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Non-food consumer goods have always been, are and will remain important attributes of a person’s life. In addition to purely physiological, non-food goods satisfy a number of other needs that shape people as thinking creatures and distinguish them from animals. The article examines the problem of consumption of non-food consumer goods by collective farmers in one of the regions of the Urals, i.e. the former Molotov Region (presently, the Perm Region) during the first years after the Great Patriotic War (1946–1950). The topic of this article is relevant, since the problem of scientifically grounded and balanced consumption of non-food consumer goods by the population remains unresolved. The author turned to materials kept in two archives: Russian State Archives of Economics and State Archives of the Sverdlovsk Region. Some of these documents have never been published, including household budget surveys, which have a long history in Russia. Attention is focused on the fact that the determining factor in the material living conditions of collective farmers during the first post-war years was the permanent shortage of almost all consumer goods. The author demonstrates that in the period under study the consumption level of non-food consumer goods by collective farmers was unsatisfactory. It should be noted that such a low level of consumption by Molotov Region peasants in the first post-war years was no exception. It is concluded that there were no grounds for a rapid growth in the consumption of non-food consumer goods by this “secondary” category of the population (which collective farmers were at the time) during the period under study.

A quantitative and qualitative analysis of food consumption in the families of collective farmers in the Molotov and Sverdlovsk regions is provided in the article. The author used materials from the funds of two archives: the Russian State Archive of Economics (RSAE) and the State Archives of the Sverdlovsk Region (SASR), some of which have never been published. The source base for writing this article was the materials of budget surveys of the population, which have a long history in our country. It is argued that the need for high-quality and properly structured nutrition is one of the basic needs of human existence. It is stated that the level of consumption of food products by the population of the Soviet Union in 1946—1950 was determined by the harsh post-war conditions. Attention is focused on the fact that a powerful decrease in the livestock component of the collective farm backyard, combined with a decrease in income from work on the collective farm, could not but affect the level of income and consumption of collective farm families, including nutrition. It is proved that in the studied period — the first post-war five years — the level of nutrition of collective farm families should be assessed as unsatisfactory.

This article examines how the ideological cliches and propagandistic campaigns in Soviet newspapers of the 1920s and 1930s are reflected in the literature of the same period. Without ending the Great Purge, the Communist Party, hypocritically, called for its repressions to be stopped and innocent people to be rehabilitated. This campaign was described in the story ‘The Rehabilitation’ by the avant-garde writer Daniil Kharms. The article also deals with the propaganda campaign that began in the Soviet periodical press in August-September 1940. This was triggered by V. Molotov’s report in which, envisaging the development of the Second World War, he summoned Soviet citizens to “readiness for mobilization”. In literature, it stipulated the government’s order to depict virtuous and heroic characters. The “readiness for mobilization” idea explains the criticism of A. Avdeenko for his partiality to negative characters and of A. Akhmatova for her lyric poems.

This article highlights the issue of increasing labour intensity among collective farmers during the Great Patriotic War. The dynamic of labour costs of the rural population was analysed using the case of the Molotov (Perm) Region, a typical rear territory of the time. The source base of the research is constituted by archival materials, including recently declassified statistical reports, protocols of district executive committees, and administrative documentation of district and regional levels. The author considers the wartime situation using the modernisation approach, seeing it as a crisis associated with the breaking, reorganisation, and complication of agricultural production activities. The materials are analysed using the comparative historical method. Documentary sources confirm the thesis of high labour intensity in agricultural production during the wartime period. In the year 1944, collective farmers in Molotov (Perm) Region had, on average, 335 labour (working) days, which was 20 % higher than the country average at the time. Following the increase in labour intensity caused by the war, the traditional rhythm of agricultural work in the region was largely transformed so that the workload of farmers became high throughout the year. The combination of tough labour conditions and ingrained intrinsic motivation contributed to the reorganisation and greater efficiency of agricultural activities. However, heavy physical exertion, low levels of mechanisation of work, and the lack of proper recuperation resulted in mass psychological burnouts among collective farmers by the end of the war. In fact, already in 1945, a decline in the level of labour productivity was recorded among the collective farms of Molotov (Perm) Region.

