Abstract: The article is focused on determining the degree of influence the wars of the 16th–17th centuries had on the social processes in Muscovite Rus. The detection of this degree is rather difficult due to the lack of sources, which would reveal the operational mechanisms of legislature. Consequently, the author constructs his hypothesis on the basis of comparing the date of appearance of key normative and legal acts, related to the social sphere, and the more difficult periods in the country's foreign policy history. The historiographical base of this research is the works regarding military and social history by pre-Revolution, Soviet, and modern scholars. The main research method is the comparative approach, which allows to identify the development dynamics of social groups, such as the service class people "by patronymic", service class people "by patronymic", and the groups that served them. On all stages of Russian historiography's development (pre-Revolutionary, Soviet, and modern) social strata and groups have been analysed separately from each other. The analysis of the country's social processes in general reveals that during the 16th–17th centuries the social system experienced significant changes: social relations began to be built not on the European (private law) principle, but on the service-hierarchical principle. That is, the position of a social stratum or group became determined not on its possession and size of private property, but on its place in the government system: the higher it was, the bigger was the volume of privileges. This did not rule out private property altogether, but the significance of that property weakened: the government deprived property-owners of political and judicial positions and began to control their economic transactions.

Keywords: service class people "by patronymic", service class people "by device", social processes, Muscovite Rus, serfdom, Russian civilisation, Russian military, 16th century, 17th century, Russia

Abstract: The subject of this article is the formation of the institute of public environmental control on the example of the experience of the Perm Finno-Ugric peoples of Russia, who led a traditional way of life tied to fishery, hunting, gathering, and reindeer breeding. These peoples comprise: the particular Komi (Zyrian) sociocultural ethnic type that includes eight ethnographic groups (Udoria, Izhma, Vym, Upper Pechora, Sysola, Luza, Lower Vychegda, Upper Vychegda), all of which understood their common origins, firmly rooted in their self-identity, their shared territory, language, psychological disposition and unique socio-normative ethnical culture, as well as their close kinship with the Zyrian sociocultural ethnic type Udmurt and Komi (Permyak) peoples. The research object of this study is the individual historical sources and information cited in modern mass media, which reveal specific questions regarding the formation of the public's participation in solving environmental issues. The authors examine particular examples of participation in the formation of public environmental control mechanisms in the Interregional Public Movement of Izhma Komi "Izhvatas", the Committee for the Protection of the Habitat of the Izhma Region Population and others. The methodological base for this study is composed of philosophical methods (dialectical, metaphysical, phenomenological) and general scientific methods used on both the empirical level (observation, measuring etc.) and on the theoretical level of knowledge (idealisation, formalisation, modelling). This research also uses the individual scientific methods of study (comparative-legal, statistical, historical, and others), applied in such scientific fields as history, ecology, sociology, environmental right, and others) and the interdisciplinary approach as the totality of various integrative methods existing at the crossroads of different scientific fields. This article presents the first comprehensive research attempt to study a society's historical experience in solving environmental issues on the example of the experience of the Perm Finno-Ugric peoples of Russia, who led a traditional way of life tied to fishery, hunting, gathering, and reindeer breeding, including the unique Komi (Zyrian) sociocultural ethic type, which includes eight ethnographic groups. As conclusions the authors provide specific participation examples of the Izhma Komi and other groups in public environmental control for the defence of the environment protection.

Keywords: sociocultural ethnic type, Komi (Zyrian), peoples, Finno-Ugric, Perm, control, environmental, public, Izhma Komi, interaction with nature

