The present study aims at finding historical patterns in the zones of contact and interpenetration of different civilizational models, which eventually lead to progressive dominance and the prevalence of one of them and displacement or absorption of the other. The author inspired by Russian byzantinist R.M. Shukurov’s book The Turks in the Byzantine World (1204–1461) attempts at comparing historical experiences of Spain and the Byzantine world in the 13th–15th centuries. He comparatively analyzes the processes that took place in the Pyrenees in the late Reconquista era (from the early 13th century) and in the Byzantine world during the last stage of its existence. Despite significant typological differences of state formations in these regions, the study reveals many common features, ranging from the political fates of Muslim Spain and Byzantium to the special nature of the intensive intercultural, interlingual and, more broadly, intercivilizational interaction in these lands at opposite ends of the Mediterranean. The author considers especially important R.M. Shukurov’s idea of the so-called “latent Turkicization” of the late Byzantine society, which actually unfolded from the inside: the Turkic element was gradually incorporated in the Byzantine world, became its integral part and determined the failure of the Empire. This model can be also useful for understanding the fate of Al- Andalus. The fall of the last Muslim state on the Iberian Peninsula, the Emirate of Granada, can be explained not only by political or economic reasons, but also by the “readiness” of Granada’s society to be conquered after more than 250-year interaction with the Christian world. A deeper study and better understanding of the historical role of the states like Granada or Byzantium, as well as other similar zones require to solve interdisciplinary problems not only within one specific academic field (Medieval, Byzantine, Oriental studies etc.), but through the interaction of various disciplines.

The subject of the article is the state of the historiography of the reign of Emperor Paul I, in particular, one of the most significant and controversial legislative acts of this monarch — the Manifesto of April 5, 1797. A brief overview of the impressive historiography devoted to the fleeting and tragic reign of Catherine the Great’s son suggests that the debate about the nature of domestic policy of the monarch, and, in particular, about the problem of serfdom, its place and role in the settlement of this issue by the Russian absolutism in the previous and subsequent time, is far from being resolved. This also applies to the assessment of the Manifesto of April 5, 1797. Despite the significant expansion of the range of studies focused on this document in recent years, historians have not reached unanimity. In a number of works there is a clear idealization of both the image of the Emperor himself and his policy on peasantry. Rather than being a Conservative seeking to protect serfdom from damage, Pavel Petrovich is presented as a Progressive, who marked the beginning of the implementation into practice of the idea of gradually alleviating the condition of privately owned peasants, culminating in their complete liberation. Supporters of the latter version cite as the main argument the above-mentioned edict of the Emperor. However, the analysis of the Manifesto text, the program documents of Tsesarevich Paul, the historical situation when the decree was published and applied in practice, as well as the assessment of the key points of the Emperor’s internal policy established in historiography allow the author to enter into polemics with this point of view. Therefore, the main task of the work is to draw the attention of researchers to a number of points that have been neglected by modern historians, and try to give a more objective and balanced view on the problem of assessing the Manifesto and the entire Paul’s policy on peasants. The novelty of the study lies in the combination of the historiographic review and the textual analysis of the decree that leads to an understanding why the historiography has provided such conflicting assessments of Paul’s reign, and demands further in-depth research.

The author states the problem of “the churching of intelligentsia” amidst the growing secularization of the Russian society at the turn of the twentieth century, and draws on the example of the life and journalistic essays of priest Iosif Ivanovich Fudel. The novelty of the work lies in the absence of treatises which would explore the topic of the pre-revolutionary intelligentsia becoming churchly, the ways and scale of this process, as well as the insufficient knowledge about the biography of the person whose activities vividly illustrate the chosen topic. Fudel’s personality and his system of beliefs are investigated in the context of socio-ecclesiastical life of his time. He had an original view on the issue of intelligentsia’s role, as he represented a conservative current within the Russian thought (which was first and foremost connected with Mikhail Novoselov’s circle and differed from the modernist and political currents of the “religious-philosophical Renaissance” age). At the heart of the source study base are Fudel’s political writings from the 1880–1900s, as well as his letters and memoirs about him. Some key articles on the topic are also used (works by Ivan Aksakov, collections of articles Vekhi and Intelligentsia in Russia). This made it possible to follow Fudel’s transition (spiritual and social) from the intelligentsia circles of the Moscow University to the Church, and the evolution of his thought from identifying with the initially criticized intelligentsia to the attempts at the meaningful dialogue with it and “internal mission” of the Church. Father Iosif set a great challenge, at that moment a practically impossible task of creating “folk intelligentsia”, which overcoming the stage of secularization would again become churchly at a new stage of its spiritual and intellectual evolution. Fudel’s standpoint was not exceptional, neither was it widespread enough to be able to overcome the alienation between the Church and the intellectuals. Nonetheless, Fudel’s work on bridging the gap between the Church and the intelligentsia — by way of preaching (inter alia, public and journalistic), mission, publication of literature, personal example — represents an important and individually successful case of relations between the two parties.

