The article describes the microstructure of cast-iron tools made between the 10th and the 13th centuries in the medieval cities of Talkhir (Talgar), Koylyk (Antonovka), Otrar, and Karakemer in the regions of Jetisu (Semirechye) and Southern Kazakhstan. The pool of cast-iron objects consisted of 41 pieces: cauldrons, braziers, plowshares, etc., as well as a mortar, a lamp, and a cast-iron block. The method of metallographic analysis made it possible to reveal the phase composition and properties of the local cast iron. Two thirds of the items were made of low-carbon pre-eutectic white cast iron, followed by half-cast iron and, occasionally, gray, eutectic, and supereutectic white iron. The production technology relied on casting iron into molds, which resulted in volumetric iron goods of various sizes and configurations. The iron was smelted in small blast furnaces located near iron ore deposits. The resulting ingots were sold on city markets and subsequently used by founders.

The article outlines the patterns of social imagination in diaries of Soviet high school students in 1945– 1953. Their descriptions of a collective future revealed the role of socialism in the life world of a young Soviet citizen. Although the general self-attitude seemed to depend on the rural or urban environment, the subjects were united by the same Soviet school and shared the values of a progressive society, i.e., education, natural vertical mobility, differentiated social environment, etc. Diarist 1 combined the principle of rationalism with some idealized concepts of justice and equality borrowed from the ethical code of the communist utopia. Diarist 2 created a utopian narrative about a science city, where he would be a prominent researcher of flora and fauna. Diarist 3 dreamed of replacing political dogmas with a dramatic text of his own authorship, and party bosses with writers and intellectuals. The post-war youth based their future projections on the norms, values, and symbolic codes of urbanized Soviet culture: their collective socialism was of entirely urban nature.

Financial status of judges ensures their independence and impartiality. In this respect, the Russian court of the first half of the 19th century had to face a wide range of problems. Most memoirs and archival documents describe the low financial status of judges of the Russian Empire. This article focuses on the state support to court officials, without regard to their personal financial status, in 1801–1864. The previously undescribed archival materials help to understand the current material support for judges in the Russian Federation. The complex research provided a systemic analysis of the state support for judges across the Russian Empire at all levels of justice. The poor financial status of judges was a systemic problem of the pre-reform Russian justice, admitted by the Ministry of Justice itself. The state tried to resolve the situation that prevented the justice system from fulfilling its main functions, but with little effect.

Alma mater identity was a significant factor in resolving intra-university conflicts among faculty members in the Russian Empire. The research focused on the history of conflicts in the Tomsk Imperial University as a typical provincial university. The socio-economic changes that occurred in Russia at the turn of the 21st century triggered a total restructure of alma mater identities, and the historical precedents of previous epochs may help the current management of academic conflicts. Before the Russian Revolution of 1917, corporate academic identity was a complex sociocultural phenomenon that combined elements of public service and academic practice. It was characterized by regulatory and legal foundations, symbolic practices, social structure, communication networks, regional specificity, and strife. Alma mater identity developed at the intersection of statutory requirements, academic traditions, and regional context. Effective conflict management required institutionalized mediation and a careful consideration of regional corporate codes. After the Revolution, the balance between formal norms and informal connections was disrupted, and it became impossible to maintain unity. Social transformations developed new identities and changed the existing ones, which naturally affected the academic environment. However, the general effect of socio-legal academic status on corporate identity was rather weak.

The Sheregesh Sports and Tourist Complex is located in Tashtagol, Kemerovo Region. It has a long history of efforts to set up a year-round operation. Opened in 1981, the Complex is an important stakeholder of Russian ski tourism. Summer tourism product was not a priority for many years: it was spontaneous and secondary to winter tourism. The seasonal imbalance in tourist traffic remains a major challenge that hampers its development. No scientific publications have yet provided a comprehensive overview of summer tourism in this part of Siberia. This article identifies the status of year-round infrastructure and summer tourist products in the evolution of the Sheregesh Sports and Tourist Complex. The available information on the subject matter being quite limited, a thorough analysis of archival documents and media sources made it possible to outline the factors that affect the summer facilities. The major limiting factors include the original focus on winter sports, the predominance of amateur tourism, the uncoordinated investments, and the lack of a distinct summer product. However, Mountain Shoria offers a unique combination of natural, climatic, and ethnocultural resources that has a great potential for a full-scale year-round recreation center. State support and event tourism have boosted its progress, but the historical identity of Sheregesh as a winter sports destination remains an obstacle.

