The semantic-motivational and etymological analysis of the Russian dialectal designations of lumbar and lumbar pain is presented. The material was extracted from dictionaries of Russian dialects, from unpublished card files of the Ural University toponymic expedition to the territories of the Russian North and the Upper Volga region, as well as folklore and ethnographic sources related to folk medicine. The main semantic-motivational models underlying the designation of the lower back, which can reflect the idea of the “topography” of this part of the body, correlation with adjacent bodily areas, the functions of the lower back, and pain symptoms are considered. It is noted that in the “lumbar” vocabulary the main place belongs to the names of lumbar pain, the abundance of which is determined by the nature of agricultural labor. It has been shown that several names contain an indication of the localization of pain, but in most cases the nature of the pain is conveyed — cutting, stabbing, aching, etc. The authors analyze linguistic material in combination with folklore and ethnographic: texts of conspiracies, ritual dialogues, descriptions of magical healing practices. Sign complexes are identified, within which the designations of pain symptoms are projected onto methods, means and tools of treatment. In such complexes, the principle of etymological magic can be realized, consistent with the concept of the “witchcraft” origin of pain symptoms. Motivational and etymological solutions for dark words are proposed.

The features of the use of biblical phraseological units with an anthroponym component in modern media texts presented in the newspaper corpus of the National Corpus of the Russian language are considered. The relevance of the study is due to the fact that it can contribute to the accumulation of knowledge about the specifics of functioning in the modern media discourse of linguistic units that accumulate cultural meanings. The frequency of use and features of the structural-semantic derivation of phraseological units of biblical origin in newspaper texts of recent times are analyzed. The performed analysis replenishes linguistic data on the mechanisms of operating with phraseological material. The most frequent biblical phraseological units with an anthroponymic component in newspaper texts are revealed. It is shown that the most characteristic semantic transformation of the studied units is the development of phraseological meaning due to the highlighting of the seme, which is not included in the meaning of the expression. Among other semantic changes, literalization and simplification of the phrase values were also noted. It was found that the leading method of structural transformation of biblical phraseological units is the expansion of the component composition. It is concluded that the transformation of phraseological units in media texts is associated with the need to strengthen the impact on the reader, increase the intensity of the expression transmitted in the utterance, update the figurativeness of the phraseological unit and overcome its tendency to cliché.

The article is devoted to the study of the semantics of units expressing the value of intensity. The concept of the lexical function Magn of the “Meaning ↔ Text” model is used in the article. Lexical functions are a tool for describing limited lexical collocation. Magn is an abstract typical meaning of ‘very’, ‘intensity’, ‘high degree’, which is expressed in a significant number of different words, and in many cases in an idiomatic way.  Lexical units expressing the meaning of ‘very’ / ‘large’ / ‘intense’ are represented in different languages by a large number of words and constructions. The designation of intensity in many languages has lexically determined variants of expression, often linguistic specific. A brief overview of the main models of the formation of the meaning of intensity in a language, examples of linguistic-specific units are given. The novelty of the research is determined by the presentation in the work of new models of the formation of the meaning of Magn and linguistic-specific expressions of this meaning. The relevance of the study is due to the fact that the study of models of the formation of the value of intensity is in line with modern research on the study of semantic evolution, the construction of a typology of semantic transitions, the identification of the features of the picture of the world of different languages, the creation of explanatory models of the language. 

