The efficacy of methods of historical anthropology actively implemented in present-day historical studies and the social request to research on the history of entrepreneurship enable us to address the issue of merchants’ professional knowledge and skills. Although this topic has been examined for many years, the implementation of merchants’ knowledge in this estate’s business activity remains poorly studied. Great opportunities for investigating this problem are provided by personal sources, namely, by merchants’ private correspondence. Due to them, one can better understand the merchants’ business world, their everyday concerns and thoughts. Such sources, especially those related to the merchant milieu of pre-reform Russia, are extremely scarce. One of these rarities is the 18th–19th century epistolary corpus of the Buldakov family from Veliky Ustyug. Its analysis allows us to understand that the success of a merchant in trading activities depended primarily on his experience, education and a set of special personal qualities. The abilities to conduct a thorough analysis of market trends, to collect the necessary information, to transmit it in a timely manner, to systematize and draw adequate conclusions were most important. This demonstrated availability of analytical and critical thinking, a broad outlook (ranging from specific knowledge of the postal service to understanding the impact of the international situation on the entrepreneurial activity in different countries) and the ability to implement the experience. A significant element of the success of trading was the capability to find mutual understanding with people of different status and occupations. All this, along with the merchant’s organizing abilities, ensured the effective functioning of the “enterprise”. The multiple contacts also stimulated an increase of relevant information. When studying merchants’ professional knowledge, the method of its dissemination is an important issue. Although the idea to obtain a special commercial education was very popular among enlighteners, the merchants continued to acquire it at the “practical school” of commerce, where new skills and knowledge spread much faster.

An important characteristic of historical consciousness is the society’s attitude towards ancient monuments. The recognition or denial of the value of material remnants of the past, the practice of visiting historical places and the very selection of these places reflect the characteristic features of the formation of national identity and patriotism. For centuries, the city of Kiev remained one of the main symbols of ancient Russian history. Its cultural image is multilayered; it combines both secular and religious features. A lot of research is devoted to the place of Kiev in the public consciousness at different stages of historical development. Most of them are based on the analysis of historical and literary works, political rhetoric, diplomatic negotiations, and propound to a large extent the official ideology of the state and the church. At the same time, sources of personal origin, which include the diaries and memoirs of travellers, are of great interest for studying everyday historical consciousness. The comparison of the value judgments and descriptions of Kiev landmarks, reflected in the travel notes of the 18th century, shows a wide variety of views on Russian antiquities in modern period. The cornerstone of the cultural image of Kiev was the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra Monastery, which defined it as a holy city, the place where Russia took the baptism and where the first Russian ascetics lived. The cult of the saints of Kiev was propagated in the publications printed by the monastery printing house, and attracted to the city numerous pilgrims, driven not so much by the thirst for knowledge of Russian history but by Christian zeal. The educated nobility, on the contrary, was primarily interested in cultural and historical aspect of visiting sites, comparing ancient Russian churches with European architectural monuments, perceiving them as aesthetic and artistic treasures. The notes of foreigners reflect a generally sceptical attitude to the sanctity of Kiev relics. Nevertheless, the secular history of the city attracts their attention. Finally, we can trace a comparison between the ancient Kiev and the antiquity in the descriptions of ceremonial receptions of crowned guests. The lack of unanimity in the perception of the main symbol of ancient Russian history shows how deep the cultural stratification of society was in the 18th century.

Notwithstanding the abiding interest from a number of scholars in the history of the Ottoman Empire and regular flow of works devoted to this polity, it should be recognized that studies which apply synchronized historical and political science approaches to the transformation of Ottoman statehood are still rare. Hence, serious gaps exist in the formation of systemic ideas about the rise and fall of the Sublime Porte, which, in the author’s opinion, can be partially filled by resorting to the topical areas of modern political science, especially the concepts of “state sustainability” and “political stability”. The main hypothesis of this study is the assumption that the roots of both the rise and the decline of the Ottoman Empire lay mainly in the same phenomena: centralization of power, closed personalistic rule, the concomitant institutional deficit, as well as the overly conservative modality of center-peripheral relations and the lack of consistent implementation of unifying principles in the Empire’s social and information space. The author’s research follows the methodology of historical institutionalism and the pivotal idea of a “path” (“dependence on the chosen track”), addresses the views of the theorists of the political regime and political stability, and also looks at some of the most characteristic topical scenarios of domestic policy in the Ottoman Empire. As a result the author concludes that among the reasons for the political crisis and the gradual deterioration of the empire’s state structure were, on the one hand, the essentially irrational desire to maintain the competitive advantages that characterized Ottoman policy at a certain stage of history, and, on the other hand, the inability of the political class to build a strategically new vector for the development of the country, different from the usual regime models. Thus, an attempt is made to supplement the comprehension and analysis of extensive historical data by the methodology of political research, evaluating the Ottoman Empire as a type of statehood in the broad sense of the word.

