The article examines contradictory aspects of artistic life and cultural policy in the 1920s, especially those which are related to L.D. Trotsky and his role in the development of Soviet art from the “transitional period” to the era of the “Great breakthrough”. The author turned to this topic thanks to the exhibition “The Fight for the Banner. Soviet Art between Trotsky and Stalin. 1926-1936”, which was held in Moscow in 2008. The analysis of the art in the 1920s is based on the unpublished archival material of the Communist Academy, the 1920s periodicals, A.V. Lunacharsky’s essays and Yu.P. Annenkov’s memoirs, as well as Trotsky’s view on culture in general, literature and art. The art of that period, unlike the subsequent one, was still largely open to formal experiments. The diferent views of party members on culture to a large extent determined the main content of debates regarding the art of the postrevolutionary time, which somthow boiled to the issue of proletarian art. The principle of the “class character” of culture (“art belongs to a class”) was opposed by calling “to forever put an end to class culture and pave the way for human culture”. The use of vague terminology led to a confusion of the concepts that determined the relationship of art to the revolution and its phenomena: proletarian art, art of the revolution, Soviet art, etc. Trotsky put forward the idea that the art of the revolution should prepare the basis for socialist art. The art of the revolution he understood as the art of a breakthrough era. He himself never saw any socialist art. One of the paradoxes of the discourse is his categorical rejection of the formal method in literary criticism and, at the same time, his support for formal experiments in literature and visual arts. This article attempts at fnding connections between the theory of “permanent revolution”, “lefism” in the party, as well as in art and art criticism of the revolutionary decade.

The article attempts to examine the process of creating the image of columns and obelisks in the history of architecture, and in particular to study how ancient prototypes infuenced such monuments in the garden space in Tsarskoe Selo. The first projects of triumphal monuments in Russia date back to the 1720s, under Peter I, but they were not realized. No such monuments were erected during the Baroque period. While, in the 1770s, Catherine II developed her new garden in honor of the victories of the Russian army in the 1768-1774 Russian-Turkish war, rostral columns, an obelisk and Ruin tower pavilion were built. The semantic meaning of obelisks changes from one of the elements of a sacred building in ancient Egypt to compositional accents (detached from Egyptian temple complexes) in squares and circus arenas of ancient Rome. In the 18th-century Russia, they were erected as the monuments of military glory in memory of victories. In the 20th century, obelisks appeared as memorials in squares and on graves of fallen soldiers. Rostral columns, which had appeared in Ancient Greece and Rome, become widespread later. This type of monuments communicates the wide range of symbolic meanings. Other types of monuments are also examined in the article for a more comprehensive historical and artistic contexts. Perhaps, an unknown antique monument served as a prototype of the rostra column on G.-B. Piranesi’s sheets, reminiscent of the Morea column. Searching for prototypes of the monuments of military glory is important for understanding their semantics and the meanings that were implied by their royal sponsor. In the chosen aspect the monuments of classicism have been examined only in a small number of studies.

The brevity and fragmentation of written sources on the history of ancient and medieval states very ofen forces scholars to employ additional materials, in particular numismatic ones. Numismatics, closely related to other auxiliary historical disciplines, arts, toponymics, and paleography, can serve as an important source for studying the past. According to numismatic materials, one can judge about changes in the issue and circulation of coins in the cities of the Caucasus in the Middle Ages, the system of its trade routes and communications; they can be used to study many important issues of socio-economic and political history. Coins of the Sassanids, Umayyads, Abbasids, Bagratids, Sajids, Safavids, Sheddadids, Shirvanshahs, Ilkhanids, Jalayirids and other rulers of the East attracted the attention of Russian and foreign oriental numismatists of the 19th and 20th centuries. Among them are Kh.D. Fren, P.S. Savel’yev, V.V. Grigor’yev, V.G. Tiesenhausen, A.K. Markov, R.R. Vasmer, I. Bartolomey, B. Dorn, M.A. Dobrynin, A.A. Bykov et al. A new milestone in the development of Caucasian numismatics was the research on the structure of monetary circulation in Transcaucasia attempted by the famous collector and numismatist Evgeny Aleksandrovich Pakhomov (1880-1965) on the basis of coin hoards. Along with the coins minted in the administrative and trade centers of the Sassanian Empire, Byzantium, the Arab Caliphate and other medieval states, E.A.Pakhomov describes the coins that were minted in the medieval states in the Caucasus. Tey testify to advanced commodity-money relations. The expansion of commodity-money relations in the antique and medieval Caucasus contributed to the further development of handicraf production, which is also evidenced by medieval written sources.

