The round table is dedicated to the discussion of the problems of the concept of a new unified text-book on the history of Russia for secondary schools. The participants’ statements at the round table include the analysis of the most important, acute and controversial questions of the concept: whether it should be a unified concept or a unified text-book, the theoretical grounds for interpreting the historical process in the content of the concept, the role of Russia in the world history, everyday life in depicting the past, the concept of the text-book and the problems of historical consciousness, and others. The participants of the round table are Doctors of Historical Sciences V.E. Bagdasaryan (MSRU), O.Volobuyev (MSRU), A.A. Danilov (Publishing house «Prosveshcheniye»), V.V. Zhuravlev (MSRU), A.V. Repnikov (RSASPH), N.I.Smolenski (MSRU)

The article summarizes the results of the students’ project “Perfect Party of Russia”, conducted with the support of the Moscow regional branch of the Russian Society of Political Scientists. The aim of the project was to detect the “perfect” qualities of the Russian political parties and their leaders through the public opinion polls in Russia and through the Internet voting. The article contains the results of the empirical research and recommendations for party building in contemporary Russia.

The article deals with the phenomenon of state political symbolism and its impact on the political environment and social integrative processes in Russia. Special attention is paid to some theoretical issues of forming some political symbols and their correspondence to material signs. The interdisciplinary nature of the research is meant for studying the political problem itself and its linguistic and cultural, epistemological and aesthetic perspectives. The authors make an attempt to reveal the social and communicative processes that influence the process of forming a symbol and its functioning.

The article considers the factors determining the specific features of the mechanism of political decisions adoption in Russia. Besides, the influence of destabilizing factors, having political character, on the national security of the country is noted. The author notes that to assess the efficiency of the mechanism of the political decisions adoption it is important to analyze the factors of stability in political sphere.

The present article considers the specific features and the basic variants of solving poverty problems. The result of the analysis shows that the social state policy has a variable character, and the choice of schemes for solving poverty problems is ambiguous. While analyzing the theory of a social state the author uses the non-traditional critical approach which focuses attention on the fact that the policy of a social state in most cases has palliative character and is based on social control, legitimation and maintenance of capitalism, instead of its transformation.

In the article an attempt is made to give views of English-speaking historians on the direction and results of Arabs’ raids to Azerbaijan, the flexible policy of the Mihranid dynasty, the role of Caucasian Albania in Arab-Khazar confrontation. The author pays special attention to the fact that Arabs’ raids didn’t result in immediate establishment of Arab domination in Azerbaijan. The administrative-territorial system of Transcaucasian domain of the caliphate is also studied.

The article covers the source study aspect of historical researches on the issues of customs, which is vital both for modern Russia and for the pre-revolutionary one. Using materials of Yarensky, Pustozersky and Solvychegodsky districts of the XVII first half of the XVIII century, the author defines the typology and the information potential of the sources which are of interest for studying them through regional approach to the history of customs of Russia in the period of this institution formation and large-scale reforming.

The article analyzes the social and political aspects of the historical development of the post-war West Germany in the works of the famous West German historian and Marxist Wolfgang Abendroth and his followers. The article considers the main milestones of forming the concept and the basic works of the representatives of the Marburg school of historiography of Germany. The author presents a brief overview of Abendroth’s impact on the emergence of the Marxist direction in the historiography of the Federal Republic of Germany. The author analyses the researcher’s theory on the essence of the labour movement, of the socialist theory, of the status of the classes in the West German society after the World War II.

The article deals with domestic and foreign historiography of disarmament in the So-viet/Russian-American relations in 1969-2012. The author states that there are certain stages of study and review of the disarmament process and the most pressing issues, which are the main subject of study of domestic and foreign scholars. The article concludes that domestic and foreign authors do not use the complex approach to consider the problem of disarmament of the USSR/Russia and the U.S., based on the unity of the Soviet-American and Russian-American period of arms reduction.

The article is devoted to the analysis of the historiography of the interaction between the state authorities and the banking sector in the crisis period at the end of the 20th century. The author concludes that in spite of the keen public interest to the mechanisms of state control over the banking sector, this problem has not yet been fully reflected in scientific works. The researchers failed to recreate an objective picture of the crisis in the banking sector in Russia on the eve of the 1998 default, as well as to analyze the authorities’ attempts to prevent the rouble devaluation and to localize the consequences of the financial crisis.

The article examines the most important areas of cooperation between the British and American intelligence services that are sure to be interesting for the researchers of World War II. The author studies the role of the UK in the development of the American strategic reconnaissance. The author’s particular interest is focused on the British assistance in the preparation of professional American spies and saboteurs. Using both memoirs and American and British historians’ major research works the author shows the importance of the Anglo-American cooperation in the field of intelligence for the victory over fascism.

This article focuses on the Austrian- Russian economic relations that have developed after Austria joined the European Union in the second half of the 90’s of the XXth century. The author states that a kind of «reload» of the economic relations between Russia and Austria turned out to be difficult and painful due to country’s entry into the EU. On the one hand, Austria, absorbed in the adaptation to the European Union, has lost some of its former interest to high level of economic cooperation with Russia. On the other hand, Russia has not taken full advantage of new opportunities for enhancing the economic cooperation with Austria as a member of the EU. Nevertheless, some time later in the Austrian-Russian economic relations there have been signs of positive changes.

The article covers the problem issues of combat use of artillery by the Red Army in the Soviet-Finnish war. The battle examples show how such issues were solved in action. Now 75 years later, the historical experience of the Winter War is still a matter of topical interest. New sources are introduced into the scientific circulation, i.e. military documents of the Soviet-Finnish war.

The article examines the main ways of development of the Soviet military-industrial complex in the post-World War II period, the military and industrial complex of the city of Kli-movsk taken as an example. The author discloses the most important reasons for the increase of production in this industrial sector, as well as the reasons of forming the research institutes, design bureaus, and military factories subsidiaries in the post-World War II period. The significance of the reforms in this sphere is evaluated both for the defense industry and for solving the problems of social adaptation of the demobbed soldiers and officers, as well as for the territorial extension of the city.