Abstract: The article attempts to reconstruct the content of the autobiographical poem “On his consulship”, which the famous orator wrote between 62–60 B.C. The autobiographical works of Marcus Tullius Cicero for this period, primarily known through references made by the author himself and other Ancient authors, are of great value: it was mainly based on them (and not on the preserved speeches) that formed the historical tradition of the Catilinarian Conspiracy – one of the most famous events in Ancient Roman history. The author of the article analyzes Cicero’s correspondence and a fragment of the poem preserved within one of his philosophical treatises, which chiefly contains a description of the omens accompanying the conspiracy. The similarity of the poem with the Third Catiline Oration allows to conclude that Cicero’s description of the events of 63 B.C. in the lost works coincide with his consular speeches known to us. Thus the article represents a preliminary reconstruction of the “missing link” in the transfer of information from the eyewitness and participant of the events to the later authors, who were influenced above all by the Ciceronian presentation of the Catilinarian Conspiracy.

Keywords: history, source criticism, autobiography, Ancient Rome, the Later Republic, the Catilinian Conspiracy, Cicero, On his consulship, De consulatu suo, omens.

Abstract: The article presents a description of the methodological developments in the study of Byzantine aristocracy, unfolding during the 20th century – primarily during its second half. The author attempts to show how scientific interest in the ruling class of Byzantium helped to widen the existing source base and advanced the elaboration of these sources, which consequently deepened the perception of Byzantine aristocracy in particular, and of the Byzantine Empire in general. The article specifically reviews the role of the prosopographical approach and of other auxiliary historical disciplines (sigillography and numismatics) in the elucidation of historical information and in the creation of new methods of its analysis. The topic is discussed on the basis of a systematic review of the main scientific works that lead towards the formation of a separate research field in Byzantine historiography – the history of the Byzantine aristocracy. The author highlights the main research stages in the study of Byzantine aristocracy and it is shown that the results of these researches significantly determined the development of such branches of Byzantinology as source criticism, socio-economic, military and political history, and others.

Keywords: history, the Byzantine Empire, society, aristocracy, Byzantinology, historiography, sources, prosopography, sigillography, numismatics.

Abstract: The article examines the main phases in the history of the regional study movement in the Mari Autonomous Oblast during the pre-war period. The author discusses the contribution of the local regional study organizations (1926–1937) to the study of the history, ethnography, and culture of this region’s peoples, including through the development of questionnaire programs and survey sheets for the collection of primary data directly from the population or with its help. The author also describes the contents and the information potential of the main document bodies, compiled as a result of a regional study of this area in archives, and through periodicals and historical-regional publications of the 1920– 1930s. The research was conducted on the basis of the fullest possible elicitation of the historical sources, in this case of the original historical-ethnographical material stored in archives (federal, regional, departmental, scientific) and contained in contemporaneous and later publications. The author also conducted a textual and archaeographical analysis of the source contents, a source criticism and a determination of their informational elaboration. The contribution of the multi-sided efforts of the Mari regional studies societies and their affiliations are evident in the primary source collections of the Mari El Republic State Archives and of the local pre-war periodicals, especially in the monographs describing rural settlements and in the surveys on peasant daily life of the given region on the eve and during the years of mass collectivization, which are unique sources for the history of the said region in the 1920–1930s.

Keywords: history, regional studies, Mari Autonomous Oblast, historical-documentary heritage, archives, documents, archaeography, source criticism, informational elaboration, documentary publications.

Abstract: The article analyzes and evaluates the cycle of governance in 20th century Russia, beginning with the Revolution of 1905. Drawing on a close study of a number of new organizations created by the Soviet regime, such as VSNKh or Sovnarkom, the author considers which state structures and institutionalized behaviors crossed the revolutionary divide, helping the new political elite to regain political capacity and authority, and producing long-lasting and significant consequences. The author pays particular attention to the origins and evolution of economic planning in Soviet Russia, using the institutional approach in his examination of the main structures of state governance of the Soviet economy, and also the comparative methodology for the study of the cycles of governance in the pre-Revolutionary and Soviet periods of Russian/ USSR history. The analysis and comparison of the creations of the new regime and state bodies of Imperial Russia led to the conclusion that the new rules of the game were essentially extensions of the patterns already in train, just as their reliance on the restored, increasingly powerful, increasingly autonomous centralized state apparatus. The author, however, does not assert that the new regime assumed the old imperial calculus of power without modifications.

