Professor S. O. Schmidt and professor O. M. Medushevskaya of decade have worked in Russian State University for the Humanities, and earlier at the Moscow State History and Archives Institute. They have made a power­ ful contribution to preparation of several generations of experts in the field of the humanities. Article is devoted to the analysis of views of two scientists, in process of development by them of the previous historiographic experience and supervision over changing scientific reality, on a key problem of humanitarian and natural-science knowledge - a historical source as cultural object and object of history of environment, interaction of the person and the nature in historical movement. From definition of historical sources as the material objects created in the course of human activity, to the serving purposes of historical research, obtaining information on the social phenomena and processes, O. M. Medushevskaya has gradually passed to understanding them as real cultural objects which consider from the subject positions natural and the humanities. The concept of a historical source was formed by S. O. Schmidt under the decisive influence of the historical and philosophical-historical concepts of outstanding Russian scientists of the 19th - early 20th centuries, as well as the latest Western European histori­ ography. The formula “historical source-all that exhales historical information”, opened a way to free understanding of a historical material. Historical sources which are really exhaling information on mankind as parts of the nature, allow to find data and on environment history. The co-evolutionary relations of man and nature create the conditions not only for the preservation of civilization in the conditions of the global ecological crisis, but also for ensuring its overcoming. Sources, as direct evidence of these relationships, form a necessary information resource for research activities in the field of environmental history.

   The article deals with the socio-cultural peculiarities of the perception of the German writer Max Dreyer in Russia in the beginning of the 20th century. The research focuses on the theatrical discourse in the magazines and newspapers of Moscow and St. Petersburg. The study showed that the author, little known today, enjoyed wide popularity in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century. His plays were performed in many theaters, both in the capital and in regions. A quick and lively response to foreign theatrical novelties and their transfer to the Russian stage was a general cultural trend of the era. This is the era of the rise of public interest in the theater and in contemporary Russian and Western drama novelties. The vector of socio-cultural development is what predetermined the demand for the German playwright in Russia. In Germany Dreyer’s most popular play was “The Trial Candidate”, in Russia, “The Seventeen Year Olds”. One of the most important factors in its success was that Dreyer’s work fell in line with major trends and preferences in the theatrical repertoire. His interest in the question of women, the problems of contradiction between dream and reality, the theme of a pure soul suffering from lies and social conventions was common.

   The S. Prokofiev Theater is today considered one of the pinnacles of the world musical theater of the 20th century. This article is devoted to the opera theater of S. Prokofiev and its philosophical overtones. It is important to understand the features of the formation and development of such a theater as a whole, to comprehend the design of the Prokofiev theater as a system of separate theatrical works in the creative mind of the author. The logic of the composer’s theatrical creativity, which in a peculiar way refracted the philosophy of Kant and Schopenhauer, required that each new work of this genre be created in contrast with the previous one. As a result, the entire array of Prokofiev’s operas appears in the form of a system of philosophical antinomies embodied in the form of a cycle of opera dyads. Thus, Prokofiev managed to present in the form of binary macrostructures of his musical theater the inconsistency of the surrounding reality and the insolubility of ideological disputes about it, which are formed as a set of “theses” and “antitheses” that are not subject to synthesis. Considering the cycle of Prokofiev’s operas as a system of semantic antinomies makes it possible to present the corpus of his musical and theatrical works as a single text (hypertext) – in all the variety of intertextual connections and philosophical overtones.

   Bishop’s items from the vestry of Nikolaevsky Perervinsky monastery are considered as markers of artistic and social monastic milieu and as things reflecting the social-historical context of Russia in the second half of the 18 th century. As a result of a complex attribution research of the saccos and the crozier, of studying unpublished monastic inventory and account books of the 18 th – 19 th centuries, it became possible to correlate the artifacts with the person of Metropolitan Plato (Levshin) of Moscow, with whom “the Golden age” of Perervinsky monastery is associated. Special attention is paid to the textiles of the saccos: a brocade damask with the pattern of “big hand” and cut velvet cross patterned. In Russian brocade weaving to the third quarter of the 18 th century a special direction was formed – church weaving. Metropolitan Platon was the first to begin serving again in polystauri vestments, bringing ancient Byzantine traditions back to life. The production of cross textiles was resumed under Emperor Paul I, whose personality was greatly influenced by Metropolitan Plato.

   Periodical press as a historical source is actively used by researchers in various fields. Professional periodicals can be a key source of research. This article shows that the professional journal “ICOM News” can be considered a quality historical source for studying the development of cultural and educational activities of museums.

   The purpose of the article is to determine the main formats of work with visitors in museums in the 1940s – 1980s, identifying the stages and reasons for the modernization of these work formats with the museum audience based on the materials of “ICOM News”.

