Problems of the medieval Russian mentality and setting them in the socio-economic and political context of pre-Petrine Russia remain important and promising areas of research. Tese issues are in the focus of a new monograph by S.V. Perevezentsev, “Russian Notions: Russian Spiritual and Political Teachings of the Tenth-Seventeenth Centuries in their Historical Development”. Te article gives refections on this book and controverts some of the interpretations and conclusions given there. It addresses the characteristics of Russian civilization, defned in the book, the specifc traits of the adoption and spread of Christianity, the cults that were popular in Russia, and so on. Te author of the article agrees with the logic of the historian building a certain register of spiritual and political teachings of medieval Russia, trying to trace the line of development of notions not only in literature and journalism, but also in architecture and painting. Tese observations of the researcher are considered quite convincing. Particular attention is paid to S.V. Perevezentsev’s approach, which ofers a look at Old Russian culture through the Orthodox system of values. In accordance with the general concept of the monograph, its author does not conduct his own primary research, but analyzing the discussions on this matter, supports one or another point of view. His purpose is to bring together dispersed, holistic or fragmentary, spiritual and political teachings. Te writer of the article agrees with S.V. Perevezentsev that in the second half of the 13th - early 14th century “Orthodoxy became the main component of all national consciousness”. Te article thoroughly analyzes the main thesis of S.V. Perevezentsev, who states that ancient Russian socio-political texts should be considered through the eyes of their writer, as a rule, a person deeply religious and well-read in Christian literature. Te main criticism of the author of the article is leveled at a certain superfuity of S.V. Perevezentsev’s church rhetoric and pathos, and the vague boundary between the language of science and the language of religion.

The article analyses the ideas about truth as a socio-legal and religious-moral ideal of Ancient Rus, and aims to systematize these ideas and identify their evolution. To this end, Old Russian written sources were studied, where one can find ideas voiced by an author of a specific source or the people who are in the narrative, concerning the concept of “truth”, which, of course, was ambiguous. Mentions of “truth” were identified, the context of the usage of this word in a historical document and its semantic load were analyzed. The next step was to determine common themes within which the sources referred to the “truth”, as well as coinciding views on this concept (if any). Based on the results of the study, an attempt was made to reconstruct some typical ideas about “truth” inherent in the era of Ancient Rus. The author of the article concludes that the Christian worldview paradigm almost completely emasculates the idea of justice as the inevitable retribution for deserts: on the contrary, within the framework of this paradigm, the belief prevails that offenders should be forgiven, not punished, and good deeds should be done just like that, unselfishly, and not for an award; God can repay the criminals justly, but he can also send down misfortunes to the righteous without any reason, only for the sake of testing or even for the sins of other people. The main goal is to lead a person to salvation; at the Last Judgment, God will evaluate not every specific deed, but the whole earthly life of a person and its results. This understanding of “truth” implies a paramount orientation towards life after death, and not towards earthly life. The study aims to fill the gap related to the study of the Old Russian worldview, since during the period under consideration, no purely philosophical treatises were created in Russia, and the researcher has to identify certain abstract ideas through contextual analysis and synthesis of individual statements or with the help of indirect references in various sources.