The rapid development of information resources (IR) and information systems (IS) at the expense of the city budget and their use in the city economy inevitably set the task of formalizing IS and IR as objects of property of economic entities, to determine their legal status by regulatory legal documents and make accounting, registration and assessment of their market value. The latter makes it possible to insure IS and IR against cyber risks. The legal framework for the approval of the legal status of IR and IS in Moscow was established by the laws of the city of Moscow, orders of the mayor, decrees and orders of the government of Moscow, which were adopted in the period 2001-2008 during the development of the Comprehensive Program for Moscow's Movement to the Information Society and implementation of the program “Electronic Moscow”. The procedure for assessing the market value of IS and IR was determined by the government decree of 6 December 2005. In 2007, a large amount of work for Moscow was done by the company VALNET, which developed a methodology for assessing the market value of IS and IR. However, in the crisis period of 2008-2009 and later, the volume of IS and IR accounting, registration and valuation work decreased, and scientifc research has been suspended. In 2018-2019, Russian economists A.G. Paptsov, Yu.A. Tsypkin, S.V. Orlov, R.A. Kamaev singled out IS and IR as an independent factor of production and proposed their own methodology for assessing the market value of personal data. They are getting to be a “new capital” marketers, political strategists and fraudsters fght for. The review of the stages of assessing the information cost and materialization in civil circulation allows us to identify the following important trends: the personal electronic digital profle (EDP) is getting to be the principal document; the fght for this new capital, the personal EDP, is unfolding in the world; the cost of digital information and the right to access it will increase; consciousness is getting to determine being under the infuence of the socio-economic sense of the EDP

This article aims to determine the contribution of Pius XII to the development of Catholic doctrine on the problem of war and peace, which has undergone a noticeable transformation during its existence. It gradually switched from the approval of the armed confict under certain circumstances to pacifsm, which was confrmed by the decisions of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). In this regard, the interesting question is how the last “preconciliar” pope Pius XII saw the problem of the allowability of war. His pontifcate witnessed the Second World War, he regularly called for an end to the bloodshed and, afer the end of the confict, he continued to develop the idea of establishing and maintaining peace throughout the globe. According to Pius XII, the principal tasks of governments were to search compromise in crisis situations and to prevent military clashes in the future. This could be facilitated by the Catholic teaching and the idea of establishing a Christian order throughout the world. The authors base their conclusions on the analysis of Pius XII’s speeches and encyclicals and demonstrate that the Pope did not support the war and, moreover, did not call for it, but on the contrary, he advocated dialogue and rejection of war as a way to resolve disputes in the circumstances of growing international instability and confrontation between the two opposing blocs. Thus, his views were a logical continuation of the peaceloving ideas of his predecessors. The Pope concerned with nuclear weapons, which appeared during his pontifcate and could give rise to an unprecedented confict and plunge the world into a worldwide catastrophe, paid special attention to the issues of limiting scientifc research. Finding himself in more difcult situation than the previous Roman pontifs, Pius XII more decisively condemned war, even the “just” one. The ideological foundation of the decisions of the Second Vatican Council was fnally built on these concepts.

