Colonial rule did not eradicate the key social and political institutions of indigenous societies. Their continued existence, although often in forms substantially transformed since the precolonial period, still plays a major role in shaping the specific trajectories of nation-building in postcolonial states. Among these institutions are the so-called traditional rulers. During the first decades following decolonization, governments in many postcolonial countries sought to deprive "indigenous rulers" of political authority as part of broader attempts to overcome ethnicity in the name of nation-building. Yet "indigenous authorities" proved remarkably resilient. Their endurance was rooted not only, or even primarily, in their practical effectiveness under modern conditions, but in the persistent legitimacy they retained in the public consciousness. At the same time, the postcolonial states of Africa, Asia, and Oceania have witnessed neither a straightforward restoration nor simple preservation of precolonial indigenous political institutions. Rather, these institutions have undergone further transformation, driven by the fundamental fact that, as in the colonial period, they no longer represent sovereign polities but are incorporated into modern — and postmodern — state structures. By the 1990s, it had become evident that a more realistic and effective approach was not to await the disappearance of "chiefs" and "kings", nor to exclude them from postcolonial political systems as collaborators of colonial powers or as obsolete symbols of backwardness. Instead, the prevailing tendency was to integrate them into those systems, encourage the bureaucratization of "indigenous" institutions, and redirect them toward "modern" national objectives, while continuing to concentrate substantive political power in the institutions of the nation-state. Such integration, in turn, offered a means of overcoming tribalism as an obstacle to nation-building. Tribalism becomes an impediment to nation-building only where, owing to a lack of historical preconditions and deliberate policies on the part of "modern authorities", "indigenous authorities" have not been effectively incorporated into the political system of the postcolonial state. The continued existence of indigenous political institutions, therefore, does not in itself constitute a threat to the formation of a postcolonial nation-state.

Marcus Sergius Silus and Lucius Sergius Catilina are among the best-known members of the patrician gens Sergia. Their reputations in the ancient tradition could hardly be more different: Silus, according to Pliny the Elder and Solinus, was the most valiant warrior in Roman history, Catilina came to be remembered as one of its most notorious villains. The question is not only how far this stark opposition, firmly entrenched in the ancient tradition, is justified, but also how Catilina himself drew upon the memory of his ancestor in his political self-presentation. The former question has received some attention in scholarship on Sergius Silus, with scholars noting several parallels between the two men; the latter, however, has yet to be examined. Catilina was well acquainted with his great-grandfather's heroic achievements, preserved both in Roman collective memory and within the gens Sergia itself. One important indication of the continuing prominence of Silus within this family tradition is the issue, in the late second or early first century BCE, of a silver denarius bearing his image. Great-grandfather and great-grandson shared several notable traits, including physical endurance, strength of character, perseverance, and a propensity for risk-taking. It is therefore plausible that Catilina regarded Silus as a model from an early age and consciously sought to emulate him. In his political career, Catilina appears to have invoked the memory of his heroic ancestor in different ways. In 64 BCE, while competing with Cicero and members of the nobilitas, he could draw on the antiquity of his lineage and on the services his ancestors had rendered to the Roman people, well-established elements of aristocratic political self-presentation. In 63 BCE, however, Marcus Sergius may have acquired a different significance as an ancestral exemplar: a man who had overcome his rivals' opposition and ultimately reached the peak of power. For Pliny and Solinus, the crucial distinction between the two Sergii lay in the ends they pursued. The great-grandfather devoted his courage and abilities to his fellow citizens and the interests of the res publica, whereas the great-grandson was driven by personal ambition, which ultimately made him an enemy of res publica libera. Once this difference in purpose is set aside, however, the remarkable similarities between Silus and Catilina come into sharper focus — similarities of which Catilina himself could hardly have been unaware. This perspective reveals a more nuanced image of Catilina. It allows us to move beyond the conventional portrayal of an impoverished aristocrat sustained by memories of his family's former glory. This, in turn, adds another dimension to our understanding of Roman political life in the 60s BCE.

