Abstract: The author discusses the mediation mission of the US President T. Roosevelt, who made a significant contribution to the end of the bloody Russian-Japanese war of 1904-1905. Having offered assistance to the conflicting parties in search of a mutual compromise, he sought to use the contradictions between the great powers through skillful maneuvering in the interests of the increased influence of his own country on world politics. In the theory of the "balance of power" formulated by him, the main attention is paid to the distribution of control zones between major geopolitical players, while a significant place in international relations was given to the United States, which at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries actively joined the struggle for sales markets. When considering the "good deeds" of the President, the main emphasis is placed on the analysis of the various diplomatic means used by him to achieve his goals. He was one of the first to resort to the so-called "multilateral" diplomacy, which involved the complex application of both conventional and non-traditional measures of mediation. By assuming the role of an intermediary, he was able not only to achieve the delimitation of spheres of influence with Japan in East Asia, but also to "open the doors" for American capital to Northern China on the basis of the principle of the most favored nation. The Portsmouth Peace led to a change in the balance of power in the Asia-Pacific region, in which the United States, thanks to the successful mediation of Roosevelt, became the main player in international diplomacy.
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Abstract: Slavery has always been condemned across the world; however in the end of the XX century, such canonical concept was rectified based on the extensive examination by American scholars of compilation of narratives of the former slaves collected in 1930s in the United States. At that time, 2,300 former slaves from 17 states were interviewed about their life in the era of slavery. Later, these interviews were placed in open access on the website of the Library of US Congress, reconstructing a contradictory picture of everyday life of African-Americans in the conditions of plantation economy: some reminiscences convey almost a nostalgic feeling of the past, while others criticizes it severely. The author in his attempt explain the historical accuracy of the results of mass interviewing of African-Americans, tries to make sense why 70 years later, the eyewitnesses of the same event have polar viewpoints. Forming the new comparative-historical approaches towards examination of collective consciousness under the influence of anthropologization of historical knowledge, the interview materials allow reconstructing the period, demonstrating the value system of the entire population group, unlike biography that structures the chain of events in chronological order. Analysis of the archive “Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938” has not been previously conducted within the Russian historiography, just briefly mentioned as one of the documentary aspects of the institution of slavery. The contained material is important for scientific comprehension of the bygone era of slavery, reflected in the collective memory of long-suffering African-American sub-ethnos. The problem of slavery in the United States, which synthesizes heritage of the past with practices of everyday life in various manifestations, seems optimal from the perspective of historiographical interest.

Abstract: The article examines the little-studied in Russian historiography topic of the role of U.S. President T. Roosevelt in resolving the first Moroccan crisis. The author seeks to determine the content, forms, and methods of his influence on the position of the leadership of Germany and France, and to examine the routes of the resolution of the regional conflict from spring 1905 to April 1906. Particular attention is paid to the secrecy of Roosevelt's mediation mission, which excluded information leakage. Through the use of not only generally accepted means, but also methods of threats and blackmail, the president managed to convince the conflicting parties to sit at the negotiation table in the Spanish town of Algeciras, to shift their position from a dead point and to achieve a mutually beneficial compromise concerning the key issues on the agenda. The main method for analyzing the Moroccan crisis and the ways it was solved is the systematic approach, which consists of a comprehensive analysis of the regional conflict's anatomy in order to comprehensively identify the relationship and interactions of the entire body of participants with an emphasis, above all, on the actions of the American side. No less fruitful is the use of historical comparative studies in determining both Roosevelt’s mediation motives and the methods he used to solve the Moroccan crisis, including in comparison with the tools used in the Russo-Japanese war. In Russian historiography, Roosevelt's mediation mission in resolving the Moroccan crisis has not been the subject of focused studies, but only briefly mentioned as one of the episodes in his foreign policy activities. The article is written based on original sources from the epistolary heritage of the president, for the first time introduced into scientific circulation.