The article presents a historiographical analysis of the works from the digest in honor of the eightieth anniversary of the remarkable Russian archaeologist and historian Nikodim Pavlovich Kondakov (published in Prague in 1924) where the first significant attempt to systematize his rich scholarly heritage had been undertaken. The author especially underlines the fact that almost all of its participants had acknowledged the established scientific school of N.P. Kondakov, and also an attempt of the brightest disciple and follower of the scholar – M.I. Rostovtzeff – to emphasize its theoretical and methodological principles.

In the article an attempt is made to study works of the modern Russian historians published in the process of preparing and holding the 100th anniversary of the Great Russian Revolution of 1917. The focus of the article is on clarifying the concept of a “critical” version of modern historiography as a revision of relevant ideas about historical events in Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century, which traditionally existed in Soviet historiography. The author of the article aims to identify the theoretical and methodological as well as the factual basis for reconstructing the historical events of the early twentieth century in the texts of renown modern Russian historians. She concentrates her attention on the question of increment of scientific knowledge in historiographical sources selected for a historiographical analysis. To that end, the article investigates the justification and productivity of using the intellectual instrumentarium of the new political history and psychological history to solve the questions formulated by the authors of analyzed historiographical sources. It is the author's opinion that the “critical” version of the modern historiography is outlining the productive approaches to redefining the meanings of Russian historical events of the early twentieth century. So far that is only the initial intellectual drawing of the new theoretical and methodological mechanisms in the modern historiography, but it is obvious, that with all the apparent provocativeness of the proposed approaches, it is a necessary step to create a new image of the past in response to the challenges of our time.

The article draws on new archival sources to analyze the process of sociocultural adaptation of a Russian nobleman in the context of revolution and civil war. The author considers the change of individual strategies of adaptation to the dynamic conditions of the sociocultural environment of the “new world” and concludes that with a very high degree of risk, the ability of the nobleman’ adaptation to new conditions was preserved - in areas where the cultural tradition remained in the era of disasters. The patronage of the representatives of the new elite, who supported this tradition, helped to adapt to the point of assimilation, albeit superficially: in the conditions of competition with the “old world”, the mechanism of maladaptation was quickly activated.

In Russia, during centuries the Arctic Ocean, as well as the Barents Sea and White Sea had been called the Icy Sea. In this article, the development of the routes of communication on the north of the European part of Russia has been analyzed. Special attention is paid to a water and land ways from Moscow to Arkhangelsk. Also, it is emphasized an important role of transit of cargoes along the artificial water way that has connected Sheksna and Sukhon rivers through the use of some canals and sluices. Ship traffic along this water system was opened in 1828. In the last quarter of the XIX century, a railroad was built from Moscow to Arkhangelsk. However, the needs of economic growth of this area required absolutely different transport accessibility. The only northern sea port in Arkhangelsk no longer satisfied the interests of foreign trade. At the turn of 19^th – 20^th centuries, the Ministry of railways and Ministry of finance received a number of offers from business leaders, local government bodies and specialists to build new public highways and railroads and to search suitable bays for sea port construction. The main goal of those projects was expedited shipping of export cargoes from Siberian and Ural regions. The path to the ports of the White and Barents Seas was a great deal shorter. For reference: the length of a road from Perm to Arkhangelsk was 1281 km, to Petrograd through Vyatka – 1750 km, and through Moscow – 2016 km. The construction of these roads could have contributed to appearance of new cities and enterprises, mining and growth of mobility of population. In the author’s opinion, the most challenging were the projects of construction of the Ob-Belomorsk railroad and the railroads to the mouth of Indiga River (Indiga Bay of the Barents Sea), where environmental conditions allowed to construct a convenient deep-water port. In different times, all these projects were declined by cabinet officials and members of parliament lawmakers for a variety of reasons, mainly of financial character. Breakdown of the USSR and a loss of the majority of convenient ports on the Black Sea and Baltic coasts again put in the agenda a question of construction of large transportation lines and ports on the Russian North.

The article is analyzing new tendencies in the policy of Russia in the region of Middle East after the beginning of its active participation in Syrian conflict. This fact encouraged increasing interest of Arab state, which attempted to intensify contacts with it. The Gulf Monarchies occupies a central position in Arab world, due to their huge reserves of hydro carbonates and political stability. The article describes the relationship between Russia and this group of states in the post Soviet period. The article is characterizing the development of these ties, which were connected with the circumstances occurred in this period inside Russia and changes in regional situation. The authors are analyzing political as well as economical relations, which were developing between Russia and Arab Monarchies of the Gulf. They concentrated on some spheres of cooperation, which were based on mutual interests. This is first the oil and gas field, which became one of the central problems, which was successfully reserved, due to common efforts of both sides.

The article seeks to analyze the evolution of China’s foreign policy concept since the late 1990s to present. In the second half of the 90s. China’s international policy has entered an active phase. Traditionally giving priority to domestic policy in relation to foreign one, the Chinese leadership has faced an obvious imbalance in the growing military and economic power of the PRC and the country’s position in the international arena. Contrary to popular belief that China does not have a long-term foreign policy strategy, the author believes that it exists, but has a hidden character. Based on an analysis of official sources such as the Constitution of the PRC, reports of the General Secretaries at congresses of the Chinese Communist Party, “white papers”, the author attempts to examine the evolution of the concept of international politics of the PRC and to trace its continuity in the specified time period. The author hypothesizes that the concepts of “peaceful rise” and “peaceful development” of China prepared the ground for the leadership of the People’s Republic of China to put forward an unprecedentedly ambitious doctrine of the “community of common destiny for humanity”. This doctrine, which implies significant obligations on China as a guarantor of stability in the world, challenges the current “Western” world order, shifting the centers of power in the international arena.

