This article attempts to comment on some issues related to the reading and interpretation of Babylonian King List of the Hellenistic Period (also known as BKLHP or “King List 6”), one of the most important cuneiform sources from Seleucid Babylonia. The author examines all titles used for the representatives of the Seleucid dynasty in the Babylonian King List, as well as the wording of the accession to the throne and death of one or another king. E. M. Berzon believes that the difference in the formulas for accession to the throne on the obverse and reverse of the King List was determined not so much by its sense as by the length of the line on cuneiform tablet. As for the statement of death, the use of the verb GAZ in the text did not depend on the very fact of the killing of the ruler. It is used only in cases when the king was killed as a result of a certain incident during a military expedition outside his possessions. Also the author has shown that the word aplu , often translated in texts as “son”, in the Seleucid time acquires a more general meaning - “heir”, which in this case was not necessarily a son. And it is precisely in this way that this sign should be translated in the Babylonian King List of the Hellenistic Period which in turn explains its use in the 10^th line of the reverse of the tablet. In general, the Babylonian royal list of the Hellenistic time is an extremely important source, which makes it possible to clarify many issues with the chronology and dating of the Seleucid rule, which the “classical” narrative tradition often cannot provide.

Great Britain implemented a model of transfer of power in India by granting independence to the country while preserving its place in the Commonwealth of Nations. The key element was handing over governance by Imperial authorities to local forces by legal means. The transfer of power led to the building of nation-states in former British India. The completion of the process marked a new stage for contemporary India and enabled Indian political institutions to operate on the basis of the British Empire’s legacy since that time. Therefore, the legacy’s values were important features of the power transfer. However, the Imperial legacy had material representation in numerous official documents kept in colonial offices. Some documents being witnesses of the British governance were eliminated by Britain’s ‘Operation Legacy.’ During the Operation, some of the official papers were incinerated, while others retained under the title of ‘legacy papers’. A connection between the transfer of power and Operation Legacy has not been explored to date, but one may exist. Some questions are: could the two processes, one of which had finished in 1947 and the other had commenced, supposedly, in 1947, be interconnected? Could the transfer of power have influenced Operation Legacy, and could Operation Legacy, in turn, have become a part of other colonial power transfers by Britain after Indian independence? The article aims to investigate how Britain’s experience in India influenced its developing Operation Legacy in other colonies and whether it later changed the practices of transfer of power. The author discusses why the first indications of a well-organized Operation Legacy emerged in Ceylon in late 1947, when Ceylon sought independence. This became known as the result of the internal inquiry by the Foreign Office, also known as the Cary Report.

The article is devoted to the policy of Visegrad countries in response to the migrant crisis in the EU and analyzes the current position of the countries on the migrant crisis regulation. Nowadays V4 countries state that the main instrument for solution of the refugee problem is implementation of strict border control. They provide harsh migrant policy at the national level that aims to restrict migrant inflow in the countries. The Visegrad countries contest EU migrant quotas as forced and challenge European position as violation of national sovereignty. On the other hand the EU insists on the realization of the unified migration policy and underlines the principle of solidarity as one of the key values of the Union. Furthermore, recent political changes, such as the growth of nationalist and populist parties inside V4, had a significant influence on the position of the countries. In other words, the policy towards migrant problem became more rigid, comparing to the other members of the EU. The confrontation has already led to the court examination and continues to be the principal cause of generaldeterioration of relationships between the old and new member states of the EU. Despite all the measures undertaken by the European Comission the countries of the region stubbornly stick to their opinion. Even Slovakia and the Czech Republic, which are not as intractable as Poland and Hungary, still follow the same policy. The migrant crisis draws attention to the brewing crisis and shows the weakening of the EU supranational institutions.

The article aims to find persons of Polish ancestry among Russian generality of Patriotic war of 1812. It seems that there were only nine Polish generals in the Russian army at that time. Futhermore this paper also dedicated to the family background of these generals and investigation of their biographies. The author considers the problem of ethnicity identity in historical context. The question of national ancestry is really complicated especially in case of studying the epoch of 1812 Patriotic war. Unfortunately, official lists of all serviceman of the Russian imperial army is inapplicable, since this research is intended to reveal criteria that were used by contemporaries of the French invasion to Russia. Even the surname of a person indicates just belonging to a certain family, but it may not match the nationality. On the biographical material of nine Polish generals the author shows some specific characteristics of ethnic identity in the 19^th century, such as religious and language affiliation. Comparison of the biographies of Polish ancestry generals, based on a few parameters, including the social and economic status of these people, shows that there were both rich (“magnates”) and impoverished aristocrats among them. All of them participated in battles, promoted in army career fast (especially “magnates”), but generally their biographies do not contain any specific features. The author draws attention to the perception of Polish generals in Russian society, not always positive strongly related to ethnic-religious stereotypes.

