The article deals with the phenomenon of syntactic phraseological units, which is insufficiently studied and requires further research. The basic provisions of the theory of syntactic phraseological units are described: different terminological designations of this phenomenon, definition, categorical features, classifications, algorithm for determining the types of these expressions. The main content of the study is the analysis of the functioning of the elements of the scheme “What would I (we) do without you?(!)”. The material for the analysis was the contexts with this phrase, extracted from fiction. The idea is substantiated that the studied expression is a syntactic phraseology and is constructed in accordance with the phraseosyntactic scheme according to the classification of V. Yu. Melikyan. Semantic, syntactic and pragmatic features of the studied scheme are analyzed. The theoretical and practical significance of the work is that the results of the study can complement the understanding of the system of syntactic phraseological units and can be used in the compilation of dictionaries of this kind of Russian expressions. In addition, the results of the study in a pragmatic aspect can contribute to understanding of the use of syntactic phraseological units in dialogues, which is important for the proper use of these units, in particular in the study of Russian as a foreign language.

The article considers the most frequently mentioned relic phenomena in the grammar of the American English language, in particular, the morphology of non-standard verbs (the use of participles gotten and proven , that lost the suffix - en in the British English, and regularization of the past tense and participle II of the verbs such as burn , lean , spell ); the use of synthetic forms of subjunctive mood and congruence of a verb-predicate in the singular with the subject, expressed by a collective name. It is shown that, according to modern research, these grammatical phenomena should be attributed to the number of examples of “colonial revival”, not “colonial backlog.” For example, the participle gotten and synthetic form of the subjunctive mood in the 18^th-19^th centuries were rarely used; standard forms of verbs such as burn , lean , spell in American literary texts of the 18^th century were less common than in English literary texts. Currently, these phenomena are approved as normal. Congruence of a verb-predicate in the singular with a subject, expressed by a collective name, was peculiar to both the American and British English in the early stages of their development. There is a tendency to borrow these grammatical phenomena in the British English.

The relevance of the work is determined by the interest in the study of discursive practices by corpus linguistics methods. The subject of the analysis is the axiological dominants of a genre that are objectified by key words, extracted from the corpus by statistical methods. The authors aim to show the specificity of the value dominants of the Russian-language genre of press release based on the use of the keyword method of the corpus methodology and an algorithm developed using the programming language Python, based on the measure tf-idf, which allows to objectively identify lexical and semantic dominants that represent value meanings. The study was conducted on the material of a representative specialized corpus, that combine texts of press releases posted on the official websites of major Russian companies between 2017 and 2019. Based on the analysis of lexical choices, it is established that the texts of press releases of the companies are addressed to professional investors, as well as to a wide discursive community. It is shown that the discursive practices of energy sector companies emphasize the prospects of development, care for the environment, the importance of their activities for society in general. Companies in the manufacturing sector emphasize the achievements and highlight quality and domestic origin of products. Retail network companies are focused on utilitarian values of choice, convenience and economy.

The article studies special types of grammatical constructions characteristic to Russian academic style, and the ways of their translation into English, primarily when used in academic paper titles. In accordance with “Construction Grammar”, three types of actively used constructions are discussed, which are particularly “sensitive” to cross-linguistic context: (1) “ X na materiale / na primere / na osnovanii Y etc.,” (2) “ X v svete / skvoz’ prizmu / v zerkale / s tochki zreniya / v kontekste / v aspecte (and so on) Y ,” (3) “ X kak sredstvo / kak osnova / kak sposob / kak kluch (and so on) k Y .” It is shown that such grammatical constructions in contemporary academic style in Russian as well as the analogous ones in English reflect the dynamic character of language evolution, discourse and communication; are generated on the basis of “family resemblance” and prototype structures; belong to the compositional area of small syntax: they are used as integral discourse units; represent irregular, but frequently lexicalized phrases and non-standard grammatical structures; are idiomatic and “language-specific” and therefore their translation requires finding “quasiequivalents” and “quasisynonyms” in other languages.