The article examines soldiers' attitudes toward two prominent figures of the February Revolution, M.V. Rodzianko and A.F. Kerensky, from March to early May 1917. The study draws on a substantial body of so-called "letters to the authorities", preserved in the archival collections of the State Archive of the Russian Federation and the Russian State Historical Archive. The research is based on materials from the State Duma, the Provisional Government, the Ministry of Justice, as well as the personal archive of A.F. Kerensky. Soldiers' congratulatory and greeting addresses provide valuable evidence for tracing the formation of public images of the leaders associated with the revolutionary events of February and early March 1917. In Russian historiography, Minister of Justice A.F. Kerensky has traditionally been regarded as one of the principal leaders of the revolution, whereas M.V. Rodzianko, Chairman of the Provisional Committee of the State Duma, has generally not been accorded a comparable status. The introduction of soldiers' "letters to the authorities" into the analysis offers grounds for reconsidering these established historiographical interpretations. An examination of soldiers' greeting addresses dating from March to early May 1917 reveals how rank-and-file servicemen perceived the activities of M.V. Rodzianko and A.F. Kerensky during the February Revolution in Petrograd and allows for an analysis of the characteristics and qualities attributed to them by soldiers themselves. These addresses shed light on developments both on the home front and at the front and help identify the principal demands addressed to the Chairman of the State Duma and the Minister of Justice following the victory of the revolution, up to the formation of the Provisional Government's first coalition cabinet and Kerensky's departure from the Ministry of Justice. The study demonstrates that soldiers tended to perceive M.V. Rodzianko as a leader of the revolution, whereas A.F. Kerensky was more often viewed as a defender of the people to whom requests, appeals, and expectations could be addressed. These findings contribute to a more nuanced understanding of political authority and leadership during the revolutionary upheaval of 1917 in Russia.

In interwar Germany, the recovery of the colonial possessions lost under the Treaty of Versailles of 1919 remained an important political objective for colonial revisionists. Heinrich Schnee, the last governor of German East Africa, emerged as one of the movement's leading figures. This article examines the range of activities through which Schnee sought to restore Germany's standing as a colonial power and secure the return of its former overseas territories. Its scholarly contribution lies in considering Schnee's role across both the Weimar and Nazi periods, a subject that has received limited attention in Russian historiography. During the 1920s, Schnee developed and vigorously promoted the claim that Germany must combat the so-called "colonial lie" — accusations of incompetence and brutality in German colonial rule that, in his view, had been used by the victorious powers to justify depriving Germany of its overseas possessions. He pursued this campaign through a wide range of channels, including political journalism and books published in several foreign languages, speeches in the Reichstag, leadership of influential colonial organizations such as the German Colonial Society, and the cultivation of ties with prominent political figures, among them Reich President Paul von Hindenburg and Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann. The findings suggest that Schnee's extensive public and organizational activities helped keep the colonial question on the political agenda of the Weimar Republic. His rhetoric also contributed, to some extent, to undermining the legitimacy of the democratic order and to the broader radicalization of public opinion. After the Nazi seizure of power, however, his political influence declined sharply. Despite joining the NSDAP and openly demonstrating his loyalty to the new regime, Schnee found himself increasingly sidelined. The Nazi leadership shifted its foreign-policy priorities toward the acquisition of Lebensraum in Eastern Europe, while control over the colonial movement passed increasingly into the hands of party organizations. Schnee's career thus reflects the broader evolution of German colonial revisionism in the interwar period. Having contributed to the delegitimization of Weimar democracy, the movement was ultimately pushed to the margins under the Third Reich, as its aims increasingly diverged from the regime's wider geopolitical priorities.

The legacy of Petr Berngardovich Struve as a historian has received considerably less scholarly attention than his contributions to social thought, economic theory, and political journalism. Struve produced relatively few works devoted specifically to Russian history. In a number of shorter publications written before the Revolution, however, he formulated the idea of a Great Russia and situated it within the broader context of Russian historical development. Several of his articles were devoted to Russian historians, primarily in connection with his interest in the formation of Russian national consciousness. Struve's principal historical work, The Social and Economic History of Russia from the Earliest Times to the Present, in Connection with the Development of Russian Culture and the Growth of Russian Statehood, remained unfinished, yet may nevertheless be regarded as a major contribution to the traditions not only of Russian historiography but also of Russian historiosophy. The work reveals the close relationship between Struve's conception of history and his understanding of nationalism and patriotism and, in effect, articulates a distinctive "philosophy of patriotism". In Struve's interpretation, patriotism and nationalism are essentially identical concepts, representing two manifestations of national sentiment. The article draws particular attention to the contradictions inherent in Struve's concept of "true nationalism", whose only genuine form, in his view, was liberalism. During his years in emigration, the complexity and internal tensions of his understanding of these concepts became especially apparent on the eve of and during the Second World War, when the Russian émigré community was compelled to define its attitude toward Bolshevik rule against the background of the threat to Russia's independence. The divergence between Struve's theoretical convictions and his practical political position – most notably in relation to Russia and Germany — became evident in his publications of the 1930s. Although the intensity of the controversy within the Russian émigré milieu over this issue has already been examined in the scholarly literature, the documents discussed in the present article, particularly the testimony of Struve's close friend E.D. Kuskova, add important detail to the picture of the dramatic inner "split" between Struve the scholar and Struve the political thinker.

