The article briefly analyzes the problem of correlation between historical and artistic comprehension of reality. The investigated aspect of the problem is the place and role of the language in historical research on the basis of the views of postmodernism representatives in the United States and Western European countries historiography of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The theoretical basis for the analysis is the thesis of history as a science, and not a synthesis of scientific and artistic principles, and with the decisive role of the latter. Another basis for the analysis is the principle of objective knowledge, incompatible with the thesis of the pluralism of truths, as the norm of the results of cognition. The work briefly analyzes the views of individual postmodernism representatives, including Н. White, the most famous of them. The analysis of this problem has a creative and specific historical significance, including the field of teaching the university course "Theory and Methodology of History."

In this article the authors analyze the studies devoted to the personality and the professional activities of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Empire of the XIX century, сhancellor A. M. Gorchakov. On the basis of the problem-chronological method the article compares the views and researchers’ assessments of A. M. Gorchakov's activities in the domestic historiography of XX and early XXI centuries. The authors conclude that, despite the change in political paradigms that influenced the interpretation of the past events, the assessment of A.M. Gorchakov’s activities by Soviet and Russian historians, however, has much in common. Mainly, they emphasize the long-term fruitful activities of the Chancellor as a major statesman, his constant devotion to serving his Fatherland as the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry in a very difficult time for Russia, after the defeat in the Crimean war.

Absract. The article provides a brief historical overview of monographs and other scientific works of I.G. Zhiriakov, PhD in History, where chief issues of the newest history of the first and the second Austrian Republics are scrutinized. The author concludes that Jiryakov’s impact into the development of the mentioned historical science flow is truly significant. Scientific activity of I.G.Zhiriakov at the Department of New, Contemporary History and Methodology of MGOU without exaggeration makes this department one of the leading scientific centers of the Russian Austria-studying science.

Among the scholars there coexist several hypotheses about the origin of the Scythians. According to Assyro-Babylonian written sources the beginning of the Scythian history is rather conditionally defined within the framework of the VII BC. The emergence of Iranian-speaking peoples (including Scythians) in Eurasia is associated with the disintegration of the proto-Iraniаn community. This event is dated differently within the limits of 20-13th BC. The author follows the hypothesis that links the beginning of Scythian history with the 13th BC. In author’s opinion, the facts that the ancestors of the Scythians Tsars’ lived beyond the Araks River (=the Uzboy, the channel of the Amu-Darya, flowed in ancient time into the Caspian Sea) most consistent with the data of archeology and written sources.

Historical and archaeological data suggest that the history of the Cimmerians and Scythians in Eastern Europe began with the 13th century BCE migrations spanning the area from the Yenisei to the Danube and causing the disintegration of the proto-Iranian community and the ensuing variously directed migrations of filial Iranian tribes. The westward migration led to the emergence of the Cimmerian union west of the Dnieper (Babino culture) and that of Scythian Farmers (Timber-grave culture) east of the Dnieper. The Cimmerians, continuing their westward movement, were confronted with the growing influence of the Thracians on the Middle Danube. This process, first marked by the Borodino Hoard, led to the formation of the Thraco-Cimmerian union and its southeastern expansion up to the Caucasus. As a result, certain Iranian tribes were displaced east of the Volga and eventually east of the Ural. Their military clashes with local tribes in the trans-Uralian steppes culminated in the migration of the Royal Scythians from the Aral region to the Caucasus and eventually in the conflict between Scythians and Cimmerians.

The article is dedicated to the analysis of the episodes of swords presentation in the Icelandic King Saga. The general rules and conditions in which the transfer of swords took place and its consequences for those involved into it are revealed. In the course of the study it was established that the procedure was of special ritual importance. It formed connections between the people involved into the process. The result of this work is the assumption that there was a special form of oath, reflected in the King Saga. It means that an ancient ritual practice was involved into the needs of the institution of royal power in the early medieval Norwegian society.

The research covers the ways public-private partnership (PPP) mechanism was applied for the colonial expansion of European powers into the remote regions of Asia. The main part of the article contains the analysis of the activities undertaken by the Dutch East India Company - Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (VOC) in the territory of modern Indonesia and other states of the region. The prerequisites to establishment of the VOC, capital formation procedures, managerial regulations, and the military component operation are explored. The VOC has influenced social and cultural sphere of host territories. The colonization projects of the 17th century have been compared with the interests of modern multinational enterprises to invest in the least developed regions of the world. The author concludes on the symbiotic nature of VOC’s state and private components, which had assured decisive competitive advantages during her golden age. But later the PPP mechanism had determined the inability of the company to adapt to the changing business and social environment.

