Journal articles on the topic 'Soviet Union – Politics and government – 1917-1936'

In the middle of the XIX century, the territory of contemporary Kyrgyzstan was conquered by the Tsarist Russia. Later, in 1917, as a result of the October Revolution, the Tsarist regime was replaced by the Soviet rule. In the territory of Kyrgyzstan, it was established firstly in the southern and western regions of the country, such as Suluktu and Kyzyl-Kiya, Osh and Talas, where the largest industrial enterprises, mines, railway junctions and most of the workers and soldiers were concentrated. However, already by the mid 1918, the Soviet government managed to spread its power to the entire region of Kyrgyzstan. In 1924, the Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, established on April 30, 1918, was reorganized into a new administrative division. As the part of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), on October 24, 1924 the Kara Kyrgyz Autonomous Region was formed. On May 25, 1925 the Kara Kyrgyz Autonomous Region was renamed into the Kyrgyz Autonomous Region. Then on February 01, 1926 it was restructured into the Kyrgyz Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. On December 05, 1936 it became a separate constituent republic of the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) known as the Kyrgyz Soviet Socialist Republic. Along with other 15 Soviet Socialist states, Kyrgyzstan had been the member of the USSR for about 70 years, from 1919 till 1991. The current paper focuses on the processes of social transformation under the Soviet regime, especially the implementation of class struggle policy and its impact on Kyrgyzstan. In comparison with the interventions from the Tsarist Russia, the social transformation process undertaken under the Soviet system was quite different. In the territory of the Kyrgyz traditional society, the Tsarist Russia made only some social reorganization, but the Soviets brought radical changes in to the socio-political organizations of the Kyrgyz people. The paper seeks to understand how the Soviet Union tried to reconstruct the Kyrgyz society during the 1920s and 1930s. In addition, the paper will analyze the methods and mechanisms of the social transformation processes and the measures used by the Soviet government in their socio-political ‘battles’ against the local elites, and the influence of the new system on the existing socio-economic stratification in the context of the Kyrgyz society. During the Soviet period the prevalent scientific vision about the major historical events of the time was based on the Communist ideology. Therefore, the main aim of the paper is to analyze and describe an objective overview of the history of Soviet class struggle policy. The paper is based on the research of local archival documents, published sources and oral materials.

Interference of esotericism and politics became apparent especially in the 19th century when the early socialists expected the coming of the Age of Spirit, and narratives about secret wisdom being kept in mysterious sacred places became all the more popular. Thus, the idea of the Age of Enlightenment underwent transformation: the world will be saved not by ordinary knowledge but by some special secret wisdom. In this context, Helena Blavatsky (1831–1891) developed the doctrine of Theosophy the ideas of which were overtaken by the next-generation theosophists including also the Russian painter Nicholas Roerich (1874–1947) and his spouse Helena Roerich (1879–1955) who developed a new form of Theosophy. The aim of this article is to analyse the interference between Theosophy and politics paying special attention to its historical roots, which, in the context of Roerich groups, are to be sought in the political activities of Nicholas Roerich, the founder of the movement. The following materials have been used in the analysis: first, writings of the founders of Agni Yoga or Teaching of Living Ethics; second, the latest studies in the history of Theosophy made in the available archives after the collapse of the soviet regime; third, materials obtained from the interviews of a field research (2006–2008). The author has made use of an interdisciplinary approach combining anthropological methods with the method of systematic analysis. The historical roots of the political activity of contemporary theosophists stretch into the political aspirations of Nicholas Roerich, the founder of Agni Yoga or Teaching of Living Ethics. Opening of the USSR secret archives and publication of several formerly inaccessible diaries and letters of theosophists offer an opportunity to study the “spiritual geopolitics” of the Roerichs. Setting off to his Central Asian expeditions (1925–1928; 1934–1935), Nicholas Roerich strived to implement the Great Plan, i.e. to found a New State that would stretch from Tibet to South Siberia comprising the territories governed by China, Mongolia, Tibet and the USSR. The new state was conceived as the kingdom of Shambhala on the earth, and in order to form this state, Nicholas Roerich aspired to acquire the support of various political systems. During the Tzarist Empire, the political world outlook of Nicholas Roerich was markedly monarchic. After the Bolshevik coup in Russia, the artist accepted the offer to work under the wing of the new power, but after his emigration to the West Roerich published extremely sharp articles against the Bolsheviks. In 1922, the Roerichs started to support Lenin considering him the messenger of Shambhala. Roerich’s efforts to acquire Bolshevik support culminated in 1926 when the Roerichs arrived in Moscow bringing a message by Mahatmas to the soviet government, a small case with earth for the Lenin Mausoleum from Burhan-Bulat and paintings in which Buddha Maitreya bore strong resemblance to Lenin. The plan of founding the Union of Eastern Republics, with Bolshevik support, failed, since about the year 1930 the soviet authorities changed their position concerning the politics of the Far East. Having ascertained that the Bolsheviks would not provide the anticipated support for the Great Plan, the Roerichs started to seek for contacts in the USA which provided funding for his second expedition (1934–1935). The Roerichs succeeded even in making correspondence (1934–1936) with President Roosevelt who paid much larger attention to Eastern states especially China than other presidents did. Their correspondence ceased when the Security Service of the USA grew suspicious about Roerich’s pro-Japanese disposition. Nicholas Roerich has sought for support to his political ambitions by all political regimes. In 1934, the Russian artist tried to ascertain whether German national socialists would support his efforts in Asia. It may seem that the plans of founding the Union of Oriental Republics have passed away along with Roerich; yet in 1991 his son Svyatoslav Roerich (1904–1993) pointed out once again that the Altai is a very important centre of the great future and Zvenigorod is still a great reality and a magnificent dream. Interference between esotericism and politics is observed also among Latvian theosophists: the soviet regime successfully made use of Roerich’s adherents propagating the communist ideology in the independent Republic of Latvia. In the 1920s and 1930s, the embassy of the USSR in Riga maintained close contacts with Roerich’s adherents in Latvia and made a strong pressure on the Latvian government not to ban the Roerich’s Museum Friend Society who actively propagated the success of soviet culture and economy. On 17 June 1940, the soviet army occupied the Republic of Latvia, and Haralds Lūkins, the son of the founder of the Roerich’s Museum Friend Society, was elected to the first government of the soviet Latvia. Nevertheless, involvement of theosophists in politics was unsuccessful, since after the official annexation of Latvia into the USSR, on 5 August 1940, all societies including the Roerich’s Museum Friend Society were closed. Since the members of the movement continued to meet regularly, in 1949, Haralds Lūkins was arrested as leader of an illegal organization. After the Second World War, theosophists were subjected to political repressions. Arrests of Roerich’s followers (1948–1951) badly impaired the movement. After rehabilitation in 1954, the repressed persons gradually returned from exile and kept on their illegal meetings in small groups. To regain their rights to act openly, Roerich’s followers started to praise Nicholas Roerich as a supporter of the soviet power. With the collapse of the soviet regime, Roerich’s followers in Latvia became legal in 1988 when the Latvian Roerich Society was restored which soon split up according to geopolitical orientation; therefore, presently in Latvia, there are the following organisations: Latvian Roerich Society, Latvian Department of the International Centre of the Roerichs, and Aivars Garda group or the Latvian National Front. A. Garda fused nationalistic ideas with Theosophy offering a special social reorganization – repatriation of the soviet-time immigrants and a social structure of Latvia that would be formed by at least 75% ethnic Latvians. Activity of A. Garda group, which is being criticized by other groups of theosophists, is a continuation of the interference between theosophical and political ideas practised by the Roerichs. Generally it is to be admitted that after the crush of the soviet regime, in theosophist groups, unclear political orientation between the rightists and leftists is observed, characterised by fairly radical ideas.