The article examines the materials of the anti-colonial discourse of the second half of the 19^th - early 20^th centuries, which is based on the ideas of the national intelligentsia of Kazakhstan about the status of the indigenous population of the Steppe Territory in imperial projects and colonization practices. The research of the written sources and activities of the liberal national intelligentsia revealed, that the priority was given to criticism of Russia's imperial policy towards nomadic groups of the population. This paper aims to identify the sociocultural conditions of the formation of the national intelligentsia, as well as the approaches of the early Kazakhstan historiography to the assessment of the factors of the agrarian colonization. As a result, the author found out that implementing the policy of “big Russian nation”, the Russian authorities tried to create the favorable conditions for the natural Russification of the Kazakh elite. The political measures included among the others the involvement in education and management system. Thus the emerging layer of the national intelligentsia actively participated in the imperial activity o intended to study of the colonization fund, jointly with a detachment of state officials - groups with common signs of professional identity. in the second half of the 19^th century, in the period of growing popularity of separatist sentiments in Kazakhstan , the national intelligentsia, educated in the European spirit, actively perceived the ideas of Siberian regionalism, and in the early 20^th century - radical leftist parties and movements, which strengthened the anti-colonial the focus of their rhetoric.

The article studies the place and role of the Russian Orthodox Mission as a tool of religious propaganda in China in the second half of the 19^th - early 20^th centuries. Heretofore, the primary goals were to fulfill the functions of the Russian diplomatic mission in China and to conduct research in the field of oriental studies and the natural sciences, which in its turn excluded the possibility of its missionary tasks. In the second half of the 19^th century the Russian Orthodox Mission had to transfer diplomatic and military intelligence functions to the Russian embassy in China that was opened in 1861. This circumstance forced the Mission to search for new directions of development and eventually focus on missionary work. The structure of the Russian Orthodox Mission was gradually transformed, adapting to the needs of pastoral activity. Its financial and material-technical base strengthened, the staff of missionaries expanded, the system of Orthodox parishes, church schools, monastery cloisters and courtyards become more complicated. In order to involve the indigenous people in the religious propaganda and to significantly increase the number of newly baptized Chinese, from the second half of the 19^th till early 20^th centuries the Mission developed the network of missionary offices, mills and schools in the six largest and densely populated provinces of central China. Despite the fact that the Mission worked in extremely unfavorable conditions, mostly caused by the political games of the great powers for influence in the Far East, Russian Orthodox Church achieved undoubted success. The growth of the Mission was interrupted by the outbreak of the First World War, following a reduction in funding and a number of other circumstances. As a result, the activity of the Russian Orthodox Mission in China was gradually decreasing in 1914- 1917.

The article analyzes the Siberian press of the last third of the 19^th - early 20^th centuries, which was banned from publishing, or, already being published, caused the scrutiny of the local administration. The study reveals typical features of the Siberian censorship practice until November 24, 1905 and after that, when the legal position of the press changed. The research is based on the examination of 387 items from 32 Siberian publications, that were censored. For the unit of material we take a separate genre unit, which served as the content of the printed issue. Up to 1905 the local censorship most of all paid attention to the notes and correspondence that contained descriptions of specific cases of abuse by officials and state institutions. They constitute the vast majority of the identified materials. In the first place, these are reports of various incidents (people's disasters, crimes, disorders in public institutions), directly or indirectly indicating the negligence and inaction of the authorities, in the second - information about the abuse of power. The larger number of such publications are connected with the officials of the lowest level. Attacks on the highest level of local administration have a single character. There is no big quantitative and qualitative difference between the forbidden materials and the ones inadvertently admitted to publishing. Since 1905, the quantitative ratio of items changed towards a significant increase in articles of general critical nature, with the predomination of the revolutionary materials. Until 1905, the work of the censorship mechanism in Siberia was characterized not only by prohibitions of materials, but also by verification of facts of the content or investigation; the number of court cases was insignificant. After 1905 the actions of censorship acquire mostly punitive character: lawsuits evolved into a crucial method of influence on press.

Tremendous defeat in a war against Japan, that shortly before was not considered as “civilized nation”, questioned capability of tsarist autocracy to maintain Russia’s credibility as a great power. Failure of the Russian army, which was more or less as strong as the Japanese one in terms of numbers and weapons, to deliver victory in any major battle became a subject of scrupulous reflection among military professionals. Shocking combat experience inspired military thought. The decade after the Russo-Japanese war has passed under the sign of “military renaissance”. If some people preferred to explain poor performance of the Russian army mostly by incompetence of particular commanders, others saw deeper reasons - the whole ineffective and malicious Russian government system couldn’t provide a war victory. Crucial changes in political environment during the First Russian revolution of 1905-1907 provided the second group with a possibility to advocate their views in a public sphere. The article deals with the history of the first Russian private, independent military newspaper “Voennyi Golos” founded at the end of 1905. Political ideas and sympathies, reviews of current political situation, speculations about how legislative and administrative changes would or could affect the army expressed on the pages of the newspaper are subjects of particular interest for the author. The article provides prosopographic study of a group of young military intellectuals, which formed around “Voennyi Golos”, based on the evidence collected about this newspaper’s authors and employees.