The article covers the history of K.F. Golovin's salon, which was held from the second half of the 1880s until the death of its host in 1913. The salon occupied a prominent place among other similar informal gatherings (V.P. Meshchersky's, E.V. Bogdanovich's salons) which influenced the formation of the contemporaneous government policy. Grown out of the “Ellipsis”, an informal circle of economists discussing the agrarian and economic problems of Russia, the salon gradually expanded the range of topics to include questions of the political structure of the empire. The article shows the importance of the salon as an unofficial politicized institution prior to the First Russian Revolution, when its activities to some extent compensated the lack of political freedoms. K.F. Golovin's Wednesday coterie was attended both by public figures of the right wing and middle-ranking officials. In some cases, certain agricultural policy measures (V.I. Kovalevsky, the Commission on the Impoverishment of the Central Provinces), which were later implemented, were tested there. K.F. Golovin's salon played a prominent role in the discussion of the drafts aiming to change the political system in 1905, especially concerning the establishment of the State Duma, and namely, the question of the form of popular representation and the electoral law (a mixed electoral college, the forming of the workers' curia, etc.). In parallel K.F. Golovin and the regular visitors of his “Wednesdays” took an active part in the attempts to unite the moderate-right and create a political party on this basis. These attempts continued to be made until 1912, but ended in failure. The history of the salon also shows the importance which unofficial right-wing thought had, first and foremost, for the authorities: public figures often offered better recipes for solving complex problems, while the ban on political activity created a deficit of government support from loyalist citizens, a deficit which could not be covered by the activity of the bureaucratic apparatus. The Wednesday salons were part of those complex mechanisms which tied the promonarchist public and the authorities. However, by the early 20th century they had clearly become insufficient.

The article examines the efforts of the State Bank of the Russian Empire to expand its branch network in the Crimea in the second half of the ninteenth - early twentieth centuries. The first activities of the State Bank on the peninsula were carried out in Sevastopol as one of the most promising port cities in the post-reform years. A branch was opened there in 1875. This was followed by the establishment of bank branches in Simferopol, Feodosia and Yalta. The author analyzes the bank’s recruitment policy with the focus on the history of the bank officials entering the service in the Sevastopol branch. Particular attention is paid to the difficulties that accompanied the process of opening bank branches. In the process of expanding the banking network, spirit of rivalry arose, which prevented the management of the country’s main credit institution from objectively assessing the need to create a particular branch. Various cities of the Crimea expressed the wish to open a branch of the State Bank. As for the efforts of the city authorities of Yevpatoria, they failed. For a long time, the branches of the Bank in the Crimea experienced difficulties in renting the premises suitable for their activities. Thus, the Sevastopol branch did not have its own building during the first ten years of its history; the Simferopol branch lacked its own premises for five years, and the Yalta branch had to rent new premises every year from 1882 to 1912. The article gives only general analysis of the operational activities of the Crimean branches of the State Bank. This aspect of their work requires deeper and more extensive coverage in a separate work. Nevertheless, the author was able to conclude that the State Bank on the Peninsula failed to provide full support, as regards the development of the region, to its business circles, which felt a lack of affordable and cheap credit. This article was written using archival materials from the funds of the Russian State Historical Archives. The core information contained in it is published for the first time.

The history of front-line journalism in Russia during the First World War has only recently begun to attract the attention of researchers. Until now, the routes of war correspondents, their relationship with the Stavka, the front commanders, and censorship have been little studied. The work of American journalist Stanley Washburn is of particular interest. By 1914, he was already an experienced and established journalist who had visited various parts of the world. The fact that Washburn had been hired by “The Times” and sent on a difficult tour of duty on the Eastern front spoke volumes. His journalistic talent was combined with knowledge of the Russian army, gained from the time of the Russo-Japanese war. Foreign Minister S.D. Sazonov advocated his admission to the front in order to create a positive image of Russia and the Russian army in the United States. Although the Stavka initially resisted admitting journalists, Sazonov’s arguments, coupled with the defeats in East Prussia, forced to soften its position. At the front, Washburn stood out from other correspondents for his discipline and enthusiasm. Not being able to visit the front line constantly, Washburn focused on describing the everyday life of the front, the human “experience” of war. His articles were distinguished by their correctness and variety of subjects, and four books about the Russian front were published on this basis in 1914- 1916. Washburn’s popularity in the West affected his position in Russia: he was given maximum freedom of movement along the front, was willingly given interview by dignitaries and front commanders, and was twice granted an audience by Nicholas II. Washburn often expressed his ideas regarding developing military propaganda at the front and improving the image of the allies in Russian society. The entry of the United States into the war in 1917 and the radical breakdown of the social system in Russia prompted Washburn to change dramatically the field of his interests, leave the journalistic profession and leave Russia forever.

