The article examines the latest trends in the historiography of medieval art in Russia using the example of E.A. Khripkova’s monograph on the basilica of the famous abbey of Saint-Denis in the north suburb of Paris. Published in 2013 the book differs from previous Russian-language works on early Gothic in France and beyond, namely the books by K.M. Muratova and E.P. Yuvalova, by much more scholarly independence and bright novelty of her concept. But unfortunately the author allows a very free interpretation of the iconography of Saint Denis portals, which are the main objects of her study. Thus, the title of the book — Abbot Suger’s Basilica of Saint-Denis — does not correspond to its content. This article indicates many arbitrary interpretations, inaccurate descriptions and bibliographic lacunae in this research. The interpretation of the main scene on the central portal, the Last Judgment in the tympanum, contains a number of iconographic conclusions which seem to be completely arbitrary, in particular the thoughts regarding the mandorla of the Saviour and communion of the apostles (in fact not existing). The same applies to the interpretation of the iconographic programme of the so-called Valois Portal. The search for textual sources to explain the narrative cycle of the portals of the western facade is not quite specific and consequently the search for the theological meaning of Suger’s design is very far from the real understanding of the Apocalypse and the Last Judgment in theology of his time, instead the author deals with general medieval Latin interpretations. The stylistic aspects of the monument, which are of the utmost importance for the further development of Early Gothic art in France, are completely ignored by Khripkova. As a result, this extensive work seems of little help. The article also examines the methodology of iconographic studies of the Middle Ages and draws conclusions as to the relation between text and image in the art of the mature Gothic Middle Ages

The Federal Law “On Legal Guarantees of Opposition Activities in the Russian Federation”, which was approved by the State Duma in March 1997, was rejected by the President, who was guided by purely political considerations. However, many ambiguities and gaps of the law, which was thought to regulate and govern the activities of the opposition as an independent legal entity, would have inevitably created serious problems if it had entered into force. In the 2000s, representatives of the opposition factions in the Duma tried several times unsuccessfully to revisit this issue. In this respect, the experience of the 1990s, when the draft law became federal law even if it never entered into force, seems to be the most effective and therefore of the greatest research interest. The Federal Law “On Legal Guarantees of Opposition Activity in the Russian Federation” can be qualified primarily as a kind of historical source reflecting the political situation of the second half of the 1990s. In contemporary literature, the law is considered only in the general context of the large scale problem of providing additional legal guaran tees to the political minority in the Russian Federation. In recent years there has been a sharp decline in the number of scholarly works dealing with the theoretical issues of the legal institutionalisation of the opposition and the adoption of a special statute guaranteeing the rights of “dissenters”. This article examines the problem of the legal legitimation of the opposition, which was actualised in the second half of the 1990s by the representatives of the left -wing forces, on the basis of the complex use of different sources (legal acts and bills, parliamentary materials, data from the periodicals, electronic resources). The subject of the study is the political and legal context of the development, adoption and reasoned rejection of the Federal Law “On Legal Guarantees of Opposition Activity in the Russian Federation”. Its study is relevant because there is almost no analysis of the development and adoption of the Russian law “On Opposition” as a special regulatory act, which additionally guaranteed the rights and special status of the alternative socio-political associations.

The Federal Law “On Legal Guarantees of Opposition Activities in the Russian Federation”, which was approved by the State Duma in March 1997, was rejected by the President, who was guided by purely political considerations. However, many ambiguities and gaps of the law, which was thought to regulate and govern the activities of the opposition as an independent legal entity, would have inevitably created serious problems if it had entered into force. In the 2000s, representatives of the opposition factions in the Duma tried several times unsuccessfully to revisit this issue. In this respect, the experience of the 1990s, when the draft law became federal law even if it never entered into force, seems to be the most effective and therefore of the greatest research interest. The Federal Law “On Legal Guarantees of Opposition Activity in the Russian Federation” can be qualified primarily as a kind of historical source reflecting the political situation of the second half of the 1990s. In contemporary literature, the law is considered only in the general context of the large scale problem of providing additional legal guaran tees to the political minority in the Russian Federation. In recent years there has been a sharp decline in the number of scholarly works dealing with the theoretical issues of the legal institutionalisation of the opposition and the adoption of a special statute guaranteeing the rights of “dissenters”. This article examines the problem of the legal legitimation of the opposition, which was actualised in the second half of the 1990s by the representatives of the left -wing forces, on the basis of the complex use of different sources (legal acts and bills, parliamentary materials, data from the periodicals, electronic resources). The subject of the study is the political and legal context of the development, adoption and reasoned rejection of the Federal Law “On Legal Guarantees of Opposition Activity in the Russian Federation”. Its study is relevant because there is almost no analysis of the development and adoption of the Russian law “On Opposition” as a special regulatory act, which additionally guaranteed the rights and special status of the alternative socio-political associations.

