Abstract: The research subject of this study is the foreign historiography dealing with the heritage of Charles Davenant (1656-1714) - an English politician, philosopher, historian, and publicist. The research object of this study is the change in the direction of examining the views and work of this English thinker in foreign historiography. The aim of this article is to identify the features in the study of the views and work of C. Devenant which were characteristic of various periods in the development of historiography. In order to achieve this, it is necessary to consider the history of studying the writings of the thinker, to identify the particularities in covering the political activity and the views of the publicist in foreign (mainly British) historiography. The article's research methodology is based on a systematic approach to the analysis of foreign historical science. The examination of other scholars' study of the English thinker's views required the application of the historical-genetic and historical-comparative methods. The novelty of this research lies in the fact that neither in Russian nor in foreign historiography have the views and work of C. Davenant been made the subject of a separate study The author identifies three main trends in the history of studying the views and work of C. Devenant.Thus, some scholars focused on reconstructing the political biography of Davenant and assessing his role in the party struggle at the turn of the 17th - 18th centuries. This approach can be called "political." At the same time, another direction was developed, which studied the economic views of the publicist and his role in the formation of economic science within its framework. In the last decades of the 20th century, up to today, a third direction has dominated, where Davenant is considered as a thinker and philosopher, and scholars focus their attention primarily on his political ideas and “political language”.

Keywords: Mark Blaug, intellectual history, historiography of political thought, Cambridge school, foreign historiography, British history, John Pocock, Miles Ogborn, political arithmetic, marxist historiography

Abstract: The article is focused on examining the views of the communist opposition ("the Bolshevik-Leninists"), headed by L. D. Trotsky, regarding the question of agricultural collectivization in the USSR in the late 1920s - early 1930s. On the basis of a body of sources, including recently discovered manuscripts of prisoners in the Verkhneuralsk political isolator, the author demonstrates that although the opposition was a supporter of production cooperations among the peasantry and, starting from the mid-20s, demanded an increase in its state support, the turn of the party leadership in 1929 towards a policy of "continuous collectivization" and "liquidation of the kulaks as a class" was met with sharp criticism from the Bolshevik-Leninists. The article discusses the content of this criticism, reconstructs the opposition’s ideas about the causes and driving forces of Stalin's collectivization, and examines the opposition’s analysis of its socio-economic and political consequences. The author describes the alternative to the policy of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in villages that the opposition put forward and demonstrates that, contrary to the widespread notions in historiography, they were not opposed to the NEP and in the late 1920s and early 1930s spoke in favor for his restoration. The positions of the Bolshevik-Leninists on collectivization are linked in this article to their rejection of the concept of "socialism in one country", which served as the ideological justification of the Stalinist "great turning point" in the village.

Keywords: Bolsheviks-Leninists, Communist opposition, collective farm, peasantry, Communist party, Socialism, all-out collectivization, agriculture, Trotsky, Stalin

Abstract: The research subject of this article is the lifestyle transformation of the Old Believers in Buryatia at the beginning of the 20th century. The research object of this study is the Old Believer population in the Verkhneudinsky uyezd in the Transbaikal region (from 1923 - the Buryat Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic). The authors consider such aspects of this topic as the trends that have changed the life of the uyezd's Old Believers; the attitude of different generations of Old Believers towards their way of living, the external influence on its isolated position (in the field of education, health care and religious morality), and the new attributes that came with the Soviet government (technological progress, emergence of youth organizations).The authors applied the historical-comparative method, which compared the aspects of various phenomena and revealed their general and particular features, upon examining the attitude of the Old Believers towards the activities of the tsarist and Soviet authorities. The historical-genetic method is necessary for examining the phenomenon under study in time in order to reveal the dynamics of the changes in the lifestyle of the Old Believers during the generational evolution. The results of the conducted study are the following. The decline of the traditional way of life among the Old Believers in Buryatia was a growing phenomenon, intensifying  from one generation to another. If for the Old Believers in the 18th - 19th centuries life in a community isolated from the external works was desirable and necessary to maintain their faith, then at the beginning of the 20th century this lifestyle became increasingly unacceptable, especially for the younger generations. The novelty of the authors' study is the introduction into scientific circulation of archival material that reveal the factors that caused significant changes in the perception of the world: the decrease in the role of the Old Believer religion in the life of young people, the acute need for education, the spread of a different way of life, and the struggle of the Soviet government with “remnants of the past” .