What effects do violent protests have on social movement mobilizations? In recent decades, the field of nonviolence studies has popularized a strategic nonviolence framework to understand activist tactics. This framework is problematic in two ways. First, dominant theories argue that violent protest actions demobilize nonviolent protest. However, there is less empirical support for this claim than often assumed. Current quantitative findings on the demobilizing effects of violent protest rely on a false dichotomy between violence and nonviolence that obscures the effects of low-level violent actions. Through statistical analysis of protest trends in the US over 72 years, I show that riots have an overall mobilizing impact on nonviolent protests. Second, the strategic nonviolence framing encourages an instrumental view of tactics that is prone to miss the symbolic and emotional aspects of different types of actions. Through qualitative interviews with participants in the black bloc tactic, I explore the experiential effects of the riot, and find that rioting can have deeply empowering emotional impacts on participants, with lasting effects that sustain activists’ political engagement. In combination, these results demonstrate that low-level violent actions interact with movements in more dynamic ways than dominant theories have understood. [Article copies available for a fee from The Transformative Studies Institute. E-mail address: journal@transformativestudies.org Website: http://www.transformativestudies.org ©2021 by The Transformative Studies Institute. All rights reserved.]

This study aims to characterize and model the thermal protective fabrics usually used in workwear under Molotov cocktail exposure. Physical properties of the fabrics were measured; and, thermal protective performances of the fabrics were evaluated under a fire exposure generated from the laboratory-simulated Molotov cocktail. The performance was calculated in terms of the amount of thermal energy transmitted through the fabrics; additionally, the time required to generate a second-degree burn on wearers’ bodies was predicted from the calculated transmitted thermal energy. For the characterization, the parameters that affected the protective performance were identified and discussed with regards to the theory of heat and mass transfer. The relationships between the properties of the fabric systems and the protective performances were statistically analyzed. The significant fabric properties affecting the performance were further employed in the empirical modeling techniques − Multiple Linear Regression (MLR) and Artificial Neural Network (ANN) for predicting the protective performance. The Coefficient of Determination (R2) and Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) of the developed MLR and ANN models were also compared to identify the best-fit model for predicting the protective performance. This study found that thermal resistance and evaporative resistance are two significant properties (P-Values 2 and RMSE values of ANN model were much higher (R2 = 0.94) and lower (RMSE = 37.42), respectively, than MLR model (R2 = 0.73; RMSE = 191.38); therefore, ANN is the best-fit model to predict the protective performance. In summary, this study could build an in-depth understanding of the parameters that can affect the protective performance of fabrics used in the workwear of high-risk sectors employees and would provide them better occupational health and safety.

In the years immediately after, student leaders and pro-democracy politicians were arrested and imprisoned, and a new wave of protest in 2019 ended in the most draconian bill in post-handover Hong Kong: the National Security Law. Tracing the rise and fall of the movement, attending to its tensions and aspirations through interviews, theoretical engagement and cultural analysis, Pang argues that the Umbrella Movement was an instance of the politics of appearance—that is, the "swift" appearance of individuals as political actors and the "gradual" construction of political intersubjectivities (11–19). [...]the book explores the relationship between democratic politics and challenges to neoliberal capitalism. The protests were unprecedented in scale and intensity, and for half a year the world watched as Hong Kong citizens fought increasingly militarized police with Molotov cocktails, homemade bows and arrows, and as ever, umbrella shields. Since the outbreak of COVID-19, the movement has largely come to a halt, and in 2020 Beijing passed a national security law that to many commentators served as the nail on the coffin for the city's democratic aspirations.

