The problem of migration processes in the Russian North received wide coverage in the academic literature. M.K. Lyubavskiy, M.M. Bogoslovskiy, N.V. Ustyugov, P.A. Kolesnikov, A.A. Preobrazhenskiy and many other scholars identified the scale, direction, causes and consequences of the movements of peasants both in its territory and beyond it. However, the question of local peasant migrations rarely fell within the historians’ sphere of interest. It is only recently that scholars have addressed this aspect. The purpose of this article is to study peasant migrations within the Ustyug uyezd (district) in the 17th century. The territorial framework of the study case encompasses the Votlozhemskaya and Shemogodskaya volosts, as well as the Sukhonskiy Novovyshlyy, Yarokurskiy and Vondokurskiy stans. The source base of the research is represented by the cadastral and census books of 1623–1626, 1646, 1658, 1667, and 1678. To identify and study local migrations in a volost, an anthroponomic method was used, the essence of which is to compare the names of the residents of peasant households based on various censuses. In this way genealogical schemes were created and subsequently analyzed. As a result, the following conclusions have been drawn. In the 17th-century Ustyug uyezd there was a relatively low level of stability in the rural population. Only 37 percent of peasant families recorded in the 1678 book lived in their villages at the time of the censuses of 1640–1660s. 15 percent of families changed their place of residence within the studied volosts. These moves were mainly related to family circumstances: household division and assistance to incapacitated family members. In addition, some migrations were caused by economic ruin. The analysis of the directions of local migration inside the volost showed that the peasants preferred to move to nearby villages, and there was a kind of “interchange” between settlements. In general, the rural population of the Russian North was very mobile, and it was not uncommon for peasants to move home.

The purpose of the article is to outline the main stages of the development of the catering system in Russia, approached separately from the system of taverns, on the one hand, and from the hotel business, on the other. Such approach is caused by the fact that historians have only considered the formation of the public catering sphere fragmentarily, and mostly in popular literature. The research starts with the analysis of the 16th century, when the sources began to consistently mention the realities associated with the sale of culinary products. The study ends with the period of 1914–1921, when the established system of catering institutions functioned in the extraordinary situation. The article clarifies some terms. In particular, the modern generic term “catering” only appeared in the early 20th century and originally had a narrow, strict sense. “Inn keeping” and then “tavern keeping” in different chronological periods meant different types of trade in culinary products. The basic legal definition of “establishments for tavern keeping” was formulated just in 1861. The article pays particular attention to the differences between taverns and inns, because, due to the nature of trade, both the contemporaries and the later scholars confused the types of establishments. The article relies mainly on legal materials, since it was regulations that created conditions for the functioning of the system and required adjustment to these conditions. At the same time, less attention was paid by scholars to the legal status of taverns than their sociocultural role. It remains unclear to what degree the rules declared by the law were transformed in the course of their adaptation to the living realities of everyday life. The study of the process of mutual adaptation of law and the organization of the tavern business requires a different type of sources. In this article, the author deliberately refrains from giving consideration to the sociocultural role of catering establishments and the evolution of the culinary component, since this is a topic for a separate study

After the arrest of a member of “The People’s Will” party Sergei Degaev in December 1882, the Inspector of the Secret Police Georgy Sudeikin managed to make him his agent provocateur. The information then received from this agent allowed the police to neutralize many of his former comrades in the revolutionary underground. Vera Figner was among the first arrested. The question of the total number of persons whom Degaev betrayed to the police was not specifically addressed in historiography, mainly because the notebook where Degaev recorded who and when he exposed to the police was not preserved, and therefore there is no direct evidence to prove the specific involvement of Degaev in the arrest of each particular member of “The People’s Will” who was identified and neutralized by the police in 1883. The article is based on the previously unpublished materials of the Police Department from the State Archive of the Russian Federation as well as personal sources, and reconstructs, as accurately as possible, the picture of Degaev’s provocative activities. Furthermore, the article specifies the number of members of “The People’s Will” betrayed by Degaev and also restores the names of some of them. In addition, the article identifies certain structures of conspirators and names their contacts destroyed after their disclosures by Degaev. In particular, the Kharkov printing house was disclosed, and its employees were arrested. The police also destroyed the mechanism of contacts between the prisoners of the Peter and Paul Fortress and on the outside. Based on the results of the study, conclusion was made of an estimated number of persons who were betrayed to the police by the provocateur Degaev: there were at least 80 of them. By further studying the records of the Police Department, retrieving from them the information which implicitly proves Degaev’s involvement in the disclosure of “The People’s Will” clandestine network, and comparing these data with details from personal sources it seems feasible to verify some more persons betrayed to the police by this provocateur.