The purpose of the article is to analyze the events surrounding the participation of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in the World Expo–1967 exhibition in Montreal and to identify the features of this process, such as the actions of diaspora organizations to attract the attention of the Canadian government and the international community to the political status of Ukraine within the Soviet Union. The publication proves that the youth movement of the Ukrainian diaspora is able to influence the course of important political events, one of which was the Montreal World Exhibition. It was used by the Kremlin as a component of preparations for the 50th anniversary of the October Bolshevik coup in Petrograd on November 7, 1917. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian diaspora was preparing to celebrate the anniversaries of the Ukrainian settlements in Canada, the Ukrainian National Revolution of 1917–1921, and the creation of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. The author concluded that the Ukrainian Canadian community drew the attention of the Canadian government and the international community to the political status of Ukraine within the Soviet Union and contributed to the consolidation of all Ukrainian world in the fight for human rights in Soviet Ukraine and its proper place in the international political and legal environment. Despite the strong involvement of the Soviet Union’s State Security Committee’s agent network, the activities of Ukrainian youth organizations in Canada in July–August 1967 brought a number of positive gains. In particular, it fostered a sense of patriotism, self–identification, and continuity in the traditions of national liberation struggle. At the same time, the nature of the events was driven by local characteristics, the size of the diaspora and its financial resources. In this context, the activities of Ukrainian youth organizations in Canada during Expo-1967 were a kind of impetus for the further struggle for freedom and independence of the native generations of the state – Ukraine.

The article is devoted to the constitutional and legal issues of local government organizations. The main attention is paid to the Soviet model of local government, which, in the period of the industrialization of the country, focused on the further strengthening of the Soviet state apparatus, the deployment of the so-called “Soviet democracy” and the fight against bureaucratic defects. However, such a situation as a whole was not typical of the Soviet system. That is why the Bolsheviks attempts to attract the poor sections of the rural population. However, success in this direction was caused not so much by the strengthening of the Soviet economy as a whole, but by the opportunity for the rural poor to plunder wealthy peasants, which had developed because of the dictatorship of the proletariat existing in the USSR. Subsequently, the Bolshevik Party raised the issue of organizing special groups of poverty or factions for an open political struggle to attract the middle peoples to the proletariat and to isolate wealthy peasants (the so-called “kulaks”) during the elections to the Soviets, cooperatives, etc. With the onset of socialist reconstruction, there was a need to organize poverty, because it was an important element and the establishment of “Soviet democracy in the countryside.” The Stalin Constitution of 1936 transformed the Soviets. From 1918, they were called the Soviets of Workers’, Peasants’ and Red Army Deputies, and now, with the entry into force of the Stalin Constitution, the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies. This transformation of the Soviets reflected the victory of the socialist system throughout the national economy, radical changes in the class composition of Soviet society, and a new triumph of “socialist democracy”. In addition, the “victory of socialism” in the USSR made possible the transition to universal, equal, and direct suffrage by secret ballot. On December 24 and 29, 1939, citizens of the Soviet Union elected their representatives to the local Soviets of Workers’ Deputies. 99.21 % of the total number of voters took part in the vote. The election results are another testament to the growing influence of the Bolshevik Party on the population of the Soviet Union, which has largely replaced the activities of the Soviets themselves, including the local ones. Holding elections to the regional, regional, district, district, city, village and settlement councils of workers’ deputies completed the restructuring of all state bodies in accordance with the Stalin Constitution and on its basis. With the adoption in 1977 of the last Constitution of the USSR, the councils of workers’ deputies were renamed the councils of people’s deputies. In 1985, the last non-alternative elections were held for 52,041 local councils, and in 1988, their structure became more complicated: there were presidencies organizing the work of regional, regional, autonomous regions, autonomous districts, district, city and rayon in the cities of Soviets. People’s Deputies. Within the framework of the city (city subordination), village, and town councils, this work is carried out directly by the heads of the designated Councils. On December 26, 1990, the Congress of People’s Deputies of the USSR introduced regular amendments to the Constitution of the USSR, which formally abolished the Presidencies, but did not prohibit their existence. On September 5, 1991, the Constitution of 1977 was effectively abolished. Finally, it happened after December 26, 1991, when the USSR actually ceased to exist. Thus, existing in the USSR during the period of socialist reconstruction and subsequent transformations that began with the processes of industrialization and ended as a result of the collapse of the USSR, the model of local government organization remained ineffective due to its actual replacement by the activities of the governing bodies of the ruling Communist Party. Keywords: Local Government; the system of Councils; local Councils; Council of Deputies of the working people; Council of People’s Deputies; Soviet local government.

The life path, scientific-pedagogical and public activity of Volodymyr Sokurenko – a prominent Ukrainian jurist, doctor of law, professor, talented teacher of the Lviv Law School of Franko University are analyzed. It is found out that after graduating from a seven-year school in Zaporizhia, V. Sokurenko entered the Zaporizhia Aviation Technical School, where he studied two courses until 1937. 1/10/1937 he was enrolled as a cadet of the 2nd school of aircraft technicians named after All-Union Lenin Komsomol. In 1938, this school was renamed the Volga Military Aviation School, which he graduated on September 4, 1939 with the military rank of military technician of the 2nd category. As a junior aircraft technician, V. Sokurenko was sent to the military unit no. 8690 in Baku, and later to Maradnyany for further military service in the USSR Air Force. From September 4, 1939 to March 16, 1940, he was a junior aircraft technician of the 50th Fighter Regiment, 60th Air Brigade of the ZAK VO in Baku. The certificate issued by the Railway District Commissariat of Lviv on January 4, 1954 no. 3132 states that V. Sokurenko actually served in the staff of the Soviet Army from October 1937 to May 1946. The same certificate states that from 10/12/1941 to 20/09/1942 and from 12/07/1943 to 08/03/1945, he took part in the Soviet-German war, in particular in the second fighter aviation corps of the Reserve of the Supreme Command of the Soviet Army. In 1943 he joined the CPSU. He was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War of the 1st degree and the Order of the Red Star (1943) as well as 9 medals «For Merit in Battle» during the Soviet-German war. With the start of the Soviet-German war, the Sokurenko family, like many other families, was evacuated to the town of Kamensk-Uralsky in the Sverdlovsk region, where their father worked at a metallurgical plant. After the war, the Sokurenko family moved to Lviv. In 1946, V. Sokurenko entered the Faculty of Law of the Ivan Franko Lviv State University, graduating with honors in 1950, and entered the graduate school of the Lviv State University at the Department of Theory and History of State and Law. V. Sokurenko successfully passed the candidate examinations and on December 25, 1953 in Moscow at the Institute of Law of the USSR he defended his thesis on the topic: «Socialist legal consciousness and its relationship with Soviet law». The supervisor of V. Sokurenko's candidate's thesis was N. Karieva. The Higher Attestation Commission of the Ministry of Culture of the USSR, by its decision of March 31, 1954, awarded V. Sokurenko the degree of Candidate of Law. In addition, it is necessary to explain the place of defense of the candidate's thesis by V. Sokurenko. As it is known, the Institute of State and Law of the USSR has its history since 1925, when, in accordance with the resolution of the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of March 25, 1925, the Institute of Soviet Construction was established at the Communist Academy. In 1936, the Institute became part of the USSR Academy of Sciences, and in 1938 it was reorganized into the Institute of Law of the USSR Academy of Sciences. In 1941–1943 it was evacuated to Tashkent. In 1960-1991 it was called the Institute of State and Law of the USSR Academy of Sciences. In Ukraine, there is the Institute of State and Law named after V. Koretsky of the NAS of Ukraine – a leading research institution in Ukraine of legal profile, founded in 1949. It is noted that, as a graduate student, V. Sokurenko read a course on the history of political doctrines, conducted special seminars on the theory of state and law. After graduating from graduate school and defending his thesis, from October 1, 1953 he was enrolled as a senior lecturer and then associate professor at the Department of Theory and History of State and Law at the Faculty of Law of the Lviv State University named after Ivan Franko. By the decision of the Higher Attestation Commission of the Ministry of Higher Education of the USSR of December 18, 1957, V. Sokurenko was awarded the academic title of associate professor of the «Department of Theory and History of State and Law». V. Sokurenko took an active part in public life. During 1947-1951 he was a member of the party bureau of the party organization of LSU, worked as a chairman of the trade union committee of the university, from 1955 to 1957 he was a secretary of the party committee of the university. He delivered lectures for the population of Lviv region. Particularly, he lectured in Turka, Chervonohrad, and Yavoriv. He made reports to the party leaders, Soviet workers as well as business leaders. He led a philosophical seminar at the Faculty of Law. He was a deputy of the Lviv City Council of People's Deputies in 1955-1957 and 1975-1978. In December 1967, he defended his doctoral thesis on the topic: «Development of progressive political thought in Ukraine (until the early twentieth century)». The defense of the doctoral thesis was approved by the Higher Attestation Commission on June 14, 1968. During 1960-1990 he headed the Department of Theory and History of State and Law; in 1962-68 and 1972-77 he was the dean of the Law Faculty of the Ivan Franko Lviv State University. In connection with the criticism of the published literature, on September 10, 1977, V. Sokurenko wrote a statement requesting his dismissal from the post of Dean of the Faculty of Law due to deteriorating health. During 1955-1965 he was on research trips to Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Austria, and Bulgaria. From August 1966 to March 1967, in particular, he spent seven months in the United States, England and Canada as a UN Fellow in the Department of Human Rights. From April to May 1968, he was a member of the government delegation to the International Conference on Human Rights in Iran for one month. He spoke, in addition to Ukrainian, English, Polish and Russian. V. Sokurenko played an important role in initiating the study of an important discipline at the Faculty of Law of the Lviv University – History of Political and Legal Studies, which has been studying the history of the emergence and development of theoretical knowledge about politics, state, law, ie the process of cognition by people of the phenomena of politics, state and law at different stages of history in different nations, from early statehood and modernity. Professor V. Sokurenko actively researched the problems of the theory of state and law, the history of Ukrainian legal and political thought. He was one of the first legal scholars in the USSR to begin research on the basics of legal deontology. V. Sokurenko conducted extensive research on the development of basic requirements for the professional and legal responsibilities of a lawyer, similar to the requirements for a doctor. In further research, the scholar analyzed the legal responsibilities, prospects for the development of the basics of professional deontology. In addition, he considered medical deontology from the standpoint of a lawyer, law and morality, focusing on internal (spiritual) processes, calling them «the spirit of law.» The main direction of V. Sokurenko's research was the problems of the theory of state and law, the history of legal and political studies. The main scientific works of professor V. Sokurenko include: «The main directions in the development of progressive state and legal thought in Ukraine: 16th – 19th centuries» (1958) (Russian), «Democratic doctrines about the state and law in Ukraine in the second half of the 19th century (M. Drahomanov, S. Podolynskyi, A. Terletskyi)» (1966), «Law. Freedom. Equality» (1981, co-authored) (in Russian), «State and legal views of Ivan Franko» (1966), «Socio-political views of Taras Shevchenko (to the 170th anniversary of his birth)» (1984); «Political and legal views of Ivan Franko (to the 130th anniversary of his birth)» (1986) (in Russian) and others. V. Sokurenko died on November 22, 1994 and was buried in Holoskivskyi Cemetery in Lviv. Volodymyr Sokurenko left a bright memory in the hearts of a wide range of scholars, colleagues and grateful students. The 100th anniversary of the Scholar is a splendid opportunity to once again draw attention to the rich scientific heritage of the lawyer, which is an integral part of the golden fund of Ukrainian legal science and education. It needs to be studied, taken into account and further developed.

