The paper describes the initial stage in the organization of military medical training at the Central Institute
for Advanced Medical Education (CIAME), now the Russian Medical Academy for Continuous Professional Education
at the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation, Moscow. The problem statement in this study is the first of its
kind in Russian historiography. The research relied on the documents found in the Russian State Archive of Scientific
and Technical Documentation and the Archive of the Russian Medical Academy of Continuous Professional Education.
The decision to establish a military medical department at the CIAME was made in 1936. The authors identified the main tasks and challenges the new department had to face, as well as solution methods, areas of theoretical and practical training,
and curriculum. The article also describes the role of the CIAME in the Battle of Khalkhin Gol in 1939 and the Winter
War of 1939–1940. In the second half of the 1930s, the CIAME medical staff acquired experience in military medical
training and medical care in combat conditions, which proved invaluable during the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945.

The issue of gender inequality in Russia’s Muslim regions is of great scientific interest and practical significance, and sociologists need to generalize the experience of the previous decades. Such multinational region as Dagestan provides a lot of useful data on the matter in question. This article describes the first attempt of the regional historiography to analyze the activities of Dagestan mass media to promote gender equality in the 1960s, e.g., in secondary schools, universities, socio-political life, culture, and family life. The author analyzed newspaper publications and documents from the Central State Archive of the Republic of Dagestan. The materials provided an objective scientific picture of the social landscape. The author relied on the principles of scientific objectivity and historicism and used comparative-historical, descriptive, and systematic research methods. All mass media obviously experienced some difficulties in covering the gender issues. However, the analysis revealed some positive trends and results in the struggle for gender equality in Dagestan, e.g., in the sanitary culture of urban and rural settlements. Still, this socio-political and socio-cultural issue remained unresolved by the end of the 1960s.

The article describes the school education in the town of Taiga, West Siberia, during the accelerated construction of socialism in the 1930s. The research relied on a local newspaper called The Stalinist Way. The author used the historical and anthropological approach based on the principles of total history. The key task was to reconstruct the everyday life of the local community in the context of the Soviet cultural revolution. The analysis made it possible to summarize the unique testimonies of ordinary people about various aspects of school life, teachers, their role in the community, and relations with the local authorities. The findings expand the understanding of the regional history of Western Siberia in the XX century and the all-Russian processes at the local level. This article contributes to the domestic theory and methodology of everyday life studies. It also adds a new, heuristic value to the Soviet periodical press as a historical source, as well as reveals new prospects for anthropological criticism.

The article describes the role of the United States in the Quadripartite Agreement on the issue of West Berlin signed by France, the USA, the UK, and the USSR in 1971. American participation in the negotiations consisted of two stages: passive interaction and intense activity. The author believes that Washington faced internal and external obstacles that affected the dynamics of the US involvement in the negotiations. The Federal Republic of Germany pursued its own "new eastern policy", which complicated the diplomatic maneuvers of the United States on the status of West Berlin. However, it was President Kissinger who helped to smooth the contradiction between the USA, as well as to find a compromise with the USSR, thus solving the West Berlin problem. The Quadripartite Agreement on Berlin was an important step in the emerging détente between the two superpowers.

The article features the current European direction in Russia’s foreign policy in the context of the Western ideas and its response to them. The author focuses on the current ideological state of the modern European direction as part of Russia’s foreign policy and the role of the historical community in its development. The research objective was to identify and classify the dominant European ideas, as well as to define their influence on the European direction of Russia’s foreign policy and to outline the prospective cross-thematic historical research. The combined historical-subject and historiographical goal resulted from the incomplete nature of the processes under study and the opportunities for the Russian historical community to participate in the formation of the modern European direction of Russia’s foreign policy. The author believes that the cooperation of historians and social scientists can bring about major practical benefits. The research relied on standard historical methods and the method of discursive analysis. The chronological scope of the article is limited to 2022 and the early 2023, which made it impossible to provide a brief overview of the related literature in the introduction. The article is debatable and refers to a mixed type of subject-theoretic articles on recent history. The main practical results are the four possible directions of cross-thematic research: 1) the history of splits in Europe, European states, and European societies, as well as their consequences; 2) worldviews, conflicting worldviews, struggle and dialogue of worldviews, uni-/multivariant and un/productive synthesis of ideas and their consequences; 3) the first stage of globalization in modern history and prospects for European integration; 4) options, types, and patterns of partnerships and collaborations within Europe and individual European countries, as well as societies outside Europe. 