The evolution of terminology for describing Siberian ethnicities in Soviet Russia and the USSR, and Russian Empire has recently become the subject of research interest for historians. Studying this subject is important for understanding the features of socialist construction in so-called national outskirts . This article focuses on the term “ inorodtsy ” ( aliens ). Analysis of sources showed that the language for describing the autochthonous population was rather conservative and was changing considerably slower than political transformations appeared. Former names for social groups were not immediately replaced by new emerging concepts. Challenging the new Soviet political vocabulary, the term aliens was still actively used until the late 1920s due to the following reasons. First of all, such institutions of the Imperial Russia as inorodtsy local governments and yasak were still functioning during the first years after the revolution. Second, political environment of protracted civil confrontation in the region. Third, the self-identification of the indigenous ethnicities by the means of imperial categories of social stratification ( yasak aliens ) which the peoples used to justify their special case in post-revolutionary Russia. The usage of this terminology in scientific and popular literature was also caused by the aliens’ discourse being associated with the field of historical experience relevant for the researchers. Ideology trends aimed at radically rethinking this experience and creating an image of socialist future for the indigenous ethnicities, hence the term inorodtsy was replaced with new definitions, and moreover it was banished from the language in the early 1930s.

The functioning of any organization depends, in many ways, on the personnel policy. The implementation of the directives of the Russian Communist party and any changes in the political course required dedicated and efficient cadre. In scientific literature one can often come across the statement according to which the party authority successfully resisted political clans, formed at the local level, through intensive personnel replacements. This article aims to describe the human resource policy of the Siberian regional party administration towards to the Altai provincial Committee of the RCP(b) in March - June 1924. In particular, the author planned to find out whether employee transfers were actually effective, who made decisions about the replacement of the staff members and how they reacted to these replacements. Studying historical sources, that were found in the State archive of the Novosibirsk region and the State archive of the Altai territory, the author revealed the staffing structure of the Bureau of the Altai gubkom and analyzed the relationships bound themembers of this organization. The research showed that the Altai gubkom secretary A. I. Podneck and the chairman of the provincial executive committee L. E. Goldich completely failed cooperation work, and this circumstance forced the Siberian krai committee of RCP(b) to start personnel replacements, which mainly meant sending away high-ranking officials-Latvians from the province. The paper concludes by arguing that in the first half of the 1920s, employee transfers were a universal means of fighting political clans. However, Siberian regional party leadership used them only as a last resort, because of the difficulties to find an appropriate successor for the dismissed official.

The article analyzes the correspondence between two outstanding archaeographers of the 20^th century - academician M. N. Tikhomirov and founder of the Archive of Ancient Relics (Institute of Russian Literature (the Pushkin House), Russian Academy of Sciences) V. I. Malyshev. The paper aims to research, how they understood and discussed the problem of preservation of manuscripts. The authors studied 182 letters from Malyshev to Tikhomirov (for 1947- 1965) stored at the private fund of M. N. Tihomirovand 66 letters from Tikhomirov to Malyshev (for the same period) as well as the memoirs and articles of Tikhomirov and Malyshev themselves, their students and followers. Comparison of the sources revealed their understanding of the essence of the problem and possible ways of its solution . The authors highlighted the general and particular in the views of two correspondents on the issue of the preservation of manuscripts. According to Malyshev, at that time the most urgent task was a collection of the manuscripts kept by ordinary people. Tikhomirov, recognizing the importance of the above-mentioned mission, insisted that maintenance of archives was just as crucial. At the same time both of them agreed on the need to organize the archaeographic expeditions, examine and registrate private collections, monitor preservation of materials in state archives, publish manuscripts, involve government resources and stimulate public attention to the problem. The letters show the mutual respect of the correspondents, their understanding of the merits of each other as well as demonstrate their successful cooperation. Together Malyshev and Tikhomirow completed reconstruction of the Archaeographic Commission, effectively promoted their common cause in the press and impressively replenished the Tikhomirov’s collection of manuscripts and old printed books (later accurately transferred to Novosibirsk). The analysis of the above-mentioned sources leads to the following conclusions: even today the experience of Soviet scholars is still relevant.

The paper is devoted to some daily activities of the Russian expeditionary “Lower corps” in Iranian province Gilan, acquired as a result of 1722-1723 Persian Campaign of Peter the Great. Relational of the corps’ commander generalin-chief V. Ya. Levashov from the Archive of Russian empire’s foreign policy published here for the first time. These documents show, that local people did not reconcile with foreign and gentile authorities. Just after the Persian campaign there were several uprising in Russian territories. Rebellions were caused by the struggle of not recognized Shah against Afghan and Turkish armies. Published documents revealed daily activities of Russian military expedition forces there during the fight against rebels in 1731. Expedition forces consisted of regular army troops and Russian administration volunteers, recruited from local people. V. Ya. Levashov’s messages provide some information about tactical activities of army, casualties, military trophies, and also present some details of the rebels’ behavior. Combat losses of Russian troops were usually minimal, but sometimes Gilan rebels managed to achieve victories. Maintenance costs for “Lower corps” and necessity to conclude a peace treaty with new Iranian shah Nadir on the eve of war against Turkey forced Empress Anna Ioannovna’s government to give away previously occupied territories.