The article is devoted to the study of the lexical aspects of Russian Bible translations of the 19th—21st centuries in comparative coverage and is a continuation of a study pre-viously conducted by reference to English Bibles. A historical overview of the existing Russian translations is given (the Synodal translation and the texts preceding it, the New Testament of Bishop Cassian, the Bible of the World Bible Translation Center, the “Central Asian translation”, the translation of Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Bible of the Inter-national Bible Society, the modern translation of the Russian Bible Society, the “Zaoksky Bible”). Special attention is paid to modern editions. Samples of texts are compared according to the lexical parameters of adaptiveness, terminologicalness, style and literalness. On the basis of this comparison, a classification of the considered translations is proposed, and their typological features and interconnections are established. The lexical nature of translations is interpreted in terms of their sociolinguistic effect (public perception). The data obtained confirms the pattern previously found in the English-language Bibles — the inverse relationship between adaptiveness on the one hand and terminologicalness, high style and literalness of the translation on the other.  In terms of lexical characteristics, the Synodal and the “Central Asian” translations differ most from each other, which is probably due to their focus on church tradition and missionary goals, respectively. 

The service unit moreover is considered from the point of view of functioning in the text. The relevance of the study is due, on the one hand, to the inclusion of the research in the study of the linguistics of the text and linguistic units that serve as means of communication in the text, on the other hand, to the lack of special descriptions of text clips in research and lexicographic sources. The novelty of the research is seen in the fact that an attempt was made to describe the general regularities of the functioning of the bond moreover in the text, characteristic contexts were identified. The description of this word in scientific literature and lexicography is analyzed. In the course of the analysis, it was revealed that the unit also functions as a text bond with the value of attachment. A total of 5 contextual modifications have been established. Three modifications are related to the degree of significance of the information in the attached comment. Two more modifications relate to the text-forming function, which is performed by the bond moreover. To identify the features of the functioning of the studied bond, examples of its use in various journalistic and literary texts were analyzed.

The article examines the protagonist’s verbalized  inner  speech  in  the   literary   text of the novel “The Remains of the Day” as a way of literary discourse organization by English novelist Kazuo Ishiguro. The  relevance of the study is explained by the interest in   the analysis of the inner speech of characters in a literary text, which differs from the natural inner speech of an individual in the ways of  linguistic  expression,  the  specifics   in the structure of the narrative. It is shown that the study of the inner speech of a character   of literary discourse using such parameters of its measurement as structural-compositional, semantic-conceptual, communicative, allows us to identify the features of the functional role of this type of speech. The novelty of the research lies in the substantiation of how the character's inner speech (introspection), being a significant unit of composition, correlates with prospection and retrospection of the text, acting as the main form of narration. The article elicits four basic concepts that organize the content of the character's inner speech. The authors of the article offer a close analysis of the rheme-theme correlation of the title of the novel and the main text as the basis of the author’s literary discourse. Particular attention is paid to the modality of the character's inner speech from the point of view of the pragmatic orientation of this type of speech towards the addressee-reader and discourse markers that influence the process of discourse interpretation.

The   little-known   factsof the work of N. S. Ashukin, S. I. Ozhegov and V. A. Filippov on the original lexicographic edition  of  the  1940s — “Dictionary   to  the plays of A.  N.  Ostrovsky”  is  analyzed in the article. The connection between the socio-cultural situation in the country and the scientific research of those years is shown. Special attention is paid to the facts of ideological pressure on philological thought. The circumstances that  hindered the publication of the Dictionary are revealed. For the first  time,  genuine  letters   from the participants in this project, telling about the ambiguous situation in Glavlit (Soviet Main Administration for Safeguarding State Secrets in the Press) and the intention of the authors to save the manuscript from death are published in the appendix. It tells about further attempts of scientists and their descendants to resume the preparation of the publication of the book in the  1960—1970s.  The facts given in the correspondence are commented on from the standpoint  of  history  and  philosophy  of science, the necessary references are indicated, possible comparisons are made with the events and persons mentioned in the letters. The presented fragment of the linguistic picture of the world is also considered  in  the  key of the development of linguistic personality and its role in the era of dictatorship. Attention is drawn to the high historical  value of the undertaken work and its place in the lexicographic tradition of the XX century. It is concluded  that archival materials  play a key role in reconstructing the real picture  of the life and activities of Soviet scientists, supplement the chronicle of science with valuable observations and contribute to an objective  assessment  of  the  achievements of philologists, show their firm position in upholding the interests  of  science  during  the dominance of ideologization in society.