The Great Patriotic war had a disastrous impact on country’s demography. Much available research focuses on the study of human losses in Russia and individual regions, while widely using demographic statistics of state bodies, mainly regional, republican statistical offices and the CSO of the USSR. Their representativeness has been proven, and negative characterizations of registry office statistics (registration of births, deaths, marriages, and divorces) found in modern historical literature has no basis, except in cases where it was not possible to collect complete information. In this study, this corpus of documents is used to analyze reproduction processes in the Molotov region and their impact on demographic structures. Identified new sources (data on birth order, and data on maternal age, which appeared in the concluding period of the war) resulted in methods of demographic analysis (calculation of general, special, and private fertility rates) to obtain new data on the demographic situation in the region and the depth of the demographic catastrophe in which the country found itself in the war, the consequences of which are felt up until today. World War II plunged the country’s population, including territories deep in the rear, into a demographic crisis that resulted in changes in demographic structures, deformation of reproduction, disproportion in the ratio between fertility and mortality, and damage to the regeneration of generations, especially among males.

(To the results of the Plenum of the Central Presidium of Varnitso on May 4-5, 1930).,. P.K.Brodovsky. Questions about the choice of the path to socialism or to the camp of its conscious and irresponsible enemies are now being raised before various strata of the intelligentsia with unprecedented sharpness and persistence. V. Molotov. All attempts not to take one or the other side end in failure and scandals. V. Lenin. The starting point for discussing the tasks of our era is the understanding of this era as a historically inevitable period of the dictatorship of the proletariat, moreover, the task of the proletarian dictatorship is to build socialism a comprehensive restructuring of the life of human society based on a new economy and technology. If we pose the question of how the intelligentsia relates and what part does the intelligentsia take in solving these problems of the epoch, then it will become clear to anyone who is even slightly familiar with the history of our revolution that it is impossible to give a general, sweeping answer to this question.

The issues related to the financial income and expenses of the families of collective farmers in the Molotov region are considered. The relevance of the study is due to the public interest shown in the study of various aspects of the material living conditions of the population. The scientific novelty of the work is seen in the fact that previously unpublished archival materials stored in the Russian State Archive of Economics (RSAE) are introduced into circulation. The results of a comparative analysis of the average per capita financial income of collective farmers in the Molotov region and other territories of the Ural region are presented. Particular attention is paid to the consideration of the tables presented by the author containing numerical data on the topic of the article. It is stated that the progressive improvement of the quality of the material living conditions of citizens today is one of the priority goals of the policy of any state that positions itself as social. Attention is focused on the fact that in the first post-war five years, the income of collective farmers was influenced by two main factors: the consequences of the Second World War and the attitude of the authorities to the collective farm peasantry. It is proved that the incomes of collective farmers in the Molotov region were lower than those of collective farmers in the economically more developed Sverdlovsk region, but were quite comparable with the incomes of collective farmers in other regions of the Urals.

The article discusses the methods of scientific and artistic propaganda (Museum and local history tour, lesson at the exhibition, lecture, conversation with slides). Museum employees at places of temporary storage of monuments carried out educational work among the population. Working with the audience in the Museum serves as a support for the positive state of mind of people in the conditions of intense wartime. Meeting with evacuees collections of art monuments allowed residents of Perm, Gorky, Solikamsk and other regional centers in 1941–1945 to expand their horizons, aesthetically evaluate the famous masterpieces of Russian art, which had a beneficial effect on the entire cultural climate of the provincial society. During the great Patriotic war, the main part of the art collections of the State Russian Museum was evacuated to Molotov (Perm). Paintings, sculptures, works of iconography are placed in the Perm Museum of local lore, in the Trinity Cathedral of Solikamsk. Conducting excursions and consultations at temporary exhibitions, conversations with slides are methods of scientific and educational work. This work was important and necessary for the residents of Perm. The meeting with art organized for visitors of the Museum in Perm by the staff of the Russian Museum provided great spiritual support during the great Patriotic war, which can be regarded as an unprecedented case of aesthetic education of the younger generation and spiritual support of the residents of Perm in wartime conditions. The relevance of the material presented in the article is undeniable. In the last years of the twenty-fi rst century, there have been increasing calls for a review of the role of the Soviet Army in the great Patriotic war (1941–1945). It is necessary to take responsibility for historical truth. The importance of the Victory, which brought liberation from Hitlerism not only to our Homeland, but also to the Western world, is great, and the merits are invaluable. It is necessary to preserve the truth for future generations of residents of the former Soviet space, as well as citizens of other countries. Special importance in the preservation of memory belongs to documentary sources, which include archive materials. Along with them, works of art created during the war or in the first post-war years play an invaluable role in restoring the truth.