Keywords: history, Russian state, state-economy, national economy, state organizations, system of governance, Bolshevik policy, neo-institutional theory, Sovnarkom, VSNKh.

Abstract: The object of this research is the Ivanovo-Voznesensk citywide strike of 1905. At the heart of the study are the questions traditionally overlooked by Soviet historiography: the unfolding mechanism of the conflict, the reasoning behind its participants’ behavior (the workers on the one hand, the enterprise owners and government representatives on the other), the missed opportunity for compromise, the reasons behind the workers’ shift from peaceful demonstrations at the beginning of the strike to violence and robberies at the end, and the nature of the demands put forward by the workers and those made by the ones acting in their name. Drawing on the collected data of the Ivanovo-Voznesensk citywide strike, archival as well as already published, the author conducted a microanalysis (in the genre of a case-study) of the event. The departure from the established tradition in Soviet historiography of not underlining the validity of the workers’ demands, the harshness of the enterprise owners and government representatives, who were aiming to crush the demonstration and were not ready for the negotiation process nor to compromise, and minimizing the leading roles of the leftist groups in the course of the strike, has allowed to understand the real interests and aims of the workers in this conflict. Based on a proposed chronicle of events, the number of participants in the strike has also become more precise.

Keywords: history of labor conflicts, collective strikes, workers’ delegates, worker demands, meetings, rallies, violence, factory inspections, council of representatives, chronology of the strike.

Abstract: The article examines the formation and development of the Medieval Georgian society’s perception of its surrounding world and outside areas, of Georgia itself and its frontiers, of contiguous countries and other geographical regions. The author takes into close consideration the questions of the formation in the Early Middle Ages of the idea of Georgian statehood and its later development. The basis for this research are the Georgian, Greek, Latin, eastern narrative sources and documents (medieval hagiographical, historical and geographical sources, and also the writings of Georgian travelers of the Later Middle Ages), and linguistic and ethnographic information. The author’s research methodology is founded on a complex critical analysis of the terms used to designate settlements, and of the ethnographical and political nomenclature. The comparative historical method is also used. The author comes to the conclusion that the main factor in the formation and development process of the Medieval Georgian society’s worldview was Christianity. The confessional affiliation of the population, and not its real geographic location, defined its definition of the characteristics of other regions and countries. The author notes a change in terms denoting various ethnic elements, from narrow ethnic to wider ethnopolitical and ethnoconfessional notions. The concept of statehood was also associated with the Christian worldview: the state of Georgia (“all of Kartli”) was understood to be a country where divine service was read in the Georgian language. This took place at the same time as the merging process of identifying the ethnogeographical frontiers of the spreading Kartvelic ethnic element with the ecclesiastical-administrative frontiers of the Georgian Church, and with the political-administrative boundaries of the Georgian government.

Keywords: ethnographical zones, Christianity, Georgian written sources, Abazgia, Georgia, Black Sea coast, Byzantine Pontos, history, ethnogeographical nomenclature, the idea of Georgian statehood.

Abstract: The article analyzes the results in the development of landownership and farming of one of the oldest Nyzhegorodsky monasteries, from its economic description of 1701–1702 recorded by stolnik P. B. Velyaminov during the Russia-wide census of monastic properties. This census was instigated after the transfer of monastic property governance to the established Monastic Department (Monastyrski Prikaz). The use of such sources requires close attention to the historical context of their creation: the description itself, of course, does not yet imply the secularization of church-monastery possessions and properties, but it did later become the premise and the instrument of this process. This research shows that the description fully covers the Nyzhegorodsky part of the Amvrosiev Dudin Monastery estates, without any deliberate falsification. Thus it has been possible to trace the changes of the settlement patterns on these monastic properties in the period between the “dozor” (emergency description) of Vasily Borisov and Tretyak Obraztsov (1587/1588 г.), the cadastral books of the 1620s and the anagraph from the beginning of the 18th century. The author describes the main branches of the monastery’s farming activity on the eve of the first secularization attempt by Peter I. Particular attention is devoted to the rent relations within the village of the monastery, to the role of the peasant community as a crucial component in the votchina system of management, and to the mechanism of upholding the taxability of the monastery’s peasants. The author views the census lists of the Dudin Monastery not only as a source documenting an evolution stage of a particular estate economy, but also as a significant contribution to the 1701–1702 “information section”, which allows to make an accurate data comparison with a number of other ecclesiastical corporations. The applied aspect of this comprehensive regional analysis has allowed to confirm the study results on the quantitative dynamics of the dependent population in monastery estates on the territory of the Nyzhegorodskyi province, and supports the comparisons with the development tendencies of other monastic domains in the period between the cadastral books of the 1620s and the description of the beginning of the 18th century.