As the Kemerovo Region adds its touristic capacity, the local tourism industry needs scientific approach to its most relevant issues, and local periodicals can provide a lot of useful information in this respect. The Krasnaya Shoria is a newspaper published for the Tashtagol district community. It proved to be a reliable source on the history of tourism in Shoria Mountains in 1999–2010. The publications revealed the key stages that Sheregesh went through on its way from a mining village to a federal resort, i.e., from the concept and targeted programs to the actual infrastructure development. The analysis also casts light upon the conflict between sports and tourism, as well as such social issues as high housing prices and unofficial employment. The newspaper was a tool for developing positive attitudes to the changes brough about by the tourism-related social projects. Apart from providing the chronology of events, the Krasnaya Shoria contains unique contemporary testimonies, statistical data, official statements, documents, and expert assessments that build up a complete profile of the Sheregesh Sports and Touristic Complex in 1999–2010. This multifaceted picture includes some unique aspects not to be found in official documents.

Prince Dimitrie Cantemir contributed to the formation of Russian historical science in the first quarter of the 18th century. His works reflected the scientific thought typical of the Early Enlightenment. Prince Cantemir’s philosophical views relied on Orthodox Christianity rather than on the Medieval providentialism and supernaturalism. Providentialism manifested itself in his Theory of Four Monarchies, i.e., global history as a sequence of four superpowers. He believed Russia to be the fourth and last monarchy, the new center of world history. Prince Cantemir explained it with its geographical location, natural resources, socio-economic development, a complex motivation of individual stakeholders, and the divine influence acting through individuals. As a devoted supporter of absolutism, he described the rulers of Moldavia as powerful defenders from the imminent Ottoman threat. The autocratic power of a just monarch was for him the only possible prerequisite for national prosperity. Prince Dimitrie Cantemir’s legacy provides a good example of the early Russian historical science.

The peoples of the Chinese province of Xinjiang aided the USSR during the Great Patriotic War of 1941– 1945. The article describes the organization, content, and termination of this support. This issue has remained outside the scope of historic research, firstly, because the archival sources remained classified for many years and, secondly, because of the Sino-Soviet split during the 1960s to the 1980s. However, despite the complex historical background of the Russian (Soviet)-Chinese relations in the first half of the 20th century, the Soviet policy towards Xinjiang was built on good neighborliness, mutual respect, and mutually beneficial economic cooperation. As a result, the peoples of Xinjiang gave the USSR selfless assistance and support in its battle against the fascist aggression. The research relied on newly identified sources from the Russian major archives, as well as on recently published memoirs and monographs.

Colonel General Nikolai E. Berzarin, Hero of the Soviet Union, was the first Soviet Commandant of Berlin and the Chief of Berlin Garrison (April – June 1945). Yet, his biography remains an understudied issue in the Russian historiography. The author applied historical-genetic, historical-biographical, and historical interpretation methods to a wide range of archival documents, memoirs, and periodicals to reveal the transformations in the collective historical memory about Colonel General N. E. Bersarin in Russia and Germany. It mostly mirrored the changes in ideology, state policy, and availability of verified historical data. In Germany, his name entered the list of Honorary Citizens of Berlin in 1975 and 1992, due to the steps taken by the Senate and society. In Russia, a street of his name appeared in Stalingrad as early as in 1956, i.e., long before it appeared in Moscow and St. Petersburg. In general, the preservation of the memory about N. E. Bersarin reflects the social demands in German and Russia.

The article describes the United Kingdom in World War II as contemplated by Basil Henry Liddell Hart and Michael Howard. These two British historians developed two different approaches to military history. Both were connected with King’s College London, which served as an institutional platform for British military studies. B. H. Liddel Hart relied on the strategy of indirect approach in his assessment of WWII. His strategic analysis shifted from the grand naval strategy to mechanized warfare. M. Howard criticized B. H. Liddel Hart’s strategic approach for leaving out the historical context. His own conceptual basis for WWII was entirely contextual. These two approaches to WWII studies are much more than individual views: they reflect the intergenerational differences in the institutional organization of military-historical knowledge and the evolution of various WWII- related theoretical and methodological approaches.