The history of the Department of Pathological Anatomy of Molotov Medical Institute during the Great Patriotic War of 19411945 is presented. The working conditions of the department, the formation of pathological anatomy service in Perm and region, the active work of the department in training personnel for pathology departments, the creation of the society of pathologists, the scientific work of the department are shown.

This article analyzes the work of the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs (NKID) of the USSR in the city of Kuibyshev (now Samara), where it was evacuated in 1941- 1943 together with other central government agencies and the diplomatic corps accredited in the USSR. Although this period was quite short, and though key decisions were, of course, made in Moscow, intense rough work was being carried out in the “reserve capital”, which ensured the solution of the tasks set by the country's leadership to the NKID apparatus.The aggression of Nazi Germany found the Soviet Union poorly prepared not only militarily, but also diplomatically. Due to the opposition of the Western powers, domestic diplomacy failed to create a collective security system to prevent the aggression of Germany, Italy and Japan. Negotiations with representatives of Great Britain and France, which were conducted in 1939, were interrupted and relations with these countries were virtually frozen.Some important strategic tasks were set before Soviet diplomacy. First of all, it was about the concentration of diplomatic activity in specific areas that could provide real assistance to the Red Army in obtaining the necessary weapons and strategic raw materials. Among other tasks were the search for allies, establishing effective military, economic and political cooperation with them, counteracting the expansion of the Nazi coalition at the expense of Sweden and Turkey, and conducting an extremely balanced policy in the Far East in order to avoid a military clash with Japan.Due to the deterioration of the military situation on the Western Front and the imminence of the capture of Moscow, on October 16, 1941, the main staff of the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs, headed by its Deputy Chairman A. Vyshinsky, as well as members of the diplomatic corps were evacuated to Kuibyshev (now Samara). V. Molotov and a small group of assistants remained in Moscow.The relations between the NKID and the embassies evacuated to Kuibyshev evolved differently. The level and the intensity of contacts with them largely depended on bilateral relations with the respective nations. Contacts with the embassies of Great Britain and the USA were naturally at the top of the agenda. By way of ambassadors of these countries the key tasks of forming the anti-Hitler coalition were being solved, and the dates of summit meetings were agreed upon.The crowding of the central office staff and foreign diplomats in a small regional city certainly introduced difficulties into the practical implementation of many tasks. Nevertheless, the striving for a common victory and the awareness of responsibility to their own country, united this motley crew of diplomats, and facilitated the search for compromise solutions. The return to Moscow of the employees of the People’s Commissariat and the diplomatic corps took place after the victory in the Battle of Kursk in the summer of 1943. Only at the end of 1943 Kuibyshev did finally cede its status of the capital of the USSR to Moscow.