This article analyzes China’s demographic situation since 1949 to nowadays, its impact on socio-economic life of the country, cooperation of the state and society in the demographic sphere. The author describes the main population control's campaigns in China, discusses the reason for the transition to the “one family – one child” policy. This article gives a special attention to the positive and negative consequences of that policy, the reasons for its rejection in 2016, as well as factors of cooperation between the state and society in that sphere.

The article examines the essence and functioning of the concept of «Islamic Awakening» (IA) (Persian – bidariye eslami) in Iran, which has been actualized by the Iranian political elite as a description of events related to the Arab Spring, as well as the foreign policy doctrine of the Islamic Republic Iran (IRI) in the 2010s. As this study shows, this term appeared in Iranian sociopolitical discourse in previous decades and has similarities with the concept of «Islamic revival», covering a vast number of diverse movements in the Islamic world in different historical periods. The authors of the article analyze the ideological roots of this concept, which dates back to the ideas of the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini that received the title «Export of the Islamic Revolution» (Persian – sodure engelabe eslami). Much attention is paid to identifying the essence of this concept and its difference from IA, which was also revealed by the present study. This article also analyzes the basic principles of the concept of «Islamic Awakening», manifested both in the statements of the highest representatives of the Iranian political elite and in the school textbooks on the modern history of Iran. The authors also seek to examine the dynamics of using the term «Islamic Awakening» in the Iranian social and political discourse, which demonstrates a strong increase in its mentioning in 2011 and a gradual decrease after 2013, which was related to a decline in the influence of Arab Spring in the Near and Middle East region and changes in the foreign policy views of the main political figures inside Iran.

This article is about the problem of the pro-Soviet Polish partisan movement’s formation during the Great Patriotic War in the territory of Western Belarus. Looking at the expansion of the influence of the Army Krajowa in Vileika region, the comand of the partisan detachments decided to involve local Poles into the resistance movement on the side of the USSR. Since there was no such experience in this region, in the process of creating its own Polish partisan detachment in the summer of 1943 they made a big mistakes. As a result, the new division existed for only a few weeks and turned from the ally into the enemy. The author analyzes the conditions of the creation of the Polish partisan detachment, its social, national features, its size, he explores the personality of the commander Vincenty Mroczkowski and his role in the fate of the division. Special attention is paid to the causes and consequences of the collapse of the Polish partisan detachment.

The purpose of the article is to identify the USSR image in “Neue Zürcher Zeitung” daily newsletter. The three main tasks are to elicit basic USSR characteristics in the newsletter, learn their dynamics, identify “connecting” historical events that governed the USSR image in “Neue Zurcher Zeitung” and its rhetoric towards the USSR as well as learn stereotypes about ‘Bolshevik Russia” in the Swiss “Neue Zürcher Zeitung”. The research reveals that the “Neue Zurcher Zeitung” media showed the USSR as an “enemy” which was based on the idea of the two worlds opposition – communist to democratic, where the former one represented the country of no freedom with no equality along with its common characteristics such as “social imperialism”, “Pan-Slavism” and “threat”. The key events that formed the Soviet perception in the newsletter were military achievements of the red army during the Moscow and Stalingrad battles, activation of the Swiss communist party and pro-Communists ideas in Switzerland, “Neue Zurcher Zeitung” attempt to confront growing “Russophobia”, and the USSR denial to restore diplomatic relationships with Switzerland in 1944. In 1945, by the end of the war in Europe, the USSR was perceived by the Swiss’ as dangerous and military powerful state, ideological project and the successor of Tsarist Russia.

The article is devoted to the study of the project of Indian integration and the creation of a single Mexican nation, created by the famous Mexican sociologist, lawyer and philosopher Andres Molina Enriquez in his work “The Great National Problems” (1909). In his main theoretical work, the author presents an extensive panorama of all social groups in Mexico, which he classified according to their race and level of cultural development. One of the central ideas of the study is to state that the mestizos represent progress and should take a leading position in the new post-revolutionary state. It should be noted that the work “Great National Problems” became a real manifesto of the Mexican Revolution (1910–1917), and its author was one of the authors of the 1917 Constitution, and in particular, Article 27, which defined the new agrarian system in the country.

This paper concerns the formation of the image of the pre-hispanic cultures of the Ecuador coast in the 20^th – 21^th centuries historiography. Since the middle of the 20^th century the study of historiography has become a real trend in the history. Historiography of Ecuador however, is insufficiently studied in the foreign literature and is not studied at all by the Russian historians. Thus, the main purpose of this paper is the study of the evolution of concepts and essential problematics to the scientists of the pre- Hispanic past of Ecuador in the 20^th – 21^th centuries. The author seeks to study the entire path of foreign historiography from the first works to the modern ones, in particular, the works of G. Dorsey, M. Saville, E. Estrada, K. Evans, B. Meggers, D. Lothrop, J. Marcos, K. Stothart and H. Benavides. Various periods of scientific knowledge are reviewed: the progression from positivism to the science of the 21th century, which is marked by a turning point in the development of theoretical and methodological foundations. The development of historiography is analyzing on the base of the concept of scientific schools in the interpretation of N.V. Illeritskaya. In conclusion author proposes new periodization of the study of pre- Hispanic cultures of the Ecuador coast.