One of the important international topics discussed in 1925 on the pages of the Soviet establishment newspapers, the Pravda and the Izvestia, was the draf of the Rhineland Pact and the possible consequences of its implementation for the USSR. From the Soviet perspective the Germany’s entry into the League of Nations posed a threat to the USSR’s rather trusting relationship with Berlin, which had developed afer the conclusion of the Rapallo Treaty in 1922, and Moscow saw the danger of increasing international isolation and the strengthening of the camp of the powers hostile to the USSR, led by Great Britain. Germany remained the focus of Soviet commentators on the Locarno trial until October 1925. At the same time, Soviet-German negotiations to conclude a trade agreement were under way, facilitating contacts at ofcial level. However, the press made it possible to infuence German public opinion, which the authorities of the Weimar Republic could not but listen to. In addition, the newspapers named possible options for Soviet policy if the Entente powers disagreed not to involve Germany in an active or passive participation in a possible aggression against a third party (viz. the USSR), as provided for by the Statute of the League of Nations. One of these options - the rapprochement of the USSR and Poland, and the provision of guarantees of the inviolability of all Polish frontiers, including with Germany, - has repeatedly been a research topic for historians, primarily Soviet and Polish ones. At present, their opinion is quite unanimous: the USSR was not going to guarantee the Polish borders, and Poland did not intend to go so far in rapprochement with the USSR. However, the Izvestia voiced another option, which was realized already in the 1930s: rapprochement with France on an anti-British (and thus anti-German) basis. Comparison of newspaper comments with the speeches of ofcials (in particular, G.V. Chicherin and I.V. Stalin) shows that there were no diferences between them on the main points of perception of the Locarno process. Te Soviet establishment newspapers in 1925 can be considered well-informed and accurately expounding the views of the USSR leadership on the turn in the international relations which was taking place in Europe.

The article covers the formation and development of the labour youth movement within the framework of the British Labour Party. After the electoral reforms of 1918 and 1928, when young Britons, both men and women, were given the right to vote, the struggle for this category of the electorate gained particular relevance. The author of the article examines the key milestones associated with the birth of the labour youth movement in the first half of the 1920s, as well as the discussion that unfolded at the annual party conference in 1924 regarding the approval of a special scheme for the creation of labour youth sections. From the very beginning, the activists’ greatest doubts were caused by the fact that the party leaders tried to focus the activities of young people on sports and entertainment, and, if possible, prevent them from directly participating in the discussion of the party policy. The article analyzes the positive dynamics of the growth of youth sections in the 1920s, and discusses the launch of the annual conferences of the Labour League of Youth. At the same time, the author notes that at the turn of the 1920s - 1930s there was a slight slowdown in the growth of the sections. In 1933, the party made an important decision to organize a larger-scale administrative and propaganda work in the area of building youth support. The efforts proved to be successful. This was manifested both in the quantitative growth of the sections, and in the fact that in the 1930s the party began to practice new forms of work with young electorate, such as organizing special schools for propagandists, “youth days” and “youth weeks”. The downside of the activation of youth sections was their noticeable leftward drift and the attempts to establish cooperation with the Communist Party in the framework of the struggle for the creation of the United Anti-Fascist Front in the late 1930s. As a result, the Labour Party had to impose a ban on the convening of the annual youth conference in 1937 and 1939, as well as to temporarily dissolve the governing bodies of the youth movement.

