The category of the Fear of God has changed over time despite its apparent immutability. The article discusses the semantics of the concept of the Fear of God and the notions associated with it, based on the “Tale of Bygone Years” and Vladimir Monomakh’s “Instruction”. The author of the article analyzes all mentions of “the Fear of God” in the selected sources, paying special attention to the context of the expression. The research has shown that, to describe the Fear of God, the chronicler mainly uses quotations, especially from sacred texts. With their help, the chronicler conveys his ideas about the studied category. The analysis of the sources reveals that the Fear of God should not be considered as an emotion, but as a long-term state or feeling that positively influenced the person’s way of life. The Fear of God was the result of a conscious choice and the basis for the life of a pious Christian. In addition, the Fear of God was close to the states of awe and joy that emerge during worship. Particularly important for the chronicler was the connection between the Fear of God and the concept of wisdom, which was believed to spring from the former. The Fear of God was the basis of knowledge perceived as a process of understanding God.

The article deals with to the epidemic of plague in Moscow in 1654 and the reaction to it of the Aptekarsky Prikaz (Apothecary Chancery), a Russian state institution in the 17th century, which was responsible for the medical sphere. The source analysis of the documents of this department shows that it practically did not interfere with the situation in the capital and was engaged only in supplying medicaments and doctors to the army which was at that moment at war in Europe. It did not begin to make the first efforts to identify and treat the sick until three years later, in 1657.

The report is an attempt to consider the question of one of the characteristic functions of the Imperial court in the 18th century – the systematic distribution of money, benefits and gifts under Catherine II. The documents of the Imperial Cabinet testify to the increasing mass of various kinds of g giveaways and gifts to courtiers, military and civil servants and a wider circle of petitioners. Such a practice served as an important element of social policy; it was supposed to ensure the loyalty of the elite and increase the prestige of the monarch among the military and bureaucracy.

The article is devoted to the “Slavic idea” of the writer of the 17th century Juraj Križanić. Being a Croat by birth, he worked in various states and in Moscow. Here he wrote the fundamental essay “Politics”. Using the late Russian historical compilations, Juraj Križanić formulated specific version of the “Slavic idea”. To realize the “Slavic idea”, the Russian state must be powerful. To be powerful, it must adhere to isolationism. In the article, the author seeks to prove that this version of the “Slavic idea” was influenced by the Moscow picture of the world.

The article discusses the campaign to “purge” the party and state apparatus, which was planned in 1928 and carried out in 1929. That campaign was personally directed by Stalin, general secretary of the Central Committee of the VKP(b). The article studies the mechanism of adapting party decisions on “purges” with respect to propaganda in the satirical magazine Crocodile, which was published in huge circulations. Party decisions on paper are one thing; their implementation in images and symbols of Soviet daily life understandable to a mass audience is another. The campaign had one goal – to intimidate society and create conditions for the transition to a more mass repression, while abandoning the new economic policy. The fundamental differences between the purge of the party apparatus and the purge of the state apparatus are explored.

The article, written with the use of archival materials, party and Komsomol press, and ethnographic research, analyzes the development of the peasant-youth world, within its main sex and age groups within the peasant world, on the eve and during collectivization. The main emphasis is placed on the dynamics of transformation of such aspects of youth life as participation in various forms of farming, family, culture, everyday life, and religion. The question of the effectiveness of attempts to influence the party and Komsomol bodies in the use of various forms of youth life in the formation of the socialist village through cooperation and collectivized farms is raised. The author concludes that there is considerable resilience of the youth world in the face of the intervention of the Soviet organs in the internal life of the youth, the steady development of such aspects of the modernization of this group as the restructuring of the family on personal grounds, the rationalization of consciousness, the secularization of culture and everyday life. The policy of the Party and Komsomol organizations in the countryside objectively contributed to the modernization of all aspects of the life of rural youth as part of modern society in its “socialist” form.

In the first years after the revolution, the relations between the intelligentsia and the young Soviet government were more complicated than those of other social groups. Among the emigrant artists, there is a whole range of models of relations with the Bolsheviks: from military emigration, irreconcilable opponents of the “Sovdepia” through doubters who kept neutrality, to fierce supporters. The artists had a large “period of reflection” during which it is necessary to determine their attitude to the new government. However, it was possible to maintain the status of “ambivalent emigration” only for a short time. The intelligentsia did not have a special amnesty to return, but the Soviet government tried to return cultural and artistic figures. They were treated not with the tools of mass agitation, but with personal influence, sometimes with the help of relatives who remained in Russia. In relation to artists, arguments were used appealing to their creative self-realization, the demand and “necessity” of their art at home. Features of repatriation among Russian emigrant artists in France are considered by the author on the basis of archival documents.

The earthly locus of this story, located at the crossroads of many seemingly incompatible yet vibrant and tragically profound worlds, is encompassed, among other things, by the multi-personal “ego” of the diegetic narrator. These worlds are imbued with pain and despair, but, according to Zamyatin, we are faced with manifestations of a living beginning, filled with the energies of revolution. As is known, Zamyatin, based on the teachings of R. Mayer, contrasted energy, which he understood as a revolutionary beginning, with entropy – stagnation and immortality. Energetic explosion, according to Zamyatin, is a necessary blow from the left to the quasi-left Bolshevik regime, which suppresses freedom and loses its living face.

The article considers in historiographical context the main problems, topics and subjects of the unpublished lecture course “The History of the Peoples of the USSR”, delivered by Academician Yu.V. Gautier at the Moscow State Historical and Archival Institute (MGIAI) in the academic year 1936/37. In the lecture course are seen those priorities and benchmarks which are due to the specifics of the historiographical process of those years, but at the same time are evident many fundamental principles and foundations of understanding of the Russian historical process, typical for historians of the “old school”, forced to adapt their lives to the circumstances of the new historiographical life.

The article is about the project of research into Soviet icons, which began at the Russian State University for the Humanities in 2021 at the Center for Visual Studies of the Middle Ages and Modern Period of the Faculty of Cultural Studies. The Soviet icon is a religious artifact created by village craftsmen (image painters) of the Soviet times – an icon, various in execution techniques, set in a wooden case (kiot). For the decoration of such icons both the traditional (for 19^th – early 20^th century) materials used – foil, paper, wax, paraffin etc. – as well as specific things that were available in the era of scarcity, poverty of the Soviet village, persecution of the Church and the inability to create religious artifacts in a manufactory way, for the market. Craftsmen used the fabric from Soviet Pioneers ties and wedding dresses, Soviet newspapers, foil from tea bags, prints on which were made with the hunting shotgun cartridges, etc. As a result, the complex bricolages appeared. Often they had icons and materials of the 19 – early 20^th century inside, covered with a layer of heterogeneous materials of the Soviet era. The article deals with the specifics of that phenomenon, explains the term “Soviet icon” introduced by the authors of the project, and describes the prospects of the project in the coming years.