AbstractThe Bolsheviks did not alienate citizens from helping find solutions to the problems afflicting children. Many social actions deemed as "useful" by the Soviet authorities were met with support by the regime. These included the "Week of the Homeless Child", school self-taxation, local societies of the "Friend of the Children", and others. Establishing its control over "useful" public ventures, the Government eventually absorbed them. On the surface, the proliferation of public ventures in the area of children's welfare, such as patronage by industrial enterprises, labor unions and other groups and the growth of various advisory boards and children's inspections, appeared to be a result of growing social initiative. In reality the government's support of public work led to de facto state and party control. In order to carry out successful public initiatives, the population had to adapt to the particulars of Bolshevik rule.

AbstractThis article examines the attempts by left-wing Ukrainian nationalists to reconcile the seemingly irreconcilable: Ukrainian nationalism and Soviet socialism. It describes how leftist Ukrainian parties active during the Revolution and Civil War in Ukraine 1917–1921 advocated a soviet form of government. Exiled members of the two major Ukrainian parties, the Social Democrats and the Socialist Revolutionaries, then took this position further, arguing in favor of reconciliation with the Bolsheviks and a return to their homeland. After the Entente recognized Polish sovereignty over Eastern Galicia and Soviet Ukraine introduced a policy of Ukrainization in 1923, many West Ukrainian intellectuals took up this call. The Great Famine of 1932–1933 and the Bolsheviks’ purge of Ukrainian Communists and intellectuals all but ended the position. However, it was more the Soviet rejection of the Sovietophiles that ended Ukrainian Sovietophilism than any rejection of the Soviet Union by leftist Ukrainian nationalists. Thus, an examination of the Ukrainian Sovietophiles calls into question the accounts of the relationship between Ukrainian nationalism and the Soviet Union that have common currency in today’s Ukraine.

In the last decade, state building and the problems of establishing state authority in the provinces in 1917 have begun to attract historians’ attention. Several works by Russian authors treat state building under the Provisional Government, with emphasis upon organizational activities “at the center.” Daniel T. Orlovsky and Howard J. White (with greater analytical rigor than their Russian counterparts) have studied the work of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the provinces. But none of these works has offered a sustained discussion of the revolution in a single city or province. Local studies have concentrated on popular institutions (for example, unions, Red Guards, and the Soviets) and the process of social polarization but have paid litde attention to the state. My aim is to bridge the gap between institutional studies and local studies by looking at local government and the contested nature of state authority in Smolensk from March to June 1917, tracing especially the conflict between class-based politics and state interests.

On 12 February 1930 a near-insolvent English company began arbitration proceedings against a large and hostile foreign State under an ad hoc arbitration clause contained in a written concession agreement signed by both parties. This concession had been granted by the Soviet Union in 1925 in respect of gold mining and other properties previously operated by the English company's Russian subsidiaries until their dispossession by the Soviet Russian government in 1918, following the October 1917 Revolution. In May 1930, after three months, the Soviet Union abruptly withdrew from the arbitration proceedings, abandoning both its defence and counterclaim and instructing its appointed arbitrator to take no further part in the proceedings. Four months later, on 2 September 1930, the English company obtained a massive monetary award in its favour, signed in London by two arbitrators only. Yet the financial result of Lena Gold-fields Limited v. USSR was to benefit David little and cost Goliath less.

The Russian Revolution of 1917, or the Bolshevik Revolution, was one of the most important historical events in Europe during the First World War. This revolution changed the course of Russian history. Its outbreak led to the formation of the Soviet Union, which was dismantled in the late 20th century. Because of a number of popular unrest and protests against the rule of Russian tsars and the Russian Empire, whose reign was characterized by the slow development of the country because of the existence of a political system subject to autocratic regimes and the control of nobles and landlords in all aspects of life in Russia, made the Russian society in the late century Nineteen rural people in the majority of workers and peasants, with the influence of the clergy and the imperial palace, accompanied by a primitive social structure, a backward economy and an autocratic government. Life in Russia was in the style of the Middle Ages. Russia retreated from the European industrial revolution until 1860, This led the people to wage a revolt against the Russian reactionary tsarist government in 1917. It was one of the most famous leaders of the Russian Revolution, Vladimir Lenin, who was called the " Revolutionaries of this revolution the Bolsheviks name or Almnschwk means the majority.