   The publications in this journal have a global geographical outreach and cover a specialized variety of museums, elucidating both the inner working of a museum as a historical and cultural unit and its evolving place within the broader societal mozaic. The publications in the journal were subjected to textual analysis based on the study of special texts as carriers of professional knowledge. In our case, these are articles devoted to various ways of interacting with the museum audience. Having studied the available data array, 367 articles were identified on the topic of interest to us, amounting to 4.2 % of the total number of all publications in this journal. To sum up, we argue that the professional museum journal “ICOM News” is the full-fledged source for the study of museums globally and for the invaluable regional insights into cultural and educational activities of national museums. It goes without saying that this source works best in combination with other sources, including archival and museographic materials.

   In the 1990s, a new architectural criticism was born, strikingly different from the previous Soviet examples. From the narrowly professional genre, architectural criticism turns back into journalism, combining the artistic interpretation of architectural works and the socio-political views of the authors, placing architecture in broader cultural contexts, inheriting the practices of the pre-revolutionary period. One of the most representative examples of the new post-Soviet criticism is the “Project Russia” journal. In many articles published in this journal in the 1990s the previous architectural era is represented in different contexts, usually in specific negative ways. This article demonstrates that the particular image of Soviet modernism in the 1960s – 1980s is one of the key components of the new discursive identity of post-Soviet architectural criticism, which is being formed against the backdrop of large-scale socio-cultural and political changes.

 

   The article is devoted to understanding of the interpretation of the period of the COVID-19 pandemic by members of the communities of Russian Reform Judaism. The problem studied is that in the religious field the reaction to the state quarantine measures was ambiguous. Thus, there is a need to analyze various cases. This article examines the reaction to the pandemic among the rabbis of the Jewish Reform communities in Russia, as well as the theological explanation of the chosen way to communicate during the crisis period. The key question of the study: how do leaders of the reform movement theologically define the need to move religious services online? The study was conducted using semi-structured interviews and participant observation. As a result of the analysis of interview data, the general position of the movement allowed changing the form of a religious ritual depending on the context. In this case, during a pandemic, the life of an individual believer is at risk. The leaders of the communities in question also did not meet resistance regarding the developed position among the believers (as opposed to the orthodox communities).

   The golden handle of the Early Sarmatian mirror from Mayerovskii III east from Volga River has an image of a goddess and two horses. The details of iconography of this personage and accompanying animals, their analogues in the Scythian and Sarmatian times are analyzed. Functionally close to her are the Scythian Snake-footed Goddess and the Yuezhi goddess on the headdress in grave 3 of Tillya Tepe. The analogues of this personage in recent times were Dzerassa in the epic of the Alans-Ossetians and Jestak of Kalash people. In the 2^nd – 1^st cc. BCE the Sarmatians of the European Steppe had three variants of its iconographic embodiment. Against this background, the iconography of the goddess from Mayerovskii III due to the change of ethnopolitical dominance in the region of her find is in many ways unique and it had no continuation.

 

   Japanese manga author Mizuki Shigeru is often regarded as a popularizer of traditional monster imagery. He created not only entertaining comics, but also popular science illustrated catalogs and encyclopedias, becoming the largest researcher and collector of Japanese folklore after ethnographer Yanagita Kunio. For his educational activities, he was awarded a number of awards and prizes. Preserving the images of Japanese monsters became a fundamental goal for him, in this article I will demonstrate how Mizuki Shigeru creates images of his manga characters based on picture books of the Edo period and ethnographic materials. At the same time, little attention is paid to the side of his work in which the influence of European fine art culture can be traced. This article aims to show the diverse imagery flourished Mizuki Shigeru’s comics, including images from American comics and paintings by European artists from the Renaissance to Surrealism. I will also try to turn to his graphic narratives in order to take a closer look at his strategy and to understand what is the specifics of Japanese graphic narrative.

   Translation studies is a vast discipline inextricably linked to linguistics (including applied linguistics, psycho- and neurolinguistics), tex­tual studies, literary criticism, semiotics, history, and philosophy. In her book, Professor Laura Salmon applies an interdisciplinary approach to research a wide range of topical issues in translation theory, discovering their origins and exposing the inconsistency of binary oppositions that have always accompa­nied it.

   The author’s main objective is to create a holistic scientific model of translation, which includes theoretically grounded and effective strategies and techniques of translation activities.

 

   The review considers the book “Bulat Okudzhava’s creative path and the myth of the ‘golden age’ ” by M. А. Aleksandrova. This monograph covers the creative heritage of Bulat Okudzhava. M. Alexandrova considers it in a broad literary context. She adequately interprets the writer’s cultural landmarks and the artistic features of his works. She convincingly refutes the popular opinion about the poet as a “singer of antiquity”. The monograph thoroughly examines the motive of personal responsibility as the dominant of Okudzhava’s work of the 1980s – 1990s.