The article is devoted to one of the problems of literary onomastics — an inventory of onomastic units of literary texts as an integral part of the vocabulary of the language of a particular writer. The relevance  of the chosen topic is due to the poorly studied issue of the mythonymicon of poetry and prose  by I. A. Bunin.   The novelty of the work is associated with the description of  the  mythological names  of Bunin the poet as  an  integral system.  The classification of  mythonyms  is  based  on five principles: the source  from  which  the name was used (there were three such sources: etiological, anthropogonic, heroic, cult and other  types of myths;  religious  and philosophical literature; multi-genre works of Slavic folklore); the nominated image of a fantastic object (eleven semantic groups are recorded: mythoanthroponyms, theonyms, demononyms, mythotonyms, mythohydronyms,   mythoornithonyms, etc.);  etymology  (otonymic, otapellative and special contextual mythological names are marked); structural type (simple or oneword  mythonyms,   complex,   represented by a bilexeme, and compound mythonyms, two-word and three-word ones are  fixed);  the presence of connotations in semantics (names with negative and positive connotative backgrounds were found).  The  author  comes to  the  conclusion  that  mythonyms  in I.A.Bunin's poetry become those stable linguistic signs that  carry  a  huge  amount  of historical and cultural information and  have a rich associative potential, accumulating the specifics of the writer's worldview, they contribute to the modeling of the text space.

The problem of the metalanguage  attitude (in the   development of the concept of D. N. Uznadze) and the specifics of the implementation of the metalanguage attitude in  parody  as   a   secondary   text   at  the   syntactic   level   are   considered. The relevance of the research lies in the fact that the development of the metalanguage aspect of speech activity in modern linguistics requires the concept of a metalanguage attitude. In addition, now it is necessary to understand how the metalanguage  attitude is realized in the syntactic organization of secondary texts of a particular genre (in this case, parody). The novelty of the  research lies  in  the  creation of the general theory of the metalanguage attitude foundations, in substantiating the  inclusion of the metalanguage attitude in the speech structure of  parody,  in  the  reconstruction  of the elements of the parodist’s creative work on the syntax of both the original (primary) and his own (secondary) text. The poetic parodies of A. A. Ivanov were taken as material for the study, in which the metalanguage attitude, realized in the syntax, is placed at the service of the genre-stylistic conventions of parody, on the one hand, and the parodist’s aesthetic goal-setting, on the other. When analyzing poetic parodies of A. A.  Ivanov, it was found that  the  syntactic  realization  of the metalanguage attitude is carried out on the basis of principles, operations and means. Four poetic parodies of A. A. Ivanov were subjected to detailed analysis.

Based on the material of the book “Walking with Pushkin” by Abram Terts (Andrey Sinyavsky), the goal is to determine the main narrative strategies that the writer implemented. The authors demonstrate that along with the genre definitions of “novel”, “novella”, “essay”, the narrative is mediated by the techniques of “philological prose” and scientific discourse. It is shown that markers of scientific discursively narrative SinyavskyTerts in “Walking with Pushkin” is the number of characteristic features: composite partitioning, the extension of the goals and objectives  of  the   analysis,   the   coverage of  the  history  of  the  problem,  selection   of  research  methodology,  the   definition   of the novelty of the work, the establishment of perspectives, providing structural integrity, respect of chronology in understanding material, the use of the bibliographic apparatus, etc. According to the authors, the experience of Sinyavsky, a research scientist, who defended the dissertation at MSU, working in world literature of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, who read lectures at Moscow state University and the Moscow art theatre Studio, influenced the nature of the material in  the  “Walking.” and served as canon  of  structural  research. It is established that a “free”    manner    of    presentation of scientific observations is expressive means of focusing attention on the most pressing issues  of  domestic scientists  to update the relationship of history and modernity (his understanding of own creativity, manifestation of the principle of “pure art”, the semantics  of the principle of freedom within the literature of socialist realism, etc.).