Dmitry S. Polyansky (1917-2001) is known as one of the CPSU and USSR leaders. He combined his membership in the Politburo of the Communist Party (1960-1976) with the posts of Russian PM, the Deputy and First Deputy Chairman of the all-union Government, the Soviet Minister of Agriculture (1958-1976). Later Polyansky served a SU ambassador in Japan and Norway (1976-1987). As a politic and state activist he was involved to number of odious events: the transfer of the Crimean Oblast (1954), the defeat of the Anti-Party Group (1957), the “Ryazan affair” (1960), the “Novocherkassk massacre” (1962), the Nikita S. Khrushchev’s

In 1917–18, the new republican governments of Russia, Germany, and Austria nationalized their former court property. A monarchic-turned-national heritage of prestigious opera and dramatic theatres weighed heavily on national and regional budgets, prompting first attempts to create centralized forms of theatre governance. In a second wave of theatre reorganization in the mid-1930s, the Soviet government created ‘union theatres’ under a Committee for Arts Affairs; the German and Austrian theatres underwent the Nazi Gleichschaltung (1933–35 and 1938); and France, a ‘democratic outlier’, opted for nationalizing the Opéra and Opéra-Comique under the Réunion des théâtres lyriques nationaux. These conglomerates have so far been little studied as historically specific forms of theatre management, particularly from a comparative, trans-regime perspective. What balance can be struck between economic, political, and ‘artistic’ costs and benefits? How does ‘Baumol’s law’ of decreasing theatre profitability apply to these very different politico-economic systems, as well as to war economies? Dictatorships reveal an economic seduction power, while this essay argues for confirming a long-term ‘great European convergence’ of state-centred theatre management, internal structure, and accountability, both in peace and war. Here, the stated goals and short-term contingencies yielded to trends originating from the logic of theatre production itself, and the compromises that the state, theatre professionals, and the public accepted in exchange for the capital of prestige. Alexander Golovlev (PhD, European University Institute in Florence, 2017) is a senior research fellow at the HSE Institute for Advanced Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies at the University of Moscow. His recent publications include, for New Theatre Quarterly, ‘Theatre Policies of Soviet Stalinism and Italian Fascism Compared, 1920–1940s’ (2019), and ‘Balancing the Books and Staging Operas under Duress: Bolshoi Theatre Management, Wartime Economy, and State Sponsorship in 1941–1945’, Russian History XLVII, No. 4 (2020).

Abstract In the Soviet Union from 1917 to 1990, the political inequality of the nationalities’ representation in institutions of governance was overcome, non-Russians’ participation in the power structures increased, and Russians’ role in administration correspondingly decreased. The increased non-Russian percentage in governance was mainly due to the introduction of the democratic principle in government formation, according to which ethnicities should participate in proportion to their number. By 1990 in the USSR overall, Russians had a slight majority in all power structures, corresponding roughly to their higher share in the country’s population. In the union republics, however, the situation was different. Only in the RSFSR did all peoples, Russian and non-Russian, participate in government administration in proportion to their numbers, following the democratic norm. Elsewhere, Russians were underrepresented and therefore discriminated against in all organs of power, including the legislative branch. Representatives of non-Russian titular nationalities, who on average filled two-thirds of all administrative positions, predominated in disproportion to their numbers. Given these representatives’ skill majority in legislative bodies, republican constitutions permitted them to adopt any laws and resolutions they desired, including laws on secession from the USSR; and the executive and judicial authorities, together with law enforcement, would undoubtedly support them. Thus, the structural prerequisites for disintegration were established. Thereafter, the fate of the Soviet Union depended on republican elites and the geopolitical environment, because of the Center’s purposeful national policy, aimed toward increasing non-Russian representation among administrative cadres and the accelerated modernization and developmental equalization of the republics.

After the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, Iurii Filipchenko (in Petrograd) and Nikolai Koltsov (in Moscow) created centers of genetic research where eugenics prospered as a socially relevant part of the new "experimental" biology. The Russian Eugenics Society, established in 1920, was dominated by research-oriented professionals. However, Bolshevik activists in the movement tried to translate eugenics into social policies (among them, sterilization) and in 1929, Marxist geneticist Alexander Serebrovsky was stimulated by the forthcoming Five-Year Plan to urge a massive eugenic program of human artificial insemination. With the advent of Stalinism, such attempts to "biologize" social phenomena became ideologically untenable and the society was abolished in 1930. Three years later, however, a number of eugenicists reassembled in the world's first institute of medical genetics, created by Bolshevik physician Solomon Levit after his return from a postdoctoral year in Texas with H. J. Muller. Muller himself moved to the Soviet Union in 1933, where he agitated for eugenics and wrote Stalin in 1936 to urge an artificial insemination program. Shortly thereafter, Muller left Russia, several of his colleagues were shot, and the Institute of Medical Genetics was disbanded. During the next three decades, Lysenkoists regularly invoked the Soviet eugenic legacy to claim that genetics itself was fascist.Key words: Russia, eugenics, human genetics, medical genetics, Lysenkoism, history, politics.

The article discusses techniques and methods used by the Soviet government to formulate the historical myth of the revolutionary movement in Russia and of the 1917 revolution. Holidays in Soviet Russia and later in the Soviet Union were not just days of relaxation. They served educational function, formed new spiritual values, instilled a sense of engagement with the events of 1917. As one of the ways to influence the mass consciousness, the festive events of the first decades of the Soviet power formed public opinion and influenced perception of historical and current events by the population. Popularization of the emerging official history of the new socialist state, which had begun in 1917, was especially effective during celebrations owing to their inherent emotional component. The use of historical plots in various dramatizations, mass actions, political processions, carnivals, and demonstrations of workers created an appearance of the new government’s legitimacy, contributed to the formation of the collective memory of the revolutionary days within the frameworks of their official interpretation. The article uses archival materials of the Department of Agitation and Propaganda of the Central Committee of the RCP (B.), which testify to the importance that the party authorities attached to the scenarios of the festive events. Memoirs of the direct participants in the events played their role in creating heroic myth of the revolution. An obligatory element of the celebration of the anniversaries was meetings with workers revolutionaries and witnesses of the revolutionary events that were arranged at the enterprises. Participation in these “evenings of remembrance” became a way of “self-identification” of an individual in new, socialist society, for speakers, as well as listeners. During these festive meetings, appearance of belonging, not only to the heroic past, but also to the epic present, was created. Specifics and ideological implications of the 1920s–30s memoirs contributed to the use of the “memorial boom” in the forming official narrative of the revolution.

The present study examines the attitude of one of the national leaders of Yakutia G.V. Ksenofontov to the political parties operating in the Yakutsk region in 1917. A lawyer and politician G.V. Ksenofontov became one of the founders of the national party – the Yakut Labor Union of Federalists, whose pro-gram combined the ideas of a federal structure of Russia, Siberian regionalism and popular socialism. The analysis of the archives and periodicals shows that the Yakut Federalists collaborated with the So-cialist-Revolutionary Party, were involved in a politi-cal struggle against local organizations of the Ka-dets and Social Democrats. G.V. Ksenofontov was nominated as a candidate for membership in the Constituent Assembly from the Federalist Party. During the pre-election campaign, an active polemic was waged, the Federalists criticized the Kadets and Social Democrats for their negative attitude towards the idea of federation. The Party of People's Free-dom was perceived as bourgeois, and in the ideolo-gy of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party the leaders of ethnic intelligentsia were repulsed by the orientation of the Social Democrats towards the proletariat, which was practically absent in the Ya-kutsk region. The bloc of Socialist-Revolutionaries and Federalists operated in the government bodies and in the elections to the Constituent Assembly. The election results showed that the union of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Federalists enjoyed support of the local population. As a result of the study, it was concluded that the history of Yakutia during the Russian Revolution of 1917 had its own characteristics. G.V. Ksenofontov contributed heavi-ly to the political development of the region, his activity as the leader of the Federalist Party and a candidate for membership in the Constituent As-sembly promoted an increase in the level of political literacy of the population, prepared the Yakut socie-ty for the transition to a new level of its develop-ment, for the formation of statehood, the creation of Yakutsk Autonomous Soviet Socialistic Republic.