The subject of this study is the academic heritage of Iya Leonidovna Mayak related to the principal issues of her research, i.e. the Roman social history of the royal time and the first half of the early republican period. The article analyzes Mayak’s ideas concerning a number of key theoretical issues of Roman studies related to the concepts of civitas, populus, ager publicus during the archaic era. This is the first attempt at generalizing the academic contribution of I.L. Mayak in the study of socio-political and socio-economic relations in Rome from the VIII to the first half of the 4th century B.C.E. The fundamental ideas of the works by Mayak are considered in the context of the world historiography of recent decades. The author stats that while the scholars of the Roman archaic society were divided in their attitude toward the annalistic tradition, as well as the interpretation of archaeological material, and one group of them, the adepts of postmodern negativity, generally denied the reliability of the sources regarding this ancient period of Roman history, I.L. Mayak invariably supported the followers of the Italian archaeologist A. Carandini, who insisted on the importance of the ancient narrative on the early city. In the discussion on pages of the Bulletin of Ancient History at the turn of the 1980s–1990s regarding E.M. Staerman’s concept of the Roman civitas as a stateless formation before the era of Octavian Augustus, I.L. Mayak was among those who did not agree with her argument, without denying Staerman’s main methodological approach. According to Mayak, the essential feature of the Roman civil community was an ancient form of ownership that distinguished civitas and polis organization as a whole from the community of ancient eastern city-states. She thought that the plebs were not included in the populus, not only in the royal time, but also during the early Republic. Mayak regarded the plebeians’ lack of access to the ager occupatorius, which was disposed by the patricians for free, as a sign of inequality in the area of land relations. She saw the purpose of the agrarian struggle as changing the mode of operation of the ager publicus in the interests of the plebs. I.L. Mayak happened to be among those few scholars who devoted their works not only to the institutional and legal history of the archaic Roman community, but also to its social studies.

The collection “Court Culture in the Renaissance” was published in 2014 by the Commission for Renaissance Culture of the Scientific Council of the Russian Academy of Sciences “History of World Culture”. The collection’s authors include scholars of Medieval history, art historians, specialists in the history of science, literature and theater. The presented studies are focused on individual topics concerning the court culture of the Renaissance and at the same time touch upon the fundamental questions of the functioning of court society in the late Middle Ages and the early Modern times. N.A. Khachaturian offers a look at court culture as a social phenomenon tied to the formation of a new structure of the royal Medieval court. M.A. Yusim, V.A. Dyatlov and T.M. Ruyatkin examine the status of specific personalities of court culture and their relationship with the court, rulers and other communities. Several articles are dedicated to the transformation of Medieval figures in the Renaissance court culture. A.V. Romanchuk and G.A. Yalovko trace the transformation of the figure of the warrior into the figure of the courtier on the example of Italian visual sources of the 14th–16th centuries. M.K. Popova demonstrates the use of the Medieval motif of courtly love for the benefit of the strengthening absolutism at the court of Elizabeth I. The use of artistic images for exalting the monarch is also considered by I.Y. Elfond on the example of the French king Francis I. M.V. Panfilova examines the topic of court ceremonies on the example of the papal court through the prism of the Roman throne’s claims to supremacy over secular sovereigns. V.M. Volodarsky presents the criticism of court customs on the part of Humanists, analyzing the works of Erasmus of Rotterdam, Sebastian Brant and Ulrich von Hutten. The role of the ruler in the cultural life of the court is considered in the articles of N.A. Bagrovnikova and T.V. Sonina. The scientific studies at the courts of Renaissance monarchs are also discussed: R.M. Aseynov analyzes the court historiography of the duchy of Burgundy in the early Renaissance and A.V. Kuzmin on the example of Italian visual sources of the 14th–16th centuries the court science in the transition era from the Renaissance to the Baroque on the example of the work of Galileo Galilei. In addition, a number of studies concerns works of visual art and theater. The analysis of the collection’s articles gives an idea of the current state and the current problems of studying the Renaissance court culture in Russian-language historiography.

