Review: The subject of this article is the work of three universities: Bashkir State University, Ufa State Aviation Technical University, and Ufa State Petroleum Technical University. Their work is being studied with the aim to identify their role in forming the personnel, technological,  scientific and theoretical foundations of the state energy policy of Russia in 1991 – 2000s. The research is focused on the implementation of the Russian state policy in the field of training highly qualified personnel for the Russian energy field by universities of the Republic of Bashkortostan at the turn of the 20th – 21st centuries. Particular attention is paid to the development of infrastructure and quality parameters of energy education in Bashkortostan. The research methodology was determined by the modernization concept of the historical process and the aim of objectively covering facts and phenomena based on a critical scientific analysis of historical sources. The novelty of this research lies in the arguments and conclusions of the study's authors, which complement the current scientific understanding of the historical experience of the Russian reforms of the 1990s and 2000s. The authors present the main conclusion that the universities of Bashkortostan made an important contribution to the implementation of the state energy policy, systematically improving the quality of scientific and educational work, notwithstanding the difficulties of that transition period. In the 2000s, the training of qualified personnel in the energy field had become the interest of universities and leading energy companies operating in the Republic of Bashkortostan.

Keywords: Bashkir State University, energy personnel, energy industry of Bashkortostan, energy of Russia, personnel policy, energy policy, history of higher education, history of Russian reforms, Ufa State Aviation Technical University, Ufa State Petroleum Technical University

Review: The subject of this article is the influence of the ideas of E. Bellamy on the ideology of the populist party in the United States of America at the end of the 19th century. In this work, the author analyzes the influence of E. Bellamy’s ideas on the leaders of the populist party, identifies the scale of their prevalence among ordinary members of the populist movement, undertakes a comparative analysis of the ideological views of E. Bellamy and populist thinkers, and identifies the reasons for the popularity of E. Bellamy’s works among the party's leaders and ordinary members. Within the framework of this study, in order to assess the prevalence of E. Bellamy's ideas among populists, the author applies the methodology of the intellectual history approach, which involves analyzing the number of references to E. Bellamy in the speeches of populist leaders and in the populist party press, and locating the existence of his works in personal and public libraries, where the populist party was very popular. The author widely applies the comparative approach to compare the ideological views of populists and E. Bellamy. This work is the first study in Russian historiography that demonstrates the widespread prevalence and the degree of influence that E. Bellamy’s ideas had on members of the populist party, based on archival and published sources. The author concludes the article stating that the ideas of E. Bellamy were very popular among populists. There are many similarities in the views of E. Bellamy and in those of various populists. The populist leaders and E. Bellamy both considered the contemporary socio-economic and political system of the United State of America as unjust and only serving the interests of the rich strata of the population.

Keywords: producerism, utopia, nationalisation, The Nationalist Movement, Bellamy, The U.S. Populist Party, republicanism, Donnelly, monopolies, antimonopolism

Review: The research subject of this study is the British society in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries, while the article's research object is the contradiction between the ethical imperatives of the British imperial project and its society's traditional conservative-democratic values, which ultimately became the basis for the conflict between the ideas of nation and empire. The aim of this article is to reconstruct and analyze the specifics of the English society's perception during the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries of the imperial project as a threat to the conservative and democratic traditions of Great Britain. The study is grounded on basic scientific principles and methodology of cultural history, while at the same time is based on the fundamental paradigm of imaginary communities and the constructivist theory of identity. The scientific novelty of this study lies in its attempt to examine the contradiction between the imperial ethics and the traditional system of values in the English society, on the one hand, and the elites representing these different projects, on the other. The authors demonstrate the conflict between the culture of governance and the attitude towards the law, established in the British Isles by the 19th century, and the practice of “administrative slaughter” of colonial officials, who were perceived as a threat to the Anglo-Saxon legal model. Particular attention is paid to the features behind the formation of colonial administration representatives. The authors analyze the characteristics of the English state-legal ideal, reveal the reasons for the transformation of state models under the conditions of managing colonies, and show the role of the British elite, the “younger sons”, in the development of the imperial project of Great Britain.

Keywords: civilizing mission, white man’s burden, colonialism, empire, Great Britain, values, imperialism, missionary, British society, imperial project

Review: The subject of this research is the Soviet Union's negotiations on the purchase of Italian planes from the company "Fiat" in the early 1930s, as well as the testing of captured Italian CR.32 planes in the USSR. The article's aim is to investigate this aspect of the relations between the Soviet Union and Italy in the field of aviation, which has not been sufficiently studied in modern Russian historiography. The author focuses a lot of attention on the history of the Soviet-Italian negotiations with the company "Fiat Aviazione" and on the analysis of documents regarding the testing of the Italian fighter CR.32 by the Soviet state. The methodological basis of this study is comprised of the principles of historicism, objectivity and systematics. The main principle is the principle of historicism, which presupposes the point of view of history as a process in its sequential development. According to the principle of historicism, the development of Soviet-Italian relations in the field of aviation during the interwar period is described in the article while taking into account the context of this historical era. This work proposes significant scientific novelty, due primarily to the used source base. The author draws on new archival documents from the Russian State Military Archives, as well as the memoirs of Soviet pilots who took part in the Spanish Civil War. The author presents the conclusion that the Soviet Union sought to maintain intensive relations with the company "Fiat" in order to acquire its newest aircrafts. The second conclusion is that the flight characteristics of the Italian CR.32 planes tested in the Soviet Union were rated quite low, but nonetheless some construction solutions and weaponry systems were later applied by Soviet mechanicians.