The article analyses various aspects of the life in prison of political prisoners of the Vyatka gubernia. Unpublished documents from the archives of Kirov and Moscow, on which this study is based, designate the subject of the study; that is, they allow to establish forms of resistance of political prisoners to prison regime, to identify patterns of their escapes, to trace dynamics in occupancy of political prisons in the Vyatka gubernia, to establish instances of interaction between representatives of different left parties while in penal institutions. The timeframe of the study is the period of the first Russian revolution of 1905-1908, when prisons ceased to be the tenement of few and far between ardent revolutionaries from the privileged strata of society, and swarmed with much less versed ideologically masses of the discontented. Thus, in view of a participant of the revolutionary events of 1905-1908, Socialists-Revolutionary Maximalist G. A. Nestroev, the ideological grounding of the political prisoners deteriorated significantly. The author, however, believes that this ‘diversity’ of prisoners allows to conduct a more thorough analysis of their public activity in prison and to better link the activities of prisoners with the people on whose behalf the revolutionary forces acted. The author focuses on the Socialists-Revolutionaries, as their percentage among prisoners was much higher than that of the Socialists-Democrats. Known for several high-profile assassinations, the former were considered more dangerous state criminals than the Socialists-Democrat ‘propagandists,’ and thus were subject to more severe punishments. After the October revolution 1917, the Bolsheviks created an extensive mythologized literature on fellow party members who served time in tsarist prisons but mentioned only several Socialists-Revolutionaries, and these were politically harmless, or deceased (like E. S. Sazonov), or attached to the Bolshevik party (like V. N. Rukhlyadev). Findings and conclusions of the article can be used in research of the later periods in the history of Russia and the Soviet Union, particularly, for comparison of the prisoners’ struggle with the prison administration and of the forms of assistance to prisoners from the outside in tzarist Russia and later.

Non-Russian peoples were represented in Russian power structures long before the revolutions of 1905 and 1917, but less than the democratic norm, which suggests de facto ethnic discrimination in the Empire. In Soviet times, the actual ethno-political inequality of peoples in the USSR was gradually overcome, and participation of non-Russians in power structures grew systematically and even accelerated, and the role of Russians decreased accordingly. The increase in non-Russians’ share in governmental bodies was almost exclusively due to an increase in their ethnic status. By 1979, Russians had a very small majority in all government structures in the USSR as a whole, except for the legislative branch, which roughly corresponded to their higher share in the country’s population (50.8 % in 1989). However, the situation was different in the Union republics. Only in the Russian Federation did all peoples, Russian and non-Russian, participate in governmental bodies in proportion to their numbers and in full compliance with the democratic norm. In Belarus, Moldova, and Uzbekistan, titular ethnic groups were underrepresented, and Russians were overrepresented. In Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, and Estonia, the representation of Russians was below the democratic norm, and in nine republics it was higher, but despite this, they did not have a majority in any union republic. This situation developed as a result of the center’s national policy, which aimed at strengthening the authorities with national personnel, accelerating the modernization of the Union republics and raising the level of development in the lagging republics to the level of the most developed republics.

The article, on the example of Volyn, analyzes the activities of public organizations in the Ukrainian ethnic lands that became part of Poland and the Soviet Union after the signing of the Riga peace treaty. These lands were the reflection of the most tragic pages in the history of Ukraine. More than once, they have played an extraordinary role in the history of the entire Ukrainian people, which has been reflected in his fate. The defeat of national liberation competitions in 1917 - 1921 and the tragic consequences of these events for the Ukrainian statehood turned Volyn into a specific socio-political and geopolitical region. The events in these territories, as well as the policies of the governments of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and the USSR and the Second Commonwealth, were decisive for the Ukrainian population living on ethnic Ukrainian lands and those who found themselves in other countries. Our research suggests that the socio-economic processes in Volyn during the interwar period were an interesting social phenomenon when Ukrainians were immigrants in their ethnic lands among Ukrainians. The line of the Soviet-Polish border, which was the frontier of the opposition, attracted the most active participants in the national liberation struggle, who continued it under new conditions of statelessness, political and ideological pressure, persecution and repression by the smelling regimes. Work and activity in the interwar period of prominent political figures of the UNR era, religious, cultural and educational figures in the territory of Western Volyn, was of great importance not only for the population of the region, but also for the Ukrainian people.In the Volyn lands, the Orthodox Church had a huge influence on the people, Christian morality in the interwar period acted as the dominant ideology. No political party or NGO has had such an impact on the masses as the church. Understanding this, the Ukrainian clergy not only defended the Orthodox faith on both sides of the borders that divided Volhynia, but also nurtured national consciousness, language, and culture.

Relations between Russia and Turkey have gone through five centuries at different stages, sometimes in difficult wars and conflicts, sometimes in harmony and good relations. However, conditions changed in the eighteenth century, when the Ottoman Empire was weakened and disintegrated. Russia played an important role in cutting down parts of the Caucasus and Central Asia, as well as in reducing the boundaries of the Ottoman Empire, which was considered a great nation for centuries. At the end of the First World War, after the victory of the October Revolution of 1917 in Russia, Russian troops withdrew from the war fronts. The Bolshevik government exposed the secret clauses of the Sykes-Picot Agreement and concluded the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in 1918, with the Quadruple Alliance, led by Germany and the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire, like its German ally, took advantage of the withdrawal of Russian troops from the war fronts. In contrast to the agreement, attacks were launched on the Caucasus regions controlled by Russian Russia. However, following the emergence of the Turkish National Movement, led by Mustafa Kemal and the signing of the Sevre Treaty and there were changes in the war fronts, as in the political arena. Russia, which became Soviet Russia at that time, found a new friend and ally, which had common interests with Soviet Russia, against the Ottoman Empire, on the one hand, and Britain and France on the other. Both countries have benefited from this friendship and alliance. But at a time when the Kurds, especially in the Ottoman Kurdistan, had a chance to move towards achieving their goals and national rights, and at least making some progress in accordance with the provisions of the Sovereign Convention on the Rights of the Kurds. As the first country to recognize and establish diplomatic relations with Turkey with the help of the Kemalist Movement in various ways, Russia, as well as economic, industrial and mining assistance, became a great supporter of Turkey in international and diplomatic forums. All this, along with many other factors, helped the Republic of Turkey stand on its own feet. When the revolutions and movements against the injustice and tyranny of the Turks occurred in Northern Kurdistan in the 1920s and 1930s, Soviet Russia sided with all possible means, military and political, as well as the Turkish Republic. Which brutally suppressed these uprisings and every move of a Kurdish nationalist nature.

The article analyzes the reforms of the political system of Russia, starting with the revolution of 1905 and ending with the reforms of Boris Yeltsin in the 90s of the twentieth century. The author shows t that the political model that had developed in tsarist Russia by the beginning of the last century did not meet the needs and realities of that time and did not allow the country to develop dynamically. The inconsistency of the reforms proposed by Nicholas II, against the background of Russia’s unsuccessful participation in the First World War, led the country in 1917, first to the February and then the October revolutions, which ended the monarchy, proclaimed a republic, first bourgeois, and then Soviet. But even these reforms did not allow us to abandon the authoritarian form of government that reigned in the Soviet Union for more than 70 years. The reform initiatives of the 60s by N. Khrushchev and A. Kosygin, aimed at softening the current political and economic regime, also had little success. The most decisive attempt to transform this regime towards its greater effectiveness and sustainability were the reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev, known as “perestroika”. They assumed a radical transformation of the existing political and economic slowness by giving it real competitiveness, more active involvement of citizens in public and business activity, rejection of the ideological and political monopolism of the Communist Party. But the initiators of perestroika failed to implement all these ideas in a short five-year period. Many of their ideas were embodied in the reforms of Boris Yeltsin, the results of which were enshrined in the Constitution of the Russian Federation in 1993. But their practical implementation in the last decade of the twentieth century showed that so far Russia has not been able to completely abandon the ideas and principles of political monopolism, which do not allow the people to put into practice their socio-economic potential and ensure the country’s sustainable and progressive development.