The importance of banking houses in Russia gradually declined with the increase of joint-stock banks, complication of economic relations and fnancial transactions. Tese houses, which previously played a signifcant role in the economic life of the country, found it increasingly difcult to compete with joint-stock banks with more solid capital, broad government support, close ties with many foreign banks, extensive branch network in diferent cities of the country. Te banking houses were voluntarily or involuntarily closed, acquired by joint-stock banks or incorporated, while some of them, mostly small ones, whose activities were ofen speculative, went bankrupt. Using the example of the banking house “G. Wawelberg”, this article examines the process of transformation of banking institutions into joint-stock commercial banks, which started in Russia since the early 1910s. Two independent joint-stock institutions were created on the basis of its ofces in Petersburg and Warsaw, the Petersburg Trade Bank (1912) and the Western Bank in Warsaw (1913). Te latter became one of the largest banks in the Kingdom of Poland before the First World War. At the same time, “Ryabushinsky Brothers” were incorporated as the Moscow Bank, and “I.V. Juncker and Co” as the Commercial Bank “I.V. Juncker and Co” (Moscow Industrial Bank). Te development of other banking institutions followed the same direction. Te Western Bank is of particular interest for research due to the fact that, having emerged during the period when the Kingdom of Poland was part of the Russian Empire, it maintained its position afer Poland gained independence in 1918, despite the deep economic crises experienced by the Polish Republic in the mid-1920s and early 1930s. Te Western Bank operated in Warsaw until 1949.

The article examines the information on the infuence of Russian newcomers on the border Finnish population of the Karelian Isthmus at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. It deals with the villages of this region, where the largest number of Russians was recorded, i. e. next to the Finnish railway line “Saint Petersburg-Riihimäki”, which provided transport accessibility. The aim of the study is to analyze a new vector of Russian-Finnish relations, which developed as a result of a noticeable migration fow from the center of the empire. A social profle of Russian newcomers to the territory of the Karelian Isthmus varies: the capital's intelligentsia, workers, peasants and revolutionary elements hiding from police surveillance. The border factor, that is, the fact that this territory was less controlled by the Russian authorities, made it possible for the revolutionaries to hold meetings, to interact relatively openly with Finnish opposition groups, while avoiding persecution due to noninterference by the Finnish authorities. It is noteworthy that the geography of the migration process was not limited only to the nearby metropolis. There are cases of migrations from Minsk, Yaroslavl and Vladimir provinces, previously neglected in historiography. In addition to dacha resting, entertainment and tourism, the Grand Duchy of Finland provided people with the opportunity to earn money: they bought land from Finnish residents for subsequent resale at a higher price, or they provided various services to meet the needs of summerfolk (construction, maintenance, grocery trade). There were also illegal sales of alcohol by Russians. Since its transportation in the territory of Finland was banned, the culprits could be substantially fned and even imprisoned. Close links with the Russian population impacted the local Finnish residents, who began to mix Russian and Finnish languages, abandoned the traditional peasant way of life and adopted the capital's habits. The turn of the century was marked by reciprocity in the border Russian-Finnish relations, which became more personal and informal afer the parties rejected the stereotypes imposed by the political agenda.

The article examines dacha construction on the South coast of the Crimea in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as a socio-economic and socio-cultural phenomenon. Tis is the case study of the dacha settlement Novy-Simeiz (1902-1920), which was practically unafected by the 20th and 21st-century restructuring. Tus, the entire village is still a space of historical memory, and its buildings and objects of landscape architecture are material historical sources. Until recently, the history of the South coast of the Crimea in the period of modernization of Imperial Russia in 1861-1917 did not attract due attention of historians and remained the domain of local and art historians. Te phenomenon of “dacha” on the South coast of the Crimea in the early 20th century as a special out-of-town institution of accelerated formation of “middleclass” identity has hardly been studied. Of the numerous dacha settlements on the South coast of the Crimea, Novy-Simeiz has been chosen as the most organized and comfortable. Almost 200 land plots were sold in it and 66 dachas were built in less than 20 years. Te article analyzes the social (estate, professional) profle of dacha buyers in Novy-Simeiz, wealthy residents of Saint Petersburg, Moscow and Central Russia, the features of the new everyday life culture in Novy-Simeiz, as well as the reasons of the sale of family estates by the former owners of Simeiz, the heirs of the industrialist S.I. Maltsov. Te paradigms of “history of leisure” and “leisure class” are used to explain the data. Te source study aspect of the research is also important: the author carries out the systematization of various (written, visual, monumental) sources, including those newly identifed due to digitalization and updating of online databases. He attempts at their analysis in terms of value and cognitive potential, and also refects on the experience in creating an electronic database, “Simeiz Dachas”, and its presentation as a history-oriented thematic site on the Internet.

