Vol 25, No 3 (2026)

This study examines the contribution of representatives of individual ethnic communities to the development of healthcare in Altai cities in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The study is based on a personalized approach, reconstructing the biographies, professional, and social activities of individuals who made significant contributions to the development of both a specific area and the region as a whole. Germans and Poles played a significant role in the establishment and development of medicine in Altai. To study the historical context and personal histories, a broad source base was used, including physician registration cards, service lists, address calendars, as well as statistical materials and provincial surveys. Documents on healthcare provision are stored in the Russian State Historical Archive and the state archives of Tomsk Oblast and Altai Krai. The authors conclude that representatives of ethnic communities occupied an important place in the medical profession and made a significant contribution to the development of healthcare in Altai. Doctors of German and Polish origin, who had specialized education and lived in Altai for a long time, received leading positions and were engaged not only in medical but also in social activities.

The study examines Jewish charities in the Irkutsk and Yenisei provinces of the Russian Empire in the early 20th century. The authors aim to reveal the features of organized (systemic) Jewish charity, stipulated by their historical experience, religious affiliation, and political and legal status. Within this context, the authors analyze the current state of research on the history of philanthropic organizations among ethnic minorities; they examine the issues of legal regulations and adjustment of charities’ creation and functioning in pre-revolutionary Russia. The study reveals law enforcement practices and collective services of Jewish communities to provide assistance to those in need - on different scales and in different forms. The authors reconstruct the activities of philanthropic organizations - the Societies for Aid to Indigent Jews - which allowed revealing the mechanisms of their creation and functioning, goals and objectives, in some cases identifying the founders’ personalities. In general, the research contributes to deeper understanding of the history of the Jewish diaspora and determining its role in the social sphere of the East Siberian region in the early 20th century. Systemic charity was most fully manifested in the urban centers of the Jewish diaspora. During the First World War, aid to refugees and displaced persons became an important component of the activities of Jewish charities. The research shows that, within the diaspora, philanthropic organizations contributed to intra-ethnic consolidation, bringing together various social strata of the Jewish community in the cities of Eastern Siberia. Furthermore, the main trend was integration processes that gave rise to various forms of interethnic interaction.

The study examines the national policy in the Lower Volga region during the first stage of socialist reconstruction (1928-1933). It identifies the specifics of its implementation through the example of individual ethnic groups outside of national autonomies included in the regional structure (the Turkic group of peoples). Using the example of the Kazakh population, the author identifies the mechanisms for transitioning nomadic ethnic groups to a sedentary lifestyle, reveals the stages, characteristics, and results of the implemented indigenization policy, considers the nature of “balancing” the policy of singling out national areas at the central and regional levels, and determines the ways and options for solving national problems in the areas of healthcare and education. The research is based on unpublished archival materials stored in both federal and regional archives (most of which consisted of records from the highest and regional party and state authorities), as well as materials from regional and national periodicals. The author concludes that the key factors determining the characteristics and main directions of national policy included the existence of a large number of ethnic groups, varying in their level of development, living in the region, including enclaves integrated into the fishing areas of the Astrakhan region, the communication with which was extremely difficult. The scale of the tasks being solved simultaneously (the introduction of a new alphabet and the development of a multi-level education system, the “settling” of the Kazakh population, the organization of the related infrastructure, the integration of “nomadic Kazakhs” into the industrial sector, the development of healthcare) and, at the same time, lack of any ready-made management templates (due to the absolute novelty) made the problem of indigenization at all levels of management central to national policy, but it turned out to be virtually impossible to implement.

This study considers the functioning of urban public administration in a Russian district town in the period from 1870 to 1914, using the town of Lyubim in Yaroslavl Governorate as an example. There is examined the class composition of the Lyubim Duma and Town Council, revealing the predominance of the merchant class, with a fairly high representation of the petty bourgeoisie. The article analyzes the features of the electoral system and the electoral process in the bodies of Lyubim’s urban public administration. Attention is paid to the specifics of the election procedures, the number of participants in the town elections, and the analysis of complaints about the electoral process filed with higher authorities by the town residents. The study examines the financial foundations of Lyubim’s municipal self-government, its main expenditure and revenue items, and the possibilities for their optimization by the town’s self-government bodies. There are identified the main areas of activity of Lyubim’s public administration: public assistance, public education, provision of urban amenities, and healthcare. The study demonstrates that in the period from 1870 to 1914, the system of public administration in Lyubim was quite efficient. The limited funds of the town budget did not prevent the town council and administration from achieving certain success in practical activities.