The study of the periodization of the development of architecture of non-formal education institutions (hereinafter NFEI) combines the following aspects: pedagogical aspect (is the decisive one, according to the author), social, political, scientific and technical aspects that are inherent in the era. The author investigates the developmental periods of architecture of non-formal education institutions. The time limits studied in the article from 1917 to 1940 belong to the second stage of development of NFEIs and their architecture - the period of development and formation. Many scholars and educators note that in Ukraine the existence of non-formal education covers the following areas: extracurricular education; postgraduate education and adult education; civil education; school and student self-government; educational initiatives aimed at developing additional skills and abilities; universities of the third age that provide educational services to the elderly. Given the modern interpretation and combination into a single concept - "lifelong learning" - all forms of education, this article examines the formation of the architecture of additional education institutions for all ages, i.e. analyzes the conditions that led to the creation of appropriate architectural forms, and the main, according to the author, examples and characteristics. This stage of development of NFEIs and their architectural and typological links is the period after the First World War and the beginning of the Soviet Union era. The nature of functioning remains mainly compensatory and educational. During this period, a unique world-renowned system of extracurricular activities is developed. Educational institutions and institutions of additional education in public houses and public schools continue to function. Various professional associations were born in the Soviet Union, and clubs, houses, and palaces of culture began to be built for them. In addition, during this period in Ukraine, religious institutions are gradually losing their influence, and educational functions are transferred to other institutions: libraries, houses and palaces of culture and so on. The beginning of the youth movement, stations of young nature lovers are created. The organization of seasonal (summer) children's camps takes new pedagogical and ideological forms. At this stage, specialized institutions started to form that carried out extracurricular educational work in one specific direction: stations for young naturalists, young technicians, children's railways, children's theaters and cinemas, libraries, sports and music schools - specialized non-formal education institutions. Institutions of a wide profile continued to function and had an appropriate number of offices and workshops - clubs of various types.

The Comintern represented in the international relations of the inter-war period a transnational global force. It has been rightly described as an organisation with political program ambitions extending beyond national boundaries. Its sections were active in most countries of the globe. The involvement of the Comintern with the Baltic states and the activities of Baltic communists in the transnational framework of the organisation has remained almost unexplored. This article deals with the period from 1918 to 1935 and looks at the Baltic communists’ activities in the Comintern before the Great Purges in the USSR.Estonian and Latvian Communism grew out of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party, Lithuanian Communism out of Polish Social Democracy and the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party. At the time of the Comintern’s I Congress, Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian Bolsheviks had congregated into the national sections subject to RKP(b). The Soviet Balticum Project and the founding of the Comintern were reasons for a part of the Baltic bolsheviks belonging to the national sections of RKP(b) to declare that they had formed independent communist parties. The annulment of the Brest peace treaty in November of 1918 and the subsequent emergence of the Estonian Workers’ Commune, Soviet Latvia and Soviet Lithuania-Belarus Republic, or in other words, the soviet project’s duration in the Baltic provinces of the former Russian empire proved to be short-lived. The peace treaties between Soviet Russia and Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania signed in 1920 which became the foundation for the emergence of three independent states evoked sharp disagreements and demoralization in the ranks of the Baltic Bolsheviks. One part of them saw the Soviet Russia’s agreement to the peace treaty as treason, while the other justified the act with a comparison to the Brest peace treaty: Considering the existing power relationships and the Comintern-led international revolutionary movement, the peace agreements reached by the Soviet government are temporary and they will certainly encounter the same fate as the Brest peace treaty. The Stalin-led Peoples’ Commissariat of Nationalities played a decisive role in making it possible that bolsheviks of Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian extraction were among the founders and afterwards in the leadership of the Comintern as a transnational organization. A similar role played the Zinoviev-led Peoples’ Commissariat of Nationalities of the Union of the Commune of the Nordic Region. In the first of these Commissariats worked Mickevičius-Kapsukas, Alexa-Angaretis, Gailis and Pöögelmamm, in the latter Anvelt and Giedrys. The Latvian bolshevik/communist Stučka was a part of Lenin’s retinue, while his countryman, one of the most transnational Balts in the Comintern and the top level of AUCP(b), Knoriņš, was allied with Stalin. Becoming members of the Comintern, the Baltic communists declared that the leadership of the revolutionary movement in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania would belong wholly to the Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian communist parties. Ties to the Comintern were justified as follows: the communist party as an independent organization forms a direct tie with the Comintern; having gained the recognition of the Comintern, the communist party joins as an independent member the transnational union of communist parties and starts with the internationalism of the working class, which allows the globalization, together with Soviet Russia/Soviet Union, of the results of the October Revolution. The question of what were the Baltic communists’ relations with the RKP(b) received this declaration as answer: the Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian proletariat can proudly point to traditions and cooperation that has connected them to the Russian proletariat. Having joined the Comintern and directing from Soviet Russia / Soviet Union illegal communist activity in their homelands, the Baltic communist leaders remained members of RCP(b)/AUCP(b) and were in their actions subject to the direction of both that organization and of Comintern. They declared that they did not recognize the bourgeois Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and would greet the day when the bourgeois order was ended in these countries and union with Soviet Union took place. A role played here also the rhetoric about the internationalism of the working class and the dictatorship of the proletariat. The latter was to be achieved by taking part in the Comintern’s transnational campaigns. Among such campaigns were the peace movement, the fight against social democracy, the creation of joint and peoples’ fronts etc. The varied ideas and wishful thinking of the Baltic Bolsheviks came to an end with the start of repressions in 1936—1937 or the Great Purge.

The article examines the historical experience of preserving the territorial integrity of the state through the adoption of criminal laws. This is done using the example of two such attempts in the history of the Russian state (by the Provisional Government after the February Revolution of 1917 and during Gorbachev’s perestroika in connection with the decision of the union republics of the Baltic states to gain state independence). In both cases legislators passed strict criminal laws, which, however, proved unable to prevent violation of the territorial integrity of the state. For example, under the Provisional Government criminal liability was increased for violent encroachments on changing the existing state system in Russia or “to tear away any part of it from Russia” (the perpetrators were even subjected to life or urgent hard labor). The second experience, also unsuccessful, dates back to the spring of 1990, when the Baltic republics (Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia) declared their state independence. The extraordinary Third Congress of People’s Deputies of the USSR immediately reacted to this, recognizing these decisions as invalid as contrary to the Constitution of the USSR. The all-Union power, recorded in the decisions of the congresses of people’s deputies, almost openly announced to the republics that their withdrawal from the USSR was impossible and they had nothing to hope for in this sense. So, in an interview for Soviet and French television in November 1990, the President of the USSR, recognizing that the Constitution of the USSR provides for the right to self-determination up to the secession of a republic and referring to the existence of a special mechanism for this exit, at the same time said that he had come to the conclusion, the country cannot be divided. The outcome of this legislative “fight” is known and dates back to December 1991. What should a legislator learn from these historical lessons? Most importantly: he must firmly grasp that there are certain limits to the possibilities of criminal law to achieve political and socio-economic goals.

