Abstract. The early second-millennium BCE old Assyrian seals impress from Kultepe in the collection of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts carries an image of great interest that has not been previously recognized. This is a battle of a hero with a serpent-like demonic character. The rarity of snake-fighting images in the extant Middle Eastern material determines the importance of studying this object, especially since it is one of the few Kultepe seals with an image which does not recur on the other seals from the region. The article analyzes the composition and subject of the seal along with the parallels to their elements found in the Near East material, explores the depicted scene in the context of relevant snakefighting myths and motifs in order to establish the relations (Anatolian, Syrian, Mesopotamian) of its subject, taking into consideration that Kultepe was a centre of interaction and synthesis of the traditions of Anatolia, Lower Mesopotamia and the Syrian-Upper Mesopotamian region. The closest iconographic parallels to the serpent on the seal are revealed in the serpent on the East Anatolian Late Hittite relief from Malatia whose appearance is further interpreted by the authors, and the alleged interpretation of some details of the seal scene finds correspondences with Syro-Anatolian motifs. A wide range of snake-fighting motifs in the relevant Near East traditions is used to determine the relations of the subject in question.

The author considers some aspects of the life and work of French ambassadors abroad in relation to performing the tasks of representing the royal authority in the second half of the 17th — early 18th centuries, and focuses on two main issues: what were the criteria for selecting the candidates for the post of a diplomatic representative and how the ambassadors used the space of their residence in order to ensure a worthy representation of the king of France. Historians mainly concentrate on the courtly (“internal”) diplomatic ceremonial, while in the historiography its “external” component has not yet been considered in its entirety. This can be explained by the fact that the study of the “external” diplomatic ceremonial is fraught with a number of methodological difficulties, such as, for example, distinguishing it from the ceremonial practice of foreign courts. By the “external” diplomatic ceremonial, the author means a set of norms, methods and principles of conduct that guided the French side when it participated in ceremonies held at foreign courts and also in ceremonies organized by French diplomats abroad. It was these ceremonies — receptions, dinners, celebrations organized by ambassadors — that became one of the objects of research in the article. The second half of the 17th century was a period when France reached its heyday in terms of political superiority on the world stage and unprecedented cultural flourishing. French diplomatic thought came to domineer in Europe at that time, and the norms of court etiquette, in its halcyon days, were a model for many European courts. It can be argued that the study of the diplomatic ceremonial of courtly society at its zenith allows us to come closer to understanding the phenomenon of the royal court as a special entity in the socio-political system of France. Moreover, it takes to a new level of tasks — the definition of the place of the French court in the political system of European courts, further analysis of diplomatic ceremonies of other European countries and interpretation of the role of the ceremonial in diplomacy of the second half of the 17th — early 18th centuries.

Little is known about kinship ties within villages and peasant communities in Russia in the second half of the 18th century. Yet the research on these links would undoubtedly help to better understand the peasant life, almost entirely enclosed within the limits of the village and rural community. The most informative source for studying kinships in the Russian Empire is census lists compiled since the first half of the 18th century. They indicate the inhabitants of every homestead and family ties inside it. Starting from the third census list of the 1760s, these documents contain information not only about the male, but also about the female part of the population, and allow establishing the network of family ties with a high degree of accuracy by comparing several census list for the same territory over different years. The article deals with one of the estates in Moscow guberniya on the basis of the third (1762) and fifth (1795) census lists. For the analysis, macros were developed in Visual Basic for Applications, integrated into Microsoft Office Excel. Thus, the authors created a chain of kinship ties and a database with more than 2 million pairs of relatives with the indication of the type of relationship (consanguinity or affinal relationship) and the range of relationship for each of them. The database helps identify the number of relatives for any person, establish the existence of family ties between households and determine the “density” and equitability of kinships. According to the census lists, more than 95 percent of the population in the area in question was linked by kinship ties. The proportion of blood relatives for different inhabitants ranges from 0 to 11 percent. Most of them lived in neighboring settlements. Application of this methodology in combination with the use of local patrimonial archives provides entirely new and extremely wide opportunities for studying the peasant life and world.

Conflict of the Tver’ Governor P.D. Akhlestyshev with the provincial zemstvo lasted throughout the entire period of his tenure in this post in the 1890s, however, after I.L. Goremykin was appointed Minister of the Interior in the fall of 1895, it moved into a new phase. The Minister actually sided with the opposition-minded zemstvo, and Akhlestyshev was forced to resign in the late 1897. Goremykin’s position in this matter was determined by two reasons: first, by the legalism inherent in the mode of his administration (thus he refused to regard the opposition of the zemstvo to the Governor as a challenge to the entire autocratic regime), and second, by intrigues inside the Ministry of the Interior in order to discredit Akhlestyshev. For almost two years, from the late 1895, the Governor tried to convince Goremykin of the legitimacy of his complaints against the zemstvo, however, judging by the quite negative reaction to Akhlestyshev’s reports, it was the Governer himself whom the Ministry blamed for the unhealthy socio-political conditions in the Tver’ guberniya. Correspondence of the Governor and Minister in 1896–1897 allows to follow the escalation of tension between them. What remained beyond the scope of this official documentation can be analyzed due to correspondence of the Governor with his confident Count S.D. Sheremetev, with whom Akhlestyshev shared the details of his relationship with the local zemstvo and the Ministry. This story shows that the political process in the Russian Empire in the late 19th century was much more complex than the confrontation between conservatives and liberals. The idea of building constructive relations with the zemstvo, despite the often provocative behavior of the latter, was evidently spreading among the representatives of the highest bureaucracy, as can be clearly seen in the case of the Tver’ guberniya. Such a link between legalist bureaucrats and liberals set a trend that doomed the utmost conservatives to marginalization.