The article discusses the features of the process of psychological adaptation to a long existence in extreme conditions by prisoners of the Gulag and the National Socialist forced-labor camps in Germany. The Soviet prisoners’ collective biographical experience of survival, reflected in the corpus of ego documents, was analyzed by the author from the standpoint of psychosocial theories created by former prisoners of Theresienstadt, Dachau and Buchenwald, Austrian scientists V. Frankl and B. Bettelheim. The article describes and explores the changes that occurred with the prisoner’s personality at each of the three stages of their psychological perception of the camp realities: primary shock, or traumatization upon entering the camp, apathy, which is viewed as the main defence mechanism of the psyche, and the depersonalization at the time of the release from the camp. The process of adaptation of a prisoner to the camp’s conditions most often involved one or another form of cooperation with the camp administration. The study highlights these types of cooperation, both legal (practice of profession, participation in the camp amateur activities, service in the militarized guard VOKhR, and work as an informant whistle-blower) and illegal (practices of fraternization, scam, bribery and embezzlement, voluntary concubinage of female prisoners with camp personnel). The author classifies belief in God, the ability to value the beauty of nature and enjoy art, engagement in professional activities, self-observation, mental connection with the loved ones, and, equally, the ability to retain a sense of humour as conscious behavioral models that helped prisoners to resist destruction of personality. Along with these behavioral patterns, the study identifies a number of so-called anti-defences that worsened the prisoner’s morale and weakened their personality: immersion in thoughts of their own innocence, which gave rise to an impatient expectation of imminent release, constant dreams of food and home comforts, a tendency to believe camp rumors, aggression. The author also focuses on such issues as the content of the concept of “survival”, limits of the influence of the camp environment on a person, transformation of the identity of a surviving prisoner.

The foundation of the “Five Star Movement” political party in Italy was officially declared in 2009. The article analyzes the steps taken by Beppe Grillo, Gianroberto Casaleggio and their supporters on the path to success in the parliamentary elections in Italy in 2013. The author unlocks the mechanism of the functioning of the social movement which seems to have no clear management structure. The article examines the reasons why the “Five Star Movement” emerged in the political arena precisely in the early 2000s. The main stages of the building of the Movement are identified: the first stage in 2005–2009, the second stage in 2009–2013. The author considers unusual forms of social mobilization: the Genoese comedian’s blog that united many of his supporters on the Internet; Meetup platform, which made it possible to shift communication away from the Internet to the format of personal meetings of Beppe Grillo’s supporters; the “central squares” of Italian cities format, which became the main site for the V-Day tours (2007) and V2-Day tours (2008). Using the blog, citizens who were not indifferent to the fate of Italy discussed topical issues and engaged in fierce discussions, sometimes directly with B. Grillo. In its turn, the Meetup platform made it possible to organize meetings of the Genoese comedian’s supporters in every city in Italy, and also to unite groups of people whose goal was to solve the local problems of their town or region. The “central squares”, where B. Grillo made speeches, helped not only to attract the electorate, but also to change the agenda for local groups organized through the Meetup platform. Gradually, the vector of attention shifted from local problems to the national level. The relevance of the topic of this study is determined by the significant role the “Five Star Movement” plays in the political life of Italy as a phenomenon that does not fit in with the framework of the old concepts of political parties and movements. Studying the activities of the supporters of Beppe Grillo, Gianroberto Casaleggio and the “Five Star Movement” at the initial stages enables us to understand key trends in the development of political mood within the country.