Despite a substantial body of scholarship on Lomonosov Moscow State University during the Great Patriotic War, significant gaps remain in our understanding of its institutional functioning under wartime conditions. This is largely due to a historiographical emphasis on the military service and personal sacrifice of MSU faculty, staff, and students, while the university as an institution has rarely been examined in its own right. The exceptional conditions of wartime transformed relations both within MSU and across the wider system of higher education administered by the People's Commissariat for Education, as institutions were dissolved, merged, and reorganized. They also altered the university's relationship with state authorities, particularly through the mobilization of students into the people's militia, the Red Army, and the labor front. These changes prompted the creation of new administrative posts, including special representatives appointed by the rector and individual faculties, as well as new organizational units within MSU, and generated a distinctive body of wartime documentation. The article draws on archival materials from two repositories — the MSU Archive and the Central State Archive of Moscow — documenting the activities of Moscow State University and the Moscow Institute of Philosophy, Literature, and History (MIFLI) between 1941 and 1945. It also makes use of wartime issues of the newspaper Moskovskii universitet (Moscow University). Taken together, these sources shed new light on the activities of individual members of the university community as well as entire MSU departments and administrative units during the Great Patriotic War. In particular, the archival evidence calls into question the view, well established in memoir literature, that the MSU administration lacked direction and that its actions were poorly coordinated. A memorandum prepared by acting rector B.P. Orlov in early 1942 indicates that the university maintained careful records of the whereabouts of its faculty, staff, and students. The evacuation and subsequent re-evacuation were likewise carried out in an orderly and coordinated manner. The loss of a portion of the university's wartime records was due not to administrative negligence, but to a fire in the building occupied by MSU in Sverdlovsk. The article also presents preliminary results of the interfaculty research project MSU during the Great Patriotic War: New Discoveries, initiated by the MSU Rectorate in 2025.

The article highlights the contribution of Lomonosov Moscow State University to the advancement of Soviet scholarship and higher education during the 1950s and 1960s. It examines previously underexplored aspects of the University's academic life in this period, including the activities of its dissertation councils. Produced within the framework of the federal historical and patriotic project People's Commissars of the Great Victory, the study seeks to contribute to a scholarly biography of the "commander-in-chief of the financial front", Arseny Grigorievich Zverev (1900–1969), an eminent Soviet statesman who headed the country's financial administration for more than two decades as People's Commissar and subsequently Minister of Finance of the USSR. In order to broaden and update the agenda of Russian historical and biographical studies, the article sets out to illuminate both insufficiently researched and hitherto entirely unexplored episodes in Zverev's life and career, substantiating them with reliable and carefully verified historical evidence. Particular attention is devoted to Zverev's preparation and defence of his doctoral dissertation at Moscow State University in 1959. The article demonstrates that this event provided an important impetus for his subsequent scholarly and teaching activities at the Institute of Economics of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the All-Union Correspondence Institute of Finance and Economics. The study argues that A.G. Zverev, a prominent Soviet statesman, a notable representative of the first generation of the Soviet scholarly intelligentsia, Doctor of Economic Sciences and Professor, made a significant contribution to the study of major issues in Soviet economic scholarship, as well as to the training of specialists and researchers for the country's financial sector. Alongside documents from the State Archive of the Russian Federation and the Russian State Archive of the Economy, the source base of the study includes previously unpublished administrative records introduced into scholarly circulation for the first time: copies of A.G. Zverev's personal files obtained, following an official request by the Federal Treasury, from the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation, the Central State Archive of the City of Moscow, the Federal State Institution Insurance Fund Records Storage Centre in Yalutorovsk, Tyumen Region, and the archives of the Institute of Economics of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation.