The Soviet-Finnish Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance which was concluded on 6 April 1948 completed the post-war settlement between Moscow and Helsinki. At the same time, it was one of the foundations of stability in northern Europe and it directly affected the interests of Sweden, whose neutral status remained in doubt aft er WWII. Stockholm paid close attention to foreign policy developments in its Nordic neighbours, including Finland, which chose to establish good neighbourly relations with the Soviet Union aft er the 1944 Moscow armistice. Moscow assumed that Sweden might be wary of the Soviet-Finnish mutual assistance treaty and shift its foreign policy line somewhat towards the West. This study is of interest due to the lack of a detailed analysis of the Swedish position on the conclusion of the Soviet-Finnish Treaty in historiography. The author uses sources from Swedish and Russian archives and libraries. The basis of source study was formed by the documents kept in the National Archives of Sweden (Riksarkivet) in Stockholm. Particular attention was paid to the collections of the Foreign Policy Department (Utrikesdepartementets arkiv), which contain reports from the Swedish embassies to Finland and the Soviet Union. The research mainly involved internal correspondence between the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs and its representatives in these countries. The author refers to the minutes of the meetings of the Swedish Riksdag (Riksdagens protokoll) which allow to determine the position of the Swedish political circles concerning the conclusion of the Soviet-Finnish Treaty. A separate group of sources consists of the leading Swedish periodicals. The very important diaries of Finnish President J.K. Paasikivi shed light on the Soviet-Finnish negotiations during the period in question and analyse the details of Swedish-Finnish relations.

The article examines the background, course and results of the visit of Eric Johnston, President of the US Chamber of Commerce, to the USSR in the summer of 1944 at the invitation of Joseph Stalin. The programme of his visit included meetings with the USSR Commissar of Foreign Trade, Anastas Mikoyan, visits to large industrial enterprises, meetings with their directors, party functionaries and cultural and artistic figures. It culminated in a lengthy meeting between Johnston and Stalin, during which a wide range of political, economic and commercial issues were discussed. The Soviet government saw Johnston as an iconic figure with infl uence not only in business but also in government circles. The Kremlin was interested in obtaining large US loans for the purchase of industrial equipment. Johnston was just the man to lobby both private American firms and the US government to grant these loans to the Soviet Union. Upon his return home he made every effort to secure a favorable resolution to the loan issue. Publications that painted a positive image of the Soviet Union and called for increased trade relations between the two countries were placed in key US business periodicals. Johnston’s position was shared by many businessmen and offi cials of relevant government agencies. However, proponents of a more pragmatic approach in both business and administrative circles pointed out that the United States could not increase imports from the Soviet Union to the level that would match the necessary exports and serve as collateral for a large loan. After Soviet Commissar of Foreign Affairs, Vyacheslav Molotov, officially requested for the loan on 3 January 1945, the US government used the loan as an instrument of political pressure on the Kremlin.

