The article studies the military campaign of 1703 in the Netherlands of the War of the Spanish Succession of 1701– 1714. The presented campaign, still undervalued by military historiography, is the most typical of the European military art of the early 18th century. The article shows the activities of the Anglo-Dutch and French command in the planning and organizing of military operations. Based on the correspondence of Louis XIV, Duke of Marlborough, French Marshals Villeroy and Bouffler, the article traces the course of the fighting in Flanders and Brabant in the summer and autumn of 1703. At the same time, the war is considered as a combination of careful maneuvering and rapid marches, false demonstrations and decisive strikes, methodical sieges of fortresses and unexpected breakthroughs of fortified lines. As a result, the little-known stage of the War of the Spanish Succession of 1701–1714 is studied in detail.

On the example of the above-mentioned campaign, the article reveals such features of Western European military affairs as the limited operational goals and plans, positional nature of strategy, rejection of decisive forms of struggle, commitment to siege warfare and maneuver tactics, increasing role of engineering and fortification and rear services, communications and logistics.

The article studies the history of establishing the Prague Higher School of Economics in the 1950s and the career trajectories of first employees. This educational institution, opened during the active campaign of Sovietization of Czechoslovak science and education, considered by the Soviet authorities as a forge of new administrators and scholars. The article concludes by arguing the enormous role played by the staff members of the Higher School of Political and Economic Sciences in the establishing of the Higher School of Economics. It also notes the prominent role of staff members who came from the Czech Higher Technical School. Paradoxically, despite the active Sovietization the real influence of Soviet specialists on the work of the Higher School of Economics was very insignificant. The authors show that in the 1950s the process of staffing has not been completed yet. The shortage of staff was one of the reasons for the rapid progress of some persons up the career ladder. The establishment of the Higher School of Economics, on the one hand, marked the development of a new major ideological center of socialist Czechoslovakia. On the other hand, the study of the career paths of its first employees shows that the process of growing new elites went far beyond the preset frameworks, turned out to be more complicated than, for example, similar processes in the USSR in the 1920s – 1930s. The article finds out that the professional trajectories of many persons, who started out as passionate communists, will lead them on the path of criticism of dogmatic Marxism. Among the young employees were those who later enthusiastically joined the economic reforms’ movement of the 1960s and glorified the Prague Spring.

The article analyzes the problem of the origin of specific communicative practices that existed on the territory of Siberia in the late 16^th – 17^th centuries and the so-called “granted word”. This practice was as follows: on behalf of the tsar the authorized person (voivode) communicated with a “direct proclamation” to his subjects. The paper concludes by arguing that the “granted word” goes back to the earlier forms of sovereign “awards”, which included measures of encouragement and benefits. Moreover, the set of addressees of the tsarist “granted word” changed from the end of the 16^th century and depended on the goals of the award, which were set by the central government. Based on the analysis of the Siberian administrative documentation of the 17^th century, the authors identified the categories of addressees of the proclamation on behalf of the monarch. It has been established that by the 1650s in Siberia there was a practice of the proclamation of three versions of the “granted word”. They were supposed to be proclaimed one by one. The first version was addressed to service people (Boyar sons, Cossacks and Soldiers). The second one was addressed to peasants, traders and craftspeople. The third version was for Siberian natives – yasak-payers. During the 1st third of the 17^th century, this particular form of direct address of the tsar to the population of Siberia acquired a new function. The “granted word” concretized, confirmed and consolidated the rights and obligations for each category of the Siberian population as subjects of the Russian monarch. According to the authors, the reasons for existing such practice on the territory of Siberia are concluded in the specifics of borderability. The monarch sought to additionally legitimate his right to manage this territory and wanted to remind his political influence.

The aim of the paper is to study the language of letters from the Field Chancellery of A. D. Menshikov. Approximately 700 documents for 1703–1705 are investigated. All of them are kept now in the archive of the St. Petersburg Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The main attention in the article is focused on the correspondence of the associates of Peter the Great with A. D. Menshikov and their “linguistic world”. The authors of the paper revealed the formulas used in the letters for naming A. D. Menshikov, wishing him health, and making requests. In order to analyze the language of letters, the authors compare two methodologies. In the framework of the theory of patronage, words about mutual loyalty and affection are interpreted as evidence of the existence of a patron-client relationship between the influential person and his correspondent. This approach is opposed by researchers who point out the diversity of forms of interpersonal communication in the medieval and modern society and warn scholars against standardization when explaining relationships. The present article raises the question of the legitimacy of using “the language of politeness” as the only proof of the presence of a patron-client relationship between A. D. Menshikov and the dignitaries of the reign of Peter the Great.