The current state of international relations requires from humanities and interdisciplinary studies an analysis of the issues related to the use of the elements of “soft power”. In this regard, the research on the practice of France that has a long tradition of cultural diplomacy is of particular academic interest. Moreover, the issues related to the institutionalization of the foreign cultural policy of the French Republic have not been previously the subject of a specific study. Since the late 1950s cultural influence was regarded by the administration of the Fifth Republic as an instrument for realization of its political interests: in the context of continued decolonization, France needed to hold the former colonial countries under its close political impact. The economic and political interests of the Fifth Republic in liberated colonies went hand in hand with its cultural policy: reliance on the local political elite, trade strategy, export growth, and investments were directly depended on the increase in the number of specialists who spoke French and appropriated French values and culture. These factors led to the foundation of a number of state, interstate and public institutions that promoted French culture abroad. Thus, one of the characteristic features of the institutionalization of the French foreign cultural policy was a large amount of actors. This foreign cultural policy is closely related to the concept of “Francophonie”. The interstate organizations established in the two regions of the world, the Canadian province of Quebec and former French Africa, were important for implementing the Francophonie policy. The two five-year programs to expand the cultural and technical presence of France abroad were carried out in 1959–1963 and 1964–1968 during the presidency of Charles de Gaulle. These programs evidence that the Francophonic strategy was officially adopted as part of the Fifth Republic’s foreign policy. France strived to further its economic and political interests through systematic support of the French language and French-speaking population.

The process of adoption of the law on political parties stretched for almost a decade in the Russian Federation. When Art. 6 of the Constitution of the USSR was annulled in early 1990, it seemed to many that this law would appear in the near future. However, after the final solution of the “CPSU problem”, work on it was suspended. Post-Soviet Russia plunged into the abyss of problems that actually paralyzed the legislative authority. The new State Duma, the successor to the previous parliament, made this act a priority. Nevertheless, the process of agreeing on a practically completed draft law (the Supreme Council of the Russian Federation did the main work of drafting it) was extended to the entire term of the First Duma. When the State Duma adopted a law on parties at the end of its legislature, it was declined by the Federation Council on formal grounds. Russian lawyers and political scientists, commenting on Federal Law “On Political Parties” in force since 2001, as a rule, do not delve into the backstory related to the travails of its formation and adoption. However, this issue may well constitute a separate topic for research. The objective of this study is to answer the question why in the mid-1990s such an important law on parties, much anticipated and favored by certain representatives of the political establishment, was ultimately not adopted. The subject of the article is the political and legal processes associated with the development, discussion and mechanisms of adoption of this normative act in 1994–1995. The research is based on the study of a wide range of sources and applies an interdisciplinary approach, i.e. methodology of historical, political, and legal analysis. The author concludes that the main reason for the failure to adopt the law was not so much its real deficiencies as the strategic interests of the 1990s Russian political elite.

The movement of spiritual Christians-Molokans in the Tambov region in the 1990s–2010s underwent major changes. The objective of this study is to analyze the historical prospects for the development of this movement in the region in question. There has been no general study of Molokans of the Tambov region since the expeditions of the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in 1959–1960; only local studies of individual Molokan communities were attempted, for example, in the town of Rasskazovo. The topic of the old Russian sectarianism still needs further research. This work is based on the field research that the author conducted in 2017 and 2019. The heyday of the Molokan movement in the Tambov region fell on the first half of the 19th century. At the turn of the 19th century, Molokanism experienced a crisis while the number of Molokans was gradually decreasing in the context of spreading baptism. During the Soviet period, the Molokan movement in the region was in decline and most of the Molokan communities disappeared. In the 1990s–2010s there were three small Molokan communities in the Tambov region — in Tambov, Uvarovo and Rasskazovo. They flourished in 1999–2010, when the Molokans held congresses and active communication between the communities, and published Samizdat magazines. Nowadays, two of the three communities — in Tambov and Uvarovo — have survived. However, the absence of active and young members promises them no prospect. Nevertheless, these communities cultivate the spiritual and ritual traditions of Molokanism. In villages where communal life ceased during the Soviet period, the Molokan tradition degraded to separate religious practices, mainly related to the burial and commemoration of the dead. This allows concluding the importance of community life and Sunday liturgical gatherings for Molokans. The decline of the present-day Tambov Molokanism is primarily due to the lack of active community members, lack of internal and external Molokan preaching, and inability to interest young people in Molokan teaching.