Keywords: Metric books, Healthcare, Education, Technical progress, Youth unions, Soviet authority, Traditional society, Old Believers, National history, Volost councils

Abstract: The subject of this article is the excavation results from the ancient settlement "Chaika", located in the vicinity of Yevpatoriya (North-Western Crimea). In 2019, the expedition of the History Department of Lomonosov Moscow State University continued its work at the Chaika settlement and the ancient quarry.Late Scythian rooms were examined at the site. Upon the removal of the wall remnants of the rooms, archaeologists uncovered finds dating the preserved layers of this part of the Late Scythian settlement. These are fragments of red-varnished ceramics, “megara” bowls from the end of 2nd - first half of the 1st century B.C.E. Amphorae fragments of Knidos, Sinope and Rhodes date to the same period. Under the Late Scythian building remains archaeologists found the ruins of a Greek complex. In 2019, excavators unearthed two rooms adjacent to the courtyard, which was studied in 2018. The authors applied field research techniques on the Chaika settlement which is traditionally used in excavating ancient settlements. A comparative typological method was also used on the identified objects. Studies in 2019 demonstrated that the new Greek complex underwent two construction periods that date back to the second half of the 4th - 3rd centuries B.C.E.The ancient quarry is located 1.5 km northwest of the Chaika settlement. Excavators cleared areas with traces of a selection of quadras. Two burials have been discovered: a stone chest with a "collective" burial and an amphora burial of a baby. The bones of six individuals were found in the chest. The skeleton of the last buried has been preserved, while the rest of the bones were moved to the wall and laid in disarray. The burial dates to the 4th - 3rd centuries B.C.E. The second burial is in an amphora. The amphora belongs to the Chersonesus center and dates to the end of the 4th - 3rd century B.C.E.

Keywords: Crimea, Nothern Black Sea Coast, Late scythian culture, Chora of Chersonesus, Greek bulding, antique culture, Ancient stone pit, Antique manor, Hellinism, settlement

Abstract: The article's topic is the history of the most famous monument of the southern coast of Crimea, its "business card" - the Swallow's Nest Castle. For the first time in Russian historiography, based on an analysis of a body of sources - primarily archival, but also published memoirs and visuals - the authors disprove the existing common errors in scientific and popular literature and resolve long-standing disputes: the sequence of land purchases on Cape Ai-Todor during the 19th - early 20th centuries, the construction of the summer house-castle "Swallow's Nest", the reconstruction in 1913 and the change in appearance, as well as the castle's history after its nationalization by the Soviet government and throughout the 20th century. The authors introduce into scientific circulation documents, which were discovered by them, from the State Archive of the Republic of Crimea, the Russian State Historical Archive, and the Central State Historical Archive of St. Petersburg. The information found is supported by data from numerous memoirs and visual sources. The novelty of the research undertaken by the authors lies primarily in their reconstruction of the true history of this important monument of Russian culture from the late 19th - early 20th century - the Swallow’s Nest Castle, which is also an important symbol of Russia's development of the southern coast of Crimea as a resort destination in popular culture. The author presents the resolution of long-standing disputes over the owners and builders of this monument and the sequence of their change.

Keywords: archival sources, complex source studies, history of leisure, Swallow's Nest, cape Ai-Todor, memoir sources, late Imperial period, Crimea, Russia, visual sources

Abstract: The article's subject is the social status of the two groups of Terek Cossacks: the “free” and the serving Cossacks. Many scholars do not know or forget about the second group. The aim of this study is to reveal the features of the two groups' social statuses, which are attested by the circumstances of their service, the nature and amount of their salaries, and their relationship with Terek governors. The author pays particular attention to some of the differences in the relations of the Terek “free” and the Don Cossacks with the state. The article is based on documents from the late 16th - 17th centuries, both preserved in archives and published. Among the research methods used, one of the most important ones was the historical-comparative method. The author compares the social statuses of Terek "free" and serving Cossacks, and of the Terek and Don Cossacks. The conducted study has allowed the author to sustain the conclusion that at the end of the 16th - 17th centuries on the Terek lived both the “free” and serving Cossacks. These two groups differed in their social organization. The "free" united themselves into a Cossack army, while the service Cossaks obeyed "heads" and the Terek governors. For the first time in historiography, evidence is provided to support the thesis that the Tersk-Grebensky "free" Cossacks in the 17th century were much more dependent on the state than the Don Cossaks.