Keywords: aviation of Italy, Spanish Civil War, Fiat planes, Italian planes, Italy, USSR, history of aviation, captured Italian aircrafts, Kazansky Evgeniy Sergeevich, Soviet-Italian relations

Review: The subject of this study's research is the state of the defensive lines of the Russian army's Western front at the dawn of the trench stage of the First World War on the Eastern front. The article's author examines the reports of General of the Infantry K. A.  Kondratovich, which were prepared by him on behalf of the front commander-in-chief A. E. Evert. Having visited all four armies of the front with revisions, the general prepared a rich factual material resource. On the basis of this material, the author describes the fortifications erected by the troops both on the front lines and in the rear, analyzes their main defects and how they came about. The author dedicates particular attention to the organizational component, which includes the interaction between the corps and army engineering control bodies. The study applies the systematic approach and the method of system reconstruction on the primary source material, while the author adheres to the principles of historicism, scientific objectivity, and verifiability. Based on the results of the conducted study, the author concludes that the Russian army at the beginning of 1916 was unable to fully adapt to the realities of the trench war. Despite the long respite that the enemy gave, the troops did not manage to sufficiently strengthen their positions. The location of the defensive positions on the Western Front was accidental, and the troops were strengthened where they stopped after the last battle. The organization of defensive work was also often not up to par. The already scarce resources, primarily human resources, were scattered, and tasks were not ranked in order of importance. The principle of unity of command was not observed, notably, corps and army engineers competed with each other. This situation could not give the command of the Russian army confidence in their own defensive lines, chaining large forces and means, and holding down offensive initiatives.

Keywords: Engineering, Fortification, Kiprian Kondratovich, Alexey Evert, Western front, Trench warfare, Defense, World War I, Great Retreat, Military administration

Review: The article's research subject is the process of establishing trade and economic relations between Ceylon and other countries in the late 19th - early 20th centuries, its scope and importance for the country. The author dedicates particular attention to export and import goods and the geography of their origin and destination, and questions the established opinion in historiography that Ceylon in the period under review was a raw materials appendage to the metropolis of Great Britain. In order to solve these aims, the author cites and analyzes archival documents of economic nature compiled by Russian diplomats. The methodological basis of this study is constituted on the principles of historicism, analysis and synthesis, as well as quantitative methods, which allow the analysis of the development course and changes in the foreign trade of Ceylon. The novelty of this study lies in the fact that the establishment of Ceylon's trade and economic relations with foreign countries in the late 19th - early 20th centuries is for the first time examined on the basis of Russian archival documents. The author comes to the conclusion that the openness of the Ceylon economy had attracted investments from various countries and the direct trading partners of Ceylon were a number of countries in Europe, North and South America, Asia and Africa.

Keywords: coconut products, tea, integration, colonial goods, trade relations, metropolis, colony, Ceylon, rubber, colonialism

Keywords: Source, Workers, Composition, Structure, Period, Pipes, Factory, Analysis, Early 20th century, Southern Russia

Keywords: establishments of Empress Maria, Emperor Nicholas I, Ministry for People’s Education, staff reform, Uvarov, pedagogy, women’s education, girls’ boarding schools, Smolnyi Institute, class inspector

Review: This paper revisits the concept of “school awareness”, which in the previous scholarship was mostly regarded as a product of penetration of Chinese patriarchal patterns into the Buddhist community against the background of loosened state control during the late Ming. Particular attention should be directed to the fact that such a mindset of Buddhist monks existed even as late as the eighteenth century, with one of the main examples here being Wenhai Fuju (1685-1765), who adopted a series of steps to promote the Qianhua lineage of Vinaya school of Chinese Buddhism. In order to explore his activities in detail, this paper synthesizes data form various sources producing a complete, chronologically-arranged biography. The analysis of obtained results shows that the majority of Wenhai Fuju’s endevours embodying his “school awareness” were in fact driven by the needs and opportunities of interaction with the Yongzheng (1723-1735) or Qianlong (1736-1795) emperors. This allows to conclude that the official authorities expected and approved such a desire for domination for a particular Buddhist school. Accordingly, it was the impact of imperial policy that could have kept up such “school awareness” in the eighteenth century China.

Keywords: China, religion, Buddhism, Qing, Yongzheng, Qianlong, Vinaya, Qianhua, Wenhai Fuju, school awareness

Keywords: new person, pre-war five-year plans, factory newspapers, content analysis, social engineering, food industry, USSR, industrialization, narrative historical sources, Soviet press