Abstract: The article reviews the dynamics of the resettlement movement on the territories of the Tobolsk and Tomsk governorates in 1906–1911. It presents a comparative analysis of two Siberian lands and examines the influence of external factors on the nature of the resettlement. The historiographical study sheds light on the various points of view regarding the nature of the resettlement policy, however the widely-accepted conclusion holds that the resettlement of peasants from European Russia to Siberia made for a significant rise in the economy of the given region, which was reflected in the flourishing of grain, mill productions, butter industry, and also in the development of stock-breeding. The source study allowed the detection of the main laws and decrees that accompanied the resettlement policy. On the basis of the resettlement dynamics to the Tomsk and Tobolsk governorates, the author comes to the conclusion that owing to its geographic location and environmental particularities the Tomsk governorate was more densely populated. There also existed true resettlement in comparison to the Tobolsk territories, where there is resettlement information that does not correspond to reality. In the course of the analysed period, there was an outflow of settlers from the Tobolsk governorate to the Tomsk one, especially to the lands of the Altai mountain region. Nevertheless, there were a high percentage of those returning to their homeland, since migrants did not have enough material sources for the establishment of households in new places. However, despite certain problems implementing the resettlement legislation, based on the quantity of settled migrants and the data on the economic development of the region, the resettlement policy to the regions of Western Siberia in 1906–1911 can be considered as a successfully achieved part of the agrarian reforms.

Keywords: dynamics, legislation, Altai region Cabinet, Tobolsk governorate, Tomsk governorate, Siberia, P. A. Stolypin, resettlement, comparative analysis, Siberian economic development

Abstract: The article is a continuation of a series of works dedicated to the analysis of the wildlife information contained in the Economic notes to the General land-surveying of the end of the 18th – beginning of the 19th centuries. This contribution analyses the information on the presence of sturgeon fish in the rivers on the territories of European Russia. In recent years the history of fishery has been actively studied within the framework of environmental history, both in Russia and abroad. This article examines the given topic for the first time on the basis of the earliest mass source, which allows a systematic examination of the environment of the time, – the materials of the General Land Survey. The systematic processing of the information in the Economic notes covering the main territory of the country allowed the development of a sample containing data on 10 gubernias, 66 uezds, including more than 600 land plots and more than 400 large and small rivers. Mentions of the general sturgeon fish-family are studied, as well as of the citation of separate species (Russian sturgeon, Starry sturgeon, Huso, Sterlet, Bastard sturgeon). Additionally, the data on the natural habitat at the end of the 18th century is mapped and analysed in comparison to their modern habitat locations.

Keywords: Russian sturgeon, Economic notes, history of fishing, General Land Survey, Sturgeon fish, environmental history, Starry sturgeon, Huso, Sterlet, Bastard sturgeon

Abstract: The article is a study on the sense of nature in the Medieval man. The given research problem is a particular topic in the larger scientific problem – the research of mentalities, i.e. the socio-psychological setting, habits, consciousness, ways of thinking of people of one or another period. In a larger context the study of the perceptions of nature is one of the possible means to understanding the outlook of a person from the past. For the purpose of this analysis only one aspect of this question was chosen that of the development of historiographical perceptions of the sense of beauty in nature before Peter the Great in Russia. The first part of the article contains a general theoretic-methodological survey, illuminating the problem of the Medieval individual’s perception of the outside world. It is shown that the study of the relations towards nature in that period was tied with certain difficulties, which were caused by the particularities of the sources. The reconstruction is based on the analysis of book-learning and partially figurative material, i.e. it reflects not so much the general perception of society, as much as of a narrow group of “creators” of elitist culture. At the same time, the very character of the sources allows to make the conclusion that that perception of nature differed with the modern one: the questions of outlook attracted a lot more attention than interest in specific points of space, landscape. The emotional-aesthetic experience of nature also existed, however it was most likely of secondary importance. In the second part of the article, the author demonstrates the becoming of the historiographical outlook in relation to the study topic. It shows the main milestones in the development of scientific understanding of the relationship between the Russian Medieval individual and nature from the time of N. M. Karamzin and up to modernity.

Keywords: scenery, Old Rus’, aesthetics, mentalities, historiography, Middle ages, book-learning, nature, outside world, landscape

Abstract: The end of the 19th – beginning of the 20th centuries was an important stage in the pre-Revolutionary history of Moscow. The increase in population within the context of Russia’s general urbanisation, economic growth, active building of city outskirts, and development of city municipality all contributed to the appearance of new problems in city life, one of which was the problem of public transportation. The article examines the history of the origins, becoming and development of city public transportation in Moscow at the end of the 19th – beginning of the 20th centuries parallel to the evolution of the city officials’ position towards the given question. If in the second half of the 19th century the city railroad was considered by the municipal authorities as a temporary attraction confined to the Polytechnic exhibition, then by the beginning of the 20th century the city council and board directed all their efforts to the advance redemption of the Moscow electric tramway network for the city’s ownership. The author evaluates the role and position of the city system of electric tramways among the other branches of municipal service. The Moscow tramway on an electric traction became the object of extreme interest for city authorities. The tramway network expanded, while its revenues assuredly rose, which made the electric tramway very profitable for the city treasury. Separate attention is also given to the operation of the tramway system in the years of the First World War.