Anti-USSR projects constituted a comprehensive long-term strategy used by the Global West in its confrontation with the Soviet state during the Cold War. The Russian Federation is currently facing a challenge of protecting its sovereignty in the changing world. Historically speaking, this problem has remained relevant since the onset of the Cold War. All this time, the ongoing contradictions between Russia and the Global West have complicated the international relations. This article describes the genesis and evolution of the antiUSSR project during the Cold War as a doctrine aimed at weakening and eliminating the Soviet Union and, subsequently, the Russian Federation as a geopolitical competitor. It ranged from containment to soft power methods. The problem-chronological principle combined with the cause-and-effect analysis also involved such standard historical-genetic and comparative historical methods. The evolution of various anti-Russian programs demonstrated a certain strategic continuity. Starting with the Operation Unthinkable, Winston Churchill’s Fulton speech, and the so-called Dulles Doctrine, the ideological confrontation between Capitalism and Socialism has escalated into a full-scale hybrid war that combines informational, political, and economic weapons. For example, the Harvard Project, which studied the Soviet mentality, was aimed at destabilizing Russian society by exercising mind control, supporting separatism, and cultivating Russophobia, i.e., through the so-called soft power.

The Cold War between the USA and the USSR unfolded on the fields of science and technology. Washington did not mind sharing scientific knowledge with its European allies to strengthen its leadership in the Western bloc. Agreement on cooperation was signed between the United States and the European Atomic Energy Community in 1958. The USA supported European integration and efforts to create a nuclear non-proliferation regime. However, the US policy towards Euratom was also influenced by the technological confrontation between the superpowers. The study involved archival materials, published documents on the US foreign policy, speeches and memoirs of American politicians, media publications. The so-called peaceful atom became a new important sector of confrontation between the USA and the USSR in the 1950s. The Eisenhower administration offered Western Europe cooperation in the field of peaceful nuclear energy. Euratom was a supranational community of six Western European countries created to pool efforts in the sphere of nuclear energy development. The launch of Sputnik in the USSR gave additional impetus to the cooperation agreement between the United States and Euratom, increasing Washington’s interest in a joint program that would unite American and Western European science and technology against the USSR. The study provides an insight into the logic of the US policy regarding Euratom and the Soviet-American confrontation during the Cold War.

The Cold War doctrines of the USSR and the USA were shaped by the nuclear factor. Today, nuclear deterrence remains a major factor of international security. This article offers a comprehensive comparative historical analysis of the mutual influence in the technological and doctrinal aspects of nuclear confrontation. The authors studied doctrinal documents, international treaties, analytical materials (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute), and historiographical works to trace the evolution of strategic thinking from the initial stage of the US nuclear monopoly to the formation of concepts of nuclear deterrence, mutual assured destruction, and the nuclear triad. The evolution of nuclear strategies was periodized as follows: formation (1945–1953); classical nuclear deterrence (1954–1969), strategic stability (1970–1985), transformation (1986–1991). While the approaches that the superpowers applied to the nuclear triad were rather asymmetric, the nuclear factor changed the nature of military confrontation, creating a system of strategic stability based on mutual deterrence. It yielded new arms control mechanisms, many of which remain relevant in the modern international relations.

The United Work Collective Council of Transnistria remains a relevant but understudied topic. It started as a reaction to forced Romanianization in the 1980s at workers’ unions at factories and enterprises. A single body to represent the international interests of all collectives was a logical consequence of the sociopolitical mobilization. The research hypothesis was as follows: the donor regions that faced with discriminatory centrifugal policies had to mobilize their socio-political movements to defend their interests. The author applied the method of historical and comparative analysis to the cases of Transnistria and Slovenia, which shared the same prerequisites for socio-political mobilization. However, the cases had substantive and chronological differences. In Slovenia, the socio-political mobilization was protracted and started as early as in the 1950s; the consolidating idea was to achieve national emancipation within the federation. In Transnistria, the intensity of socio-political mobilization (1988–1989) was caused by the radical centrifugal policy; the civic and ideological values were the consolidating idea. Local elites and labor collectives contributed to the socio-political mobilization both in Slovenia and Transnistria. The radical nationalist policy, destabilized legislative initiatives, uneven economic development, and disproportionate distribution of resources triggered the socio-political mobilization in the donor republics, which eventually resulted in open confrontations with the central government.

Interventionism was a major tool of the US foreign policy in the era of bipolar confrontation. Today, the USA continues to use it to advance its interests in different regions. The two US interventions in Lebanon in 1958 and 1982–1984 demonstrated both similarities and differences in the specific historical context. Despite the quarter-of-a-century gap between these two military operations, the geopolitical component remained the same: the USA wanted to control the processes in the Syria–Israel–Iran triangle. Both operations had a domestic political background as the White House intended to strengthen its prestige and leadership in relations with the Congress and to win more voters. However, the scale, consequences, and legal aspects of the interventions initiated by Eisenhower and Reagan differed. In 1958, the USA managed to avoid human losses despite a larger military contingent. In 1982–1984, the much smaller expeditionary force lost several hundred marines. Yet, both operations strengthened the conviction of the White House in its right and ability to intervene in the affairs of other countries.