The aim of the research is to study and systematize etymological, historical-linguistic and historiographic information about the terms fonema / phoneme / Phonem based on the results of the analysis of Russian, English and German theoretical and lexicographic sources published in the 19th—20th centuries. Sources in French are used where necessary. The methods of historical-linguistic, historiographical, definitional, etymological, semantic and lexicographical analysis are used in the study. It has been established that in the ancient Greek language, which is the source of the origin of the word φώνημα, the latter was used in two general meanings: (1) ‘voice, sound’, (2) ‘word, speech’. In the second half of the 19th century, in the new European languages, the word underwent adaptation, subsequent semantic rethinking and acquired a terminological status. The term phonème was first used by the French amateur linguist A. Dufriche-Desgenettes in 1861 in the generalized phonetic meaning ‘sound’. In the phonological sense, this term is found by F. de Saussure in 1879. The term fonema (phoneme) was introduced into Russian linguistic terminology in 1880 by N. V. Krushevsky and, starting from 1881, was widely used in the works of I. A. Baudouin de Courtenay, V. M. Dobrovsky and others. The first use of the English term phoneme in the meaning of ‘sound’ should presumably be attributed to 1914, and not to 1894, as evidenced by English lexicographical sources. In a highly specialized (phonological) sense, the term was fixed in English linguistic terminology already in 1919, when the corresponding word usage was recorded in the work of G. Perera and D. Jones. In the vocabulary of the German language, the term Phonem in the meaning of ‘sound’ appeared in 1855 thanks to the Bulgarian philosopher P. Beron. In a similar sense, the desired term is found in 1875 by E. Boehmer. In its phonological meaning, the German term Phonem occurs for the first time in the works of I. A. Baudouin de Courtenay in 1895.

The article is devoted to the definitional analysis of the term mediation in the scientific communication of translation researchers and the rational grounds for introducing a new word into the terminological system of the translation science branch of scientific knowledge. Research methods: information search of modern foreign and domestic scientific studies on the keywords mediation and mediatsiya, definitional and contextual analysis of the specified pair of terms in scientific research on translation in Russian, English and French. The authors raise the issue of a certain confusion in the use of the term to refer to various kinds of intermediary activity. It turns out that in the field of translation, mediation is most often understood as a process of acting as an intermediary and is a type of social interaction between different interlocutors with the help of an interpreter. As a result of the study, it is found that the introduction of the term mediation into scientific communication is determined by the need to designate a special kind of cultural mediation, in which the translator plays a more active role, bringing him closer to the mediator as a intermediary in controversial and conflict situations. The relevance of the use of the term here is connected with the problems of intercultural and sociocultural mediation in migration processes.

The problem of translation of a literary text is considered, in which the interpretation of the national-cultural self-identification of the characters and the narrator is a significant tool for identifying its semantic dominant. For the first time, the issue of translation strategies in relation to the actualization of “one’s own and someone else’s” is studied on the material of the Hungarian translation of Evgeny Vodolazkin’s novel “Laurus”. The object of the study is archaic or non-archaic fragments of the Old Russian text in the speech of the heroes of the novel, as well as translations of personal names and toponyms. It is established that Lajos Palfalvi uses the translation strategy of domestication. The language means of archaization used in the translation text are described. It is proved that the leading means of archaization in translation is the use of the ancient Hungarian narrative past, other means of archaization are obsolete forms, words and syntactic constructions, rare words and words belonging to a high, literary or folk style. The adequacy of the translation strategy is demonstrated: these linguistic means refer the Hungarian reader to the Middle Ages, which corresponds to the author's intention. At the same time, it is noted that the specific linguocultural continuity of the Eastern Slavs (inhabitants of Ancient Russia) and Russians (native speakers of the modern Russian language) is only partially updated in the translation of the novel.

The study of the evaluative potential of the concept TRUTH in the Russian language picture of the world has been carried out. The results of the analysis of the use of the word true in the role of a qualitative adjective with evaluative semantics and the word truly in the role of a qualitative adverb with the semantics of the degree of manifestation of a property, feature or action / state are presented based on the materials of the Russian National Corpus and the authors’ own Internet monitoring in the Russian-speaking segment of the Internet. It is shown that in the total semantic content of the concept TRUTH, two semantic layers of its conceptual content in the modern Russian are realized: correspondence to reality; compliance with the norm in the world of people, the highest ideal. The following varieties of uses of the qualitative adjective true and the qualitative adverb truly as a secondary assessment based on the general meaning of “corresponding to the ideal in the world of norms and values of the speaker” were found: the meaning is “ideal, exemplary, perfect”; the meaning is “full, reached / brought to the maximum degree of manifestation of the entity named by the defined word” and the meaning of a strong degree of manifestation of something. It is concluded that the words true and truly embody the subjective moral and value ideas of native speakers about how it should be in the world of human relations, and not about “how it really is”.

The article deals with the issue of semantic discrepancies between the lexical units of the Spanish language national variants on the example of the semantic field “Bread and baking” lexemes. The relevance of the study is due to its focus on the needs of the current stage of development of comparative semantics, variantology and intervariant dialectology, which provide for the gradual coverage of all the supporting semantic fields of the language in the communicative-pragmatic aspect. The novelty of the study is seen in the fact that through a comparative intervariant analysis of language units with the primary meaning of baking, the cultural specificity of the corresponding concepts in different Spanish-speaking countries and regions within the framework of a multinational language is revealed. Particular attention is paid to the semantic processes and linguistic phenomena underlying the intervariant discrepancies, their classification is proposed in relation to this area. The question is raised about the importance of extralinguistic factors in the formation of the alimentary thesaurus of a particular country and culture or sets of cultures in a certain territory. As a result of the study, it was proved that the vocabulary of the field “Baking” is a source of difficulties in intercultural communication, directly related to linguistic phenomena in the field of variantology and intervariant dialectology of the Spanish language.