This article discusses the way the USSR reacted to the creation of the supranational European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom). The authors believe that the Soviet criticism of German and French nuclear programs was, at least, partially, objective and non-ideological. The study featured documents on Soviet foreign policy that described the initial reaction of the USSR to the Euratom plans, suggested alternative options for European cooperation in the field of peaceful nuclear energy, and showed the evolution of the Soviet approach to European integration. Western Europe and the United States had their own goals in the development of the peaceful nuclear industry in Europe. The fears expressed by the USSR were related to the membership of the Federal Republic of Germany in Euratom and the role the United States intended to assume in this organization. Eventually, Moscow accepted a more neutral position in relation to the Euratom and other integration processes in Western Europe.

The article describes the concept of political socialization of Soviet schoolchildren based on children's public diplomacy in 1982–1986. The authors concentrated on the international visits made by Samantha Smith and Yekaterina Lychyova. The research did not involve other factors of political socialization, e.g., weekly political information, fundraising events for the starving children of Africa and Nicaragua, foreign pen-palls, etc. These international visits provided valuable practical experience of interaction between Soviet and foreign children. Children's diplomacy is a relatively new phenomenon for Russian historiography, and the authors attempted to define its theoretical and symbolic meaning. The ideology-affected political socialization transformed children's everyday life, depriving it of the freedom of choice and opportunities. The analysis of children's diplomacy with its potential opportunities and shortcomings made it possible to determine the bottlenecks of political socialization. It revealed the tension between the public and private dimensions of international politics and actualized the factor of transnational activity in the development of bilateral Soviet-American relations. The research relied on the personal experience of those children, their memories, memoirs of their contemporaries, media publications, etc. The project of children's diplomacy failed because it deviated from its original scenario. Every time the process was out of direct control of political elites, children’s psychology and behavior interfered with the plan.

The Subbotniks, or gers, were Russian Sabbatarians. The article describes a necropolis of exiled Jewish Subbotniks founded in the village of Zima, Irkutsk Province, in the early 1830s. The Subbotniks shared the necropolis with the Jews since both exile communities maintained close routine and religious contacts. The research objective was to catalog the authentic tombstones of 1865–1947 and determine the influence of Judaism on the religious life the Subbotniks. The article gives a general description of the Sabbatarian sects that appeared among Russian peasants at the turn of the XVIII–XIX centuries and explains how they ended up in the Irkutsk Province. The author studied the Jewish burial and mourning practices adopted by the Subbotniks and compared the Zima necropolis with traditional Jewish cemeteries. The descriptions of tombstones and epitaphs were collected during the expeditions of 2017 and 2019.

The surviving tombstones were cataloged, and the epitaphs were translated from Hebrew into Russian to compile a list of those buried in the cemetery during the period in question. The research also included the tombstones that belonged to the Jews who lived in Zima in the XIX – early XX centuries.

In the Russian Empire, Kuzbass was an administrative part of the Tomsk Province. However, the local education belonged to the West-Siberian District, which united the entire Asian Russia. Its development coincided with the launch of the Great Trans-Siberian Railroad and P. A. Stolypin’s agrarian reform. These events brought about serious changes in the local economy, demography, and mentality, which increased the role of education in the region. The region had no institutions of higher education, and the secondary schools were also scarce. The education was mostly represented by primary schools, which were subordinate to the Ministry of Public Education. The Mariinsk and Tomsk Provinces were in the focus of modernization processes: a lot of rural and urban schools were opened there. However, by 1917, the West-Siberian District was still short of schools, and some areas had no educational institution of any level. 

Mikhail M. Speransky was one of the most outstanding statesman of the Russian Empire. He was the Siberian Governor-General in 1819–1821. His Siberian travel diary and correspondence cast light upon the interaction between state power and private capital during the economic and socio-cultural integration of the Eastern territories. The research objective was to reveal M. M. Speransky’s opinion about Siberian merchants, who were the most influential regional community. The analysis included M. M. Speransky’s brief diary entries and long letters to his daughter and friends, and as well as his business correspondence. M. M. Speransky believed that Siberian merchants were to play an important role in the development of regional economy and society. Numerous contacts with representatives of merchants from different Siberian cities allowed him to make observations about the moods spread in the merchant environment, the volume and features of commercial operations, their social role, etc. He also established good relations with the most prominent merchants. M. M. Speransky wrote about everyday life, culture, and economic relations of Siberian communities. He advocated the freedom of trade and despised the selfish attitude of the local administrations to the merchant class. He gathered information from different sources, including personal conversations with merchants, and developed an opinion on such important state issues as the activities of the Russian-American Company and the Russian-Chinese trade via Kyakhta. M. M. Speransky’s had a pragmatic interest in merchants and encouraged them to make charity donations for various needs.