This study considers the biography of Georgy Borisovich Skalov-Sinani, an active participant in the civil war, an adviser in China, and the head of the Secretariat of South and Caribbean America of the Executive Committee of the Comintern. His biography was not quite typical of a Bolshevik functionary of such stature. During the period of duality of power in Russia in 1917, he rose to the very top and became one of the leaders of the soldiers’ section of the Petrograd Soviet and a member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of Soviets. All that time, G.B. Skalov remained in the shadow of the leading figures that came to power during the February Revolution. In the context of the repression campaign that began after the assassination of S.M. Kirov in 1934, it was these eighteen months of uncompromising struggle for the ideals of February Revolution and the defense of the Provisional Government and the Constituent Assembly that outweighed the 17-year period of selfless service to the Bolshevik Party. The study examines the stages of the transformation of the “personal file” of All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) member G.B. Skalov into the file of the “leader of a White Guard officer terrorist organization,” and he became one of the central figures of the infamous “Kremlin Trial.” The study is based on the analysis of the documents stored in the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History and the State Archive of the Russian Federation, and comparison of these documents with the published scholarly works. Using a range of methods of analysis applied in historical science, the authors reconstruct the twists and turns of the Great Terror using the example of the biography of one of its victims.

This study explores one of the major crises that led to tensions in the relations between Iran and the Soviet Union after World War II, namely the Soviet Iranian oil crisis of 1946-1947. The nature of the Soviet withdrawal from Iran after World War II posed a dilemma. The Tehran Agreement, signed in 1942, stipulated the withdrawal of foreign forces from Iran within a maximum of six months once World War II concluded. While the United States and Britain withdrew, the Soviet Union took a different stance. It refused to withdraw, sparking a crisis in Azerbaijan with the purpose of obtaining oil concessions in northern Iran. The results indicate that Soviet Union had expansionist ambitions in Iran that date back to prior to 1947 and were motivated by its strategic geographical location and diverse economic resources. Once World War II ended, Iran’s geopolitical importance increased with the emergence of large quantities of oil, making it a place of conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union, as oil became one of the world’s most sought-after commodities and a key element of the struggle.

The study examines the historical component of the course “Fundamentals of Russian Statehood” in the context of the tasks of new worldview formation and youth education. The source base of the study includes four core textbooks, considered as the official corpus of the course, prepared within the logic of the “DNA of Russia” project and the introduction of the discipline into higher education. The methodology of the study is based on examining the textbooks on “Fundamentals of Russian Statehood” through the correlation of key paradigms for explaining the historical process. The research methods include comparative analysis of educational texts, identification of interpretative differences, and quantitative content analysis. According to the findings, Russian history in the course “Fundamentals of Russian Statehood” is presented within the logic of the civilizational approach, which interprets Russia as a special type of state-civilization. The study identifies common methodological features of the textbook corpus. It is shown that, while the textbooks share a common conceptual framework, there are differences in the interpretation of certain periods and phenomena of the Russian historical process. The study concludes that the course “Fundamentals of Russian Statehood” creates a demand for a broader methodological renewal of teaching national history based on the civilizational approach, axiological analysis, and the presentation of Russia as an independent subject of the world historical process.

The article examines the composition and content of 27 personal files of Hungarian students who studied at the Kazan State Pedagogical Institute in 1949-1955. The sources represent surviving personal files not transferred to state storage, which are stored in the Department of Russian History and Archival Science at Kazan Federal University. The personal files allow reconstructing the gender, age, and social composition of the Hungarian scholarship recipients, their political preferences, level of activity, and details of their biographies prior to arriving in the USSR. It is shown that these were predominantly 20-yearold young men and women, primarily of working-class and peasant origin, activists, often members of the Communist Youth League, who had prepared for their studies in the USSR at the Oleg Koshevoy School in Budapest. Most of them studied in the Physics, Mathematics, and History departments, and despite the fact that in the literature it was pointed out that foreigners had academic difficulties in the USSR, they demonstrated relatively high academic results. There are presented three biographies of former Kazan students who made successful careers in Hungary: Istvan Tabor, head of the Hungarian Fencing Federation; Andor Frenkel, a physicist and founder and first head of the theoretical department of the Budapest Central Physics Research Institute; and Frenc Szabo, a diplomat. It is concluded that, despite the formalization and limited information in the personal files, they have a significant source potential, allowing for creating a general portrait of Hungarian students at a Soviet university in the late 1940s - mid-1950s and complementing the biographies of several prominent Hungarian figures of the Soviet era. They may be of use in reconstructing the postwar history of Soviet-Hungarian relations.