their tributaries Kamyshinka and Ilovlya. The analysis showed that despite the fact that in the XVIII-XX centuries many sources containing reliable information about the activities of J. Broeckell in Russia were introduced into scientific circulation, the authors of works on the history of the construction of the Volga-Don Canal were based mainly not on these sources, but on the book by Englishman John Perry "The State Russia under the present tsar", who led the construction work on Kamyshinka in 1698-1702. In the course of the research, it was possible to establish the main biographical information about Johann Broeckell before his arrival in Russia, to clarify the circumstances of his admission to the tsarist service. Analysis of a wide range of published and archival data allowed us to prove that in 1696 J. Broeckell took part in the Azov campaign, was engaged in the construction of earthworks after the capture of the city by Russian troops. In 1697, under his leadership the canal between the tributaries of the Volga and Don Kamyshinka and Ilovlya was begun to built. At the beginning of 1698, apparently realizing that he would not be able to successfully complete the construction of the canal, J. Broeckell left Russia. At the end of 1698, he was captured by Russian troops while trying to transfer to the service of the Turks.

Abstract: The research subject is the activity of the Russian government agencies on the central and regional levels in 1700-1760s in collecting information necessary for the study of the state’s territories in earth science and historic-cultural spheres, with the help of preparing and sending out particular surveys, as well as the result of this work – reports, answers to the surveys, books written on their basis. During this period scholars began a complex scientific study of Russian territories, with regard to which the named series of questions allows to trace how the development of the new methods of scientific mastering of the territory occurred, how the scientific study of these territories was tied to the actual government policy on the military-political and economic reclamation of the country’s regions. The research was conducted on the basis of the principles of historicism and objectivity with the application of the textual criticism and historic-comparative methods, and the method of systematic analysis. As a result of the conducted research it has been established that in 1700-1710s the collection and comprehension of the information regarding the geography, history, ethnography of Russian regions was carried out in the extreme conditions of constant military operations and implementation of vast government reforms. After the end of the Northern War, which chronologically coincides with the passage of the Tsaritsynskaya Watch Line that reduced the military pressure in the Lower Volga region, as one of the main means to collect information for the study of the region came to be used the distribution of surveys, the answers to which were prepared by the local clerks. The organization of surveys at this time, was primarily connected with the activity of several outstanding scholars, who realized the necessity of composing a general historical and geographical description on the Russian Empire – I. K. Kirillov, V. N. Tatishev, M. V. Lomonosov and G. F. Miller, and was not part of the constantly conducted government policy. Surveying allowed to accumulate information on the Russian regions, including on the Lower Volga region, in the Academy of Sciences and the Senate, but this method of collecting empirical material had a whole series of shortcomings, which under the existing conditions could not be overcome.

Abstract: The subject of this research is the historical essays of the early XVIII century, in which along with other issued, were examined the problems of history of the Lower Volga Region (diaries of Peter the Great’s travels, “Short History of the Great Northern War”, “Core of the Russian History”, as well as works of the foreigners who traveled or served in Russia – Bell, Perry, Strahlenberg, de Bruijn). The work defines the circles of the questions on the Lower Volga Region history, which presented the interest for these authors, as well as characterizes their contribution into the study of regional history. The conducted research demonstrated that in the early XVIII century, the issues associated with the history, modern status and prospects of development of the Lower Volga Region were analyzed, as well as materials on this topic were created. These essays differed from the previously existed traditions of description of history in their approaches towards understanding of the past, form, and methods of the work with the source. These compositions comprised the foundation for the main directions of further study of the history of Lower Volga Region during the XVIII-XIX centuries:


Examination of events of the regional history in the context of history of the Russian State;


Study of the historical problematic within the works dedicated to the comprehensive research of territory of the Russian Empire in geographic, economic, and ethnographic regard.