The headlines constructions of the news announcement in mass media discourse are analyzed. The purpose of the study is to identify the specifics of syntactic language resources used in the news announcement: from structural, formal description of the method of information representation to the means of expression of the modal and communicative component of statements. The author claims that it is necessary to consider not separate lexical means which, undoubtedly, are dominating in realization of informative function, but constructions from the point of interaction in them lexical and syntactic language levels. The material for the study was the news announcements (more than 900 headlines) of the start page of the Yandex search engine, which ranks first in terms of appeals in the Russian communication space among other search engines. The author’s observations show that simple two-member complete sentences of the active voice are the most active in the news announcement, among the one-member sentences - indefinite-personal, as well as complex conjunctionless and complex sentences with expository semantic relations are active. It is proved that used syntactic means do not violate such criteria of news genres as capacity, conciseness, relevance, factology, compliance with the actual interests of the target audience, and contribute to formation of an optimal communicative environment.

Constructions with adnominal evaluative genitive are considered as a specific way of encoding the axiological scores on the morphosyntactic level. The linguo-axiological approach to the study of this construction indicates the novelty and relevance of the study. Constructions of type “N nom. + N gen.” in which the position of subject is taken by the noun man or anthroponymic nouns are selected as the main object of study. It is proved that the coding of axiological evaluation in the framework of this syntactic model is based on the implementation of two main types of possessiveness: possession and belonging. The dependence of the character and intensity of evaluation on the semantic-syntactic structure of the combination is established. Inverted constructions like man of honor in which the characteristic property acquires the status of an inalienable value, and the subject itself acts as its reference carrier are described as having the greatest axiological potential. The authors claim that positive attitude in converses determines their functioning in the role of prescriptive linguistic concepts or ideologemes. It is noted that the smaller axiological potential within the estimative polarity is inherent in constructions with a figurative meaning of possessiveness, in which the assessment of a person occurs by indicating his belonging to the place, time or occupation ( man of the era , man of the year , man of show business ).

The article for the first time comprehensively comprehends the Russian translation and literary-critical reception of the poem “The Cotter’s Saturday Night” by Robert Burns during the 19^th century. The analysis of translations and transcriptions of this piece in Russian language by I. I. Kozlov (1829), D. V. Kostomarov (1861), A. M. Fedorov (1896) is made. As a result of the analysis, the specificity of the approaches of each of the interpreters to the understanding of the Scottish poet’s conception, to the interpretation of the motives of villagers’ patriarchal life, the primordial national religiosity, faith in fate, the inevitability of the circumstances to be overcome is revealed. It is noted that none of the Russian poets-translators of the 19^th century managed to preserve the formal features of the original and the characteristic tone of the narrative, permeated with a sense of belonging to the moral bonds of rural life. It is emphasized that “The Cotter’s Saturday Night” appeared outside the broad context of Burns’s works, which formed an idea of a specific, isolated place of this work in the poet’s heritage. It is indicated that at the same time the Russian translations of “The Cotter’s Saturday Night” fully reflected the ideas of poetic translation, the circumstances of social life, ideological and artistic and aesthetic views of the interpreters themselves. Russian critics’ reaction to Burns’s poem and its Russian translations contained in the articles by V. G. Belinsky, O. I. Senkovsky, N. A. Polevoy, P. I. Weinberg, etc. is also comprehended.

The specificity of actualization of an image in the poetics of a song text is considered. Difficulties of theoretical interpretations of song genre as a form of literary creation are revealed, within its context the status of popular songs poetry is revealed. Questions of interaction of modalities of personal “I” of a poet-songwriter and audience for which he / she creates are touched. A distinction is made between the cases of “spontaneous” music transcription of texts that were originally created in the context of recitation poetry, and the cases of originally conceived, conscious projection of texts to music. Semantic regularities can be traced on concrete material, which determine the specificity of a song in the role of an image typical to mass songs genre. The paradigm “song → body” is considered as one ofthe variants of representation of this image. Examples are given from the song poetry by F. M. Kankulov, whose work to date has not attracted the attention of researchers, especially the individual aspects of his poetry, which determines the novelty of the presented observations, were not considered. The study suggests that the cultural specificity that emerges in the paradigm raises the question of new mental aspects in image reading, which within the song text is based on the upper, and therefore, the most transparent layers of cultural identity.