Problem setting. Many decades have passed since the Pact was signed, and the essential nature of the it continues to spark debate among historians and scholars. The main criterion that continues debates is the fact that the signing of the act resulted in a change of the entire European continent and a change in the geopolitical balance. Therefore, the relevance of the topic is that today there is no clear political and moral assessment of the pact on the basis of which a rational international significance of the document could be established. Target of research. The purposes of this study are to establish the legal characteristics and nature of the Molotov – Ribbentrop Pact; to analyze the consequences of which the document has been signed; to distinguish the positive and negative sides of the act in combination with the proposal of its international significance. Analysis of resent researches and publications. The following scientists were engaged in research of the specified question: M. Shvagulak, S. Pron, I. Khalupa, Nicolas Burns and Andreas Ortega. Article’s main body. This publication discusses the document – the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which has had a significant impact on both political and social development and the future potential of dozens of countries across the European continent. The Pact still defines many geopolitical realities in modern Europe. Discussions about the historic role of the non-aggression treaty and secret protocols are still relevant. The article deals with the legal characterization and essence of an international act of political and legal nature. The consequences of the signature of the “fateful sentence” are analyzed, as well as the positive and negative sides of this document, in combination with the establishment of its international significance, are highlighted and presented in detail. Conclusions and prospects for the development. Thus, as can be seen from all the work, the Molotov – Ribbentrop Pact has a rather contradictory character, both in relation to the countries it has in some way concerned and to history in general. So, on the one hand, this treaty was really beneficial and needed by the countries that signed it, namely Germany and the Soviet Union. However, the benefits in each of these countries were different. Discussions are still ongoing about the legal force of the treaty, as well as its international legal assessment. But from the point of view of international law, the Pact should be regarded as a huge violation that has influenced the development of new rules and principles in modern society. That is why the author believes that it is the Molotov – Ribbentrop Pact that became the signature of both states in the face of the forthcoming explosion of the largest Second world war.

This article explores how Louis Aragon became the symbol for the reaction of the French Communist Party (PCF) to the August 1939 pact of non-aggression between the USSR and Nazi Germany. The party’...

In June 1940, Vyacheslav Molotov demanded access to the nickel resource in Finnish Petsamo. Just three months earlier, the area had been returned to Finland as part of the Moscow Peace Treaty. What...

Evacuation of plants and population to the territory of Molotov region during the Great Patriotic War is one of the well-researched episodes. Removing from the frontline people, especially children, as well as the equipment of factories which played an important role in the USSR defense industry was the primary task for the authorities. The evacuation of cultural values from the country's leading museums also played an important role. At the same time, in 1941-1942 Molotov also became one of the centers receiving the document from different archives. Based on the analysis of the archival materials it is revealed some aspects of the war period archivist’s activity connected with the preservation of evacuated documents of the Central Archive of October Revolution and some archives of Leningrad region. The evacuated materials began to arrive in Molotov in August 1941, and already in 1942 this fact negatively influenced the work of the Molotov Region State archive. The archivists of Molotov could provide the best conditions of the evacuated materials storage only to the detriment of the local materials conservation and their own work. For the long period the archive was practically forced to stop the reference and scientific work, as well as the systematization of the archival funds. But the core targets of the archive at that period were not reduced by the authority, which led to archivists’ overstrain and discontent of management. At the same time, the key mission – safekeeping of the evacuated documents – was accomplished by the archivists. Re-evacuation of the materials of the Central Archive of October Revolution made in March 1944 allowed Molotov archivists to return to the pre-war working conditions.

The system of state and military control under the influence of crisis phenomena of any type, war or pandemic, undergoes profound transformations and requires the mobilization of all resources including efforts aimed at training the necessary military personnel. Our country has gained considerable experience in training military pilots, including naval aviation, both in peacetime and in wartime. Without a doubt, the experience of the Great Patriotic War is one of the most important in the history of aviation and the system of military educational institutions of the Navy. Just the war, which required maximum effort, demanded quick, non-trivial, but extremely productive decisions in the training of aviation personnel with limited human, material and time resources. The article explores the training and combat activities of the Second School of the pilot training of the Navy, as a part of the pilot training system during the Great Patriotic War. The author relies on the chronological sequence and analysis of archival and personal documents some of which are being used in the scientific field, reveals issues related to the development of management and organization of training of pilots of the Navy in the conditions of termination of such activities of OSOAVIAHIM. The interaction of the military command and Soviet local authorities on the organization of educational process, as well as the main steps for reforming and transforming all studies have been anlyzed. From the point of view of objectivity the author reveals both positive and negative aspects of these processes; indicates that the difficulties of the initial period of the school’s formation affected the number and quality of school graduates. All this makes it possible to assess the degree of effectiveness of such a system of training aviation personnel both in individual educational institutions and in the country's navy as a whole during the war years.

