Abstract: This article analyzes an isolated case within the framework of trend of jubilee mania – recent centenary celebration of the Revolution of 1917 in Italy. The author believes that many historical events reappear on the horizon when assigned to play an important role in modern politics. The article describes how the Italians view the Revolution and how it helps to explain modern Russia. The research is carried out within the framework of methodology of public history. Having examined a wide variety of sources (online articles, articles in newspapers and magazines, scientific writings, information on the congresses and conferences, exhibitions, concerts, etc.), the author attempts to demonstrate how the Russian revolutions are reflected in the Italian public opinion. The conclusion is made that the Revolution plays an important role not only in modern Russia, in Italy as well. The latter believe that the Revolution is still present in their culture and politics, correlates with their own path of political history of the XX century, including the powerful Movement for the left that emerged in the country after the World War II. At the same time, Russia did not give due attention to celebration of the centennial anniversary, focusing rather on the victory over Hitler, since this event projects the glory of the Soviet Union onto the modern Russian Federation.

Keywords: Trotsky, Stalin, Bolsheviks, Lenin, February Revolution, October Revolution, jubilee mania, politics of memory, Communism, propaganda

Abstract: This paper revisits the concept of “school awareness”, which in the previous scholarship was mostly regarded as a product of penetration of Chinese patriarchal patterns into the Buddhist community against the background of loosened state control during the late Ming dynasty. Particular attention should be directed to the fact that such mindset of Buddhist monks existed even as late as the XVIII century, with one of the main examples here being Wenhai Fuju (1685-1765), who adopted a series of steps to promote the Qianhua lineage of Vinaya school of Chinese Buddhism. In order to explore his activities in detail, this paper synthesizes data form various sources producing a complete, chronologically arranged biography. The analysis of obtained results shows that the majority of Wenhai Fuju’s endeavors embodying his “school awareness” were in fact driven by the needs and opportunities of interaction with the Yongzheng (1723-1735) or Qianlong (1736-1795) emperors. This allows concluding that the official authorities expected and approved such desire for domination for a particular Buddhist school. Accordingly, it was the impact of imperial policy that could have kept up such “school awareness” in the XVIII century China.

Keywords: Wenhai Fuju, Qianhua, Vinaya, Qianlong, Yongzheng, Qing, Buddhism, religion, China, school awareness

Abstract: The paper deals with the problem of the planning. The planning economy was indeed one of the most important achievements of the XX century. It allows avoiding such negative phenomena as unemployment and poverty. Nowadays the planning economy in Russia is rejected because after Gorbachev’s perestroika the leaders have decided to rely only on the market relations. They thought the reason for the economic collapse of the Soviet Union was the planning. The aim of the paper is to prove that the main error of the Soviet planning economy was not the planning itself, but the absence of interaction between the public management system and population. The text gives valuable information on the origins and development of the Soviet planning. The Soviet planning appeared in the difficult political and social context of the Civil War. From the beginning, the planning was developed by eminent scientists of their time. The political leaders used the planning in theire own aims; putting unrealizable tasks and using the economic failures to find and accuse the “enemies”. Conclusions are drawn about the necessity of the development of the planning system as a system of system of reconciling the needs of the people and the interests of public administration.

Keywords: practice of management, planning, Soviet history, social needs, public administration, planning economy, social practices of interaction, social development, social transformation, social engineering

Abstract: In early 20th century part of the Buddhist Sangha started a process of revising its organization forms as well as its theoretical and practical heritage. Two essentially different movements existed in that sphere. They had different tasks and quite different approaches for solving those tasks. On the one hand, the activity of such Buryat enlightenment scholars as B. Baradin, Ts. Jamsarano as well as representatives of the clergy such as A. Dorjiev, Ch. Iroltuyev, Ganjurova-Gegen were part of the renewal processes in Buddhism that took place in many countries where it was spread. The renewal process was a reaction against the ideological and economic expansion of the colonialist countries and was designed to develop the ideological basis for preserving the national identity of the colonized nations. On the other hand, Lubsan Sandan Tsydenov and his followers had quite a different task: to reform Buddhism in order to enable it to develop in a new social and cultural environment – in the Western culture of Russia. Their task was not so much preserving the national identity as developing the Buddhist tradition in a new cultural environment, which also solved the question of identity in an indirect way.

Keywords: Buryat Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism, Sangha, Tantra, neobuddhism, renewal movement, Russian Buddhism, Dandaron, Tsydenov, Dorzhiev

Abstract: The article is dedicated to examination of the processes of formation of the system of administration of public education and cultural-educational activity during the first years of the establishment of Soviet government in the Tyumen (Tobolsk) governorate, prior to its entry into the Ural Region in 1923. Based on the analysis of archive materials, the author determines and analyzes the features of formation and human resources of the provincial department of public education under the circumstances of civil war, as well as establishment of the system of soviets. The article gives assessment to the role of military revolutionary committee of Tyumen governorate alongside the provincial political and educational committee in the organization of public education. The scientific novelty is substantiated by introduction into the academic discourse of the archive materials that allow expanding the perception on the content of state building processes in the field of public education, as well as political agitation in the territory of Tyumen governorate. The author underlines that the development of organizational structures alongside the system of administration of public education in the region were under the influence of the circumstances of civil war and repetitive change of political power.