The article analyzes the plot and image structure of the novel “Forth to Life” by E. Uruymagova (1905-1955) in the context of the traditions of a family-clan novel and its later (“Soviet”) modifications. One of the central problems is the disintegration of the proprietary world, its historical doom against the background of the awakening of the creative and organizing power of people, correlated by the author with the influence of the ideas of the revolution. The emphasis is made on the aspect of procreation (mentally defective heir or lack thereof) as a way to implement the narrative strategies of the work, its main idea. The relevance and novelty of the work are seen in the fact that the refraction of classical traditions in the display of the theme of physical and moral degradation of the bourgeois family did not become the subject of a separate study in the North Caucasian literature. The principles of comparative analysis in combination with the method of intertextual reconstruction of a single motif space are used to reproduce the two-vector nature of the successive relations of the Ossetian writer with the world classics masters (F. M. Dostoevsky, M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, I. Franko, J. Golesworthy, M. Gorky, T. Mann) and literary followers (V. Gagloev, Kh. Teunov, I. Mashbash). It is proved that, despite the obvious refinement in the ideological paradigm of the era, Uruymagova’s novel is a landmark phenomenon of the multinational Soviet literature of the post-war years.

The author describes the experience of many years of work on the study of laughter in the Russian folk wedding. In this work, in particular, one of the forms of its embodiment in the Russian traditional and modern wedding is considered. Special attention is paid to such rites as Courtship, Visiting the groom’s house by girls, Ransoms in the bride’s house. It is shown that these and other wedding rites that require active interaction of the parties were very often at the same time laugh competitions, which clearly manifested mastery of such a type of folk eloquence, which is called balagurstvo . This competition, which was a dialogue, includes both spontaneous and stereotypical speech statements, in particular, such folklore genres as groomsman’s sayings and korilnye songs were replicas of the parties. The article proves that in the modern wedding this speech competition not only has been further developed and strengthened, but could already be implemented with the simultaneous use of oral and written speech, including official documents. Greater development in modern wedding also got not a verbal contest of parties, but action accompanying of humorous dialogue, which could use items having in the specific wedding situation a humorous meaning (for example, setting the table for guests by food waste instead of holiday treats).

The article analyzes the functions of “proofreading” in the structure of the plot and meta-plot of the novel “Transparent Things” by V. V. Nabokov. The image of proofreader Hugh Person is considered in two paradigms: “hero-proofreader - hero-writer” and “proofreader as an assistant to the author - author-creator.” The main part of the study is dedicated to track the dynamics of the hero: his movement from “deafness” to the author’s voice (errors in the proof) to understanding the “service” function of a corrector (the hero as “the employee”) and plan of the Creator. The paper focuses on the multilinguistic game and distinguishes the signs of the author’s presence in the novel’s text. In conclusion, the article draws conclusions about the meta-literary potential of the hero-proofreader in the plot, as well as the ambiguity of his figure in the poetics of this author. In addition, the function of heroes’ clothes is considered. The extent and quality of connectedness of the characters with objective reality are interpreted as a signal of the hero’s execution / non-execution of his function in the novel. Also in the work the interpretation of the hotel locus as a temporary “refuge” of the hero in the space of the text is given. A special emphasis is made on the glass showcase as a way to demonstrate the Author’s techniques and planned plot moves. proofreader

A review of literary-critical and journalistic articles about M. Gorky published in French periodicals of the early 20^th century is made, some of which in our translation are for the first time introduced into scientific use. The purpose of the work is to determine the features of the perception of the writer’s works based on the analysis of the first responses to his works published in France. Special attention is paid to the article by E. Melchior de Vogue “Maxim Gorky. Works and personality of the writer,” in which the author analyzes Gorky’s works in the Russian and foreign context. The article analyzes the article by Pylon Edmond, a French writer and critic, in which the biographical aspect of M. Gorky’s image is correlated with the facts from the life of F. Villon. Materials about M. Gorky published in the most famous French periodicals of the early 20^th century are characterized: L’Aurore, La Presse, Le Figaro, Le Temps, that have regularly published notes covering various aspects of the life of Maxim Gorky, especially his political views. As the study showed, despite the incredible popularity of Gorky in France, the majority of authors of journalistic articles perceived Gorky as a socio-political figure, a man with an exceptional biography, but not the artist of a word.

The theme of creativity represented in P. Ackroyd’s novel “Chatterton” through the images of poets, writers, artists is analyzed. The features of the approach of the writer, the famous English novelist and biographer, to creation of works in the centre of which there is a creative person are revealed. Attention is paid to the complex structure of the novel “Chatterton,” which intertwine different time layers and fates of both fictional characters associated with creativity and famous writers of different centuries. The author reveals the peculiarities of the relationship of the book characters, who are a kind of Chatterton’s doubles, to the process of creating works of art. Special attention is paid to the issue of sources of creative inspiration and recognition of an artist. The author shows how the characters of the novel are connected by common problems that concern each of them, in particular by the interest in the fate of Chatterton, different versions of whose life or appearance they are trying to recreate. It is concluded that the image of creative personalities of different eras helps the writer to create an image of the artist true to his vocation - art, which exists forever and overcomes temporal and spatial limitations of the real world.