The color theories formulated in the Bauhaus in the late 1910s — early 1930s became key concepts for the further development of Western European coloristic culture. The coloristic solutions of the architectural environment, visual and decorative arts, which were found by the Bauhaus masters and disciples, developed in the context of avant-garde trends at that time prevailing in Germany. The Bauhaus first years were marked by the influence of Expressionism. Color had to perform an important social task by improving the quality of life, filling with emotions and bringing up a “new spirit”. At the same time, the coloristic solutions reflected the individuality of the authors. The expressionist period in the Bauhaus is associated with the name of J. Itten and his Vorkurs. In 1921–1924, with the beginning of T. van Doesburg’s lectures, De Stihl’s color concept spread. The rationalistic coloristic solution ensured the integrity of an individual work and synthesis of all the products produced for life, its relation with space. It constrained the pronounced individualism, diversity and excessiveness characteristic of Expressionism. The theories of V. Kandinsky and P. Klee had the features of rationalism, but at the same time they retained quite a lot of expressionist characteristics. Functional color should be fully devoted to the subject, which it colors, and its purpose. In the building, it is called upon to ensure integrity, to organize movement in space, and to exert an emotional impact corresponding to the functional use of the room. In printed products, color organizes the plane, provides simplicity, speeds up information assimilation, etc. Employing the theory of W. Ostwald, H. Scheper, J. Schmidt, H. Bayer used the functional color. When H. Meyer replaced W. Gropius as director in 1928, the functional side began to play even more significant role. The next director of the Bauhaus, Mis van der Rohe, rejected the paint in his work as excessive decoration, hiding the natural color and material properties. The analysis of particular works allows to see how the color theory came into close relationship with socio-political aims, general trends in art, while remaining consistent with productive necessity, with those expressive means available to certain kinds of products, as well as with personal thoughts of masters and directors of the Bauhaus.

The capital of the Cimmerian Bosporus — Panticapaeum — is one of the most famous archaeological sites of the Northern Black Sea coast. It occupies a special place in the history of this region, since already at an early stage it became a zone of political and economic activities of the first settlers. The ancient tradition conveyed to us fragmentary information regarding the foundation and early period of its existence, however the presence of fragments of painted archaic pottery allowed V.D. Blavatskiy to suggest that a Panticapaeum emporium had already existed in the second half of the 17th century B.C. on the eastern and northeastern slopes of Mount Mithridates, in the area of the so-called first Arm-chair. In recent decades, field archaeological research provided new data that can fundamentally influence the contemporary view of this stage of the site’s history. One of the key issues of the history of Panticapaeum is the problem of the foundation of the apoikia and its early stage of existence. This work discusses the materials and remnants of buildings, which were studied in 2011–2016 by the Bosporus (Panticapaean) archaeological expedition of the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts lead by V.P. Tolstikov. The expedition established the early archaic layer, conditionally named the “fire layer”. The only currently known rectangular room D-3, whose corners are oriented in the cardinal directions, attracts our attention. It was attached to the inner side of the solid basement of the supposed defensive wall, to masonwork № 44. The pottery found on the site allows attributing the emergence of the Greek settlement to the last quarter of the 17th — beginning of the third quarter of the 6th century B.C. Additionally, the pottery of certain types previously unknown in Panticapaeum, i.e. Protocorinthian vases, an early Laconian bowl, and Anatolian ceramics, were excavated, and due to this fact the scope of the research has expanded considerably, breaking new ground in the study of this site.

