Vol 1, No 4 (2019)

The article is devoted to the specifics of the formation of the commercial and economic district around the Russian border towns in the late 16th - the early 18th century. The formation of a system of biddings, outposts, customs, and fees from trade operations is studied on the example of Samara.

The article deals with the trends of intellectual practices that were carried out in the cities of the Volga region during the World War I. The author identifies ways and forms of implementation of intellectual practices, including the work of participants in educational and scientific societies on the organization of open educational lectures, excursions to museums and research facilities, as well as inventive and research activities. She reveals that communication practices included the creative work of amateur groups.

The article is based on the analysis of unpublished archival documents and reveals the information potential of sources on development of the Soviet military-industrial complex in the post-war period, 1945-1953. The author proposes that the key problem of the defense industry was the “way out of the war” accompanied by technological restructuring of production and conversion. He reveals the central role of the State Planning Committee (Gosplan) in the system of coordination of interdepartmental interests.

The study of Russophobia in the United States is a topical and promising trend of contemporary historical studies; it has not only academic, but also practical and political importance. Analysis of the genesis of this phenomenon, its development, and transformation helps to estimate its impact on American politics and society in different historical periods, including the present. Special attention is paid to the connection of this phenomenon with the foreign policy of the United States, when, after the Revolution of 1917, and then with the outbreak of the Cold War, anti-Russian sentiments of the government and society became an integral part of the official policy. In the world and national historiography, the topic of Russophobia in the United States was studied only in the context of general confrontation between two countries in different times, or as a part of imagological studies of Russian-American relations, but never attracts close attention of researchers.

The author characterizes and analyzes a special group of historical sources: memories of former child prisoners of Nazi concentration camps. This is a fairly new and under-researched group of sources, which are being published by organizations established by former child prisoners. Special attention is given to the specific nature of this group of sources, the content of child memories, and their role in the study of World War II history. The author also raises the questions of their information value, reliability, and accuracy, as well as difficulties of working with personal sources.

The paper deals with the problem of determining the objective criteria for establishing the boundary of the Pre-Ural and Ural-Mugodzhary mining and metallurgical centers of the Late Bronze Age. From the point of view of geomorphology, the transboundary territory was formed at the contact of the Permian and Devonian Paleozoic systems. The different nature of copper mineralization within the discussed historical and metallurgical formations is determined by confining to different geological structures. The Pre-Ural and Ural-Mugodzhary mining and metallurgical centers were correlated historically and culturally with the metal-producing activities of the carriers of the West-Alakul and Kozhumberdy Cultural Groups, whose contact zone corresponded to the demarcation line between the Syrtovo-Pre-Ural and Central South Ural physic-geographical provinces. Orographic and hydrographic elements of natural territorial complexes dictated the choice of adaptation strategies. Economic and cultural models combining mobile cattle breeding with mining and metallurgical production were based on the ability of steppe and mountain-steppe geosystems to regenerate while preserving the ecological function; that models were formed within the separate physical and geographical divisions.