The annual visit of the Irish prime minister to the US and the official celebration of Saint Patrick’s Day accompanying it in Washington traditionally provide a platform for discussing topics and issues related to the Irish US community and important for the political leaders of Ireland. The subject of this study is the events in Washington in March 2017, their course and particularities in the context of the problem of illegal immigration in the US. The purpose of the study is to establish how, during the meeting of newly elected US President D. Trump and Irish Prime Minister E. Kenny, the contradictions in the Irish-American relations were revealed, including those related to illegal immigration to the US. The Russian historiography does not deal with the issues of illegal Irish immigration to the US while the studies in the area of Irish–US relations are evidently scarce. The results of the analysis presented in the article allow concluding that the conditions of the meeting were largely due to the lack of D. Trump’s support among the political circles of Ireland that led to numerous protest actions against E. Kenny’s trip to the USA. Yet his meeting with D. Trump took place. Over time it became more obvious that D. Trump enjoyed the support of a large part of Irish Americans. Equally, the need for action to resolve the problem of Irish illegal immigrants in the US was also evident. Consequently, the immigration issue became central in E. Kenny’s speeches, and he did not miss this opportunity to address to the US president. However, the call of the Irish prime minister to give illegal Irish immigrants a legitimate status has so far not received a response from D. Trump.

The early Upper Palaeolithic epoch in the north-west Caucasus is represented only by two sites. Korotkaya Cave, whose small area was investigated, contains few materials while the reference site for studying the Upper Palaeolithic in the North-West Caucasus is Mezmaiskaya Cave in the Apsheron district of the Krasnodar region. The earliest Upper Palaeolithic layer of the cave (1C layer) is between 40–37 thousand years old. The archaeological complex of this layer contains all categories of stone products, including tools, semi-finished chipped stone tools, their chips, waste products, cores and allows reconstructing the technology of splitting stone material. Technological analysis of Mezmaiskaya cave’s 1C layer industry has demonstrated that the early Upper Palaeolithic period in the North-West Caucasus was dominated by the technique of splitting stones into microchips in order to produce chips and microchips, 3–12 mm wide. Preference was given to high-quality flint that reached the site either in the form of ready lamellar blanks and prepared pre-cores, or in the form of pieces of flint and large flakes; the latter were regularly used to create butt cores. The analysis of the cores, technical chips and blanks allows establishing two technological chains: first, chipping chips, 7–12 mm wide, from prismatic one- and two-table cores and, second, producing microchips, 2–7 mm wide, from butt cores, some of which are made on solid flakes. The study of the metric and morphological characteristics of the chips shows the employment of stone-chipping techniques by striking with a soft, possibly stone, chipper. Mezmaiskaya cave’s 1C layer toolkit and splitting technology find analogies in the territory of the South Caucasus and the Middle East. The industries of these areas, as the material from the 1C layer of Mezmaiskaya cave, are characterized by predominance of chips and microchips, mainly knocked from single-table cores with a narrow splitting surface.

The capital of the Cimmerian Bosporus — Panticapaeum — is one of the most famous archaeological sites of the Northern Black Sea coast. It occupies a special place in the history of this region, since already at an early stage it became a zone of political and economic activities of the first settlers. The ancient tradition conveyed to us fragmentary information regarding the foundation and early period of its existence, however the presence of fragments of painted archaic pottery allowed V.D. Blavatskiy to suggest that a Panticapaeum emporium had already existed in the second half of the 17th century B.C. on the eastern and northeastern slopes of Mount Mithridates, in the area of the so-called first Arm-chair. In recent decades, field archaeological research provided new data that can fundamentally influence the contemporary view of this stage of the site’s history. One of the key issues of the history of Panticapaeum is the problem of the foundation of the apoikia and its early stage of existence. This work discusses the materials and remnants of buildings, which were studied in 2011–2016 by the Bosporus (Panticapaean) archaeological expedition of the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts lead by V.P. Tolstikov. The expedition established the early archaic layer, conditionally named the “fire layer”. The only currently known rectangular room D-3, whose corners are oriented in the cardinal directions, attracts our attention. It was attached to the inner side of the solid basement of the supposed defensive wall, to masonwork № 44. The pottery found on the site allows attributing the emergence of the Greek settlement to the last quarter of the 17th — beginning of the third quarter of the 6th century B.C. Additionally, the pottery of certain types previously unknown in Panticapaeum, i.e. Protocorinthian vases, an early Laconian bowl, and Anatolian ceramics, were excavated, and due to this fact the scope of the research has expanded considerably, breaking new ground in the study of this site.