Keywords: history of Moscow, city municipality, city transport, Moscow tramway, horse tramway, Moscow council, Moscow board, municipal services, city development, urbanism

Abstract: The article concentrates of the professional and political life of Elisabet Selbert (1896–1986), substantially engaged in the resolution of the problem of women’s equality in post-war Germany. The educational level, professional and political party status of E. Selbert developed in her the interest to understand the female issue in German society. The active political and social significance of the frau at the end of the 1940s allowed Selbert not only to make the problem acute, but also to carry its resolution to a qualitative new level, offering legal reformation with the aim of asserting the equal rights of women in civic and private law. The contribution of Selbert consisted in, after having understood and felt the new context of the post-war era, her deciding to move away from theoretical substantiation of her novel ideas to their practical realisation. However the new political elite and new political culture, advocating democratic values, in practice demonstrated resistant conservatism in solving the problem of women’s equality. Selbert was one of the authors of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany and a member of the Parliamentary Council, and she had to undertake the enormous work of instigating comprehension and conviction in the political elite and fellow countrywomen of the necessity to resolve the problem of gender inequality. Intellectual and professional strategies, dialogue with various structures and representatives of German society in the framework of socio-elucidation work allowed Selbert to achieve significant legal changes in the Constitution of the FRG and family law.

Keywords: family law, civil code, Parliamentary Council, constitution, women’s legal status, , Social Democratic Party of Germany, Elisabet Selbert, gender equality, family-marital relations, reformation

Abstract: At the end of the 1940s – beginning of the 1950s according to the Stalinist direction plans the USSR developed the construction of large hydrotechnical structures, named by the state propaganda as the “great constructions of communism”. Many of them were located at the Middle and Lower Volga: the Volga-Don water canal, the Kuybyshev and Stalingrad hydroelectric power stations. The construction of these units was given to the GULAG system. The “great constructions” can be seen as a certain display of camp economy of the post-war period. It was there that was conducted a mass transfer of former prisoners, who received release in the status of civilian workers, but were still limited in their freedom of choice, forcibly “attached” to the GULAG constructions. There the Stalinist direction tried to restore the earlier abrogated instruments of prisoner labour motivation (wages, count of work days), giving additional impulse to the camp system. The article analyses how much the labour resources disposed by the camp economy reflected its mobilisation capacities. The author answers the question of whether one can speak of GULAG mobilisation benefits in the resolution of the economic problems at the end of the 1940s – beginning of the 1950s, considering the rapid disintegration of the camp-production complex begun after the death of Stalin. The author further investigates the question of what internal contradictions ultimately made it impossible for the GULAG to fulfil the functions of an economic agent. Finally, the article concludes whether the problems of the post-war camp economy can be considered as a vivid testament that the system came to a deadlock.

Keywords: Volga-Don hydro station, correction-labour camp, great constructions of communism, camp-production complex, GULAG, prisoners, Ministry of Internal Affairs, Kuybyshev hydro station, Stalingrad hydro station, Volga region

Abstract: The GULAGs operated with a differentiated approach to the installation of various prisoner categories in camps. For the Vyazem camp, which was employed for the construction of the Moscow–Minsk highway, the NKVD (the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs) ordered the deployment restriction of a series of convict categories, in the first place of those having convictions on most points of the article 58 of the RSFSR Penal Code. The author sees the main reason for this in the geographic location of the camp. The subdivisions of the Vyazem camp were located in the densely populated central region of the European part of the USSR, some of which – directly in line with Moscow. The author, having analysed the statistical data, demonstrates that the transfer limitations in camps of certain convicted groups was carried out in practice, including at the height of the Great terror’s repressive actions. The share of political prisoners maintained at Vyazem camp, including those convicted on article 58, was many times lower than the average in GULAG camps (in 1939 and 1941 –17 times less). The contained number of convicts of a “criminal-banditism element” (article 59 of the Penal Code) was also minimal. Half of the Vyazem camp prisoners consisted of convicts with an imprisonment term of less than three years, which was not typical for GULAG.