The issue of reception of field research of Savvin - Bolo Vilyuy expedition (1938) with subsequent fixation of Russian and Even folklore as well as Yakut folk songs is covered. Internal connections between Vilyuy and the subsequent folklore expeditions organized in 1930-1970 by S. I. Bolo, T. A. Shub, V. D. Lebedev and M. N. Zhirkov are defined. It is shown that within the framework of the Vilyuy expedition of 1938, approaches and principles of fixation of samples of oral folklore were developed, and then these developments were used when collecting text and musical folklore by participants of subsequent expeditions, the principles and approaches being improved. The novelty of the study is due to the fact that the value of the results of the Vilyuy expedition of 1938 to the present time has not yet been considered in science in the stated perspective of continuity. The authors dwell on the issues of formation of the expedition participants as scientists, on the peculiarities of expeditions organization, the tasks set in the framework of expeditions, on the content and composition of the material recorded in the field. The estimation of the achievements of expeditions organized by T. A. Shub, V. D. Lebedev, M. N. Zhirkov is given.

The article is devoted to one of I. Brodsky’s poems of 1967. The analysis of the poetic text is presented through the prism of communicative strategies. Theoretical and methodological basis is the works by Yu. I. Levin, O. S. Issers, I. N. Borisova et al. It is revealed that communication as an exchange of information is presented in a special way in the literary text. It is a link between the author and his potential readership. Moreover, the addressee has a different degree of manifestation: communicative intentions can be open, hidden in the subtext, and can not be expressed at all materially. The article deals with the variety of communicative relations, their dependence on “image of an addressee,” content and purpose. It is concluded that the effectiveness of interaction is directly related to the chosen communicative strategy. Three universal types of strategies are considered in more detail: regulatory, dictal, modal. The novelty of the study is due to the approach to the analysis of Brodsky’s poem in terms of the implementation of communicative intentions. On the basis of a detailed analysis of the thematic, compositional, motivic-figurative, communicative structure of the poetic text, the principles of the implementation of a particular strategy are outlined, the possible prerequisites for their use are explained, and a version of the interpretation of meanings is proposed.

The article is devoted to the problem of socio-political development of villages of Kozlovsky district of the Central Chernozem region in 1929-1930. The main sources of the study were extensive materials concentrated in the State Archive of Socio-Political History of the Tambov Region and the State Archive of the Tambov Region. It is shown that these documents made it possible to study at the micro level the problems of increasing antagonism between the Soviet power and peasantry, the progressive expansion of the tools of struggle of each of the opposing forces on the local example of the peasantry of the Kozlovsky district. The article pays special attention to the social appearance of the protest movement. The relevance of the study is due to the importance of identifying the problems of conflict-free resolution of socio-political protests. On the contrary, repressive measures of the Soviet government against Kozlovsky district peasants turned to the growing dissent, mass demonstrations, etc. It is indicated that the government, in pursuit of clearly defined political and economic objectives, continued to use the push methods in the fight on the bread front, and during the complete collectivization. A comprehensive social and institutional assessment of the events in the Soviet village in 1929-1930 is carried out. The researchers prove that collectivization has become a mechanism for suppressing the protest forces in a village and strengthening the positions of Soviet power.

The article analyzes the historical role and characteristic features of the patriotic activity of the first Bulgarian Exarch Anfim I in the second half of the 1870s, during the period of mass persecution of the Bulgarians by the Ottoman authorities after the suppression of the April uprising of 1876. The author presents Anfim I as a person deeply interested in the liberation of the Bulgarians from the Ottoman oppression and in their unification, who actively carried out spiritual and ideological activities, in particular, related to the dissemination of patriotic ideas. It is concluded that the patriotic activity of the Bulgarian high priest was the most important structural link of the national liberation movement of the Bulgarians, one of the key factors of socialization of the Bulgarian people, contributing to the formation of their socio-cultural and political consciousness, encouraging patriotic activity and national unity. The author singles out the following directions of patriotic activities of Anfim I the Exarch: material support for Bulgarians’ uprisings against the Ottoman rule; organization of collecting the information and conducting investigations related to punitive shares of the Turkish authorities; petition of Bulgaria to the Ottoman government; organization of treatments towards Russia and the world community in the promotion of the Bulgarian interests; participation in the organizational work on the improvement of the newborn Bulgarian state; organization of collecting signatures against the decisions of the Berlin Congress, dismembered Greater San Stefano Bulgaria. The Pro-Russian orientation of the patriotic activity of Anfim I the Exarch is presented in the article as its key feature.