Abstract In this article, we argue that the discriminatory acts and laws that the Finnish government issued in the 1930s and 1940s to regulate vagrancy and impose labor obligations on the population were intended first and foremost to put pressure on the Finnish Roma, an ethnic minority consisting of an estimated number of 4,000 persons at that time. Although the irtolaislaki (Finnish Act on the Regulation of Vagrancy) of 1936 did not mention the Roma explicitly, its content and intention is comparable to a series of similar acts directed against them in Europe before and after World War II. These similarities show that Finland's vagrancy legislation cannot be fully understood without a European perspective because Roma policies tend to have a supranational character. Up to now, the historiography on Finland's Roma policies has rarely gone beyond its Finnish and Scandinavian interpretive scope (Gasche 2016, 17–19). Yet, even during WWII, the development in Finland was comparable to some other countries allied with Nazi Germany, as we will show. At the same time, however, the postwar development in Finland seems to be unique in international comparison. Unlike the Finnish Roma, the Roma in Germany and other (West) European countries began a Roma rights movement and started to demand protection within the majority society along with political equality. This activism was primarily based on a consciousness of the centuries-old discrimination against “Gypsies” practiced by the majority, which culminated in the Nazi genocide of Europe's Roma (Matras 1998; Rose 1987; Wippermann 2015, 138–50). The Finnish Roma, however, identified themselves with a positive narrative about Roma soldiers fighting in the Finnish Army for their home country (Ruohotie 2007, 12). This strategy was successful, we argue, since it perfectly fits into the official Finnish narrative about a brave and fair “war of continuation” that Finland fought against the Soviet Union independently and separately from Nazi Germany—a point of view questioned in recent years in light of the information on Finnish Waffen-SS and Wehrmacht volunteers involved in Nazi atrocities against Soviet civilians, including the Roma.

The emergence of Ukraine as an independent sovereign state is connected with important historical events that have significantly influenced its present. The purpose is to study the dynamics of the gradual historical development of the legal institutions of Ukraine, focusing on important historical events that significantly influenced the emergence and development of our country's statehood and its strengthening in the future. Historically, the development of local self-government in the territory of Ukraine-Russia is closely linked to the situation on these lands, which occurred after the Tatar-Mongol invasion of 1240 and the actual destruction of Kievan Rus. The distribution of Magdeburg law in Ukrainian cities is considered, which is related to the influence of the processes inherent in European states of that time. The importance of Philip Orlik's Constitution for the democratic development of both Ukraine and European countries is considered. This document is a source of law not only in Ukrainian but also in European history and is important both in terms of Ukraine's internal development and its impact on the processes of becoming democratic European countries. In legal terms, the importance is to solve one of the most important issues - to justify the role of representative power as a prototype of the future Ukrainian parliament. It is emphasized that the most significant events concerning the establishment of Ukraine as a sovereign independent state occur in its recent history: after the First World War 1914 - 1918, when Ukraine became an independent state; as a result of the collapse of the USSR in the late twentieth century and the final creation of independent states on the ruins of the Soviet Union, which marked the beginning of a new era of Ukrainian statehood. The formation in April 1917 of the Central Rada as the highest territorial authority in Ukraine was the source of a number of legal documents on the way to the independence of Ukraine, four Universals were adopted, which gradually brought Ukraine closer to an independent state. Universals of the Ukrainian Central Rada are political and legal documents of programmatic character of 1917-1918, defining changes in the state and legal status of Ukrainian lands of the former Russian Empire. The most important milestone on the path to the formation of an independent Ukrainian state was the adoption by the Verkhovna Rada of the Ukrainian SSR on the eve of the final collapse of the Soviet Union a well-known document of historical significance - the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine and the adoption of the Act of Declaration of Ukraine on August 24, 1991. It is concluded that on the long road of gradual historical and legal development in Ukraine law has been formed as a sign of its statehood and which is of great national value. Keywords: formation of the state and legal institutions, Magdeburg law, Constitution of Phillip Orlik, creation of independent state.

The article offers an overview of modern historical data on the origins, causes of World War II, the decisive role of the USSR in its victorious end, and also records the main results and lessons of World War II.Hitler's Germany was the main cause of World War II. Nazism, racial theory, mixed with far-reaching geopolitical designs, became the combustible mixture that ignited the fire of glob­al conflict. The war with the Soviet Union was planned to be waged with particular cruelty.The preconditions for the outbreak of World War II were the humiliating provisions of the Versailles Peace Treaty for the German people, as well as the attitude of the "Western de­mocracies" to Russia after 1917 and the Soviet Union as an outcast of world development. Great Britain, France, the United States chose for themselves a policy of ignoring Moscow's interests, they were more likely to cooperate with Hitler's Germany than with Soviet Russia. It was the "Munich Agreement" that became the point of no return to the beginning of the Second World War. Under these conditions, for the USSR, its own security and the conclusion of a non-aggression pact with Germany began to come to the fore, defining the "spheres of interests" of the parties in order to limit the advance of German troops towards the Soviet borders in the event of German aggression against Poland. The non-aggression pact gave the USSR just under two years to rebuild the army and consolidate its defensive potential and pushed the Soviet borders hundreds of kilometers westward. The signing of the Pact was preceded by the failure in August 1939 of the negotiations between the military mis­sions of Britain, France and the USSR, although Moscow took the Anglo-French-Soviet nego­tiations with all seriousness.The huge losses of the USSR in the summer of 1941 are explained by the following circum­stances: before the war, a large-scale modernization of the Red Army was launched, a gradu­ate of a military school did not have sufficient experience in managing an entrusted unit by June 22, 1941; the Red Army was going to bleed the enemy in border battles, stop it with short counterattacks by covering units, carry out defensive operations, and then strike a de­cisive blow into the depths of the enemy's territory, so the importance of a multi-echeloned long-term defense in 1941 was underestimated by the command of the Red Army and it was not ready for it; significant groupings of the Western Special Military District were drawn into potential salients, which was used by the Germans at the initial stage of the war; Stalin's fear of provoking Hitler to start a war led to slowness in making the most urgent and necessary decisions to bring troops to combat readiness.The Allies delayed the opening of the second front for an unreasonably long time. They, of course, achieved outstanding success in the landing operation in France, however, the en­emy's losses in only one Soviet strategic operation in the summer of 1944 ("Bagration") are not inferior, and even exceed, the enemy’s losses on the second front. One of the goals of "Bagration" was to help the Allies.Soviet soldiers liberated Europe at the cost of their lives. At the same time, Moscow could not afford to re-establish a cordon sanitaire around its borders after the war, so that anti- Soviet forces would come to power in the border states. The United States and Great Britain took all measures available to them to quickly remove from the governments of Italy, France and other Western states all the left-wing forces that in 1944-1945 had a serious impact on the politics of their countries.

Despite the attention that has been given to the role of economic sanctions in Japan's decision to launch the Pacific war, Australia's decision to ban iron ore exports to Japan has been given little attention, even though this was one of the earliest economic sanctions imposed onimperial Japan in the 1930s. To a degree this neglect can be traced to a preoccupation with the actions and objectives of the great powers and a failure to consider the opportunities available to small nations to take significant initiatives. The following article traces the origins of the iron ore embargo back to 1934 when Essington Lewis, the Managing Director of the Broken Hill Proprietary Company Ltd (BHP), Australia's iron and steel monopoly, visited Japan and subsequently advocated the development of an Australian armaments industry to counter probable Japanese aggression in the Pacific. In Japan Lewis crossed paths with J. G. Latham, the Minister for External Affairs, who was leading the Australian government's Eastern Mission. Latham returned to Australia with conclusions that differed fundamentally from those of Lewis, who came up with a plan to take advantage of Japan's dependence on imports of iron ore and other iron products to finance investment in Australian armaments manufacturing. In explaining this outcome the article discusses interactions between a number of conflicts: between Latham and Lewis; between the British Treasury and the Foreign Office; and between the Japanese army and navy. In London the Treasury wanted to focus on the European theatre, while also holding down military spending in order to achieve balanced budgets. The Treasury believed that the way to best defend British commercial interests in Asia was to appease Japan. On the other hand, the Foreign Office was committed to the protection of British interests in the Far East by a more forceful diplomacy, although it was only willing to counten-ance behavior short of military action. Consistent with Latham's recommendations to his government, the emerging consensus in London was that while a settlement in China would help to safeguard British interests there, as long as the Japanese were bound up in their war in China they were less likely to attack British colonies in Southeast Asia and the Pacific. In 1936 this orientation was challenged by a shift in the balance of power in Tokyo away from the army and in favor of the navy. Although priority continued to be placed on winning the war in China and guarding against an attack from the Soviet Union, now the navy's plan for southward expansion was given more careful consideration and credibility.

