No 2, 2026
Publishing Date: 2026-07-25
HISTORY
Kravtsov D.A. Arthur Evans’s model of Minoan expansion and the myth of the peaceful Minoans
The article analyses the relationship between Arthur Evans’s model of Minoan expansion and the later image of the Minoans as peace-loving people. The author pays particular attention to Evans’s interpretation of the absence of fortifications on Crete, the spread of Minoan culture beyond the island, the Minoan presence on mainland Greece, and the meaning of Pax Minoica. It is shown that Evans combined the idea of Crete’s internal flourishing with the concept of a maritime power, colonization, political control and violence on the periphery. The article concludes that the myth of the “peaceful Minoans” did not emerge as a direct consequence of Evans’s concept, but through its later scholarly and popular reception.
The brief stay of Lenin in Copenhagen during the late summer and autumn of 1910 has generally occupied only a marginal place in studies of the Russian history movement. Overshadowed by the historical events of 1917 and by Lenin’s longer periods of exile in Switzerland, France and Britain, the Copenhagen visit has nevertheless attracted increasing scholarly attention as an illuminating episode in the history of transnational socialism. During his stay, Lenin attended the Eighth Congress of the Second International, participated in meetings among Russian social democratic delegates, established contacts with socialist activists from across Europe, and pursued extensive research on Danish agriculture and cooperative institutions in the Royal Danish Library. This article argues that the significance of Lenin’s Copenhagen lies less in his formal role during the congress than in the wider political and intellectual environment in which it occurred. Copenhagen functioned as a hub within an international network of revolutionary exiles, allowing socialist activists to exchange ideas, debate strategy and maintain political organizations across national borders. Examining Lenin’s activities through Soviet, Western, Danish and recent historiography demonstrates how interpretations of the visit have evolved alongside changing understandings of the Russian history in 1917 and international socialism.
This article examines the specific features of the formation of the image of the Russian provinces with Samara as a case study in the now-vanished information discourse of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The author justifies the relevance of this topic by demonstrating that the stereotypes of “backwardness” and harsh living conditions that became a part of American social mythology and continue to shape contemporary information processes. To address this problem, the study introduces a new methodological concept, the «imagined region», which makes it possible to trace the evolution of this image over a long historical period.
Pokidova N.V. Samara as assessed by “The New York Times” newspaper in 1905-1907
In contemporary academic research in international journalism and study of the history of public opinion, the importance of foreign print media is growing. They serve as a key tool for understanding how perceptions of a reality that differs from one’s own are constructed. This article, using materials from “The New York Times” newspaper, analyses how American media covered the Samara Province during the First Russian revolution and the famine. The research source base consists of an exclusive selection of several dozen newspaper publications of various genres: telegrams from St. Petersburg, detailed correspondence from the scene, letters and appeals from famine relief organizers, as well as editorial notes and analytical articles. The study found that Samara on “The New York Times” pages is portrayed not as an ordinary administrative unit, but as a hotbed of revolution and anarchy. This image synthesizes three fundamental themes that form a reflection of a systemic crisis.
The study focuses on a little-studied topic in Russian historiography, the execution of fifteen partisans on Piazzale Loreto in Milan on August 10, 1944. The article reconstructs in detail the background, course and outcome of the tragedy. It pays special attention to the theoretical aspects of visual materials used in historical science, the evolution of ideas about the corpus of sources and their classification. Based on the adapted methodology by L.V. Belgorodskaya and N.R. Novosiltsev, the author conducted a comprehensive analysis of the main forms of commemoration of the Milanese partisans, which focuses on the analysis of the painting by the Italian avant-garde artist Aligi Sassu “The Martyrs of Piazzale Loreto” (1944). In conclusion it is noted not only the possibility of using visual sources, but also the methodological benefits of integrating visual art materials into historical research.
The article focuses on the activities of the Commissioner for religious affairs at the Council of Ministers of the USSR in the Smolensk Region at the early 1970s, aimed at relations with religious organizations in the region on the example of Vyazma city. The authors study aspects of interaction and control by Soviet authorities over both registered and unregistered religious communities and groups of believers, showing the activities of the Commissioner and the problems he faced in a certain area of the Smolensk region. The article features materials from the Contemporary History State Archive of the Smolensk Region; many of them are being introduced into scientific circulation for the first time.
