The article explores the question of how the unity of the Roman Empire was construed in the 4th - 5th centuries and what mechanisms ensured its sustainability. By tracing the historical changes of succession, it is evident that Imperial Unity during this period was ensured primarily by Christian ideology and mechanisms for its implementation were the same as those adopted under Diocletian. Although considered as a single realm, the Empire, for the most part of the 4th century was under the control of several emperors, who, if not connected by kinship, would seek to secure their union through dynastic marriages. As power was not inherited by women, the man who married a woman of the royal family, could most likely inherit the throne, but for legitimacy reasons it was necessary for him to be approved by the senior ruler (hence the ordination of Valentinian III by Theodosius II). The year 395, traditionally regarded as the year of the Division of the Empire into Eastern and Western parts, did not bring anything new: the concept of unity and the order of succession remained the same, occasionally disturbed by the actions of usurpers. Rulers can be considered even those who came to power, albeit with the aid of a dynastic marriage, but without the approval of the senior ruler (for example, Marcian, married to Pulcheria, but not approved by Valentinian III). In such cases, emperors sought to legitimize their power by relying on the Church which subsequently allowed to avoid the unpleasantness of being branded a usurper. Ignoring the actual usurpations led to the concept of the divided Empire. Meanwhile, despite the ongoing alienation of the West and the East, the idea of unity of Christendom was not disturbed by such cases; the status of a unified empire was seen as desirable, so the senior Emperor (usually of the East which in that era was more stable) could appoint emperors in the West (as he so did, for example, Leo I). The concept of continuing unity also guided Justinian in his attempt toward restoration.

The article examines the relationship between Spain and the Holy See, as well as the functioning of the Apostolic Nunciature in Madrid between September 1833 - July 1835. An outline of previous research in this field is presented. The article also introduces into scientific use a number of documents from the Vatican Secret Archives, and offers a brief overview of the Holy See - Spain diplomatic relations in 1823-1833. In 1832 in Spain, the apostolic nuncio F. Tiberi was substituted by L. Amat. The new representative of the Holy See arrived in Madrid in September 1833, 17 days before the death of King Ferdinand VII. In October 1833 the First Carlist War started. Numerous representatives of the Spanish clergy supported the claim of the King’s brother, Prince (Infante) Don Carlos, to the throne. Nevertheless, the Holy See did not recognize neither the Princess Isabel neither Infante Don Carlos as legitimate claimants to the Spanish throne. For that reason, the Spanish government in Madrid did not recognize L. Amat as the nuncio. L. Amat stayed in Madrid until 1835. In the meantime, The Holy See State Secretary T. Bernetti and the nuncio L. Amat preferred to wait for the results of the conflict between the Carlists and the Isabelinos (the partisans of Don Carlos and Isabel, respectively). According to the nuncio’s letters to the State Secretary in 1833-1834, the Holy See’s representative did not consider Isabel’s victory an obvious one. The Pope’s reluctance to recognize Isabel as a Queen led to a breakdown of diplomatic relations between the Holy See and Spain in 1835. The sup-pression of the Society of Jesus in Spain in August 1835 was the cause of both the breakdown and the nuncio’s departure from the country. The events of August 1835 enhanced the Spanish clergy’s support to the Don Carlos cause and encouraged J. A. Mendizabal’s anticlerical policy in 1835-1836.

The article is devoted to the study of views and activities on the eve and during the First World War of the famous Islamic activist Amir Shakib Arslan (1869-1946). The author focuses on studying Shakib Arslan’s cooperation with the leaders of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), as well as the short but important period of the Amir’s life, connected with his stay in Germany as an emissary of the Ottoman Empire. The author tries to understand the place and role of Shakib Arslan in the relations between the German and the Ottoman empires in the final stage of the First World War, paying special attention to his propaganda activity during this period. The example of Shakib Arslan confirms the thesis of representatives of the new empire history about the importance of numerous cross-border interconnections for inter-imperial relations. With the beginning of the First World War, on the one hand, additional difficulties around maintain ties between the Ottoman and German empires arose, and on the other, new ties and forms of cooperation were created, with their intensity ultimately increasing during the war. During the First World War, many representatives of national movements followed a similar path (moving to Germany, cooperation with German services, including the use of propaganda). It is important, however, to see and understand not only their personal motives, but also the situational context of interaction, and in general, from a transnational perspective, consider the various links and communities which emerged during as well as after the war. This will help to better understand the influence of the First World War on the dynamics of national post-war and anti-colonial movements. With the end of the First World War, the anti-colonial struggle did not end (on the contrary, in some cases, it received a new impetus), and the networks of interaction, institutions and communities created during the war transformed, and continued to operate in the 1920s and in some cases even in the 1930s.