Keywords: Terek voyevodas, Terek town, belomestnye Cossacks, ‘free’ Cossacks, service Cossacks, Greben Cossacks, Terek Cossacks, North Caucasus, oath to the Tsar, royal allowance

Abstract: The research subject of this study is the work of surveyors in the new territory of the Russian Empire that was granted by Catherine II at the end of the 18th century to the Black Sea Cossack army. The relocation of the Black Sea Cossacks to Taman and the further economic development of the Kuban territory created the need for establishing borders and land surveying. In Russian historiography, the work of land surveyors in this particular territory has remained little-studied. This is due both to the poor preservation of historical sources and to the fact that the work of land surveyors on the territory of the Black Sea Cossack army has never been made the object of an in-depth analysis. This study has applied the methods of archival research of documentary information on the activities of surveyors in disparate sources and used the methods of analysing historical sources based on a systematic approach. The novelty of this study lies in the fact that the author was able to restore the whole picture of the work of land surveyors who took part in the development of the territory granted to the Black Sea Cossack Army by Catherine II in the late 18th century. Based on an analysis of historical sources, various aspects of this work were traced, starting from the participation in the expedition of M. Gulik, who was sent to inspect and describe the territory located on Taman and along the Kuban River, including the formation of the petition asking for the grant of land, and finally to the final demarcation from the territories of the Yekaterinoslavsky and Caucasian governorships and setting plans for cities and villages.

Keywords: plans of cities, demarcation, surveyors, development of the territory, Kuban, Taman, black sea Cossacks, General surveying, Vasily Kolchigin, map

Abstract: The article is focused on the study of the left opposition, above all on the Bolshevik-Leninists, after 1927. The established point of view in historiography is that the disappearance of the left opposition after the defeat in 1927 and the expulsion of Leo Trotsky are tied together. However, archival documents and texts found in 2018 demonstrate that even after the Fifteenth Congress of the CPSU (B), there was still a significant number of politically active representatives of the left opposition in the country. The research subject of this article are several documents from the Notebooks of the Upper Ural Political Isolator. The article's research method is the new political history, which not only considers real political events but also seeks to reconstruct the symbolic nature of politics. For the first time in historical sciences, the authors conduct an analysis of the Bolshevik-Leninist documents created in the Urals in the 1930s.The representatives of the left opposition in the Urals tried to wage a political war with the Stalinist regime and, even while incarcerated, worked on a program for transforming the USSR. They believed that collectivization and forced industrialization were distorting Leninist ideas on a socialist state and were in fact aimed at strengthening the position of the Stalinist bureaucracy.

Keywords: collectivization, political struggle, political isolator, Trotskyists, Bolshevik-Leninists, left opposition, industrialization, Urals, Stalin, USSR

Abstract: The article is focused on the Russian imperial diplomatic mission to Bucharest from 1914 to 1916, its composition, tasks, and activities. The article provides a description of the mission's composition, the functions of its members, consular posts, attaches and military agents, as well as an analysis of the conditions in which the mission came into existence in the period under review. Additionally, the author presents the main tasks that the Russian mission faced relating to the outbreak of the First World War. Based on new data from the archival funds of the Foreign Policy Archive of the Russian Empire and the State Archive of the Russian Federation, the author describes the activities and the structures of diplomatic missions in Romania. The history of the activities of the Russian Empire's diplomatic missions during the First World War can rightfully be classified with other unstudied topics in Russian and foreign historiography. Using the example of the activities of the Russian imperial diplomatic mission in Romania, the author examines the most important aspects of the diplomatic work's organization: the structure of the mission, the rearrangement of personnel, the activities and powers of consulates, other diplomatic and military agents, as well as the main tasks of the mission during the period of Romanian neutrality and the results their implementation.