Photographic studios provide an excellent example of entrepreneurial activity, as well as a deep insight into the routine and innovations in West-Siberian cities and towns during the modernization period. This article describes the development of photography business in Western Siberia in the second half of the XIX – early XX century. The historiography analysis of this issue showed a rather poor scientific coverage. The study covered the regions of Tomsk, Tyumen, Novosibirsk, Kemerovo, Omsk, and Altai. The article introduces unpublished archival documents and photographs. Archival cases showed how the authorities licensed private photographic studios, the motivation behind the permissions, the number of photo salons, commercial rivalry, labor optimization, profits, and customer attitude. The author believes that photography catalyzed modernization of urban routine and democratized the local society: any citizen had the right to start a photographic studio, where they could serve any customers, regardless of their social status.

One of the most important documents of the second half of the XIX century in the history of the Central Asia outskirts of the Russian Empire is the Temporary Regulation "On administration in the Ural, Turgai, Akmola and Semipalatinsk regions" of 1868, which became the basis for the region administrational reform contributing to the integration of the region into the general imperial space. The Temporary Regulation played a special role in the formation of a new configuration of the judicial and legal system in the Steppe Regions. The article analyzes the process of preparing the "Temporary Regulation", defines the goals, objectives and results of the work of the Commissions of 1863 and 1865. The article considers the organization of the judicial system of the Steppe Regions, which was a complex one, combining the principles of the new and pre-reform judicial systems and institutions with the elements of traditional judicial and legal system. The biy court, while retaining its significance, was reorganized and integrated into the regional justice system. However, despite the importance of the "Temporary Regulation", several years after its implementation, significant shortcomings in the work of the judicial and legal system of the region were identified. This problem caused a wide discussion at the regional and central levels of the government. The low efficiency of the regional judicial system caused comments, while the principle of forming a judicial system intergrating formal and informal institutions was contradictory. The lack of effects made the Government start a new draft of the judicial and legal system reform, taking into account regional peculiarities and experience in implementing the "Temporary Regulation".

The article describes the unpublished archives collected by M. K. Kadyrbaev from his field work in Central Kazakhstan in 1955–1979. It provides information on eight stone statues and structures. The authors attributed and dated them in line with the contemporary rules of archeology. One of the statues appeared to belong to the Saka period of the Tasmola culture. Another monument had no obvious analogies but, possibly, was part of a Qipcaq sanctuary. The authors also touched upon some challenging or debatable issues raised by M. K. Kadyrbaev and other expedition members, e.g., the validity of correlating statues without sings of sex with images of women; the secret Polovtsian sanctuary, which have to be studied in the context of similar Qipcaq sites, etc.

In the early XX century, Turkestan represented a remarkable model of economic modernization. Russian commercial banks and the local bourgeoisie welcomed the economic integration of the Central Asian periphery into the Russian Empire. Bukharan Jews had found their economic niche by the 1860s: they traded in cotton and acted as intermediaries between Turkestan cotton producers and Russian textile workers. However, the segregationist policy in the regional industry prohibited them to establish trading houses and, therefore, restricted their ability to obtain bank loans. Eventually, the liberal economic policy initiated by Prime Minister Sergei Yu. Witte facilitated the reorganization of Bukharan-Jewish enterprises. The patriarchal family businesses turned into modern trading and industrial companies, e.g., the Davydov Trading House, the Vadyaev Brothers, etc. The National Bank and the Russian Commercial Bank opened their outlets in the most important commercial and industrial centers of Turkestan, which was another important step towards economic modernization. This article focuses on the role of Russian commercial banks in the activities of Bukharan-Jewish business circles during the modernization of the Central Asian periphery of the Russian Empire in the early XX century. The Davydov Trading House was reorganized in 1906 and became a leader in the cotton trading market. It used the loans from Russian banks to build cotton ginning factories, breweries, and an internal network of seed-cotton suppliers. Unlike the Vadyaev Brothers, the Davidov family failed to create a stable family business model: in the summer of 1914, the Trading House and all its property were controlled by a committee board established by the major creditors from among the Russian commercial banks. In spite of the Great War, the board managed to save the Davydov Trading House from bankruptcy and modernized its operations.