Abstract: The subject of this study is the interrelation between ethnic communities and their surrounding natural environment during the process of ethnogenisis. The specific research object is the paleoecological models of ethnogenisis on the model territory of the Baikal and Olkhonsky region. The author examines in detail such aspects as the traditional adaptive natural resource management, the ties of domestic technologies and culture with changes in natural habitat and climate, and an ethnic group's passionary energetic renewal. Particular attention is paid to the synergetic modelling of ethnonatural systems in order to reveal the particularities that cannot be identified through the standard methods of ethnology, geography, history, anthropology, and ecology. The author uses the methodological approach of the general theory of systems, synergetic modelling, systematic-statistical, historical-genetical, ethnosociocultural, comparative-geographical, and other methods. The study's novelty lies in its use of the general theory of systems for the paleoecological modelling of ethnonatural interactions, which resulted in the obtainment of original information. Also, on the basis of this modelling, the author describes in detail the history of the Baikal region's settlement. The modelling of ethnonatural systems depends on the theory of constructing models of the past, on the examination of societies and cultures from different historical periods in their dynamic development, on space and time conjugation, on revealing their ties with environmental conditions, and on the evolution and dynamics of the surrounding natural environment. The posed questions and derived results will help to stimulate regional studies of the historical experience of man interacting with nature. The historical experience of ethnonatural relations and their paleoecological models allow us to recognise the most important moments for an economic territorial and landscape planning in the region today. Its subsequent execution will allow to identify and substantiate the functioning mechanisms of sustainable ethnonatural systems, which will serve as a basis for the development and approbation of promising strategies in natural resource management in the administrative units of the Russian Federation. It will also ensure cohesion, orderliness and subordination in all the administrative-territorial, social-economic and political structures of society.

Keywords: Baikal region, paleoecological models, ethno-environmental systems, synergetics, theory of systems, man and landscapes, ethnogenesis, natural resource management, sustainable development, regional strategies

Abstract: The article analyses the process of forming a civil society in Russia and its particularities. The author ties the particularities of forming a civil society in Russia with the trailing nature of its modernisation. Russia later than other countries joined the modernisation process. Another particularity of the modernisation process in Russia is its instability in historical terms, as during different periods of history various aspects of modernising changes were realised with differing intensities. The author draws a parallel between today's modernisation process and the one initiated by Alexander II during the 1860s–1870s. The author further examines the different sides of this process: the democratisation of social relations, the creation of self-governing institutions, and the evolution of the social conscience. The author analyses the historical facts that characterise the modernisation process both during the 19th century and at the turn of the 21st century. This research is based on archival documents, periodical press, and memoirs. The author comes to the conclusion that the process of forming a civil society in Russia has a number of unique features: the government’s greater role, the unevenness of this processes territorially and institutionally, the slow and mosaic transformation of the social conscience. This defines the incompleteness of the forming process of a civil society and the irregular development of its institution.

Keywords: civil society, modernisation, democracy, constitutional state, social conscience, middle class, market economy, political culture, legal culture, non-governmental organisations

Abstract: The article is focused on Russia's historical experience of settling vast land territories at the end of the 18th – 19th centuries by means of attracting labour resources from European countries. Based on the key provisions laid down in the Manifestos of Catherine II in 1762 and 1763, the authors investigate on a documental basis the participation of German peasants in realising the Empire's colonisation policy in the Volga and Novorossiysk regions. The authors highlight the role of the Russian Germans as a powerful labour resource in restoring the Soviet economy in the course of the 20th century, after its devastation during the period of resistance to the Fascist aggression in 1941–1945, as well as the Germans' active role in reviving USSR's economy in 1940–1980s and in the cultural rebirth.

Keywords: history, Catherine II, German colonies, land settlement, resettlement, mobilisation, deportation, collectivisation, Volga German autonomy, Soviet government, consolidation, patriotism

Abstract: The subject of the author's research is the yet unstudied aspects of the transnational history of the intelligence services of the USSR and the GDR in the sphere of controlling the educational system of the East German students in the Soviet Union: their mutual collaboration, the area of operation of the Stasi, the methods of recruitment and mobilisation of unofficial informers, and the conflict areas of the Socialist integration. On the basis of material from Russian and German archives, the author reconstructs the strategies of assessing reality and behavioural practice of the students, the reasons for collaborating with intelligence services, and the attempts to use uncontrolled niches for private benefit. On the methodological plan the article presents an interdisciplinary study, created at the intersection of new political, transnational, and social history, historical anthropology, and sociology of international relations. The student delegation became a Stasi channel, securing the effect of having a limited presence on the territory of the governing country, as well as a possibility to have an indirect influence on the internal affairs of the Soviet Union: the organisation of the educational process and control over Soviet and international students, and also over representatives of West Germany (entrepreneurs, scholars, tourists). The author notes the pragmatic flexibility of the intelligence services' discourse on interagency with respect to official propaganda words, and also confirms the fruitfulness of the refusal to universally consider all the agents of the Stasi as ingrained servants of dictatorship in favour of a differentiated approach to analysing the motives for collaborating with secret services.