In the 19th century, Europe entered the era of industrial revolutions and was engulfed in two interconnected processes: industrialization and urbanization. Against the background of the rapid development of industry and economy, cities had to face serious social problems such as epidemics, lack of housing, unsanitary conditions, crime, etc. Cities became sources of social tension and constant unrest, which undermined the stability of political institutions. The situation was seriously aggravated and worsened due to the fact that the urban space failed to keep up with new social challenges. So, one of the main urban issues of that time were sprawling slums. Governments and city planners had to look for ways out of the prevailing situation and develop competent strategies for further urban development. In France, the accession of Napoleon III in the middle of the 19th century, marked the beginning of a largescale reconstruction of Paris directed by the Prefect of the Seine Baron J. Haussmann. Te renovation aimed at solving both social and political problems. It was assumed that the implementation of the project would not only remedy the city’s growing social problems, but also prevent the possibility of social unrest and protest actions in the future. Te purpose of this work is to analyze the main urban planning solutions adopted during this period, and to identify the key social corollaries of the work carried out. It is concluded that as a result of the Haussmannisation of Paris the city became a modern political, cultural and economic center, shook of the chains of medieval urban fabric and remnants of the past, while the city residents acquired a new lifestyle and new everyday urban practices. Te reconstruction of the French capital demonstrated the role and the potential of urban planning as a tool for managing society. In many respects, the modern appearance of Paris was formed precisely as a result of Haussmannisation, whose broad lines and social purpose are discussed in this article.

The article is an attempt to write the frst intellectual biography of Ivan Grigorievich Kulzhinsky (1803-1884), a neglected Russian conservative author and educator, known only to researchers of N.V. Gogol’s biography. His literary work is usually divided into two stages: the period of romantic “Nationality” and dealing with Little Russian ethnography and the time of upholding the “Uvarov’s triad” and serving the interests of the “reactionary” government policy. Te author studies Kulzhinsky’s publications and letters and reveals a direct continuity between these two stages and his ambiguous attitude to class conservatism. In his journalistic novels Emerit and Te Uyezd Judge of Our Uyezd (District), Kulzhinsky epitomizes the principles of the ethics and worldview of Nicholas I’s intellectual civil servant. Tese ideas later signifcantly infuenced the Great Reforms and their social atmosphere. Kulzhinsky thought that the main objective of literature was not “aesthetics”, but rather moral preaching and criticized lefist trends in literature, criticism, pedagogy and public life in the second half of the 19th century. He also justifed censorship and considered postreform “progressivism” to be “regressive” and leading to the decay of Christian civilization. Kulzhinsky saw the emerging Ukrainophilism, which imposed the peasant dialect “spoiled by Polonisms” on the Little Russian people, as rejection of true social progress. However, in the second half of the 1860s, he entered into the polemics with the supporters of class conservatism and proved himself an upholder of the “Muravyev’s system” that was being implemented in the Northwestern Krai. For many decades Kulzhinsky advocated the principle of national identity and called for the refusal to speak foreign languages in everyday life. Nevertheless, unlike the Slavophiles, he never criticized Tsar Peter’s reforms and believed that the latter did not touch the foundations of Russian identity, i. e. the church and autocracy. Kulzhinsky called for the creation of a system of women education, which would be consistent with the national spirit, and later, in the 1870s, for the transfer of primary schools under the full supervision of the church.