Matyushin K.A. The production mechanism of kolkhozes and sovkhozes in Krasnoyarsk Krai in 1976-1980
The article examines the production mechanism of kolkhozes (collective farms) and sovkhozes (state farms) in Krasnoyarsk Krai in 1976-1980s as part of the late Soviet administrative-planning agrarian system. The focus is placed on how directive planning, resource supply, land use, the fodder base and labour organization were combined in the everyday work of agricultural enterprises. The author pays particular attention to the links through which large-scale agrarian production depended on machinery, fuel, electricity, repair resources, personnel and administrative control. Based on the material of the collective-state farm system of the region, the article shows that crop husbandry, fodder production and animal husbandry formed a single production chain which stability was determined by a set of interconnected conditions. This approach makes it possible to raise the question of how manageable and effective the regional agrarian system was during the 10th five-year plan.
PEDAGOGY and TEACHING METHODOLOGY
This article presents experience of the Donskoy Polytechnic College in creating and operating a School of Pedagogical Excellence (SPE) as a model of an educational space aimed at the continuous professional development of teachers in secondary vocational education. This paper is relevant due to institutional changes in secondary vocational education, staffing issues and the ineffectiveness of methodological work traditional methods. It concludes that the SPE is effective as a tool for addressing staffing issues and improving the quality of education. Development prospects lie in digitalization and the replication of this model in other vocational educational institutions in the region.
POLITOLOGY and LAW
Medical malpractice is a complex legal issue involving aspects of criminal law, civil law and medical ethics. Medical malpractice cases often result in both physical and psychological harm to patients, thus demanding legal accountability from medical personnel. This study aims to analyse the forms of civil liability in medical malpractice cases and the obstacles to law enforcement. The research method used is a normative juridical method with a statutory and conceptual approach. The results show that civil liability focuses more on the existence of unlawful acts or breaches of contract that cause harm to patients. Law enforcement in medical malpractice cases still faces obstacles in obtaining evidence and differing views between the legal and medical professions.
This article examines the obstacles to and the prospects for deeper cooperation among the BRICS countries in the field of information technology. It argues that digital sovereignty is at once the main motive for such cooperation and its principal constraint. The study reviews the institutional architecture that BRICS has built since 2017, including the Partnership on the New Industrial Revolution, the Digital BRICS Task Force and the remote sensing satellite constellation, and then identifies five obstacles: structural heterogeneity, divergent data-governance regimes, technological dependence on Western suppliers, the rivalry between China and India, and weak institutionalization. It then assesses the most promising tracks for optimization, among them cross-border payment infrastructure, a shared data-governance framework, digital public infrastructure, sovereign artificial intelligence and space-based data. The article concludes that the prospects are real but uneven, and that progress depends less on technical capacity than on a governance design that preserves national control while allowing systems to interoperate.
THEOLOGY
The paper examines the main patterns of the selection of clergy in the territory of the Olonets diocese in the 18th and early 20th centuries. It has been revealed that for a significant part of the period under study, parishioners retained the ancient right to choose the clergy. The laity had detailed information about the existence of such powers and, if necessary, resolutely defended their legitimate rights by appealing to the highest church administrative authorities (the Synod). The situation has changed radically since the first decades of the 19th century. The election of clergy was replaced by the appointment of churchmen to parishes without taking into account the opinions of parishioners. In the changed reality, parishioners retained significant opportunities for comprehensive control over their pastors.
Khroul V. Religion and humour in media: towards a conflict preventive normative model
This article proposes a theoretical framework for understanding and preventing conflicts arising from humorous media coverage of religion. Drawing on mediatisation theory, classical theories of humour, and comparative case analysis across three distinct socio-cultural contexts: Russia, Sweden and South Africa the paper argues that the relationship between media humour and religious sensibility is structurally predictable and normatively manageable. The article surveys recent international scholarship on the humour religion nexus in digital environments, identifies Russian cases as a distinctive regulatory archetype, and synthesises empirical material from both the Global South and the Nordic context into a coherent theoretical model. The paper concludes by arguing that a conflict preventive normative model is not merely desirable but theoretically grounded and empirically achievable, provided it is anchored in context-sensitive analysis of mutual expectations between media practitioners and religious communities.
PHILOLOGY
This paper examines the components of the conceptual sphere reflecting the miraculous, using Russian folk tales and the modern Russian language as a reference. A number of concepts form a conceptual magical, sacred space in Russian fairy tales, creating a fairy tale atmosphere of wonder. The components and tools for constructing the fairy tale world include the concepts “another world”, “fate”, “faith” and so on. The primary concept organizing this space is the concept of miracle, and an important opposition is the opposition of “us” and “them”. An analysis of fairy tale concepts suggests the existence of a conceptual space of magic, which finds regular expression in Russian fairy tales. For a fairy tale worldview, the presence of a magical component in the concepts that create its system is natural; this is their usual structure, which does not surprise the recipients of the fairy tale text. In the modern language, a conceptual space associated with the sphere of the miraculous is also present. Here, it is more variable: it can coincide with the fairy tale, or it can differ significantly. Miracles have become more commonly understood metaphorically and people’s confidence in their own strength and the ability to change their destiny has become more pronounced. At the same time, there is a growing desire to believe in miracles, but not in a fairy-tale sense, but in a religious and mythological sense.