The question of the evolution of the USA press attitude to the foreign policy of the USSR is considered. The article presents the results of the analysis of American newspapers in the aspect of the formation of the image of the “red menace.” The study of this information phenomenon will allow to understand more precisely how the representations formed through the press influenced the Soviet-American relations. The main arguments by which the authors justify the key role of the 1939 Pact in creating a new image of the USSR are given. The novelty of the study is seen in the fact that the estimates of the 1939 Pact, given by American journalists, are analyzed. The influence of British newspapers on American assessments of the Pact is discussed. It is noted that the study of the USA press will provide an opportunity to more deeply illuminate American ideas about practical approaches to the development of international relations in the context of the transformation of the world order before the Second World War. The analysis of the press showed that during 1939 in the American public discourse there was a change of priority approaches: the image of the USSR evolved from the “red menace” to a potential ally. It is shown that this problem is relevant in practical terms - for the analysis of modern information processes in American society.

The first initiatives of the Soviet authorities on the organization of geological researches of minerals and creation of the enterprises for their industrial production in Yakutia are considered. It is established that in the process of formation of the state system of geological exploration and development of subsoil resources in Yakutia there are two main periods: the initial one (1920-1922), when the search for minerals was not yet associated with the industrial development of deposits, and the second period (1923-1925), during which the state system of search, exploration and development of mineral deposits was created in the Yakut ASSR, at the same time, the centralized structure of industry management included for the first time both regulatory bodies for geological prospecting and exploration of minerals, and bodies for managing enterprises of industrial field development. The author argues that as a result of the reforms of 1920-1925, geological exploration, which previously was primarily purely scientific in nature, was put at the service of production. It is concluded that in these years the Yakut ASSR formed a centralized state management structure that controlled the process of technical and economic evaluation of mineral deposits and the implementation of all targeted activities in the field of mining.

The state of Jewish communities in Western Siberia in the historical perspective is analyzed. On the basis of a wide range of archival sources the author analyzes the specifics of the life of such communities during four historical periods: pre-revolutionary, change of political regimes (1917-1919), Soviet and post-Soviet. A special place in the article is given to the phenomenon of regional (Siberian) variant of Jewish identity. The purpose of the article is to analyze the transformations in the understanding and realization of the idea of community life of Jews living in Western Siberia for two centuries of the Jewish Diaspora in the region. The results of a quantitative survey conducted by the author in autumn 2018 are presented. On the basis of comparative analysis of the data, the author comes to a conclusion that the socio-cultural image of the West Siberian communities retains typical characteristics of the Jewish regional (Siberian) identity. At the same time, the main indicators of the level of religiosity, national and cultural identification, age and educational characteristics correspond to the general picture of Russian Jewry, which indicates a close connection between the provincial Jewry of different regions of Russia and Russian Jewry in general. The analysis of the dynamics of Jewish national and cultural life in Western Siberia gives grounds to consider the thesis of the observed crisis of the Jewish Diaspora in the Russian province premature.

The features of mining and seasonal work (MSW) of the peasants of the Kuznetsk basin in the period 1880ies - early 1890-ies are considered. Within the above-mentioned territorial framework the content of the main varieties of MSW and their dynamics during 1887-1893 are covered. Attention is paid to the characteristics of each type of MSW. Based on the analysis of statistical data, the prevalence of each type of MSW among the peasant population of Kuzbass is estimated. The question is raised about the degree of profitability of different MSW. Special attention is paid to hunting, fishing, beekeeping, gathering and transportation works. The novelty of the study is seen in the fact that for the first time on the basis of processing of statistical data the state and dynamics of the development of MSW in the Kuzbass region are characterized by the end of the 19^th century. The differences in the state and development of the MSW on the cabinet (Kuznetsk district) and state (Mariinsky district and the southern part of the Tomsk district) lands of Kuzbass are demonstrated. This kind of research, based on the analysis of statistical data, is being undertaken for the first time. The social significance of the study is connected with the need to draw attention to the problems of sustainable socio-economic development of rural areas at the present time.