The issues of creating a picture of the world in the story of the English writer E. F. Benson’s “Gavon’s Eve”. It is concluded that the picture of the world is organized by two external chronotopes: the chronotope of the Scottish village of Gavon, the chronotope of the Pictish fortress and the internal chronotope, concentrated around the consciousness of the narrator. Attention is paid to the functioning of forms of artistic space and time, built on the principle of binary oppositions. It is shown that spatial correlations between external and internal, far and near, western and eastern have an increased semantic significance in the narrative. Particular attention is paid to the role of the spatial categories of up and down, revealing the author’s concept of the eternity of infernal evil. It has been proven that the key forms of artistic time are day and night, light and dark, past and present, which are traditional for Gothic subjects. The relevance of the study is due to the growing interest in the genre of gothic prose, which today is associated, in particular, with attempts to resist anti-humanistic, destructive trends in the life of modern society. The novelty of the research is seen in the fact that the issues of artistry    of Gothic stories by E. F. Benson is still underresearched.

The article is devoted to the little-studied Northern European sources of Russian plays on the plot  about  Tamerlane  and  Bayazet  of the late 17^th — early 18th centuries. The material was the play “Temir-Aksakovo Action” in 1675, a not preserved version of the play  of the early 18th century “The Clear History  of Tamerlane, the Tatar Khan how he defeated Saltan of Tursk Bayazet”, plays from the repertoire of “English comedians” of the 17^th century, plays by the German playwright Andreas Gryphius and the English playwright Nicholas Roe. It is shown that the interludes of the play “Temir-Aksakovo Action” could be taken from the little-known play “The Comedy of Tamerlane”, staged in Nuremberg in 1667. Analysis of the play by German playwright Andreas Gryphius “The Armenian Leo” in 1656 makes it possible to  talk  about  general  formulas  in constructing the theme of  the  overthrow of tyranny, the baroque theme of the mutability of life in the German and Russian drama of the 17^th century. The play “The Clear History of Tamerlane  ...”,  staged  at  the  court of Peter I in the 1700s, has been brought into consideration. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of the typological commonality of the Russian play with the play by the English playwright Nicholas Rowe “Tamerlane” in 1701, containing real historical allusions to the present.

The question of the role, forms and functions of fragmentation of modern artistic narra tive is considered. The results of the analy sis of the fragmentary narrative of the works of contemporary  English-speaking  authors (J.   Barnes,   D.   Mitchell,   M. Cunningham, I. Banks, J. Franzen, S. Faulks, J. Eugenides, A. Smith, J. McGregor and others) are presented. The relevance of the study is due to the fact that in the modern literature of the postmodernist direction, nonlinearity of narration, deliberate mixing of temporal, local, descriptive and other layers are becoming widespread, practically becoming the norm. The novelty of the research is seen in the fact that the fragmentation of a literary text is studied at different levels — compositional, content-thematic, plot, ideological-figurative, genre, narrative, chronotopic. It has been proved that the forms of implementation of fragmentariness are quite diverse: irregular division of the text, heterogeneity of themes and ideas, lack of linear development of the plot, combination of elements of different genres, the presence of internal polystylism, the use of different types of narration and narrator, violation of the unity of the chronotope. The analysis of specific material showed that the functions of a fragmentary narrative are determined by each specific context, the leading ones being the impact on the reader, the management of his attention, the placement of accents according to the writer's intention, the creation of the impression of authenticity and reliability.