Keywords: church-monastery corporation, monastery, community, peasants, farming, estate, landownership, history, Amvrosiev Dudin monastery, Nyzhegorodskyi district.

Abstract: The article reviews the solid publication of the correspondence between E. Bernstein and K. Kautsky, which sheds light on many points in the biographies of these two leading theoreticians of the German Social Democracy movement in the period between the wars (1918–1932). This book also contains vast information on the history of the Socialist movement of practically all the European countries. The letters of Bernstein and Kautsky are an extremely valuable historical source that will be useful to modern, as well as to the future generations of researchers in Social Democracy and Socialism histories. The study of the publication is based methodologically on the principles of historicism and scientific objectivity. The biographical method, also applied to this private correspondence, has allowed reconstituting in a most complete form the biographical information of E. Bernstein, K. Kautsky, and of other leaders of German Social Democracy. Examining the letters and their content evolution through conceptual constructions permits to view this source body as a certain social reality. The analysis of the correspondence led the authors of the review to conclude that both Bernstein and Kautsky after 1918, and certainly in the 1920s – beginning of the 1930s, had to be content with the status of cabinet theoreticians, being honored for their past contributions, but their role and influence on the political line and ideology of Social Democracy were not great. This makes all the more valuable the comments on the events of the 1920–1930s in their correspondence (such as on the question of the restoration of the Social Democratic International and its functions, the formation of new states and the national question, attitude towards Fascism).

Keywords: history, German Social Democracy, Eduard Bernstein, Karl Kautsky, Weimar Republic, correspondence, Labour and Socialist International, Fascism, ideology, Luise Kautsky.

Abstract: The article summarizes the book presentations of two Italian authors, Gian Paolo Caselli (Caselli G. P. La Russia nuova. Economia e storia da Gorbačёv a Putin. Milano-Udine, 2013) and Giorgio Scotoni (Scotoni G. Il Nemico Fidato. La guerra di sterminio in URSS e l’occupazione alpina sull’Alto Don. Trento, 2013), which took place on the 19th of February 2014 at the History Department of Moscow State University – Lomonosov. The Italian scholars in their comprehensive presentations described the concepts, main premises and conclusions of their studies. The monograph of G. Scotoni fills the gap in the history of the Italian Alpenkorp’s military operations participation in the USSR in 1941–1944. The author raises the question of the Italians degree of involvement in Germany’s extermination war on Soviet territories, proving that the German and the Italian forces from the beginning differed in their motivations: the Italians were moved by the Catholic ideas of proselytism and generally did not tarnish themselves with atrocities against the civil population. The book by G. P. Caselli examines the socio-economical processes in post-Soviet Russia, from which he derived a number of predictions as to the possible options of our country’s movement on the paths of modernization and progress, and on the geopolitical position of Russia in general. The presentation was conducted in Russian and Italian languages and aroused great interest in all present.

Keywords: Second World War, war of annihilation, Italian Alpenkorps, racial theory, Fascism, Gorbachev, Yeltsin, Putin, Perestroika, post-Soviet.

Abstract: The article consists of a detailed review of the session “The Role of libraries in the information support of historical sciences” (moderators: L.I. Borodkin, E.A. Vorontsova, S.V. Mironenko), held at the international scientific conference “150 years at the service of science and education” (the conference, held 5–6 December 2013, was dedicated to the 150th anniversary of the public opening of the Chertkov Library, to the 75th anniversary of the name “State Public Historical Library” and to the 130th anniversary of the opening of the State Historical Museum). More than 20 specialists read reports in this session, coming from various scientific institutions and universities, libraries and museums of Moscow and Russian regions, as well as from Poland. The discussion topic was focused on the problem of information support in historical sciences in general, which has not been fully perceived as a problem by the members of this community, and also on the extremely relevant for librarians applied aspects of this question (compiling, systematization, digitalizing collections for this purpose and also for the users’ needs).

Keywords: history, historical sciences, information support, digital era (“Digital-plus”), informational space, informational resource, historiographical source, library, electronic library, State Public Historical Library of Russia.