The article analyzes the rulemaking and administrative work of government institutions from the point of regulatory impact on public life in the regional dimension. When systematizing the process of creating various models of autonomous governance, the imperial essence of Russia is identified by the formula “essentially monarchical power – regional non-sovereign entities – supra-ethnic composition of the population”. The article examines the accounting and possible consolidation of the classical principles of public administration: administrative, national and state structuring and convergent institutionalization of power relations in relation to a particular region. It argues that the meaning of the imperial factor lies in the diversity of socio-political traditions of the diverse national and ethnic composition of the population of Russia, which became a result of the development of a complex centralized state. Concerning the Central Asian territories, the idea of power relations in the empire in practice transformed into the interaction of various groups of its population against the background of the non-definiteness of the processes of formation of national identities. The article concludes by arguing that considering the regional-appointee (namestnichestvo) model of national-regional governance of Russia, the traditional state-legal existence as a condition for its sustainable functioning and transformation was provided by a certain set of political and legal measures as promising lines of ethnopolitics.

The article analyzes the role of the volost clerk in the system of local peasant self-government, as well as his relationship with state authorities. Based on modern research outcomes, materials of volost boards and data from periodicals, the author reconstructs the social image of the volost clerk. On the one hand, the articles reveals numerous abuses on their part, negligence in the performance of their duties, immorality, arbitrariness and bribery. This behavior obviously did not allow peasants to consider volost clerks as full-fledged members of the community, which even at the beginning of the 20^th century still remained a rather closed, with its own foundations and orders. Often the volost clerks were perceived by their status as higher than the volost foremen, to whom they were directly subordinate according to the law. On the other hand, peasants turned a blind eye to minor violations of these officials because of the informal connections of volost clerks with representatives of the highest echelons of power. Peasants often used their services to draw up petitions since they were the most educated and knowledgeable persons in the self-government. In other words, their professional qualities, competence and knowledge of local and all-Russian legislation, their ability to successfully solve the problems of both an individual peasant and the community as a whole, turned rural residents to perceive him as a guardian of the interests of the peasant population. Nevertheless, some favor from the higher authorities did not make a big difference for volost clerk, he remained an alien element both for the system of local selfgovernment and for the system of imperial government.

Harvest statistics in USSR in the 1920s was based on techniques and approaches used in Russian Empire. In 1930 it became a subject of reforms. Statistical representatives of village councils who replaced voluntary correspondents were supposed to report to the district commissions information on specific\biological yield and the results of grain threshing. Regional commissions were obliged to summarize received information, check it and make corrections to primary materials for underestimation. In the early 1930s harvest statistics were doubtful. Amendments were subjective. Their value depended on the choice of behavioral strategies of the district and regional authorities. The size of the officially approved gross product did not depend on the real barn weight but on the political situation. At the same time, the basic indicator of its determination was growing yield, based on which grain procurement plans were approved. A higher degree of reliability of the accounting system should have been provided by Central and Regional State Commissions for Yield Accounting created in 1933. Central State Commission developed and applied methods of calculating the “optimal yield” (yield minus inevitable losses), “optimal economic yield” (excluding technically inevitable losses), “actual yield” (taking into account losses used on the farm). Amount of the losses was accounted during random inspections of farms. Despite the reforms, yield estimation remained politically driven. Harvest statistics were still largely propagandistic and mobilizing in nature. In 1937 state commissions were liquidated, and the national economic accounting services inherited the task of yield calculating. In 1939 procedure of harvest calculating was once again revised. Accounting average yield contained all losses, including those unused on the farm.

Based on the methodological practice of oral history, as well as the method of in-depth interviews, the article reveals factors, content and results of the development of the socio-cultural and professional identity within the academic and teacher community consisting of the post-war generation born in 1943–1953. It establishes that markers of the identity of the generation include joint historical experience, models, and programs of socialization cultivated during the Soviet era, general life experience in the process of professional communication. When reconstructing the socio-cultural identity of baby boomers, the authors take into account the thesis, according to which the differentiation of generations is due to the experience of significant historical events, perceived as historical caesura. It also establishes that crises, scientific revolutions, socio-political innovations that influence many age groups are experienced differently in the certain phase of a certain generation. This study identifies the stages of the development of the communicative consent of the representatives of the baby boomer generation, the ethical principles of community contacts in the context of the socio-cultural background of the 2nd half of the 20th century. The authors pay particular attention to intergenerational communication, which defined the system of moral and ethical ideas of baby boomers, influenced the choice of strategies and practices of social behavior in the conditions of generally accepted norms of the USSR.