Abstract The article examines the ideas and arrangements referred to as nonterritorial autonomy (NTA) in the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and the post-Soviet states. Many scholars regard NTA as a theoretical breakthrough and as a way to drastically rearrange diversity policies. The author seeks to clarify whether NTA had been a groundbreaking innovation and an area of political contestations. Two short periods of NTA-related initiatives after 1917 and in the late 1980s–1990s may look like attempts (albeit ineffective) to replace the earlier forms of diversity governance. The author shows that the ideas of group societal separateness, differential treatment of individuals, group agency, and cohesiveness, as well as a group’s running of its internal affairs, were present in varying degrees in imperial, Soviet, and post-Soviet governments’ thoughts and practices. Academia and civil society were also appropriating and developing these views, and group self-rule on a nonterritorial basis was their logical extension. However, the practical implementation was, in most cases, on a top-down basis, and group agency and self-rule were affirmed mostly rhetorically. The continuity of discourses and practices demonstrates that NTA was an integral part of “normal” and broad ethnopolitical developments across the major historic divides in Northern Eurasia.

Autonomous Republics, although situated within the borders of a state, have the right to govern themselves within their own borders. The most concrete indicator of a state’s autonomy is its flag, its national language, its national culture and its national education. In this context, the language and education policies come into play in the building of a new political union and a national identity. For example, Gagauzia (or Gagauzia Autonomous Region), which was shaped by many historical periods from the Ottoman Empire (from the 16th century until 1812) to the Russian Empire (1721-1917) and to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (1922-1991), is nowadays within the borders of the Republic of Moldova. It is an autonomous republic with the right to self-government. This paper aims to analyze the language and education policies determined and applied for the Gagauz Turks in Moldova. It is possible to argue that there is a relationship between the notions of “autonomous republic” and “language and education policy.” In the autonomous republic, this policy will be described as a policy-based not only on the national identity, but also the plurilingualism.

Some aspects of the confrontation between Armenian and Azerbaijani historians in the assessments of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict are highlighted. The roots of this conflict should be sought in the events of the early twentieth century related to the mutual pogroms and murders of the Armenian-Christian and Turkic-Muslim population of the Transcaucasian territories of the Russian Empire. The Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict had its continuation during the events of 1917−1920, as well as at the end of the existence of the Soviet Union. It was during the Russian revolution that the first war broke out between Armenians and Azerbaijanis for the Nagorno-Karabakh. The war became a national affair of both nations, as they took part in it as regular and paramilitary units. With the collapse of the Soviet Union the conflict not only escalated but also turned back into war. Under current conditions this conflict has acquired geopolitical significance. All these events have become a stumbling block for Armenian and Azerbaijani historians. Using history facts, Transcaucasian scholars, are trying to prove the superiority of their peoples and their right to own certain lands, including Nagorno-Karabakh. The connection between government policy and the position of historians of both countries depend on the results of their researches. The prerequisites for establishing a constructive dialogue between Armenian and Azerbaijani researchers in the context of a possible political solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh problem are shown.

In an attempt to stem the escalation of the Spanish Civil War to other countries, France and Britain proposed the signing of a non-intervention agreement with other nations, including Germany, Italy, Portugal, and the Soviet Union, all of which had definite stakes in the outcome of the conflict. Compared with these other countries, Portugal’s involvement was more discreet, but by no means less critical. Taking into account its role in the war and the circumstances in which Salazar tried to stay ahead of the game, this study serves two objectives. The first one is to understand the ways in which Salazar assessed the role of Britain in the Non-Intervention Committee from September 1936 to July 1937, notably through his Notes and Speeches (2016). The second objective, still based on the same documents, is to examine how he depicted the Anglo-Portuguese relations and the Alliance in the first year of the Spanish Civil War, a period marked by the transition from a position of apparent neutrality and impartiality to a position where he openly champions the nationalist cause as the only way to stop the progress of communism in Europe. The tipping point was the attempt on his life on 4 July 1937. In his speech at the national assembly two days later, he claims that he does not fear the hatred that his critics in Britain bare him and that Portugal, though still cherishing the Alliance, must be able to steer its own course and live up to its political principles.

Российская гуманитарная деятельность периода Гражданской войны на территориях, подконтрольных антибольшевистским режимам, и в эмиграции является малоизученной областью отечественной исторической науки, интерес к которой в среде профессиональных историков не ослабевает. Статья посвящена изучению источников различного происхождения, позволяющих сформировать источниковую базу исследования российской гуманитарной деятельности: от фондов Российского общества Красного Креста в Сибири до воспоминаний деятелей Белого движения, от документов Министерства снабжения и продовольствия Омского правительства и его местных органов, касавшихся ситуации с поставками хлеба, до протоколов с именами репрессированных в Крыму сестер милосердия РОКК, хранящихся в Отраслевом государственном архиве Службы безопасности Украины. Особое внимание обращено на богатейшую коллекцию документов Русского заграничного исторического архива в Праге (РЗИА), переданного нашей стране в 1945 г. Корпус документов из состава Пражского архива хранится сегодня в Государственном архиве Российской Федерации. В результате проведенного исследования автор пришел к выводу, что в условиях деградации государственных и муниципальных институтов, развала политической жизни, острого гражданского конфликта, экономического кризиса, охватившего всю территорию бывшей Российской империи, дефицита предметов первой необходимости и продуктов питания российская гуманитарная деятельность не только не была свернута, но и пережила на коротком отрезке времени расцвет. Поэтому определение и описание корпуса источников для изучения этой исторической области по-прежнему остается актуальной задачей.The bulk of sources on Russian humanitarian activity during the Civil War period had been accumulated in the collections of the Prague Archive, a collection of documents that originated in Prague as an institution with the Cultural and Educational Department of the Prague Zemgor in 1923. Later it was called the Russian Historical Archive Abroad in Prague. Thanks to the financial support of the Czechoslovak government and a developed system of representatives, the Archive annually replenished its collection of documents that reflected the activities of Russian emigrants in different countries of the world. And if documents of the government of Admiral Kolchak and his military staff are presented in a fair number, the funds of personal origin are extremely small. Thus, documentary collections, allowing to at least fragmentarily complement the canvas of Russian humanitarian activity during the Civil War are of great value. The Fund of M.L. Kondakov, a representative of the Russian Red Cross Society during the rule of Admiral Kolchak in 1918, contains draft documents and personal correspondence of the author on the Russian Red Cross Societys recovery humanitarian activity in Siberia and the Far East. Among the few funds of personal origin that preserve sources on the history of humanitarian activity during the Civil war and emigration, is the Fund of Vissarion Gurevich, a lawyer and a public figure, who was a member of the Siberian Zemstvo and City Union and a member of the Economic Meetings under the Chief Representative of Admiral Kolchak during the war. Domestic archives have more funds of personal origin of political and public figures, who, to some extent, participated in the activities of the governments of A.I. Denikin and later P.N. Wrangel and managed to evacuate and take out their papers during the Crimean evacuation. The situation with the supply of bread was reflected in the documents of the Ministry of Food Supply and Consumption and its local authorities, as well as the various organisations involved in the procurement. Therefore, the documentary materials created during the daily activities of these agencies are an important source for studying both the humanitarian and financial policies of the White Siberian authorities and the economic history of the region during this period. The Sectoral State Archive of the Security Service of Ukraine has a significant array of documents for the study of Russian humanitarian activity. In 1998, a collection of documents The Legislative Activity of the White Governments of Siberia (JuneNovember 1918) was published. Attempts to carry out human rights activities in Soviet Russia, as part of the ceneral humanitarian canvas of the post-revolutionary era, are reflected in the publication Two Episodes from the Life of Literary Organisations: Report of Deputies of Literary Organisations on a Trip to Moscow in the Case of Arrested Writers and Scholars. The source tells about the events of 2829 August 1919 when the leaders of the so-called National Centre were arrested in Moscow and the lists of members of this organisation were seized.