A significant phenomenon in the years of the Great Patriotic War was the evacuation of population, enterprises and institutions to the Eastern regions of the country which changed to a great extent the appearance and gave a new impetus to the economic and socio-cultural development of the rear regions. Molotov region was one of these territories. The Executive Committee of the Molotovsky regional Council of Workers ' Deputies (regional Executive Committee) was responsible for organizing the reception of evacuees, and the city and district Executive committees, village councils, and collective farms were directly responsible for housing the evacuated population. Analysis of the records of local authorities provides an opportunity to study the policy implemented on the ground in relation to the evacuated population. The sources of the study were the documents of local authorities deposited in the funds of the regional Executive Committee, city and district Executive committees of Molotov region, but the funds are presented unevenly. The author comes to the conclusion that in practice of city and district authorities the work with certain categories of the evacuated population occured due to the administrative documents of the Molotov regional Executive Committee, operational tasks for supplying the evacuated population and their employment. It should be noted that the evacuated population as an integral group appeared mainly in summer and autumn 1941, when the main task facing the authorities was the rapid deployment of citizens. A significant ranking during this period was provided by the type of evacuation – organized arrived evacuated population (with enterprises and institutions) and unorganized arrived population (single). Further, in the recordkeeping documentation the ranking of the evacuation population according to definite categories was provided primarily when solving the problems of social supply of citizens and at their statistical accounting. According to the documents a number of groups being under special attention of the local authorities were identified among the evacuated population: children, engineering and technical workers of enterprises arriving for evacuation, evacuated families of red army soldiers, front – line soldiers, families of the red Army command staff, families of responsible party workers. Significant specifics in the mechanisms of work with evac population in certain districts of Molotov region have not been identified.

The paper is aimed at examining criminal prosecution of the collaborationists, which is one of the most important activities of the post-war Soviet state security bodies. The research is based on the files of state security bodies in the Molotov region. In historiography, the issue is in general explored. Particularly, some papers describe well the evolution of legislative environment for criminal justice and penal sanctions for collaborationism. However, scholars, as a rule, do not verify information that can be found in official documents. Therefore, the author focuses mainly on the opportunities of using the investigations’ files as sources for the assessment of validity of imputations of collaborationism. The source analysis shows that, in general, a style of the significant part of accused persons’ evidences which can be found in the records of interrogations, bills of indictment, and other materials of the studied trials, shows an adequate representation of the most part of events. The author demonstrates that the state security bodies of Molotov region did an important work for the state and society, disclosing collaborationists and initiating criminal prosecution against them. They did a large-scale and intensive work to identify the criminals and prove their guilt. The analysis of declassified documents of investigation bodies and tribunals lets the author to conclude that a large part of those evidences are persuasive. However, the ability to extend the research results to the activity of the state security service as a whole depends on whether historians would have the opportunity for studying all the doc- Уголовное преследование … 117 uments of the Soviet state security service of the war and post-war period dealing with the trials against collaborationists

the publication presents documents from the collections of the State Archive of the Perm Krai – SAPK. The documents deal with the genesis of the institution of the commissioner Council for religious cults in the Molotov region during the Second world war. The relevance of the study is to study the Soviet state-confessional policy in 1944–1946 years. The main aspects of reforming the anti-religious policy of the USSR in the conditions of the Second world war are considered in substantial monographs. The attention of most researchers is focused on the relations between the state and the Russian Orthodox Church and the activities of the Council for the Affairs of the ROC. To a lesser extent, the formation of the institution of commissioners of the Council for religious cults in the regions has been studied. Archival materials show the practices of the authorities with the help of which the organization of the institution of the commissioner took place. The commissioners were to control local religious associations. Documents from the Fund of the commissioner Council for religious cults (SAPK F. r–1204. Op. 2. D. 9) have been prepared for publication in accordance with the existing rules.