The topic is relevant and is of interest in the light of current trends in international relations, when the United States have unleashed economic aggression and are increasing the scale of political and information-sanctions war against the Russian Federation. Quite naturally there are some historical associations. In 1918, a hundred years ago, the United States began an armed intervention against Soviet Russia and subjected it to an economic blockade. The pro-imperialist anti-Soviet course of the conservative leadership of the national trade union center of the United States - the American Federation of Labor (AFL) did not correspond to the sentiments of the broad trade union masses. Many influential trade unions, affiliated with the AFL, actively sought the normalization of the inter-state relations and the restoration of the economic ties between the two countries. Advanced conscious workers and trade union activists took an active part in the struggle against the intervention, for the reversal of the economic blockade and for the recognition of Soviet Russia. The movement of solidarity under the slogan "Hands off from Soviet Russia!" went down in history as one of the brightest episodes of a broad socio-political movement in the United States for democracy and universal progress.

The article studies the activities of the Soviet military administration in Germany in 1945-1947. The author pays attention to the circumstances these activities were performed after the military occupation. The differences from the activities of the antifascist coalition are also stressed. On the basis of atchive materials and some other documents the researcher comes to the conclusion that inspite all the difficulties and hardships of that time and possible mistakes of the first stage of occupation, the activities of the Soviet military administration was quite successful.

The article deals with one of the most significant events of the second half of the twentieth century - the Cuban missile crisis. During the crisis the humanity faced the threat of nuclear catastrophe. The U.S. policy for many years had been concentrated against Cuba, the U.S. Congress also took an active part in the Cuban issue. The author perfoms the study in a double perspective analyzing the Cuban missile crisis ,on the one hand, and the reaction of the U.S. Congress to the events in Cuba, on the other. The article focuses on the position and actions of the Congress in the period of exacerbation of the Cuban missile crisis, and the causes and consequences of the crisis.

The article considers the Russian-Indian cooperation in power industry at the modern stage. Energy security has become one of the priority directions of the politics of the majority of the countries, especially such states as India and China, facing energy resource problems. Russia and India have close relations in the implementation of “atoms for peace” projects. Such key Russian-Indian energy programs are referred to the construction of Indian atomic stations “Kundankulam” and “Ruppur” that contribute not only to the improvement of social and economic and environmental conditions and to the development of science in these states, but also to the reinforcement of political and economic relations between Russia and India.

The article discusses the concept of conspiracy as the basis for the events of February 1917. The authors prove the failure of the arguments of those who supported the version of the plot that led to the collapse of the monarchy. The methods of the source analysis and historical reconstruction are used to prove it. The authors sate there was social psychosis at the turn of 1916-1917, which contributed to the rumors about the preparation of the conspiracy. The authors conclude that there was not enough time to organize the plot properly,so the events of 1917 were the result of spontaneous popular action.

The article analyzes the struggle of the All-Russian Cheka bodies with profiteering. This topic is insufficiently explored in the Russian historiography. The author shows the organizational and legislative development of the struggle against profiteering. On the basis of a broad source base presented, including cases, both by the local Cheka and the All-Russian Cheka, the specifics of these activities of the state security bodies at all levels of the territorial and administrative division of Soviet Russia are considered. The influence of the rejection from the old economical principles and of the industrial-geographical factor on the fight against profiteering is shown.

The article is devoted to the analysis of social communications and public behavior models of the population of the Novgorod land during the great Patriotic war. The main source was the archive documents placed in the 3rd volume of the collection "the land of Novgorod in the era of social upheaval, 1941-1945". The study of the published sources with the involvement of methodological approaches of domestic and foreign historical science enabled to formulate and justify the concept assuming the Soviet society of wartime to be a traditional one, but using technology of modern to protect their own future. Novgorod land can be considered to be an example of a typical model of social communications of the USSR in the period of 1941-1945. In the final conclusion the authors insist on the need to update the successful historical experience for the development needs of Russia in the present and in the historical perspective.

The studied topic is of important historical and political value. The author exposed the regularity of the struggle measures against Lithuanian nationalists in Soviet Lithuania in the final stage of the war. The fight against the Lithuanian nationalist underground and Hitler's agents and saboteurs in Soviet Lithuania showed that the activities of the USSR law enforcement agencies in the Lithuanian SSR were legal and correct in relation to the population of Lithuania and ensured the state security of the Lithuanian SSR and the USSR as a whole.

The purpose of this article is to show a noticeable activation of public life in the USSR in the autumn of 1956. The author analyzed the body of texts including recently introduced declassified information bulletins on public sentiment, directed solely on the leader of the Moscow party organization of that time. The analysis showed that the extraordinary revival of the political activity of the masses was accompanied not only by condemnations of bureaucracy and the interference into the affairs of neighboring countries (including that military one into Hungary), but also by individual attempts to formalize these sentiments by creating circles that are not controlled by official agitation and propaganda structures. The conclusion is made that all this very much frightened the Soviet tops and made them remember about the coersive methods they used to deal with the lower classes.