Keywords: Tyumen province, Ministry of Education, Central Committee of the Republic for Political Education, department of education, Provincial revolutionary committee, revolutionary committee, Education department, civil war, military crisis, public education, council of public education

Abstract: At the modern stage of the development of historical science studying the activity of Russian Monarchist Union as an important part of the social and political processes in the territory of Russian Empire at the beginning of the twentieth century does not lose its significance. Therefore, the historiographical researches of this study and its complex current historical meaning still remain relevant. The particular significance of the historiographical researches of the activities of the Russian Monarchist Union during World War I and the February Bourgeois Revolution is determined by an insufficient state of knowledge regarding this problem, which means it can be classifed as ‘underexamined’. The article contains a general overview of the historiography of the Russian Monarchist Union in the Russian Empire during 1914 – February 1917: a study of the state of knowledge regarding this topic and the determination of relevant problems. The research is based on the fundamental methodological principles of historical study: historicism and objectivity. These principles are reflected by using a number of research methods employed in historiographical studies: general science methods, general historical science methods, and specific historiographical methods - in particular, the methods of specific historiographical analysis and historiographical synthesis. Based on the results of the research, the author summarises the previous studies of the activity of Russian Monarchist Union during World War I and the February Bourgeois Revolution. This allows the identification of the underexamined and debatable problems in studying the above-mentioned political associations, and the main trends and tendencies in the Monarchist Association’s historiography, which determines the tasks and prospects for further study of the Russian Monarchist Union and their activity during the period between 1914 and February 1917.

Keywords: February Bourgeois Revolution, State Duma, Russian Right-Wing Parties, Conservative Ideology, the Black Hundreds, Monarchist Union, historiography, Russian Monarchists, World War I, Russian political history

Abstract: The Great War in Russian Memory, highly academic cultural history book that was published by Indiana University Press in 2011 (p.385). The author needed over the nine years to write this book and answer the question: which role has the Great war in the Russian collective memory and how it manifests. This research takles the questions of cultural history, gender history, propaganda and representations of war in the Soviet Union. Professional usability of this book enhances bibliography and a detailed register of the names and terms. Written with readable style, I highly recommend The Great War in Russian Memory to a wider circle of readers. The book should be translated into as many languages because it brilliantly completes our knowledge of Russia during the World War I and, later, the knowledge about everyday life in the Soviet Union.

Keywords: History, Book review, Cultural History, Gender History, Propaganda, Representations of War, Soviet Union, Great War, Everyday Life, Collective Memory.

Abstract: The article is devoted to the history of forced labour and the realization of the duty to work in Soviet Russia. Duty to work was enshrined in all the Soviet constitutions and thus became a leitmotif for the era. Three main period are emphasized: the period of Military Communism (1918–1921), the War period, including pre war and post war times (1940–1948), during the Khrushchev Thaw (1961–1965), we\\\'ll briefly speak apart about forced labour in GULAG. The author made an analysis of official documents, implementing duty to work, statistic data, researches of contemporary and Soviet scholars. This historical review of forced labour in Russia makes us conclude that obligation to work (not only a moral one but backed by criminal or administrative responsibility) was a distinguishing feature of Soviet labour law. The idea was born even before the Soviet state in the writings of K. Marx and Lenin and existed until the collapse of USSR. During these years the enforcement of the duty to work differed considerably depending on the current needs of the State, of the economic conditions.

Keywords: soviet history, forced labour, labour conscription, Gulag, labour code, parasitism, criminal responsability, mobilization, right for work, obligation to work.

Abstract: People of the past are alive due to a special kind of social practice — social memory. Modern psychology demonstrates sufficiently that no one can, on their own, have an adequate understanding of their social behaviour and the way of thinking. However sincere his attempts to be the judge of himself, sooner or later he has to resort to somebody else’s judgement and interpretation. This also holds true for the consciousness of nations, confessional communities, political and ideological movements. A historian’s belonging to some historiographic tradition or another, undoubtedly influences the character of his research. And to the same degree, a historian’s work is influenced by his individuality. Problems and methods of historical anthropology are not infrequently called the history of mentality. This is associated with the French School of Annals. The history of mentalities, however, can hardly pretend to have an autonomous status in the system of historical knowledge. We cannot to foresee to what and how history will respond, but there is an old observation by social psychologists that social shifts begin in a form and depth that nobody expects. People of the Renaissance considered that history began with them, they imagined themselves to be pioneers, aware as they were that they were reviving antiquity. Tradition often seems irrelevant, a password for an archaic period and preposterous old times. But it is in tradition that infinite social experience is crystallized.

Keywords: philosophy, history, culture, tradition, stability, historicism, reform, revolution, social experience, progress.