The article examines a number of key aspects in the political history of Tuvan People’s Republic shortly before it became part of the USSR. The entries in the diary of the charge d’affaires of the USSR in the Tuvan People’s Republic, M.G. Sushchevsky (1942-1943) help us focus, in particular, on the early preparatory stage of this process and pinpoint the date when the Soviet leaders started to consider the issue quite seriously – March 18, 1943. Attention is also paid to other developments in the social and political life of the People’s Republic of Tuva which had some bearing in the process of taking the decision to join the USSR. Among them are the government institutions and their work (e.g. the Little Khural) and the political purges which continued into the 1940s.Some light is shed on the emigration of Tuvan arats to Mongolia and the forced resettlement of ethnic Tuvans from Mongolia to Tuva in the 1930s and 1940s. Special treatment is given to the issue of the border which since the early 1930s had become dominant in the Tuvan-Mongolian relations and remained so until the accession of Tuva into the USSR in October 1944.For its sources, the study, inter alia, relies in the unpublished “Diaries of the charge d’affaires of the USSR in the Tuvan People’s Republic c[omrades] Sushchevsky and Budarin”, preserved at the Archives of the Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation (f. 06 “V.M . Molotov’s Secretariat”).

‘Chekhov’s English admirers’, D. S. Mirsky complained, think that everything is perfect in Chekhov. Chekhov is like the fictional Molotov a plebeian: the serf’s grandson who made a man of himself. Chekhov became a humanist in the tradition of Pushkin and Turgenev, like them valuing restraint, measure in all things; more concerned with perspective than hoping for any miracle of reformation. Chekhov began writing the humorous sketch for a public that never looked beyond journalism. Chekhov’s disengagement marks him off from his contemporaries and nearly all his successors. Chekhov never loses sight of the vast background to human incident: the sea watched by two lovers on a bench, the storm impervious to the hatreds of men, the steppe in its loneliness. He can achieve distance and relate: his impersonality rests on an awareness of physical space, and of the silence behind the discord.

In the confrontation of systems for geopolitical space in the post-World War II world, India turned into a zone for the US and Soviet rivalry for influence in the South Asian region. The Indo-Pakistan military conflict over Jammu and Kashmir led to its partition, and from the Soviet point of view, important military and strategic areas close to the territory of the Soviet Union were in the hands of Pakistan. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Soviet state viewed the policies of India, in the immediate aftermath of its independence, through the warped prism of ideology structured by I.V. Stalin, V.M. Molotov and A.Y. Vyshinsky. India was of marginal interest to the Soviet Union during the Stalin era. This was primarily due to Stalin’s erroneous assessment that the Indian leadership with its colonial and imperial intellectual background and its urban origins did not make India a useful partner of the Soviet Union. How did the Soviet Union, under the leadership of Stalin, view the liberation movement of the Indian people and react to the political processes in India? What was the attitude of the Soviet Union to the Government of Nehru? How did the early years of India-Russia diplomatic engagement unfold? These are some of the historical questions that the chapter has attempted to explore.

This article examines the fate of the well-known chess players of the middle of the 20th century - the “expatriate defector” Alexander Alekhine and the Soviet champion Mikhail Botvinnik - as one of the little-known stories related to the history of the contacts between the representatives of the Russian diaspora and the Soviet state of the Stalin era. The author examines the history of the failed match between these two outstanding chess masters in 1939-1940 and shows why the Alekhine-Botvinnik match, which had been initially approved at the highest party and state level, was not held, and find out what role the Soviet administrative apparatus played in this. The author comes to conclusion that under the conditions of strict authoritarian leadership, with the directives of V.M. Molotov, N.A. Bulganin and A.Ya. Vyshinsky, and possibly Joseph Stalin, the managers had a sufficient set of bureaucratic methods that allowed delaying the process of preparing the match up to a favourable occasion which led to the final breakdown in the negotiations. Such methods include precaution, prolonging pauses in interdepartmental communication, requesting for “instructions”, recalculating estimates, using rumours as arguments, using erroneous addresses and redirecting correspondence. The reason for the officials’ inactivity was the fear of personal responsibility for the defeat of the Soviet champion by the “expatriate defector”, especially in the situation when some leaders of the USSR chess movement were repressed. The author’s analysis provides insight into the problems of the functioning of the executive power in the conditions of the political regime established in the USSR by the beginning of the Second World War.