Keywords: Military agent, Consulate, Attache, Ambassador, first world war, Bucharest, Romania, Diplomatic mission, Promotion, Russian foreign policy

Abstract: The article's study is an analysis of the distribution of pathological deviations and stress markers in the Late Bronze Age population found in the burial mounds of the Volgograd Region and the Republic of Kalmykia. A total of 199 bones with varying conservation degrees have been studied. Among these, 113 skeletons belonged to adults, 71 skeletons were of men and 34 were female skeletons. In 6 adult the gender could not be determined. In 88 cases, bone remains belonged to children and adolescents. The study of this group was carried out using a standard technique for fixing pathological and stressful conditions (Buzhilova, 1995, 1998). The analysis of the frequency of pathological conditions and stress markers in the group was carried out by the methods of one-dimensional and multidimensional statistics.As a result of this study, the author established, based on a number of paleoanthropological and paleopathological criteria, that the population of the Late Bronze Age stands out compared to previous historical eras because of the processes of climatic humidization in the Lower Volga region.The author notes a specific paleopathological profile in the population found in the burial mounds from the later epoch.The conducted comparative analysis of the examined group with other groups from the Early and Middle Bronze Age using the non-parametric Kruskal-Wallis test has demonstrated the absence of statistically significant differences in the occurrence and manifestations of mostly pathological signs, indicating that despite the changes in the economic structure (transition to complex economy ), the lifestyle and, consequently, the stress pressure of the Late Bronze Age population did not radically change, compared with previous historical periods.

Keywords: hyperostosis frontalis interna, caries, statistics methods, Lover Volga river rigion, Late Bronze Age, stress, paleopathology, paleoanthropology, trauma, pathological profile

Abstract: The agricultural areas of Semirechye and Southern Kazakhstan in the Middle Ages were undergoing active urbanization and the formation and development of urban economy. Medieval cities were centers of small commodity production and a significant part of their population were artisans and merchants. The development of crafts and the concentration of craftsmen in large urban settlements starting from the Middle Ages contributed to the creation of simple-structured guilds of craftsmen according to their specific craft. This is evidenced by the so-called "Risalya" - the written charters of artisans. It is obvious that the craft associations of Central Asian cities had their own particularities and were not identical to the craft guild structures of Western Europe.The aim of this article is to identify the features reflecting the development level of craft and craft guilds in the medieval cities of the Syr Darya and Semirechye basins, according to archaeological and written sources. The study's research methods are the comparative-typological (material analysis for cultural and temporal affiliation), metallographic (identification of technological methods for the production of metal artifacts), and the use of written sources by medieval authors. The article's study has allowed the author to come to the following conclusions. The archaeological and written sources of the Central Asian-Kazakh region produced during the Middle Ages indicate an increase in the number of cities, urban areas and urban populations. Cities were formed, first of all, as craft and trade centers, which was the result of the separation of crafts from agriculture. The progress of craft production took place predominantly within the framework medieval cities: craft specialization became more profound, new branches of craft activity appeared, exchange relations expanded, and craft guilds were formed. The guild charters of the Risalya represent religious and ethical treatises.

Keywords: commodity production, craft statutes, urban settlements, organization of artisans, Risal of artisans, social structure, urban craft, medieval city, written sources, manufacturing techniques

Abstract: The article discusses the information potential of some of the sources discovered in the State Archives of the Altai Krai, specifically, their possible contribution to the study of income and property inequality among the population in the south of Western Siberia. The chronological framework of the article includes the second half of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries. The authors note the high and constantly growing relevance of the topic related to the study of property inequality and differentiation by income in populations, including in the historical field. At the same time, the study of the regional aspects of this problem is also gaining importance, especially in such a large territory as Russia. Methodologically, the article focuses on archival search and archival heuristics. A fairly small number of studies, where the question of property inequality in the population of Siberia was discussed and resolved, determine the main research issues in the formation of a source base for this study. The article describes and evaluates, from the point of view of the information potential for the study of incomes and property inequality among the Siberian population in the designated chronological period, the sources stored in the State Archive of Altai Krai. The article's general conclusion is that, despite the difficulties in finding large amounts of data, the information potential of the sources allows us to pose and solve issues related to income and property inequality.