The paper is devoted to the study of how commercial networks of Bukharan and Chinese merchants were used for the export of Russian cotton fabrics in the first half of the 19th century. Bukharan merchants dominated the central core of Silk Road trade in Central Asia, and developed the trade with not only Russia, but also Eurasian countries including China and India. Shanxi merchants built close relations with the Chinese government and established the commercial and financial system in their own country. Asian trade was carried out in harmony with natural environments. Many regions in Eurasia belonged to the steppes, and this ecological system was suitable for livestock farming including camels, horses and mules, used as a means of transportation. However this trade system of one year cycles could not adapt to the subsequent periods of innovation when the steam engine and fossil fuels were introduced in the field of production, and when mass production was realized.

The gendarmerie supervision of private gold mining in Siberia appeared as a result of a large number of labor strikes at gold mines in Siberia in the late 1830s and early 1840s. The government believed that the presence of gendarmes in the gold mines would help reduce the number of workers’ strikes and be a way for the authorities to receive direct intel about all activities taking place in the gold mining industry. In Russian historiography, the gendarmerie supervision of the industrial sector of the economy has not actually been studied; this fact actualizes the research presented in this article. The key purpose of this article is to analyze the activities of gendarme officer Dmitry Gavrilovich Ponomarev, who had been supervising private gold mining enterprises in Western Siberia for 14 years - longer than all his predecessors and successors. The research aims were to reveal the reason for the appointment of Ponomarev to this position, identify his main duties during his time in service, analyze his documentation, and answer the question about the effectiveness of gendarmerie supervision as a whole, based on the example of Ponomarev’s activity. The first gendarme officers who supervised the gold mining industry, especially D. G. Ponomarev, treated their duties fairly responsibly, trying to delve into all aspects of the gold mining process. The remained documentation testifies to Ponomarev’s sufficiently high competence in the matters of gold mining. The gendarmerie supervision of private gold mining in Siberia was a fairly good source of information for the highest executive authorities in the region about the processes and events that took place in private gold mines. Therefore, it can be concluded that the gendarmerie agency had a sufficiently high degree of effectiveness in this regard.

In the second half of the 1850s in the conditions of general liberalization of the political regime and socio-political upsurge in the Russian public environment, the concept of liberal transformations of the country was formed, which the representatives of Russian society conveyed to the ruling elite. The main provisions of this concept were the abolition of serfdom, the demand for broad publicity and freedom of public opinion, as well as the recognition of basic civil rights and freedoms. These provisions are reflected in the works of outstanding Russian thinkers of this period, which has been studied in detail in domestic historiography. However the socio-political ideas of Russian scientist S. I. Baranovsky during the mid-19th century has not yet been introduced into scientific circulation and has not been the subject of a dedicated study. The purpose of the article is to analyze Baranovsky’s main ideas outlined in his 1857 note addressed to Emperor Alexander II, in the context of the development of Russian social thought in the mid-19th century and changes in the relationship between power and society in the country. Bara-novsky’s note “Zadushevnye dumy” is a moderately liberal project of socio-political transformation in the Russian empire, which in many respects continued the tradition of designing the concept of political modernization of Russian autocracy. Many basic theoretical principles of classical liberalism reflected in the views of the scientist, such as the theory of natural laws, basic individual rights and freedoms stemming from it, the rule of law, the principle of separation of powers. Baranovsky’s approach to socio-political reform was characterized by a critical attitude toward borrowing the Western European experience of state administration, which was reflected in the attempts of adapting his proposals to the Russian social and political conditions of the mid-19th century.

Since the middle of the 19th century, church periodicals in the form of Diocesan records occupied an important place in the social life of the Russian provinces, placing on their pages not only documents and addresses of church and official authorities, sermons and instructions, but also material of, for example journalistic, local history, historical and ethnographic nature. In light of this, the study of the process of Christianization of the Kazakh population of the Steppe Territory in the late 19th - early 20th century is of particular interest. The study considers materials of the “Omsk Diocesan Records”, the official periodical of the Omsk diocese, which until recently has been poorly studied in historiography. A comprehensive analysis of the source (the «Omsk Diocesan Records») showed that the Kazakh (Kyrgyz) population of the Steppe Territory and the Omsk diocese under the conditions of missionary activity of the Kyrgyz mission experienced a transformation not only in the ethno-religious, but also in the economic, social and cultural spheres. The “Omsk Diocesan Records” can be considered a full-fledged, original and versatile source about the history of the Christianization of the Kyrgyz (Kazakh) population of the Steppe Territory in the late 19th - early 20th century, reflecting the official position of the Russian Orthodox Church regarding missionary activity, its state, forms and methods, as well as certain aspects of the very process of Christianization of the Kirghiz (Kazakhs), such as: the socio-economic conditionality of the adoption of Orthodoxy, the process of socialization, acculturation and transformation of ethnic and religious consciousness of both the newly baptized and their recent relatives and newfound brothers in religion.