Keywords: repression statistics, categories of prisoners, convicts, prisoners, Vyazem camp, correctional-labour camp, GULAG, Stalin repressions, Moscow-region camps, highway Moscow–Minsk

Abstract: The article is devoted to the issue of places of worship on the fronts of the First world war. There is a controversy regarding samples marching thrones required lists of things to organize services in a military campaign, discusses the consequent difficulties in the manufacture of Hiking churches. Highlights the problem of supply priests in the army marching churches. Explores the conflict that arose due to the use of buildings Orthodox, Uniate Catholic churches of Galicia for the organization of worship, between the Russian military and naval clergy and the Archbishop of Volhynia and Zhytomyr. This paper investigates the sources of different origin, including first introduced into scientific circulation.The novelty of the research lies in the formulation of the question, because the practical problem of divine service at the front during the First world war, researchers are not affected. An important question is the relation to the objects of worship and places of worship from both the congregation and the priests, and the Catholic population of Galicia, as well as Austrians and Germans. Provides information about the activities of the Commission on documenting cases of desecration of churches and icons.

Keywords: iconostas, mobile altar, church tent, field church, charity, protopresbyter, diocesan clergy, military clergy, church service, First World War

Abstract: During the years of the first Soviet Five-Year Plan one of the key questions was the increase of labour productivity, which compelled plant managers to devote particular attention to the creation of work stimulus. A significant role was played by the quality of the social services that the plants could offer their workers: housing, provision of essential commodities, etc. Undoubtedly, the ideological setting had its effect and the struggle for the creation of a “socialist way of life”, which by definition had to be of better quality in comparison to the pre-Revolutionary one, forced the development of the social sphere. At the same time, plant managements were well aware that the household disarrangement lowered productivity, labour quality and discipline. This research, based on archival material and directed at the study of the social factors in labour motivation on a separate plant during the years of the first Five-Year Plan (1928–1932), permits a detailed analysis of the precise measures undertaken in this sphere by the party and economic managements, their effectiveness, including as opposed to the earlier period. In this case at the heart of the study is the large textile plant with a rich pre-Revolutionary history – the Trekhgornaya factory.

Keywords: Trekhgornaya factory, social sphere, first Five-Year Plan, worker qualification, textile-workers, labour relations, labour motivation, income level, housing, provision of essential commodities

Abstract: The article examines the main lines of the Soviet government’s policy towards the Bey courts of Adat regulations in Kyrgyzstan during the first years of Soviet rule, which can be divided into two stages. At the first stage, during the years of the fiercest struggle with the Basmachis in 1918–1920, local Soviet agencies went in the direction of the complete prohibition of Bey and Qadi courts. At the beginning of 1921 on the territory controlled by the Bolsheviks, the operation of Qadi and Bey courts was discontinued and a secular judicial system was set in place with two branches – the Revolutionary tribunal and the People’s court. At the same time, naturally, in the regions controlled by the Basmachis legislation was carried out on the basis of Sharia and Adat. With the transition to NEP, however, conditions changed and legislation according to the norms of Adat was restored. The resulting situation contained two parallel-existing systems – Soviet and traditional. Concurrently with this started a rapid process of limiting the jurisprudence of Bey courts, which ultimately brought their termination at the turn of the 1920s–1930s. The scientific novelty of this research is set in the first place by the use of archival documents, not used previously in the study of this topic. This led to a series of new and original conclusion.

Keywords: Sharia, Adat, Bey courts, Bolsheviks, Soviet authority, traditional legislation, decrees, NEP, Revolutionary legal sense, People’s court

Abstract: The article is a review of the new book by the famous Russian historian Boris Lvovich Havkin dealing with the most illustrious figures and events in the Russo-German history of the 20th century. The publication analyses the historical portraits of Alexander Parvus (Helphand), Ulrich von Brockdorff-Rantzau, Wilhelm von Mirbach-Harff, Friedrich-Werner Graf von der Schulenburg, Friedrich Wilhelm Paulus, Ewald von Kleist, Ferdinand Schörner and others. The review gives a description of the theses written by the book’s author on such current and contested questions as the role of Germany in the preparation of the Bolshevik overturn of 1917, the Soviet-German pact of 1939, the activities of the “Red chapel”, etc. A series of conceptual positions of the reviewed study are subjected to a critical analysis, concerning the general aspects of the Russo-German history of the 20th century. At the reviewer’s centre of attention lie the historical figures and events, which united the histories of Russia and Germany since 1917 up to 1945. The reviewed volume is of the highest scientific quality, furnished with source publication and photographic documents, and is of unquestionable interest for specialists in the field of Russo-German relations, as well as for those interested in history in general.

Keywords: Great Patriotic War, Bolshevism, National socialism, “Rapallo policy”, 1918 Treaty of Brest, Russo-German relations, German history, Russian history, Resistance movement, Second World War