№ 5 (2025)

There is a strong tradition of interpreting the concepts of “Voguls” and “Ostyaks” as ethnonyms strictly tied to the Ugric population. The conducted study on the use of these concepts in documents of the 16^th–17^th centuries AD shows that this version is erroneous. The concepts of “Voguls” and “Ostyaks” initially were the situational designations, not tied to linguistic or “ethnic” groups. The reason for the emergence of a rigid semantic link between these concepts and the Ugrians was their long-term use to designate population groups which later formed the Mansi and Khanty peoples. At the same time, the fact that these same concepts were used to designate a population that had no relation to the Ugrians is omitted as insignificant. Moreover, some population groups of the 16^th–17^th centuries are interpreted as “Turkic-speaking Ugrians”, based on their designation in documents as “Ostyaks”.

The conclusions of the study are as follows. The ambitious idea of building a new capital – a great city "to praise him" – became an integral part of the concept of the monarch's rule at the very beginning of the XVIII century. On the eve of the foundation stone of St. Petersburg, Peter the Great was already thinking of giving it a metropolitan status in the future. Reliable and numerous sources unequivocally indicate that the monarch himself laid the foundation stone of the future capital on May 16, 1703. The author of the article shows that the foundation stone of the fortress at the mouth of the Neva River on Trinity Day by the Knights of the Order of St. Andrew the First-Called, a representative composition of the generals with the prescribed church rite, represented a large-scale celebration. The responses to the author's point of view that St. Petersburg was officially declared the capital on May 8 (19), 1714 are analyzed.

From 1874 to 1886, the government leaders of the Russian Empire considered seven projects for the introduction of military service in the Caucasus. A large number of projects were explained by the divergence of views on the principles of reform between the Caucasian administration and the St. Petersburg higher bureaucracy. In 1874-1881, the principles of imperial unification, increasing the military power of the state and saving money were put in the first place in St. Petersburg. Meanwhile, in Tiflis, priority was given to the principle of administrative and legal isolation of the outskirts, which made it possible to maintain the loyalty and tranquility of its population. After the accession of Emperor Alexander III in 1881, the Caucasian administration and part of the St. Petersburg bureaucracy began to take into account the ethnic and religious characteristics of the "native population" of the Caucasus to a greater extent than before. Following lengthy discussions in May 1886 in St. Petersburg, it was finally decided to extend military service only to the Christian indigenous population of the Caucasus, while it was decided to exempt the Muslim population from active service, replacing it with a monetary tax.

The article deals with the activity of West Siberian patronage in the beginning of the 20^th century. Its close relationship with the law on parole on June 22, 1909 is highlighted and traced. Using the example of Tomsk province, as one of the main penitentiary regions, the scenario of development, management and support of patronage societies in the Russian Empire is shown. The main factors that hindered the activities of these organizations are denoted. Considerable attention is paid to the participation of the Siberian society in the life of the patronage, as well as its assessments by local figures of justice.

The article is devoted to the study of the image of the "East" as an object of Soviet politics in its economic, ideological, propaganda and cultural aspects on the pages of the Soviet satirical magazine "Crocodile" in the first decade of its existence – in 1922–1932. The author vividly demonstrates, using a textual narrative and visual sources, the novelty of satirical rhetoric and strategies of satirical journalists in creating a meta–image of the "collective East". Using materials on Eastern themes, the authors and editors of the magazine were solving a new task of creating a kind of "positive" satire, in which criticism of Western politics in its "eastern dimension" emphasized the image of friendly Asia updated by the changes. And the pre-revolutionary rhetoric of the "enemy from the East" is being replaced by a new image of the "friend from the East", which is fully supported by the USSR. During the period under review, this strategy only formed its own language and image system, but in the future it will confirm its relevance in Soviet propaganda discourse and foreign policy rhetoric.

This article examines the attempts of the Central Committee of the CPSU to establish effective control over the work of regional party committees in the early post-war years. To achieve this goal, the center streamlined and intensively applied control practices developed in the pre-war years. However, standard measures did not give the desired result: the available resources were insufficient for detailed monitoring of the situation at the local level, selective inspections had a short-term mobilizing effect and failed to address key shortcomings in the work of the implementers. In early 1953, the top leadership decided to tighten control with the help of mass and regular inspections, but immediately after Stalin's death gave up excessive pressure on the regions.

The article examines the notes on the administrative separation of the Gorno-Altaisk autonomous oblast from the Altai krai, sent by the first secretary of the Gorno-Altaisk obkom N.M. Kiselyov to the Altai kraikom and the Central Committee of the CPSU in the second half of the 1950s. These initiatives are placed in a broad historical context, primarily in connection with changes in the regional politics in the wake of Stalin’s death. A number of similar initiatives of other ethnic regions during the same period, their causes and consequences are also noted. Conclusions are drawn about the essence of the changes in the system of center-regional relations during the “Thaw”. The short- and long-term consequences of Kiselyov’s initiatives for the future of Gorno-Altai and neighboring regions are traced.

This article is dedicated to the latest book in the "Peoples and Cultures" series. It analyzes material on the historical evolution of the Nogais, their ethnolinguistic roots, area of settlement, material culture, religion, as well as the processes within modern Nogai society.

This review presents a collection of works by renowned historian A.I. Miller, devoted to the Ukrainian question in the 19th-21st centuries. The reviewer agrees with the historian's main thesis that Ukrainian national identity only emerged in the 20th century, building on a pre-existing regional identity. The author's conclusions are significant when examining Ukrainization tendencies in Soviet encyclopedic articles on the history of Ukraine.

The work discusses the evolution of the political system of Finland from the era of the Great Reforms to the beginning of the First World War through the eyes of modern Russian researcher N.D. Postnikov. The process of building a Finnish multiparty system, in which there was no room for pro-Russian forces, is shown. This "tragedy" of Russian monarchical statehood is explained both by the opposition of local elites and the inconsistency of the authorities' own policies on its constitutional fringes.

The review examines a new monograph by A.I. Repinetsky, a renowned specialist in historical demography. Based on materials from the general population censuses (1897, 1920, 1926, 1937, 1939) and archival documents, the monograph reconstructs the demographic history of the Samara Volga region from 1897 to 1945. The reviewer highly appreciates the systematic analysis of population dynamics, gender and age, social and ethnic composition, as well as literacy and marriage rates against the backdrop of major historical events: the First World War, the Civil War, famine, industrialization, repressions, and the Great Patriotic War. Special attention in the review is paid to Repinetsky's methodological approach, particularly his introduction of data from the previously classified 1937 census into scholarly discourse and his handling of the issue of changing administrative borders of the region. The monograph is characterized as a significant contribution to historical demography, with practical relevance for understanding contemporary socio-demographic processes.