The early Upper Palaeolithic epoch in the north-west Caucasus is represented only by two sites. Korotkaya Cave, whose small area was investigated, contains few materials while the reference site for studying the Upper Palaeolithic in the North-West Caucasus is Mezmaiskaya Cave in the Apsheron district of the Krasnodar region. The earliest Upper Palaeolithic layer of the cave (1C layer) is between 40–37 thousand years old. The archaeological complex of this layer contains all categories of stone products, including tools, semi-finished chipped stone tools, their chips, waste products, cores and allows reconstructing the technology of splitting stone material. Technological analysis of Mezmaiskaya cave’s 1C layer industry has demonstrated that the early Upper Palaeolithic period in the North-West Caucasus was dominated by the technique of splitting stones into microchips in order to produce chips and microchips, 3–12 mm wide. Preference was given to high-quality flint that reached the site either in the form of ready lamellar blanks and prepared pre-cores, or in the form of pieces of flint and large flakes; the latter were regularly used to create butt cores. The analysis of the cores, technical chips and blanks allows establishing two technological chains: first, chipping chips, 7–12 mm wide, from prismatic one- and two-table cores and, second, producing microchips, 2–7 mm wide, from butt cores, some of which are made on solid flakes. The study of the metric and morphological characteristics of the chips shows the employment of stone-chipping techniques by striking with a soft, possibly stone, chipper. Mezmaiskaya cave’s 1C layer toolkit and splitting technology find analogies in the territory of the South Caucasus and the Middle East. The industries of these areas, as the material from the 1C layer of Mezmaiskaya cave, are characterized by predominance of chips and microchips, mainly knocked from single-table cores with a narrow splitting surface.

The annual visit of the Irish prime minister to the US and the official celebration of Saint Patrick’s Day accompanying it in Washington traditionally provide a platform for discussing topics and issues related to the Irish US community and important for the political leaders of Ireland. The subject of this study is the events in Washington in March 2017, their course and particularities in the context of the problem of illegal immigration in the US. The purpose of the study is to establish how, during the meeting of newly elected US President D. Trump and Irish Prime Minister E. Kenny, the contradictions in the Irish-American relations were revealed, including those related to illegal immigration to the US. The Russian historiography does not deal with the issues of illegal Irish immigration to the US while the studies in the area of Irish–US relations are evidently scarce. The results of the analysis presented in the article allow concluding that the conditions of the meeting were largely due to the lack of D. Trump’s support among the political circles of Ireland that led to numerous protest actions against E. Kenny’s trip to the USA. Yet his meeting with D. Trump took place. Over time it became more obvious that D. Trump enjoyed the support of a large part of Irish Americans. Equally, the need for action to resolve the problem of Irish illegal immigrants in the US was also evident. Consequently, the immigration issue became central in E. Kenny’s speeches, and he did not miss this opportunity to address to the US president. However, the call of the Irish prime minister to give illegal Irish immigrants a legitimate status has so far not received a response from D. Trump.

The foundation of the “Five Star Movement” political party in Italy was officially declared in 2009. The article analyzes the steps taken by Beppe Grillo, Gianroberto Casaleggio and their supporters on the path to success in the parliamentary elections in Italy in 2013. The author unlocks the mechanism of the functioning of the social movement which seems to have no clear management structure. The article examines the reasons why the “Five Star Movement” emerged in the political arena precisely in the early 2000s. The main stages of the building of the Movement are identified: the first stage in 2005–2009, the second stage in 2009–2013. The author considers unusual forms of social mobilization: the Genoese comedian’s blog that united many of his supporters on the Internet; Meetup platform, which made it possible to shift communication away from the Internet to the format of personal meetings of Beppe Grillo’s supporters; the “central squares” of Italian cities format, which became the main site for the V-Day tours (2007) and V2-Day tours (2008). Using the blog, citizens who were not indifferent to the fate of Italy discussed topical issues and engaged in fierce discussions, sometimes directly with B. Grillo. In its turn, the Meetup platform made it possible to organize meetings of the Genoese comedian’s supporters in every city in Italy, and also to unite groups of people whose goal was to solve the local problems of their town or region. The “central squares”, where B. Grillo made speeches, helped not only to attract the electorate, but also to change the agenda for local groups organized through the Meetup platform. Gradually, the vector of attention shifted from local problems to the national level. The relevance of the topic of this study is determined by the significant role the “Five Star Movement” plays in the political life of Italy as a phenomenon that does not fit in with the framework of the old concepts of political parties and movements. Studying the activities of the supporters of Beppe Grillo, Gianroberto Casaleggio and the “Five Star Movement” at the initial stages enables us to understand key trends in the development of political mood within the country.