The article discusses the role of architecture in housing construction in the USSR. The author analyzes the experience of France in solving the housing crisis in the USSR. The author examines the practice of designing and construction in France which influenced the choice of methods of mass housing construction in the USSR. The author examines the restructuring of the housing policy in the USSR, when the typification of projects, industrialization of house construction, efficiency and standardization of construction, solved the problem of acute housing crisis in the USSR.

The purpose of the article is to identify the elements of guidance experience in the introduction of science in agricultural production in the 1970s. The study of this experience makes it possible to identify its positive elements and recommend it for implementation. The author has studied a significant amount of archival documents, including current archives. Their analysis made it possible to identify a comprehensive approach of the political and economic structures of Stavropol and Krasnodar Krai to solving the problems of intensifying agricultural production by developing agricultural science and introducing its results into production. The analysis of the documents made it possible to identify the features of the Soviet system of industrial management, which relied on specific features of the Russian civilization, which has certain tendencies for centralization. The author’s conclusion is in expressing his belief that the subjective factor - the methods of leadership - plays a significant role in the development of agricultural production.

This paper discusses the issue of the image of Russia as presented in the political rhetoric of the three right-wing Eurosceptic parties of Scandinavia: the Danish People’s Party (DF), the Progress Party (FrP) of Norway, and the Sweden Democrats (SD). The author analyses the parties’ programs, official statements and texts published in the party sources as well as in the regular media devoted to various aspects to the attitude to the country (political, economic, security contexts and others). These parties share similar attitude to “Putin’s Russia”, considering it to be potentially dangerous to the region and Europe as a whole. The differences in the parties’ rhetoric are connected with the factors counterbalancing Russian threat. Among them, first of all, is the need for joint Russian-Western efforts in struggling the international Islamic terrorism and mutually beneficial trade.

The paper studies the influence of Russia on the international economy with the use of hidtorical and systemic approaches. The question of how a country with a source-based econmy has become one of the main actors of the modern world politics is answered. The definition of Russia as a phenomenon in the world politics is given in the beginning of the article. Its features as a specific actor of the world politics are singled out. The article shows how the country was qualitatively changing the world politics in the course of the twentieth century. Historical contradictions of Russian modernization are mentioned. Factors that turned Russia into the leading actor of the international politics are analyzed. The authors come to the conclusion that the phenomenon of Russia is the result of its historical development, when the modernization of economics was considerably lagging behind the modernization of the army, administration, education and politics. Russia has become a special actor in the world politics in the result of the system functioning that includes the export of strategic raw materials; the activation of human capital; the policy of strengthening Russia's international importance; creation, production and use of high-tech conventional weapons. The conditions for the functioning of this system are created by the possession of nuclear weapons; huge territory and population; patriotism; the political system of Russia.

The article gives a presentation of the factors, consequences and measures to overcome the global crisis. The author showed its features, rooted in the deep "tectonic" processes and therefore causing the cardinality of the reforms designed to build a new architecture of the world socio-economic organism. The reliance on the self-organizing power of the market is irrelevant to the enormity of the coming changes. It is the universality of the problems initiated by the current consequences of the crisis that determines the place and role of states and international organizations in creating conditions for further progressive development. When there is a significant cultural, scientific and educational "reserve", modern Russia, having been significantly deindustrialized in the 90-ies of the last century, has a real chance to reduce the existing lagging behind from the developed economies. It will move in the direction of "creative economy".

The purpose of this article is to carry out a critical analysis of the ideological and theoretical attitudes presented in the environmental study of the “greens” in Germany. According to the position of the authors, their practical implementation will contribute to the solution of environmental problems inherent in modern society, minimizing the risks and destructions determined by environmental factors. Studying the range of the indicated problems, the authors are guided by the provisions of the dialectics on contradiction as a source of development. The principles of historicism and scientific objectivism are also taken into consideration. It is concluded that despite the presence of utopian provisions in the "greens"’ doctrine, it can be used in the development of environmental policy principles and directions. On the basis of the analysis of the ecological doctrine of the "greens" provisions are formulated. Their practical implementation will help to reduce the tendency to risk in the society.

The present article reviews the role of NGO as one of the structural elements of the civil society in formulating and participating in the anti-corruption policies in modern Russia. Due ot its role as a social unit which takes active part in the administrative activities supervision, the civil society as a whole, and NGO in particular, has become more widespread and more influential both in the world and in Russia. The article also presents a brief excursus of the civil society’s perception by the political thought in various historical periods. The analysis of NGOs typology and forms of government-NGO cooperation in combating corruption is performed. Besides, the functions of NGOs and civil society in the theory of “policy cycle” are presented.