The article attempts to interpret an important type of mass sources — letters “to the authorities” — from the standpoint of the new institutional history, based on the assumption that prospects for society’s development depend on the quality of the institutional system. Several concepts of neo-institutionalism, such as information asymmetry, the propensity of individual subjects for opportunistic behavior, the principal-agent problem, are used to analyze public attitudes toward the Soviet bureaucracy in the 1920s — early 1930s. The information asymmetry was dual, as each participant in the interaction within the “authorities–people” system tried to use it to promote their interests and achieve their goals. The article analyzes the patterns of behavior of the Soviet officials and of ordinary citizens on the basis of letters “to the authorities”. Those patterns were generated by the desire to benefit from the asymmetry of information. The opportunism of the subjects of social interactions is viewed from different angles, inter alia the negative attitude of citizens towards the opportunism of grassroots nomenclature figures who supposedly sabotaged the “proper” party policy in general. The principal-agent problem is considered in the context of the evolution of the Soviet political system. The state, due to the specifics of its political organization, strove for all-encompassing control and the dismantling of social compromises. This was most clearly manifested in the process of the curtailment of the NEP, which in itself was a model whose functioning was based on numerous compromises: between the city and the country, the Communist Party and the “specialists”, the wealthy peasants, NEPmen, and other population groups. Society responded to the breakdown of the system of compromises with high incidence of opportunistic behavior: overt and covert religious practices, hiding their property and income from taxation, violation of prescribed norms of behavior, low labor discipline, direct resistance to acts of violence by the authorities, etc. Opportunism (both malicious and non-malicious) in the Soviet system of relations of domination and subordination manifested itself everywhere, and citizens recorded its manifestations in letters.

During the First World War, the Russian Red Cross Society (here in after referred to as the RRCS, Red Cross) took over the organization of the evacuation and treatment of mentally ill soldiers. The article covers the society’s involvement in organizing this type of specialized assistance on the Caucasian front, the region where, due to the underdevelopment of medicine, such help was especially relevant. In the early twentieth century, military psychiatry was just beginning to evolve, differentiating itself from psychiatry proper. The War Department had had no time to prepare medical institutions for the mentally ill. In the course of this research, based on previously unstudied documents from Russian and foreign archives, the author established how the psychiatric care of the army on the Caucasian front was organized, what difficulties the RRCS faced, and to what extent the organization was effective. This work was complicated by long distances in the theater of war, the lack of suitable premises for accommodating patients, and the lack of qualified specialists. Gradually, the RRCS created an extensive system of providing assistance to the mentally ill on the Caucasian front, which included flying psychiatric squads affiliated with the troops, taking patients from the army, evacuation points, distribution centers and rear infirmaries. In the course of its activities, the Red Cross worked closely with the local military administration and public organizations. The military district administration forbade the evacuation of the mentally ill from the Caucasus. Since there were not enough available medical institutions to accommodate the “chronic patients”, the organization was forced to discharge those who needed further treatment. In general, the RRCS played a significant role in the care of mentally ill soldiers on the Caucasian front, succeeding in the new direction of medicine. The expertise of the organization was appreciated by the local authorities who took over the administration of the region in 1917 and planned to use the staff, premises and inventory of the psychiatric hospitals of the RRCS aft er demobilization.

The newspaper Kievlyanin, the principal periodical of the South-Western Region, allows more detailed consideration of the main aspects of the implementation of the peasant reform in the 1860s–1870s, including its Malorossian specificity. On the basis of archival documents and periodicals, the author shows a sharpness and complexity of the confrontation between supporters and opponents of the serfdom preservation even aft er the official approval of the “Regulations” of 19 February 1861. The defense of the nobility interests in the western provinces was undertaken not only by the supporters of Russian “aristocratic party”, but also by the local Polish landlords. Therefore, the emergence of the newspaper Kiyevlyanin, whose editorial board began to stand up for the basic principles of the reform, in such conditions in the summer of 1864 was a momentous event. The newspaper’s editors actively participated in the public debate and tirelessly stressed not only the importance of liberating the peasants, but also the need to overcome the Polish landownership as one of the major obstacles to the establishment of the “Russian element” in the region. The period of A.P. Bezak’s governorship (1865–1868) was especially active. An analysis of the Kievlyanin articles demonstrates that the editors and correspondents not only constantly reported on the peasant reforms, but also took a direct part in their implementation through the participation in the Association for Acquisition of Estates. However, a change of governmental course in the early 1870s, namely the switch to a policy of “conciliation” in the Western region and appointment of a new Kyiv Governor General, A.M. Dondukov-Korsakov, led to the ending of the Peasant reform. The attempts to solve the “peasant question” by organizing a long-term loan did not let the peasants be freed from the land shortage. Th e Kiyevlyanin repeatedly reported on the aggravation of relations between the landowners of the South-Western Region. Unable to influence the course of peasant reforms, the editorial board called for a return to the old track pursued by the Governor General A.P. Bezak.