The materials of the Urals are used to analyze the little-studied regional aspects of the history of the left-Communist opposition to Lenin’s policy of “respite” and the “obscene” Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. It is established that the foreign policy guidelines of the left Communists reflected the reaction of revolutionism against the actual course of the Russian revolution, against the tactics of continuous maneuvering and maneuvering in the international arena, which was imposed on the Bolsheviks by the inexorable realities of life. The author characterizes the scale of the spread of leftist Communist ideas in the regional organizations of the Bolshevik party and beyond - in the Soviets, trade unions, factory committees, among the social “lower classes,” and their dynamics. The calculations showed that the popularity of the views of the left Communists in these structures and segments of the population was due to both the doctrinal attitudes of Bolshevism and the sharp increase in the mass consciousness of the elements of the mythological worldview susceptible to “crazy” ideas of the left. The process of evolution of the left-Communist opposition in the conditions of Civil war is analyzed. It is concluded that the revolutionary principles of the “new” left Communists inevitably were in conflict with the tasks of consolidating the Bolshevik forces and strengthening the Soviet state machine. For the first time a wide range of archival sources and materials of periodicals of the studied period is introduced into scientific circulation.

The history of formation of Ganja-Karabakh Province of Safavid Empire is shown and the role of the tribal unions of Qajar in this process is examined. The article shows the activities of Qajars political leaders of that time - Kamal ad-Din Khan and Imamkuli Khan, their participation in the hostilities that led the rulers of the Safavid Empire in the South Caucasus, as well as participation of the Qajars in the hostilities of the Ottoman-Safavid war of the 16^th century. Based on the analysis of historical sources, it is shown that it was the Qajar leaders who played a leading role in the spread and preservation of Safavid power in the territories of the South Caucasus, including the lands of Shirvan and Georgian States. It is shown that under the influence of the Qajars there were territories located at the junction of the borders of modern Georgia and Azerbaijan - Shamshadil, Borchalu and Kazakh possessions, control over which was essential for the entire communication system of the South Caucasus. The paper also examines in detail the origin and early history of Ziyad-oglu Qacarlar - a dynastic branch whose descendants ruled the Karabakh Khanate from the middle of the 18^th century until the region’s accession to the Russian Empire.

The Russian historiography of the FRG regional policy after the unification of Germany is analyzed. Historical, political, legal, economic, cultural and geographical scientific works devoted to the relationship between the centre and the regions of Germany are considered. It is concluded that most of works are concentrated around the phenomenon of German federalism, inter-budgetary relations and problem of integration of the former lands of the GDR. The author covers discussions on the sustainability and effectiveness of cooperative federalism, problems of inter-budgetary relations, the prospects of a competitive model of federalism as a result of Federal reforms of the 21^st century, the impact of regional imbalances on domestic policy, the possibility of unification of the Federal lands and their adaptation to the challenges of European integration. The state of study of the development of individual regions and local government of Germany is presented. Estimates of land elections and their influence on regional policy are given. Despite the recognition of the significant influence of the länder and municipalities on the domestic and foreign policy of the United Germany by many scholars, their position as political actors is usually either given in an overview or appears as an illustrative material to the general pattern. In conclusion, the main gaps in the study of the regional policy of modern Germany are listed, the elimination of which will help to get closer to a holistic view of the political significance of the land and municipal levels of government.

The article studies the experience of the organization of youth associations created to implement the functions of social and state control in the USSR. It is shown that in the late 1920s, the youth movement has developed from a few groups of Komsomol control to the mass participation of boys and girls in the implementation of control functions. The authors focus on the participation of young people in the sections of the Worker-Peasant Inspection and creation of “light cavalry” units, which directed their activities to rationalize the work of state institutions, prompt consideration of complaints of the population, self-identification of shortcomings. The basic forms of organizational structure of youth control units, the causes of organizational difficulties at the initial stage of their operation are revealed. Having made a conclusion about expediency of inclusion of youth in activity on improvement of public administration, the authors nevertheless note that already at the initial stage of activity of “light cavalry” in the organizational sphere opposite tendencies were shown: development of self-government and work pro bono was opposed by bureaucracy of the Komsomol asset duplicating the negative moments in style of work of mentors from party-state apparatus. The materials of the Russian State Archive of Social and Political History are widely used in the study, the evidence of contemporaries is involved.