This article commemorates Valery Ivanovich Bovykin, professor at the Faculty of History of Lomonosov Moscow State University, on the centenary of his birth in January 2027. His scholarly and teaching career was closely bound to the Faculty of History, where he made a major contribution to the development of the Department of Source Studies. V.I. Bovykin was an internationally recognized authority on Russian history at the turn of the 20th century. His wide-ranging scholarship encompassed the social, economic, financial, and banking history of pre-revolutionary Russia, foreign policy and international relations, source studies, archival research methods, and related fields. V.I. Bovykin's works and ideas remain relevant today and continue to play an important role in the training of young scholars and new generations of historians. An accomplished university teacher and the author of textbooks, teaching materials, and course programs, he supervised nearly one hundred undergraduate theses. More than thirty dissertations for the Candidate of Sciences degree were completed under his supervision. V.I. Bovykin taught general lecture courses and seminars, developed numerous specialized courses on major issues in historical scholarship, and supervised various forms of student research and practical training. The article traces the principal stages of V.I. Bovykin's academic and teaching career and examines his role in establishing an influential school of Russian historical scholarship at Moscow University. It explores his development as both a researcher and mentor, outlines the main areas of his research, and considers the distinctive features of his teaching methods and his approach to mentoring students. The article also draws on the recollections of V.I. Bovykin's former students, many of whom later became prominent scholars and university teachers. The authors synthesize these various aspects of V.I. Bovykin's work and examine how the Department of Source Studies at the Faculty of History of Moscow University continues to promote his scholarly and teaching legacy and to preserve his memory among faculty, postgraduate students, and undergraduates.

This article examines nostalgia as a mode of representing the historical past and as an indicator of changing attitudes toward history. The relevance of the study stems not only from the persistent presence of nostalgic narratives in the media but also from the insufficient development of analytical tools capable of capturing this phenomenon comprehensively amid the digital transformation of the information environment. The article argues that nostalgia is no longer confined to the realm of personal experience but has increasingly become a public phenomenon actively employed in the construction of collective identity and the shaping of emotionally charged media agendas. The analysis draws on materials published by two Russian media outlets, Argumenty i Fakty and Gazeta.Ru, between 2005 and 2025. Unlike previous studies that have tended to offer static accounts of nostalgia, this research proposes a dynamic model of its evolution by comparing three chronological snapshots — 2005, 2015, and 2025 — and combining quantitative and qualitative methods. A content analysis of 100 publications reveals shifts in the objects of nostalgia, its functions within media texts, and the modes through which the past is represented, as well as an increasing blurring of the temporal boundaries of nostalgic experience. Across the period under study, depending on context, nostalgia may function as the central theme of a text, a secondary argumentative device, a background element, or an object of explicit rejection. It is predominantly endowed with positive, and less frequently ambivalent, emotional connotations and may serve as a means of constructing collective identity. The findings demonstrate that over the course of two decades, nostalgia evolved from a form of "quiet reflection on a lost everyday world", through the "collecting of the material culture of the 1990s", into an "emotional and marketing resource" that may be mobilized, criticized, or rejected. Particular attention is paid to three recurring objects of nostalgia — film and literature, technology and gadgets, and the Soviet past as a historical era — whose evolution reflects a gradual shift from nostalgia centred on tangible objects toward nostalgia for emotional states, experiences, and ways of feeling. The findings make it possible to trace broader transformations in historical memory and public sentiment within Russian media discourse over the past two decades.

This article seeks to identify the distinctive features of costume-inflected portraiture of Russian tsarevnas in the age of Peter I within the broader context of European art. The characteristics of the costumed portrait as a distinct type in Russia are examined through comparison with portrait images of princesses from European dynasties. Whereas portraits of Russian tsarevnas have not previously been treated as a separate category, this study proposes to consider them as a particular variety of the female portrait in the early modern period. The article focuses on the allegorical personae most frequently encountered in portraits of tsarevnas and princesses, above all Flora and Diana. The specific character of their Russian articulation was shaped in large measure by the defining features of Petrine painting, with its urgent imperative to assimilate the possibilities of early modern art. The logic of this development determined both the reliance on an already established Western European artistic tradition, mediated by foreign masters such as Louis Caravaque, and the relative restraint of the range of classical personae in comparison with other European national schools. The Western European tradition is represented here by examples drawn from French, English, and Italian painting. A comparative iconographic analysis, informed by the historical and cultural contexts in which these portraits were produced, makes it possible to discern new layers of meaning within them. Costumed portraits fulfilled a crucial representational function, situating royal women within an elevated mythic realm shared across European artistic culture, a framework through which their virtues, chastity, and the natural beauty refined by court culture could be articulated. Tsarevnas and princesses were conventionally cast both as patrons of culture and as desirable brides whose advantageous dynastic marriages might exert considerable influence on international relations. A central task for artists was to maintain an equilibrium between the sitter's individual features and the broadly legible allegorical persona, rooted in European culture, that she was made to embody. Accessories and attributes played a particularly significant role in such images, for they enabled viewers to identify the figure whom the sitter personified.