Keywords: wealth inequality, income, document, source, fund, archive, information potential, tax, money, enterprise

Abstract: The focus of this article is the author's analysis of the autobiographical material and journalistic work of the prominent Russian writer A. I. Kuprin, written by him during the years of his emigration to Finland (1919-1921), as a resource for reconstructing the identity of the “Russian refugee” through the images of Russian and European sociocultural spaces that he penned as "own" and "alien" / "other". The article describes the historiographic discourse of the trend to converge history and literature, and of the “linguistic turn” in the context of the development of modern source studies of Russian history. The author proposes methods for analyzing fictionalized memoir texts, ego-sources, with the aim of enriching the traditionally dominant procedure for studying the history of text creation and in order to provide a more meaningful analysis. The author's special contribution to the study of this topic is the article's use of special methods for studying the language of text sources, which have allowed to reveal the meanings of key concepts and ideas that were important for their creators and the introduction of a number of significant concepts into the historical discourse, among which are the concepts of historical memory and identity.

Keywords: history of concepts, socio-cultural space, source study, cultural identity, fiction-memoirs, Kuprin Alexandr, ego-sources, linguistic turn, russian literature abroad, memoirs

Abstract: The article is focused on the little-studied problem of how Russian commercial banks, private and state-run, credited agricultural production enterprises and agricultural trade in the second half of the 19th century. The dominant economic theory during those years did not consider agriculture to be part of the commercial banks' responsibility, and this industry's clientele affiliation is poorly reflected in banking statistics. However, the actual contribution of banks in agricultural regions met the urgent needs of the economy. The author analyzes banking practices for servicing wholesalers and landlords using archived and published material of the Oryol Commercial Bank (1872-1908) and the branches of the State Bank of the Russian Empire operating in the governorates of Central Chernozem, South and West of European Russia. The article calculates the turnover of the two banks' operations related to providing services to agriculturers for 1866-1901. Based on this data, the author reveals a protracted economic crisis in the Oryol Governorate in the 1880s, linked to a fall in agricultural prices, unfavorable railway tariffs, and a series of low crop yields. As a result, in the 1890s, the Oryol Commercial Bank had expanded its network of branches outside the Oryol Governorate. Sharp fluctuations in the 1880s weighted down operations of exporting goods, while operations related to local consumption remained relatively stable, which disproves the so-called concept of “hungry exports”. The policy of the State Bank, which set out to expand banking services to agriculture in the 1890s, must be evaluated through the fact that similar operations undertaken by a private bank were significantly more developed in the territory under examination.

Keywords: credit against commodities, discount of bills of exchange, agricultural trade, grain trade, agriculture, state bank, commercial banks, historical statistics, Oryol governorate, Central Black Earth Region

Abstract: The article addresses the subject of the monetary-credit policy of the Russian state in the second half of the 18th - the first half of the 19th centuries. The research object of this study is the state's promissory note rate of exchange. A promissory note rate is essentially an exchange rate and it reflects the purchasing power of the currency in one country in relation to the monetary currency in another. On the basis of primary data deriving from the Russian press, the author collected the data of promissory note quotes suitable for the subsequent statistical analysis, and identified the periods of the exchange rate's instability, the nature of its dynamics and the factors that influenced it. As the main research method of this work, the author applied the historical-genetic and statistical research methods and the inductive approach to the examination. The topic of the Russian note exchange rate dynamics in the first third of the 19th century has been little studied in historiography. The article demonstrates that the volatility of note rates, on the one hand, was lower than could be expected at this turbulent time, and on the other hand, the coefficient of variation was low. But at the same time, the note rate noticeably deviates from parity, which, given its nature of being based on the domestic rate of the metallic equivalency value of money, indicates a significant speculative component in its dynamics.

Keywords: international trade, monetary policy, exchange rate, finance, St. Petersburg exchange, Russia, rate of exchange, bill, Foreign exchange market, exchange of currency