The article is devoted to the analysis of the problem of actualizing in the fielf of modern policy of Russia such categories as: the system of values, tradition and national identity.The basic principles of Russia's policy are formulated with the use of axiological approach to the analisis of the directions and spheres of the national policy. Besides, the works of specialists and philosophers in the sphere of security policy were analysed, the results of the analisis taken into consideration. The authors consider the system of values, tradition and identity to be the result of nation-wide consensus between the society and the state. It becomes possible only through supporting the discussion of the society values both in the organs of power and in the society as a whole. The basic principles of state policy in this sphere should be the principles of the historical subjectivity of the Russian state, stability of its intellectual- mental sovereignity and recognition of the structural role of the “Russian” factor for the Russian poliethnic civilization.

The article analyzes the main problem points in the foreign policy orientation on the Balkan countries. As a result of comparing the positions of these countries, as well as the EU and NATO, on the issues of the Balkans integration into Europe, the study of Russia's current role in the subregion, the study of a number of documents, the author comes to the following conclusions. Due to the pressure, exerted by the EU and NATO, there is certain tension when the countries of the subregion try to follow a multi-vector approach and develop cooperation with Russia. The governments of a number of countries have already sacrificed or are about to sacrifice their national interests for the European and Euro-Atlantic integration. The author notes that, despite the fact that Russia's influence in the region is growing, the Balkan countries are not in a position to adhere to an independent foreign policy, and act in the wake of the EU and NATO policies.

In recent years the relationship within Russia-China-Japan triangle has become an increasingly important factor of the political situation at the Asia-Pacific region. Being important parts of the regional subsystem, Japan and China largely determine the balance of power in East Asia. Taking into account the specifics of these countries relations, the existence of unresolved conflicts between them, Russia seeks to maintain stability in the region, including participation in joint projects - economic, military, scientific, etc. Constructive dialogue in the triangle of Russia-China-Japan meets the geopolitical goals of our country. In the context of comparative politics, the article examines the trends of the Russian-Chinese and Russian-Japanese interrelations, as well as their hierarchy in Russia's strategic interests. The authors come to the conclusion that a "post-West" model of intercountry relations is gradually being formed in the region. This model takes into account the interests, features of the socio-political and economic system of its member states, and also helps to smooth out conflicts between the parties, and contributes to world development as a whole.

The article examines the phenomenon of Marxism in the projection of macrohistorical processes, the connection of challenges and problems of the nineteenth century with the actual agenda of the present. The conclusion about the increase of request in modern society for reconsideration of K. Marx’s creative heritage is drawn. The discursive space of Marxist schools is represented, and the difference in their interpretation of Marxism is shown. The article focuses on the question of Marxism’s attitude to religion and the national question. The author traces the value origins of Marxism in Christian axiology. The explanation is given through the reconstruction of the historical context of several Russophobic assessments of Marx's Russian history. The basic provisions of Marxism axiology are differentiated from the point of view of their acceptability and unacceptability for projects of the future in the development of Russia and the world.

The article deals with the problems of historical experience of creating the theory of historical process on the basis of Marxism, its impact on the appearance of socio-political technologies of historical development management. The author has carried out a review analysis of metaconceptsof history that nowadaysare widespreadin socio-historical studies, epistemological and ideological problems of the creation of modern theory of history, the social and practical need to create a theory of history and the development of social technologies. The analysis of the historical use of social technologies has shown the possibility of both destructive and creative sides of use. The author concludes that it is necessary to combine theoretical, moral and historical experience of solving problems for forming a humane project of a fair humanistic future.

The article presents an attempt to single out the differences between the attitudes of the classical Marxism to the social-democratic movement of the XIX century and the attitudes of the modern social-democratism to the Marxist doctrine. Besides, the reasons for the contradiction, that separated these two phenomena with rather similar theoretical bases, are formulated. The author analysed the basic works of Marxism’s classics that mainly criticize the social-democratic movement (Germany, end of XIX c.), as well as the works of modern politologists and historians where the main reasons for both the points of contact and the conflict between social-democratism and Marxism on the edge of XXI century were substantiated. The statement that there are some possibilities for Marxism to revive was empirically proved. But it can be revived only if it reforms itself according to the demands of modern social-economic and political situation in the world like the social-democratic doctrine could have done it. Theoretical and practical importance of the problem is that theoretical conclusions and the results of the practical activities of the social-democratic movement in Russia, CIS countries and Western Europe are being summarized, as well as the theses, contributing to futher development of both social-democratism and Marxism with the offered vectors of development, are being fo rmulated. The article is addressed to historians and politologists who are engaged into the study of political movements’ history and into the political practicing.