The history of and the background of the creation of Saint Petersburg Soviet of Workers’ Deputies, which was formed in October 1905 and became the centre of the mass “Soviet” movement in Russia, undoubtedly demand further study. The subject of the present article is the analysis of G.S. Khrustalev-Nossar’s activities in the period prior to his chairmanship in the Saint Petersburg Soviet. The study seeks to investigate his role in the workers’ movement, putting it into the context of the preconditions for the creation of the Soviet. Unprecedentedly, the problem has been examined on the basis of not only the previously published accounts left by G.S. Khrustalev-Nossar and his contemporaries, but also archival documents (records of the Police Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs), memoirs of the parties involved in the events (particularly Social Democrats V. Perazich, P.D. Kolokol’nikov). The comparative analysis of the data from the afore-mentioned sources enables one to reconstruct, step by step, Khrustalev-Nossar’s work among the workers, his communication with representatives of various socio-political movements, to perceive whether he was, as he claimed, the maker of “the first Soviet” and elucidate his role in the workers’ organizational movement, in the forming of the idea to create the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies in Saint Petersburg in 1905. The article examines in detail Khrustalev-Nossar’s participation in the events following the Bloody Sunday, in the elections to Senator N.V. Shidlovsky’s Commission, in the holding of workers’ meetings at Udelnaya railway station in Saint Petersburg, in the activities of the Printing Workers’ Union. On the one hand, the research shows why, in October 1905, Khrustalev-Nossar was elected chairman of the fledgling Saint Petersburg Soviet, and, on the other hand, explains why he eventually became one of the “forgotten” figures of the period of the first Russian Revolution, 1905–1907, and has never received due attention in the academic and nonfiction literature. In this case, the pioneering contribution is a study and new assessment of the role of the individual in the course of the 1905 revolutionary events.

The present article examines a number of the issues relating to the activities of the military-police councils established under Moscow Governor- General F.V. Dubasov during the December armed uprising — the causes and process of formation of this body, its structure and composition, meeting agendas, decisions and their implementation. The purpose of research is to evaluate the efficiency of this institution and to establish its role in suppressing the “insurrection”, and this is important to study the relationship between civil and military authorities during the first Russian Revolution. These issues have not received treatment in historiography: those authors who deal with the history of the Moscow uprising either have completely ignored the military-police councils, or mentioned them only in passing. In the first days of the uprising, the interaction between civilian and military authorities was fraught with significant difficulties (inconsistency in police and military operations, the massive shelling of civilians’ homes by the military forces without causing damage to the rebels, the practice of sending expeditions by the commander of the Moscow military district to destroy barricades, inability to bring the outskirts of the city under their control). This prompted Governor-General F.V. Dubasov to take measures to provide supervision over the forces of the Moscow Military District, including establishment of the military-police councils under his chairmanship. The meetings of this body were held almost daily and attended by a wide range of civilian and military high-rank officials of the city. They discussed the plans and results of the most important military operations against the “rebels” (for example, punitive expeditions to Presnya and along the Moscow–Ryazan’ Railway). The governor-general eventually managed to persuade the military to adopt his tactics, i. e. the step-by-step occupation and “cleansing” of the regions that remained in the hands of the revolutionaries. However, the work of this body was handicapped by a number of shortcomings: late timing, loose attendance, haste in organizing operations, and the lack of real control over the military actions. The interplay of these factors led to numerous “failures” during the operation to capture the last stronghold of the rebels — Presnya.

The article examines the social composition of the right-wing parties that operated on the territory of Vladimir guberniya in 1905–1917, i. e. the Union of the Russian People and its subdivisions — the Shuya Union of the Russian Orthodox People and the Ivanovo-Voznesensk Autocratic-Monarchist Party. Their social base was the proletariat, the petite urban bourgeoisie and, to a much lesser extent, the peasantry, which had very close economic relations with the regional towns. “Census” classes were very poorly represented in the monarchical organizations of Vladimir guberniya. Not only the priests and officials who were not recommended by their superiors to participate in the activities of the right-wing organizations, but even the nobility were mostly very wary of the Black Hundreds and were in no hurry to join them. This statement is even more apt in the case of the local bourgeoisie, whose representatives, even if sympathetic to the monarchical idea, preferred to remain sympathizers, and lately completely distanced themselves from the Black Hundreds and joined the right wing of the liberal camp. The intelligentsia initially ignored the right-wing organizations, preferring opposition parties of varying degrees of radicalism. The social composition of the monarchical organizations in Vladimir guberniya was rather tightly correlated with their geographical location. The majority of the right-wing parties in the industrial centres, such as Ivanovo-Voznesensk, Kovrov, Nikolskoe, etc., were the workers. In the other towns, including provincial Vladimir, the petit bourgeoisie dominated in the monarchical organizations. In the rural chapters of the Union of the Russian people, almost all the members were peasants. There is very little information on the sex and age composition of the right-wing organizations, but it can still be argued that women’s participation in their activities was quite high, while there were a few young people among the monarchists, since they adopted a more radical ideology

The NKVD (MVD) special camps in the Soviet zone of occupation in post-war Germany remain an element of the Soviet occupational policy relatively unknown and practically unstudied in Russian historiography. The present article deals with these special camps on the basis of the extensive archival material deposited in the Fund of the Special Camps Division in the State Archives of the Russian Federation. The author analyzes various aspects of their functioning, such as the reasons and prerequisites for their organization, the development of the camp network in 1945–1948, the contingent of the camps, their staff, as well as their place in the system of the organs of the Soviet military administration and role in the activities of the Soviet state security organs in East Germany in the first post-war years. The special camps are defined as a distinct type of detention. They cannot be identified with either internment camps or concentration camps, as has been suggested in some German publications on this issue. They were intended for detention of the Germans who were arrested by the Soviet state security organs and previously involved in the Nazi party-state and militarized structures, as well as the Soviet citizens convicted to various terms of imprisonment by military tribunals. In this sense, they can really be named “special camps” where various categories of people were temporarily detained. A large number of contradictions in the functioning of the special camp system and, due to the very high mortality rate, its relative inadequacy to the task of providing the Soviet economy with the demanded workforce ultimately led to the gradual dissolution of the special camps by the Soviet government. Additionally, from the point of view of foreign policy, information about the camps with tens of thousands of prisoners in the Soviet occupational zone damaged the international reputation of the USSR, especially in the context of the aggravation of the “German question” in the early years of the Cold War. All this factors entailed substantial revision of the Soviet “camp policy” in East Germany in 1948 and complete dissolution of the special camps.