Apart from mass import products, dozens of individual items of Western European origin were found in the excavations of medieval Novgorod, including household items and jewelry. Unlike the mass products, they are associated with the following excavation sites: Nerev, Slavna, Ilyinsky, Duboshin, Mikhailova Street, Nutny, Nikitinsky and Troitsky. There were the townhouses of the Novgorod boyars and merchants who traded with the Hanseatic League. About 200 individual items of Western European origin have been found in Novgorod. The author assigned individual objects to every residence. In addition, she attempts at classifying these residences on the basis of their landlords’ ownership of imported European products. The distribution of Western European items among Novgorod residences contributes to our perception of the social status of the owners of imported products. Apart from the traditionally prominent role of the boyars, one can note the high density of Western European items on the sites of nonaristocratic townhouses. Craftsmen and merchants could also purchase Western European imported products. Some of them could get to Novgorod from Karelia, where the local population was in contact with the subjects of the Swedish crown and assimilated certain elements of Western culture. In Novgorod there are zones of accumulation of Western European everyday items that were hardly used by the Novgorodians. These zones are considered to be the quarters of residents from Germany. This observation allows to verify the data of written sources. Simultaneous circulation of certain types of products in Novgorod and in the West correlates with evidence of the intensive trade exchange during the 13th and 14th centuries. These data also allow demonstrating that in certain periods Western style trends extended to the territory of medieval Novgorod.

Feodor Alekseyev, a leading representative of the genre of perspective cityscapes in the Russian academic art at the turn of the 18th century, combined artistic work and teaching practice for many years, simultaneously acting as the head of the workshop and the professor of the perspective painting class at the Imperial Academy of Arts. Based on Alekseyev’s activities, the author examines the content of the concepts of “workshop” and “school” in the era of classicism in Russia, when the earlier forms of master and apprentices’ working in a guild coexisted with the new academic system of training professional artists. The basis for the analysis was Alekseyev’s practical work commissioned by the Emperor, i.e. his execution of the views of Moscow, whose image symbolized national historical traditions and acted as a certain antithesis to the metropolitan Petersburg in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The features characterising the relationship between the master and his assistants are reflected in Alekseyev’s collaboration with the graduates of the Academy, A.M. Kunavin and I.V. Moshkov, as they worked jointly on the graphic views of Moscow in 1800–1801 (after the business trip to the ancient capital on assignment for the Academy of Arts). The study of the paintings from the perspective of the typological features of images, their style and manner of execution let the author identify the respective roles of the master and his mentees in the process of creating the cityscapes. The article traces the compositional and semantic transformation of the views starting with watercolour drawings from nature and ending with the paintings that brought Alekseyev the glory of the first master of the Russian cityscape. Alekseyev’s experience as the head of the workshop, when he directly shared his expertise with his apprentices and determined the final result of their work, was extended in the activities of Alekseyev as a professor, who headed the class of perspective painting at the Academy of Arts from 1803 to 1824, and continued the practice of creating the panoramic views of Moscow. Thanks to the close integration of artistic and pedagogical practice, Alekseyev had a significant impact on the formation of the typological and figurative “model” of the urban landscape which was developed in the Russian art at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

The article analyzes archival, periodical and other printed material of the 1920s–1930s and demonstrates how the idea of accessibility of art (“art belongs to the people”) was realized and new “proletarian spectators”, visitors to art museums and exhibitions, were introduced to the culture. Particular attention is given to previously unexplored material (such as guest books of art museums and exhibitions, sociological studies conducted by museum employees, notes by tour guides). It gives the idea of audience reaction to “culturalization”, art in general and contemporary art in particular. As a rule, guest books escape the attention of art historians. The author thinks that these data allow developing a new approach to this significant topic. The artistic intelligentsia and museum staff were supposed to “accustom to art” workers and peasants who had been deprived of this experience before. For most visitors, their visits to the Tretyakov Gallery and the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts were the first experience of getting acquainted with an art gallery and painting in general (“the impression is great”, the museum “is magnificent”, “made a great impression”, “I am overjoyed since everything is so unexpectedly beautiful”); the audience better understood the sculpture (“the only bad thing is that the figures are broken”), the visitors liked easel painting, but they needed explanation (“it’s extremely difficult without a guide”), classic and realistic art was preferred, the avant-garde (“a daub”) and contemporary painting were not liked (“I don’t want to look at and spend time on this”). The audience had no idea about the formal values of art and saw only the subject of the painting. The questionnaires of artists and art historians published in the weekly “Zhizn’ iskusstva” in 1929 revealed that many problems remained unresolved and art was still “alien and incomprehensible to the broad proletariat and peasant masses”.

March 24, 2020 marks the anniversary of Lidia Vasilyevna Koshman: Doctor of Historical Sciences, Chief Researcher and Head of the Laboratory of Cultural History of the Faculty of History, Lomonosov Moscow State University