Keywords: East German students, Stasi, Comecon, Socialist bloc, history of the German Democratic Republic, intelligence history, transnational history, social group resistance, mobilisation practices, Cold War culture

Abstract: The article focuses on the history of studying the anthropological material found on the territory of the Lower Volga region dating to the time of the Golden Horde. The historiography regarding the examination of the anthropological material collected on the territory of the Lower Volga is relatively scarce andfragmented. Unfortunately, none of the modern works on this subject are dedicated to the compilation of all the anthropological works, whose published conclusions concern the whole period of study of the Golden Horde. This article summarises and systematises various paleoanthropological works. In this study the systematic method of processing data was applied, which works with the method of logically analysing source material. This article reviews the history of study of yet another important source of anthropological material. The anthropological material from the towns of the Golden Horde in the Lower Volga region has been studied from the 1920s–1930s and is still studied today. From the whole body of examined material, the author comes to the conclusion that the population of the Golden Horde was not homogenous in its racial composition, but combined Mongoloid and Caucasian traits. The main population component was Caucasian-Mongoloid mestizos, with varying proportions of Caucasian and Mongoloid miscegenation, which has been identified as a local substrate. Along with the local component of the substrate on the territory of the Lower Volga region, there was also a component of alien population, which can be identified as Khorezm, Central Asian, and Russian. The Mongols in a relatively short period of time almost completely dissolved into the conquered tribes. Wherein two methods of miscegenation can be identified: mechanical and biological.

Keywords: anthropology, Golden Horde, Lower Volga region, craniology, osteometry, paleoanthropology, pathologies, historiography, Caucasians, Mongoloids

Abstract: The subject of this study is the cultural-historical concept and method of K. Lamprecht examined in the light of his biography and the place they occupied among the scholar's work on other topics. The article not only traces the links, but also the influence of K. Lamprecht's life events, as well as of his immediate socio-cultural environment, on the sphere of his scientific interests and on his works. This study is placed in the subject fields of source study historiography, intellectual history, and also in the phenomenological concept of source study. The study used the source study and comparative methods, as well as the methods of narrative division and dialogue. The historiographical sources are analysed as products of the time to which they belong and their author is perceived as "the Other", a member of a different culture. The novelty of this study is determined by the very approach to the work of K. Lamprecht, as well as the examination of the cultural-historical method itself. It is shown that K. Lamprecht, known as the author of the cultural-historical method, for a long time studied the Rhine region, and also held certain positions. He used his career advancements to closely study his topic of interest and to develop his cultural-historical method, which became famous due to the author's own efforts, reflected not only in the writing of texts and discussions on the given subject, but also in the opening of an institute that applied this method.

Keywords: K. Lamprecht, cultural-historical method, cultural history, methodological discussion, cultural age, intellectual history, source study historiography, intellectual biography, phenomenological paradigm, method of dialogue

Abstract: The article summarises the results of the work conducted within the framework of the project RGNF no. 15-01-00026 "the Crisis of Agrarian Communities in Imperial Russian: the Famine of 1891–1892 in the Central-Chernozyomny Region" in 2015. The author focuses attention on the examination of the features of the Russian Orthodox Church's charitable activity during the period of the famine in 1891–1892 on the example of the Tula governorate, which belonged to the Agrarian centre of the Russian Empire. The article in particular highlights the investigation of the ecclesiastical institutes’ activities in the push to overcome the crisis in the Russian Empire at the end of the 19th century. The author, on the basis of published sources and unpublished archival material, analyses the activity of the Tula eparchial committee in aiding the starving population during the period of 1891–1892. The article also examines the particularities of the social and economic situation at the level of the rural parish, analyses the relationship between agrarian societies and the clergy under the condition of an emergency situation. The conducted research has allowed to come to the conclusion that the efforts of the Russian Orthodox Church objectively contributed to overcoming the crisis of the agrarian community at the end of the 19th century. The inclusion of the Russian Orthodox Church in solving the social and economic problems happened in a mode of a forced mobilisation, which gives ground for the author to talk about the exceptional mobilisation possibilities of the Empire's leading religious confession under the conditions of a crisis.

Keywords: empire, Russian Orthodox Church, clergy, peasantry, famine, charity, eparchial committee, social service, parish, peasant community