The article explores the issues of the formation and activities of the prosecutor’s office in the 1920s as an institution of the Soviet state, called upon to exercise supervision over the observance of its laws by all actors of public life, including party and state bodies. The relevance of this topic is determined by the difficulties in the formation of the rule of law and civil society in modern Russia, largely due to the influence of the historical legacy of the Soviet period. It is noted that the introduction of the New Economic Policy (NEP) led to an increase in the role of law in public life, which allowed the prosecutor’s office to strengthen its authority in both the state and among the population. The number of citizens appeals to the Prosecutor's Office of Siberia grew from 12,400 in 1924 to 27,100 in 1925. During the period between 1925-1927 alone, the prosecutor’s office of Siberia initiated over three thousand criminal cases against individual workers of local authorities. However, the later rejection of the NEP, which manifested itself most clearly in the grain procurement campaigns of the late 1920s, essentially meant a return to “military communism”; a system more familiar and convenient for the ruling stratum. The prosecution authorities had to adapt to the Stalinist course, which was aimed at abandoning the legitimacy of the NEP. Sources show that a significant number of prosecutors in Siberia, not ready to accept such violations of the rule of law, were suspended from work. The study of the history of the structures of the prosecutor's office of Siberia in the 1920s clearly demonstrates the origins of the transformation of the Soviet state, which proclaimed itself the democratic power of workers and peasants, while turning into a totalitarian regime dominated by party nomenclature.

Large-scale deportations of foreign citizens to the USSR territory, arrested and deported for political reasons, seems to be a unique case in the history of foreign affairs, especially between the USSR and its socialist regime allies. The deportation of Hungarian citizens, which took place after the Hungarian Revolution in 1956, seems to be the last of such events. Since November 4th, 1956 as part of the Soviet Army operation “Vihr” a large number of Hungarian citizens were deported from the territory of Hungary to the USSR by Soviet military and security agencies. The first party of Hungarian citizens taken across the border to the Soviet Union was transferred at night on November 4th, and the last on November 15th. According to KGB statistics, the total amount of relocations was 860 people. All Hungarians were interrogated by the Soviet security agencies in KGB’s prisons in Uzhgorod and Striy and gradually sent back to Hungary up until January 7th, 1957. The aim of this study is to summarize the actual results of Hungarian historiography research on this topic. Special attention is paid to propaganda mechanisms of concealing facts of Hungarian deportations by the Soviet authorities from their own citizens, especially with the help of religious leaders from Soviet-Hungarian boundary territories. These facts were pretty well-known among locals, and the situation came to a serious conflict between church authorities and parishioners in these regions. As a result, it could be mentioned that Hungarian citizens (local revolutionary committees and student group members, military and security agency officials and so on) were selected to be deported by criteria such as their possibility of being participants of “counter-revolutionary events”. However, the principles of this selection still require a more detailed investigation.

The article focuses on the activities of the scientific-technical societies of the Tatar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (ASSR) in the second half of the 1950s - early 1960s in their efforts to enhance invention and innovation, and effectiveness of various forms of mobilization in the engineering and technical communities of factory workers. The author provides arguments in favor of the idea that the differentiated character of the structural transformations of scientific-technical societies, as well as the criteria for assessing the effectiveness of their activities, reflected the mobilization model of the Soviet economy. Realizing the mobilization functions that are not inherent in their nature and implementing speculative ideas (democratization of production), scientific-technical societies created far-fetched associations, such as worker-research institutes, public construction bureaus, public bureaus of economic analysis, and others. A key focal point is the analysis of the difficulties faced by scientific-technical associations. The most significant of which were the lack of: independence in planning the trajectory of its development, scientific personnel and effective connections with other scientific and engineering organizations. A large number of mobilization events generated the pursuit of quantity at the expense of quality. The article also discusses how the peculiarities of the command system, which was weakly susceptible to innovation and the growing discrepancy between political slogans and the realities of Soviet life, led to the profanation of the government's initiatives to develop creative activity of the working masses. In the USSR system of management of scientific and technical progress, immune to managerial influences coming from below, public organizations could not play a serious role, as a result implementing mobilization functions unusual for their nature.

Over 1,500 Finnish workers arrived to the Sovietsky settlement (Vyborg district, Leningrad region) in 1985 to reconstruct the Vyborg Pulp and Paper Plant (VPPP). The local party and state authorities connected their presence with the profiteering of western goods, prostitution, mendicancy and religious literature distribution in the settlement. To oppose these tendencies they tried to mobilize workers’ “consciousness”. This event is considered very useful for historians from the point of view of a psychoanalytical collision that could help a subject to manifest and construct itself. The author studied curiosity tactics of local workers and control tactics of local authorities, concluding that the described tendencies were mostly a product of the authorities’ imagination, as a means to control the population. The locals reacted differently to both the presence of foreigners and control attempts of the authorities. The nature of individuals’ reactions depended on their social position within the relations of production of the Soviet plant. For example, workers from the production workshops of the VPPP participated in the volunteer auxiliary police unit more actively than their other colleagues. This was obviously a political move, as these volunteers prevented close communication between Soviet and Finnish citizens. Workers from the production workshops were more privileged and therefore had to perform their informal political duties - whether they agreed with them or not. The general conclusion is that historians could use the notion of a “civil society” based on the events during the last years of the Soviet Union for further research. The author considers a “civil society” to be a social non-state complexity that consists of several groups, each with their own interests and behaviors. Future studies could provide a more concrete structure of that Soviet civil complexity.