The novel by A. Pushkin “The   Queen  of Spades” and the novel by A. V. Ivanov “Bad weather” from the point of view of literary relationships is examined in the article, the method of intertextual analysis is used. The aim of the study is to identify parallels   in the problematic, motivational structure and systems of images of these works. The article analyzes the relationship between the work of  A. Ivanov and  directly  with  the  text   of “The Queen of Spades”, and with the epigraph to it. The results of the research allow us to conclude that the image of bad weather as a background for the development of action connects the Pushkin story and the novel by A. V. Ivanov. It is noted that in both works the theme of the change of epochs is artistically realized, and the past is interpreted as    a time much brighter and more meaningful than the present. The studied works are also united by the plot-forming motive of playing with fate, which, in turn, is associated with the theme of passion for money. In addi tion, commonality can be noted in the nature of the characters and the principles of their representation; to a certain extent, the fates and nature of women characters of the works are similar. Comparison with Pushkin's story helps to see deep philosophical problems in A. Ivanov’s novel “Bad Weather”.

The article is devoted to the study of the system of artistic images of Russian wedding  folklore of the modern Udmurt Republic.  The relevance of the work is due to the fact that the temporal processes of the wedding ritual itself, as well as family-clan  and natural rhythms are first considered on the example of wedding folklore that exists in the territory of the modern republic. Particular attention is paid to the images of heavenly bodies, the kingdom of plants, zooand ornithomorphic   images,   the   symbolism   of sound signals. The sun  is  shown  to  be the central artistic  image  associated  with  the display of time. As a result of the analysis, it was found that  semantically,  the  images of evening dawn, morning dawn and night have significant  similarities.  The  question of the possible division of the night into two time periods is considered — a dark one, which does not correspond to a wedding situation, and a light one,  which  regulates the course of ritual time. It  is  shown  that  the image of the night is a symbol of the first conjugal intercourse. It has been established that the mention of the trumpet and the bell   in the songs emphasizes  the  sacred  status  of the wedding ceremony.  It is  noted  that  in wedding songs, the symbolism of the sound of the bell and trumpet merges with  the symbolism of the sun. It was revealed that in the description of emporal processes there may be categories of morality.

The article reveals the specifics of the functioning of the phenomenon of duplicity  in  the novel by the English writer M. Spark “Aiding and Abetting” (2000). The scientific novelty lies in the fact that this work is viewed from this angle for the first time. An overview of a number of existing approaches to the phenomenon of duality in modern literary criticism is presented. The author analyzes pairs of the main characters of the novel, who are doubles, revealed in similar situations related to the themes of fraud and crime. It is shown that in the novel “Aiding and Abetting” the characters play the roles of both antagonists and carnival counterparts. Particular attention is paid to the  combination  inherent in M. Spark’s work in the works of satirical orientation and postmodern play, which is reflected in the change of the narrative perspective, ambiguity and uncertainty of the finale. The meaning of the title of the work is revealed in the context of the realization of the motive of duality, the main moral problems posed in the novel are revealed. The author comes to the conclusion that through the use of doubles, Spark describes the vices of society and the moral degradation of a person.

The problem of large-scale migration of British and Irish Catholics to continental Europe in the 16th—18th centuries is investigated. The relevance of the study is due to the fact that the religious schools of Catholics in Europe were seen as examples of pious communities, the foundations on which the emerging traditions of religious tolerance, stability and commercial prosperity were built in England. It is noted  that  this  fueled  the  arguments  of the supporters of liberal religious reforms in the UK in the 19th century. The novelty   of the study is seen in the fact that the study of the movement of Catholics to Europe makes  it  possible  to   reveal   the   degree   of influence of religious schools on British politics and public opinion, to understand how the expatriate community in exile functioned, adapted and communicated. Migration has been proven to be most intense during the Elizabethan period and early Stuart  reign,  but its impact on religious life in Britain and Ireland was felt over a longer period, until  the end of the 18th century. The authors conclude that for Catholics who remained in England, religious institutions in Europe were not only a source of supply of missionary priests and religious literature, but also a link with the continental Counter-Reformation.