This article examines one of the standardized procedures implemented by Stalin and his supporters during the New Economic Policy to professionalize policy processes in central party agencies. Stalin and his supporters in the Secretariat and Organization Bureau relied on informational studies generated by officials in the Organization-Assignment Department of the Central Committee Secretariat (Orgraspred) to assess both the results of major political campaigns and the quality of local party administration. This article draws attention to this practice by examining two case studies. The first was a 1924 investigation into the poor health of party activists and officials sponsored by the Orgraspred, which appeared to confirm opposition claims about the separation of the party leadership from the working class. The second recounts the findings reported by three of Stalin’s allies in the Organization Bureau – Molotov, Andrei Andreev, and Nikolai Antipov – following extended personal tours of Tambov, Tula, Kursk, Ukraine, the Urals, Siberia and the Far East in support of the “Face to the Countryside” campaign. A careful review of the standard procedures these case studies exemplify suggests that common beliefs about the apolitical nature of the Stalin faction that formed during the years of factional struggle require revision.

Journalist Mark Kulansky, who wrote a book on the significance of 1968, proclaimed that “there has never been a year like 1968, and it is unlikely that there will ever be one again.” (Kulansky 2005...

Este artículo analiza el modelo organizativo y de negocio de El Salto, un medio alternativo surgido de la refundación de Diagonal como proyecto colaborativo y descentralizado territorialmente. A partir de una revisión documental y de entrevistas en profundidad con miembros del proyecto, abordamos su experiencia con el fin de presentar sus potencialidades, límites, contradicciones y retos en el actual contexto de hibridismo mediático. Nos encontramos ante un medio que ha estado vinculado a los movimientos sociales desde finales del siglo XX –primero como Molotov (1986-2003), después como Diagonal (2005-2016) y actualmente como El Salto. En estos años ha pasado de ser un medio antagonista y contra-informativo a convertirse en un medio alternativo –en lo discursivo y en lo organizativo– con vocación transversal. En las conclusiones debatimos sobre el futuro de un modelo periodístico colaborativo basado en los principios del cuarto poder en red. This paper analyzes the organizational and business model of El Salto, an alternative media which arises from the refoundation of Diagonal as a collaborative and territorially decentralized project. We conduct a documentary revision and deep interviews with some members of the project in order to expose the potentialities, limits, contradictions and challenges of alternative media in the current hybrid media systems. We are dealing with a media linked to social movements since the late twentieth century –first as Molotov (1986-2003), later as Diagonal (2005-2016) and now as El Salto. In their path it has been transformed from an antagonistic and counter-informative media to an alternative media –both, discursive and organizational– with a transversal perspective. In the conclusions, we discuss the future of a collaborative journalistic model based on the principles networked Fourth Estate.

The educational practice of Ural schools during the Great Patriotic war is examined. Based on documents from archives and museums of the Perm region school history in the period of 1941-1945 is reconstructed. The materials on the organizational and pedagogical problems and their solutions are presented. The implementation of the compulsory education, introduction of basic military training, forms of training and education in their relation to the realities of a military childhood are examined. Information about students’ participation in the assistance front is provided. The author argues that in the second half of the 1930-ies - early 1940-ies a system of education and social teaching, having a rigid social order, developed. Solutions of actual problems of patriotic and military physical education are shown. The elements of best teaching experience and teachers’ mastery as a phenomenon that expresses the essence of the processes in a specific period and timeless in its significance are described. Significant line of the historic genesis of childhood related to the role of the child as a subject of history is actualised. The publication is a part of research work on the military childhood and is limited by the historical-pedagogical analysis of the pedagogical practice, embodied in schools of Molotov oblast during the war.