The impact of the economic crisis that had been gaining momentum in Uruguay from the mid-1950s was first felt by agricultural workers in the country’s northern provinces. Their economic situation was approaching catastrophe. In 1961 the Union of Sugar Workers of the Province of Artigas (UTAA) was formed in the north of Uruguay. It was headed by a lawyer from Montevideo, one of the leaders of the Socialist Party, Raúl Sendic. Unlike other trade unions in the country, whose leadership was effectively controlled by the North American capital, the UTAA began an uncompromising struggle for workers’ rights. In 1962, Raúl Sendic, together with the UTAA sugar cane cutters, organized a march to Montevideo to present the workers’ economic demands to the Uruguayan government. Soon, in order to support the UTAA, a group of young activists from various leftwing parties was formed. They sought to coordinate the actions of the protesters and their political sympathizers and were called “Coordination”. Gradually, the participants in the “Coordination” came to the idea of the need to switch to the methods of armed struggle. In the summer of 1963, they expropriated weapons from a gun club in the town of Nueva Helvecia. This operation, known as the “Swiss gun club”, actually began a new stage in the history of the movement, which resulted in 1965 in the creation of a revolutionary organization that resorted to the tactics of “direct action”. It was the Movement for National Liberation, Tupamaros. The subject of this article is the activities of the radical wing of the non-systemic left opposition in Uruguay in the first half of the 1960s, which in 1965 united into a single organization of Tupamaros. The aim of the article is to show the origin and evolution of the opposition organization through its transition from legal methods of struggle to armed ones, right down to guerilla operations. This work, for the first time in Russian historiography, analyzes the key milestones in the formation and development of the Tupamaros revolutionary movement, and considers the economic and political prerequisites of its emergence.

The article concerns the still completely unexplored issue of the possible anthropomorphic perception of the Old Russian churches. The work is based on the study of Old Russian written sources, mainly chronicles, as well as inventories, charters, lives, travel descriptions. The information extracted from written sources is grouped in the article by individual words, which were used by Old Russian writers as anthropomorphic terms when describing the church: “top”, “head”, “forehead”, “neck”, “under head”, “shoulders”, “belt”, “foot”. Some documents contain single terms or their pairs; there are examples of a more consistent use of several terms concurrently. Chronologically, anthropomorphic terms were common in Old Russian literature throughout its history, that is, from the 11th to the 17th centuries. They are found in an extensive range of documents. A careful examination of the terms has revealed that the Old Russian church was described in approximately the same way as a human figure, and the objects were described sequentially from top to bottom. Similar descriptions with the same sequence, using similar anthropomorphic terms, are found in Italian and post-Byzantine painting manuals, where a proportional analysis of the human figure is given. Some anthropomorphic terms similar to the Old Russian ones are found in Byzantine descriptions of temples or in the form of separate words. It can be assumed that the Old Russian set of anthropomorphic terms is of Byzantine origin. The comparison with the human figure, that arises when one reads such descriptions, is a likely key to understanding the proportions of ancient Russian churches, which were interpreted through the prism of human proportions and their standards of the time. The proposed approach also permits more extensive use of historical, written terms in contemporary art history literature. The range of anthropomorphic terms describing the architecture of ancient Russian churches is quite wide and well documented. Perhaps it will be expanded in the future, but already now, on its basis, it is possible to enrich the understanding of architecture in medieval Russia.

This article is based on a comparison of graphics of Russian deesis images of the 15th-16th centuries. A detailed analysis of a large number of tracings of Deesis icons that date from different times and places leads to the assumption that their authors widely used a set of the same graphic elements repeated from icon to icon regardless of who or what is depicted, the Savior or Theotokos, an angel, an apostle, a prophet, a martyr, a bishop or a saint; regardless of whether this image is half-length or full-length; regardless of the postures and gestures of the depicted figures and their attires. These patterns are especially noticeable in drawing robes, draperies and fabrics in general. The use of these typical elements is almost mandatory, although their combination varies from image to image. The same blocks of elements can also differ slightly from icon to icon in terms of proportions, relative sizes of particular images, and the curvature of the lines. A block can be partly concealed by an element not belonging to it or used twice; its part can be mirrored, rotated at some angle, clockwise or counterclockwise, shifted or removed, while the structure of the block remains the same. An experienced eye will easily identify each block in a wide variety of icon images. This phenomenon allows us to significantly modify the idea of the strategy medieval icon painters adopt, i.e. a Deesis icon drawing was not often literally copied, at the same time, it was not invented completely anew. To a greater or lesser extent, the images were constructed from already available ready-made blocks, and some of the figures consist of them almost entirely.