The organization, composition, financial condition and activities of the John Damascus’s singing brotherhood are considered. The relevance of the study is associated with the need to revive spiritual and moral values in modern Russian society. The novelty of the esearch lies in the fact that for the first time, according to the chronicle of the church press, the functioning of the brotherhood was reconstructed, the choir of which consisted of representatives of the city clergy, and the conductors were professional musicians. The author notes that, despite the increase in the number of performers in peacetime, the unstable composition of the choir did not allow them to achieve high performing skills. It is shown that the brotherhood performed organizational, missionary, spiritual, educational, charitable  functions. It is proved that the work of the brotherhood contributed to the activation of concert and choral activities in the city, helped to preserve the ancient singing tradition, on the one hand, and introduced the audience to modern sacred music on the other hand. It is emphasized that in the conditions of the expansion of secularization at the beginning of the 20th century, charitable spiritual concerts  organized  by the brotherhood helped to maintain, strengthen and develop religious and moral feelings, thoughts, moods in listeners. It is concluded that the deteriorating living conditions during the war years, and then revolutionary events stopped the functioning of the organization.

The article examines the plot about the stay of French servicemen in captivity in the south of  Russia  at  the  end  of  the  intervention  of the Entente countries (spring-summer 1919). The relevance of the study is due to the need to revise the point of view established in Russian historiography about the voluntary and massive transition of the French military to the side of the Bolsheviks. The author dwells on the circumstances of captivity and the period of detention of foreigners. Particular attention is paid to the attempt by the Bolsheviks to spread the ideas of the left movement and attract prisoners to the ranks of the Red Army. This activity was carried out through the creation of communist groups at the Foreign Collegium in Odessa. Using the example of the work of the French Communist Group employees, it was possible to identify agitation and propaganda methods of persuading the compatriots to the side of the Bolsheviks. The novelty of the study is seen in the fact that for the reconstruction of the  methods of campaigning, the author involved materials from the archives of the French Ministry of Defense, which make it possible to determine the circle of agitators and concretize methods of recruiting foreigners. The author proved that there was no mass transition to the side of the Bolsheviks, the agitators managed to persuade only a few prisoners of the French and most of the servicemen remained faithful to this oath.

The article considers the issue of the formation of state management system of industry in the USSR, which was developed on the basis of the first decrees of the Soviet government. The relevance of the study is due to the consonance of the past problems of the mining industry with the modern ones, which manifested themselves in the conditions of a radical transformation of the state's position in relation to mineral resources. It is shown that in the 1920s in the country, the processes of liquidation of local entrepreneurship, the transition to a centralized, planned-regulated system of economic management, within which there was an enlargement and state monopolization of its mining industry began. The novelty of the research lies in the fact that, on the basis of documentary sources, the process of creating an mining industry in the Yakut ASSR is revealed, the course of making consistent, logically grounded decisions corresponding to the chosen principles and priorities of the development of the region is traced. The presented results reflect the peculiarities and specifics of local realities, in the conditions of which difficult decisions were made, proceeding from the vital economic interests of the republic. It was found that the efforts of the republican authorities to organize, select priorities in the distribution of human resources, undertaken in the 1920s subsequently proved their effectiveness, contributed to the formation of a public administration system operating on the principles of economic independence of the region.

The article is devoted to the study of the political activity of one of the prominent figures of the Czech and Slovak national movement Bohdan Pavlu, who played a significant role in the Civil War in Russia. The material was documents of personal origin and official documents containing information on the activities of sCzech-Slovak organizations in Russia. The author pays attention to the evolution of political views of B. Pavlu, his attitude to the tsarist government. It is shown how external circumstances influenced the support of the course of T. G. Masaryk. Particular attention is paid to the activities of B. Pavlu during the Civil War in Russia. The novelty of the research is due to the fact that for the first time the socio-political views of one of the leaders of the Czech national movement in Russia are comprehensively studied. The relevance of the study is due to the lack of consensus in Russian society on the role of foreign intervention in the events of 1917—1922. It is proved that B. Pavlu’s activities contributed to the consolidation of the Czech and Slovak national movement in Russia. It is emphasized that it was he who formulated the concept of “Czechoslovakia”, which formed the basis for the idea of creating a single state for the two peoples.