The color theories formulated in the Bauhaus in the late 1910s — early 1930s became key concepts for the further development of Western European coloristic culture. The coloristic solutions of the architectural environment, visual and decorative arts, which were found by the Bauhaus masters and disciples, developed in the context of avant-garde trends at that time prevailing in Germany. The Bauhaus first years were marked by the influence of Expressionism. Color had to perform an important social task by improving the quality of life, filling with emotions and bringing up a “new spirit”. At the same time, the coloristic solutions reflected the individuality of the authors. The expressionist period in the Bauhaus is associated with the name of J. Itten and his Vorkurs. In 1921–1924, with the beginning of T. van Doesburg’s lectures, De Stihl’s color concept spread. The rationalistic coloristic solution ensured the integrity of an individual work and synthesis of all the products produced for life, its relation with space. It constrained the pronounced individualism, diversity and excessiveness characteristic of Expressionism. The theories of V. Kandinsky and P. Klee had the features of rationalism, but at the same time they retained quite a lot of expressionist characteristics. Functional color should be fully devoted to the subject, which it colors, and its purpose. In the building, it is called upon to ensure integrity, to organize movement in space, and to exert an emotional impact corresponding to the functional use of the room. In printed products, color organizes the plane, provides simplicity, speeds up information assimilation, etc. Employing the theory of W. Ostwald, H. Scheper, J. Schmidt, H. Bayer used the functional color. When H. Meyer replaced W. Gropius as director in 1928, the functional side began to play even more significant role. The next director of the Bauhaus, Mis van der Rohe, rejected the paint in his work as excessive decoration, hiding the natural color and material properties. The analysis of particular works allows to see how the color theory came into close relationship with socio-political aims, general trends in art, while remaining consistent with productive necessity, with those expressive means available to certain kinds of products, as well as with personal thoughts of masters and directors of the Bauhaus.

The collection “Court Culture in the Renaissance” was published in 2014 by the Commission for Renaissance Culture of the Scientific Council of the Russian Academy of Sciences “History of World Culture”. The collection’s authors include scholars of Medieval history, art historians, specialists in the history of science, literature and theater. The presented studies are focused on individual topics concerning the court culture of the Renaissance and at the same time touch upon the fundamental questions of the functioning of court society in the late Middle Ages and the early Modern times. N.A. Khachaturian offers a look at court culture as a social phenomenon tied to the formation of a new structure of the royal Medieval court. M.A. Yusim, V.A. Dyatlov and T.M. Ruyatkin examine the status of specific personalities of court culture and their relationship with the court, rulers and other communities. Several articles are dedicated to the transformation of Medieval figures in the Renaissance court culture. A.V. Romanchuk and G.A. Yalovko trace the transformation of the figure of the warrior into the figure of the courtier on the example of Italian visual sources of the 14th–16th centuries. M.K. Popova demonstrates the use of the Medieval motif of courtly love for the benefit of the strengthening absolutism at the court of Elizabeth I. The use of artistic images for exalting the monarch is also considered by I.Y. Elfond on the example of the French king Francis I. M.V. Panfilova examines the topic of court ceremonies on the example of the papal court through the prism of the Roman throne’s claims to supremacy over secular sovereigns. V.M. Volodarsky presents the criticism of court customs on the part of Humanists, analyzing the works of Erasmus of Rotterdam, Sebastian Brant and Ulrich von Hutten. The role of the ruler in the cultural life of the court is considered in the articles of N.A. Bagrovnikova and T.V. Sonina. The scientific studies at the courts of Renaissance monarchs are also discussed: R.M. Aseynov analyzes the court historiography of the duchy of Burgundy in the early Renaissance and A.V. Kuzmin on the example of Italian visual sources of the 14th–16th centuries the court science in the transition era from the Renaissance to the Baroque on the example of the work of Galileo Galilei. In addition, a number of studies concerns works of visual art and theater. The analysis of the collection’s articles gives an idea of the current state and the current problems of studying the Renaissance court culture in Russian-language historiography.