The article discusses methodological approaches and historiographical principles of modern Russian research on the personality and rule of Nicholas I. It analyzes the main directions of the Russian historiography of the late 20^th – early 21^st century concerning the Nicholas reign – the continuity and distinctive features of government reformism, state ideology and political control, military, social and economic policy, the peasant question. The authors pay much attention to scientific and biographical works about Nicholas I and the statesmen of his era. The article identifies a number of the most controversial problems of the reign – the missed transformative opportunities, the Crimean War, the illness and death of Nicholas I. The article concludes by arguing that modern historiography is characterized by a rejection of the rough and simplified division and even opposition of the first, second and third quarters of the 19^th century. In most of the works carried out on the basis of various research methods, the Nicholas reign is assessed as an important stage of Russian modernization, the time when the administrative transformations of Alexander I were completed and the socio-economic and political grounds for Great Reforms were prepared.

The article considers the confirmation of the Kazakh khans as the subjects of the Russian Empire. The implementation of the confirmation institute has become a new tool of Russia’s influence on the Kazakh elite. The publication allows us to imagine how Russian border officials tried to introduce new mechanisms of control over the Kazakhs. The lack of military and political resources forced Russian administrators to use symbolic resources in their relations with the Kazakhs. One of these, along with the oath, was the confirmation of the Kazakh ruler by the khan, made on behalf of the Russian ruling monarch. The first experience was the confirmation of the khan's dignity of Sultan Nuraly, the son of the elder khan of the Kazakhs, Abulkhair, who died in 1748. Nuraly’s statement became a precedent in relations with the Kazakhs. Russian authorities approved the Kazakh khan in July 1749; the first ceremony in the history of Kazakh-Russian relations took place near Orenburg. The Orenburg governor I. I. Neplyuev developed the rite of confirmation in detail. The ceremony included the arrival of Nuraly to the place of confirmation, the meeting of the khan, the announcement of his khan, the oath, the presentation of royal gifts, an official dinner with the participation of the approved khan, his entourage and Orenburg officials and military, and a number of other circumstances.

Written in early 1944, a letter of confidence from Patriarch Sergius (Stragorodsky) to bishop Dimitri (Gradusov) reveals the nature of the friction between the head of the Moscow Patriarchate and the Georgian Catholicos-Patriarch Kallistratus (Tsintsadze). The solemn announcement at the end of 1943 of the overcoming of the division between the Russian and Georgian Orthodox Churches, which had lasted since 1917, did not put an end to the mutual perplexities. The difficulty arose due to the fact that in 1927–1943 the Georgian Catholicosate was officially in ecclesiastical communion with the Russian schismatics, also known as Renovationists. But in the changed circumstances, the head of the Georgian Church preferred to keep in secret this historical fact, so as not to raise doubts about the Orthodoxy of the Georgians. The embarrassment of Catholicos Kallistratus led to the fact that the documents on the restoration of canonical communion between the Russian and Georgian Churches, which had already been prepared for publication in the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate in December 1943, were removed from the almost finished issue and replaced with other materials. However,  for  Patriarch  Sergius,  the  canonical  aspect  of  the  problem  was  crucial. The break of the Georgian Catholicosate with the Russian schismatic Renovationists was required to be documented and made public. Otherwise, according to Patriarch Sergius, the Russian Church itself could be schismatic. As a result, the head of the Moscow Patriarchate was able to convincingly argue his position and achieve the official publication of the necessary documents in the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate in March 1944. Such persistence of Patriarch Sergius did not harm the further positive development of relations between the Russian and Georgian Churches.

The paper discusses the new monograph by N. A. Chetyrina, a well-known researcher of Russian urban history. Her book is dedicated to studying one of the remarkable “small” towns of Russia – Sergievsky Posad at the initial stage of its development during the reforms of the “Enlightened Absolutism”. The author shows clearly that this town’s example highlights the features of the status, the composition of the population, the management system in the “posads”, which were a kind of urban settlement in the Russian Empire. The book made a significant contribution to the economic, social, administrative and cultural history of Russian urban settlements in the late 18th – early 19th century. In general, her monograph contains of valuable material explaining the estate structure of the Russian society in the period of the “Enlightened Absolutism”. So, a very fractional list of “titles” and “states” of different groups of residents in the historical sources now does not prevent us from the conclusion that there are common class characteristics in the category of “urban inhabitants” and in the category of “rural inhabitants planted on the state lands”. This monograph could be highly recommended for academic scholars and students in studying modern trends in the historical science – urban history, local history, social history.