The position is substantiated according to which the preservation of the rite as an object of ethnocultural heritage in modern conditions is possible through bringing it into a museum state. It is argued that this process should be based on the fixation of the rite during the period of its existence in the natural socio-cultural environment, the results of which were reflected in the field diaries of ethnographers stored in museum archives. The authors point to the main difference between the “inheri tor of tradition” and the “bearer of tradition”, which is the fragmentation and discreteness  of the information available to the latter, which is insufficient to recreate the complex image of the traditional  rite. The potential of the proposed methodology for  interpreting  and  reconstructing   traditional rituals is revealed on the example of the Shor rite ‘Shachig’. The authors analyze modern national-social variations in the interpretation of ethnographic information  about  the  rite  of the first third of the XX century. It is shown that the superficial processing of the information contained in the sources and the incorrect decoding of the codes leads to the transformation of the descriptions of all elements and the material component of the rite. As a scientifically grounded alternative, reconstruction and interpretation of this rite from the standpoint of a semiotic approach is proposed, based on a comprehensive analysis of all its elements (actional, verbal, objective) and considering temporal and local characteristics.

The ideas of heads of Soviet enterprises from different regions of the country concerning the socio-economic development of the USSR, expressed at a meeting in Moscow in 1983, are analyzed. The socio-psychological characteristics that were inherent in the Soviet economic leaders at the regional level, who were involved in discussing the problems of ‘improving the economic mechanism’, are studied in detail. The source base of the study includes documents from the Russian  State  Archive of Socio-Political History and the Center for Documentation of the Recent History of the Yaroslavl Region, oral history data (interviews with representatives of the regional authorities of the 1970s-1980s, which were personally conducted by the author of the article) and scientific literature. It is argued that the opinions of directors of the largest enterprises were perceived by party officials with the same level of trust as the opinions of representatives of the scientific community. It is concluded that the ideas of the party and economic activists intertwined the innovative nature of thinking with the dogmatic patterns of Soviet ideology. It is noted that the activities of the party and economic activists contributed to the formation of a kind of proto-bourgeoisie in the USSR in the 1970s-1980s. It is emphasized that the ideas of the party active on expanding the rights of enterprises and material incentives were a manifestation of latent capitalist tendencies. It is concluded that the main factor in the effective interaction of the regional ‘party economic functionaries’ with Moscow was close informal relations.

An analysis of the contribution of regional merchants to the process of forming a system of credit and financial institutions in the territory of Western Transbaikalia is presented in the article. The history of both successful and unsuccessful attempts to create bank ing institutions in the region has been reconstructed on the basis of reporting and officework documentation stored in the funds of the State Archives of the Republic of Buryatia and the Irkutsk Region, the Russian State Historical Archive. It was found that the creation of the regional banking system was based not on the state, but on the private initiative; the key role in the process  was  played  by the merchants. According to the authors, in the process of organizing banks and loan offices, representatives of the merchants were guided not only by making a profit, but envisaged the use of part of the proceeds for charitable purposes. It was revealed that merchant initiatives were caused not only by the desire to expand the opportunities for entrepreneurial activity, but also by the desire to contribute to the development of the native land. It is concluded that the Transbaikal merchants played an important role in the socio-economic development of Western Transbaikalia and became the main driving force in integrating the region’s economy into the all-Russian financial system.

The institutional foundations, organizational features, the main trends and problems of cooperation between European member states of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) in the field of international tourism in the second half of the 1950s — 1980s are described in the article. Specific examples show the formula for building bilateral cooperation in this area, as well as organizational principles and main directions of work of special annual meetings of tourist operators and government agencies in the field of tourism. Particular attention is paid to the description of the mechanisms of mutual settlements between socialist countries for the rendered mutual tourist services, including in a non-currency form. Based on the analysis  of publications of the Soviet period and archival sources, the author concluded that syncretism of economic, economic and ideological approaches was characteristic of large-scale international tourist exchange between European socialist countries, and the Soviet Union played not so much the role of a “big brother” with a decisive vote as an ideological “mentor”. It is emphasized that, despite the declaration of the systemic advantages of “socialist tourism”, in general, it was characterized by numerous organizational difficulties.