The paper undertakes a comprehensive analysis of the poem by Makhtumkuli Fragi “Gözel Şirgazy” (Beautiful Shirgazy) in the aspect of the poetics of farewell and the motive of separation. The relevance of the research is dictated by the insufficient study of the autobiographical lyrics of the Turkmen poet in terms of its artistic structure. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the systematic consideration of the refrain as a compositional dominant that determines the emotional trajectory of the poem, as well as in identifying the dual nature of the motive of separation – spatial (separation from the Madrasah) and existential (loss of father). The methodological basis of the research combines historical, literary, biographical and linguae poetic approaches. The analysis revealed that the poetics of farewell in the “Gözel Şirgazy” poem are built on three interrelated levels: compositional (circular refrain), metaphorical (images of “salt”, “hiding place of words”, “Kaaba”, “golden doors”) and emotional (contrasting transition from enlightened intonation to tragic after the news of father’s death). The findings of the study can be used in further study of Makhtumkuli Fragi’s autobiographical poetry, as well as in courses on the history of Turkic literature.
This paper examines three translations of the poem “The Song of Our Land” (Pieśń o ziemi naszej) by Wincenty Pol from Polish into Russian and German. The poem was written during the heyday of Romanticism and is stylized as a Polish folklore genre, the gawęda. Its content is a literary journey and is geographically descriptive. Catholics and Orthodox Christians have long inhabited Polish lands and the translation of religious terms related to Orthodoxy and Catholicism presents a particularly interesting problem. In Polish, as in Russian, the words “kostel” (Catholic Church) and “tserkov” (Orthodoxy Church) have distinct meanings, denoting both religious and national affiliations. In both languages, regional and national affiliation comes to the fore in translation: the word “kostel” in Russian, like the word “cerkiew” in Polish, evokes associations with specific territories, unlike the more denominationally neutral “khram” (temple) or “sobor” (cathedral). In German, this distinction is absent and accordingly, the aspect of denominational diversity is lost in translations. This is partly restored by preserving architectural descriptions: a tower (for a Catholic Church) and a dome (for an Orthodoxy Church), but outside of a cultural context, denominational differences are not obvious. Footnotes explaining the structure of a church in German translations are most often provided with an indication of nationality (Russian). Two significant spiritual centres, Orthodox (Kiev Lavra) and Catholic (Częstochowa), also have a national-ethnographic context in the original text, which is foregrounded in one of the German translations. In the context of the loss of state independence, religious affiliation became the main pillar of national identity, and Wincenty Pol emphasizes national-religious unity in his work.
Miss Marple’s daily life included a variety of dietary supplements, such as blackcurrant tablets, Ovaltine, Horlicks and others. This article explores the history of these products, discusses their traditional uses and their connection to Agatha Christie’s detective fiction. Particular attention is given to the “black draught” (“black drink”), which in Russian translations of the novel is called a laxative made from Senna plant. However, there are at least two varieties of this supplement, and the later modification has a much broader spectrum of effects. It’s likely that Christie was referring to the original, authentic version of the “black draught”, which composition is not limited to Senna.
PHILOSOPHY
This article argues that the ideologeme, a recurrent, evaluatively charged discursive unit, is the irreducible atomic structure from which all propaganda and disinformation are constituted. Every propaganda narrative can be decomposed into ideologemes; no political manipulation exists that is not ultimately composed of them. The article advances this claim through three moves: an ontological argument showing that the minimal conditions of propaganda are fulfilled precisely by the ideologeme’s defining properties; a formal seven-criterion operational definition that distinguishes the ideologeme from adjacent concepts; and balanced comparative discourse analysis across Democratic and Republican media and rhetoric in the United States. The analysis introduces two conceptual extensions debated in the current literature: the “isotope” problem (identical words bearing opposite charges in different ideological camps) and the question of visual ideologemes (non-verbal symbols that perform identical functions without any linguistic unit). The article concludes with an inference about the underlying goals of each party as revealed by their characteristic ideologeme portfolios. Cases examined include “Fox News” and “MSNBC” prime-time programming, presidential and candidate rhetoric from Trump, Obama, Biden, and Clinton, and social media amplification patterns.