The newspaper Kievlyanin, the principal periodical of the South-Western Region, allows more detailed consideration of the main aspects of the implementation of the peasant reform in the 1860s–1870s, including its Malorossian specificity. On the basis of archival documents and periodicals, the author shows a sharpness and complexity of the confrontation between supporters and opponents of the serfdom preservation even aft er the official approval of the “Regulations” of 19 February 1861. The defense of the nobility interests in the western provinces was undertaken not only by the supporters of Russian “aristocratic party”, but also by the local Polish landlords. Therefore, the emergence of the newspaper Kiyevlyanin, whose editorial board began to stand up for the basic principles of the reform, in such conditions in the summer of 1864 was a momentous event. The newspaper’s editors actively participated in the public debate and tirelessly stressed not only the importance of liberating the peasants, but also the need to overcome the Polish landownership as one of the major obstacles to the establishment of the “Russian element” in the region. The period of A.P. Bezak’s governorship (1865–1868) was especially active. An analysis of the Kievlyanin articles demonstrates that the editors and correspondents not only constantly reported on the peasant reforms, but also took a direct part in their implementation through the participation in the Association for Acquisition of Estates. However, a change of governmental course in the early 1870s, namely the switch to a policy of “conciliation” in the Western region and appointment of a new Kyiv Governor General, A.M. Dondukov-Korsakov, led to the ending of the Peasant reform. Th e attempts to solve the “peasant question” by organizing a long-term loan did not let the peasants be freed from the land shortage. Th e Kiyevlyanin repeatedly reported on the aggravation of relations between the landowners of the South-Western Region. Unable to influence the course of peasant reforms, the editorial board called for a return to the old track pursued by the Governor General A.P. Bezak.

The work covers hagiographic motifs which recount the “spiritual warfare” experienced by the founders of monasteries in the 14th–15th centuries. The spiritual struggle was waged in the period between the settlement of a hermit in a chosen wilderness desert place and the creation of a monastery. It was at this time that the site of the future monastery underwent the process of sacralization, i.e., the transformation of an unclean, “alien” place into a holy one. A large number of the lives of saints, reporting the practice of the sacralization of space, include episodes of the fight against demons. The analysis of these hagiographic motifs suggests that, in the view of many hagiographers, the theme of resisting demons was an integral part of a clearly defined and simultaneously original system of describing the spiritual assimilation of the site where the monastery was to appear. According to the hagiographers, the saints retired to remote, deserted places, inhabited by demons. The beginning of the sacralization of these places (the erection of the cross, the chapel, the exploits of prayer and abstinence) is perceived in the lives of saints as a strong blow to the demons. In their turn, the demons tried to frighten the hermits and drive them away from their chosen place in the most cunning ways. To enhance the realism of demonic delusions, hagiographers described their appearance in human or bestial form. Some texts reported how the devil sent robbers, pagans or local residents in order to harm or even kill the saints. These descriptions represent a separate kind of “spiritual warfare” motif, in which fear of spiritual danger is complemented by threats of physical assault. In each case, the hermit had to resist the attacks and stay in the chosen place until the complete victory over the demons. Corresponding hagiographic episodes are accompanied with a description of the practices adopted by hermits to struggle with delusions. According to hagiographers, the monks used such remedies as the Jesus Prayer and the sign of the cross, as well as prayers built from psalm verses and New Testament quotations. According to the vitae, the appearance of a monastery on the site of the deeds of the monk became possible only aft er his victory over demons, which often marked the transition to the final stage of the process of sacralization of space.