The issue of periodization and  establishment of chronological frames of  the  stages of the diplomatic service of J.-C. de Ludolf, who represented the Kingdom of Naples abroad from 1805, and after its unification with the Sicilian Kingdom in 1816 and un  til the abolition  in  1861  —  the  Kingdom  of the Two Sicilies. It is shown that, despite Ludolf's many years of work in the Russian direction in various qualities, the coverage of the role and place of his figure in foreign policy processes is very fragmentary in Russian historiography. With the aim of the initial reconstruction of the key milestones in the diplomatic career of this historical person, study of foreign sources: materials from the State Archives of Naples, the memoirs of his daughter, as well as biographical works was carried out. By analyzing and systematizing the information presented in them, four periods of Ludolf's diplomatic activity are highlighted and briefly characterized. His most important achievements at each of the respective stages are outlined, while it is noted that a long stay in the service line in the Russian Empire at least had a significant impact on the professional development of a diplomat. It was revealed that St. Petersburg became the first and last point of his career path, during which he managed to work there as an attaché, plenipotentiary envoy and ambassador-at-large.

The features of the emergence and functioning of reading rooms in the Buryat-Mongolian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in the 1920s-1930s are considered. The author analyzes the measures taken by the Soviet government, local cells of the Communist Party and Komsomol activists aimed at strengthening izba-reading rooms on the territory of the republic. The main problems of the organization and activities of izba-reading rooms are investigated in detail, attention is paid to various methods of work to attract the population to new forms of Soviet culture. The relevance of the study is due to the fact that the study   of the role and place of the izba-reading room in the regional cultural space will make an important contribution to the creation of a largescale objective picture of the cultural revolution that took place in the USSR in the 1920s1930s. The scientific novelty lies in the fact that a number of previously unpublished sources are put into circulation, collected directly for this study. This made it possible to highlight some details that previously could not be reflected in other works. As a result   of the study, it was determined that the izbareading room, despite the difficulties that arose (weak resource base, a shortage of trained personnel, low qualifications of workers, cultural and linguistic differences, a wary attitude of the local population  towards  the  events  of the Soviet government) gradually managed to win the sympathy of the adult population and become a reference point of cultural and educational work in the village.

The article is devoted to the study of the evolution of the culture of everyday life of the Siberian province population in the first quarter of the 18th century, the characteristics of the development of traditional forms of material culture of Siberians, and new features of everyday life that arose under the influence of the implementation of Peter's reforms on the territory of Western Siberia. Changes in the material culture, leisure and life of the population of the Siberian province in the first quarter of the 18th century are considered, the traditions of building houses, making clothes, the level of medical care and health care, leisure activities of the population of Western Siberia in the first quarter of the 18th century are described. The study was carried out on the basis of an analysis of the complex of legislative and office-work sources of the State Archives in Tobolsk. Among them, an important place is occupied by decrees regulating the organization of medical care for the population, documents reflecting the actions of local authorities in relation to the occupation of Swedish prisoners of war in Tobolsk by distilling. The authors  of the article show that Peter's modernization processes in the field of culture, customs and everyday life had little effect on the traditions of building houses, making clothes, and everyday activities of the majority of the peasant population of the Siberian province and local non-Russian peoples. It is concluded that the main changes affecting the area of everyday culture are associated with the implementation of the military and administrative reforms of Peter I, the appearance of captured Swedes on the territory of the province, the implementation of the provincial reform,  a change in the local administration system, the emergence of medical professional personnel and health care institutions.