The article presents unknown evidence of epistolary communication of S. I. Ozhegov and his “correspondents” — Professor A. M. Egolin, Prince P. Obolenskiy, Mr Nedzvetskiy. The linguistic informativeness of the letters is noted. The value of the presented materials for the study of lexicology, stylistics, author’s punctuation and speech culture is indicated. Attention is drawn to the range of problems discussed in the letters, including the selection and interpretation of definitions in dictionaries (pilyonyi sakhar ‘sawn sugar’, plavlenyi syr ‘processed cheese’, gromootvod ‘lightning rod’), haplology, the formation of appellatives from the names of writers (nekrasovoved or nekrasoved), social and phonetic adaptation of foreign language vocabulary (t’emp — temp), etc. The facts given in the correspondence are commented on from the standpoint of the history of philological science, the necessary references are given, possible comparisons are made with the events and persons mentioned in the epistolary. The texts are evaluated as a fragment of a special linguistic picture of the world, in which the main place is occupied by the linguistic personality of S. I. Ozhegov, who attracted scientists of different schools and generations. The conclusion is made about the relevance of the publication of archival sources that reveal interesting circumstances of the scientific life of philologists, exposing their searches and discoveries. These materials supplement the available information about the linguistic discussions of the 1950s and 1960s, represent living portraits of scientists.

The paper focuses on terminological problems in contemporary cross-linguistic communication that are generated primarily by two main tendencies in global scientific communication — the digitalization in information processing and the English language globalization. Both are closely connected with a new approach in linguistics — discourse clustering and its role in promoting foreign language and translation instruction. The paper provides a corpus-based account of Russian–English translation problems concerning clear-cut distinctions between Russian versus English academic style’s language-specific patterns in terminology discursive clustering, as well as their didactic and methodological importance for foreign language acquisition, Russian-English and English-Russian translation. The main idea is that the most important contemporary terminological problem in a cross-linguistic perspective is the lack of active authentic and language-specific terminology patterns in Russian–English scientific translations.

The results of a study of the situation of light designation in akathists to Russian saints is presented in the article. The relevance of studying the phenomenon of light on this material is due, firstly, to the most important text-forming role of light designs in this hymnographic genre, and secondly, to the need for an in-depth study of the role of the verb in the organization of the Slavic sentence. The situation of light designation became the direct object of analysis, and the participants in this situation became the subject. The focus of research attention is on the relevant valence (semantic and syntactic) characteristics of the verb as the structural center of the sentence. The main research methods were: functional-semantic, contextual analysis of lexical units, statistical. As a result of the study, a linguistic corpus of light designations (3,157 units) was identified, their part-of-speech affiliation was characterized, a chronological distribution was demonstrated, and the dominant root-forming elements (svet-, siya-, zar-, blist-, svesh-) were established. Particular attention is paid to the grammatical mechanisms that provide light designation, as well as to its direct participants. The emphasis is on the main participant — the light. The description of the register of possible semantic roles of participants in the situation of light designation (Subject, Object and their subtypes) is focused on the division traditional in the Orthodox metaphysics of light: “uncreated light”, “smart light” and “sensual light”.

The results of a study conducted in 2021 and devoted to the analysis of the current position of the Russian language in Mongolian society is presented in the article. The relevance of the study is due to the need to analyze the changes taking place in the minds of the Mongols regarding the Russian language, and to search for further prospects for its functioning in Mongolia. The impossibility of conducting a mass questionnaire survey due to the pandemic of a new coronavirus infection led to the choice of an expert survey as the main research method. The factors leading to the weakening of the Russian language positions, which include, first of all, the change in Mongolia’s foreign policy priorities, the search for new partners, the decrease in Russia’s influence, and the processes of globalization are considered in the article. It was revealed that, despite the narrowing of the spheres of functioning of the Russian in Mongolia, its socio-cultural potential in the Mongolian society has not been exhausted. The factors restraining the growth of negative trends are highlighted, namely the presence of the Russian in the educational sphere, the presence of specialists with Soviet and Russian education, a common historical memory based on friendship and trust. Analysis of the results of the study shows that the further development of cooperation between Russia and Mongolia in all spheres of public life, the strengthening of political union, economic cooperation and cultural interaction can allow the Russian language to become one of the leading foreign languages in modern Mongolian society.

The question of the lexicographic description of idiomatic expressions with a new component in the composition, which have become widespread both in the texts of the official media and on other Internet resources, is considered. The relevance of the study is determined by the lexicographic practice of fixing neologisms in explanatory dictionaries of various types. It is noted that expressions built according to the “new + noun” model: new sincerity, new reality, new sociality, new normality, new romance, etc., include the second component, which names the phenomenon of socio-cultural or moral spheres, which has long been known by native speakers. Using the example of the idiom new sincerity and the lexeme sincerity, it is shown that the semantic scope of the meanings of these language units differs significantly. The authors come to the conclusion that the lexeme sincerity names a property inherent in a person, is evaluated by native speakers as an ethical category, and is often used in a number of nominations of other traditional values, such as courage, honesty, nobility, etc. It is proved that the expression new sincerity, denoting, same as sincerity, the openness of a person, first of all indicates not the property of the communicant, but his goal — to attract the attention of other people in the public space with the frankness of self-expression.

The article is devoted to the description of the analysis of compound words results built according to the model “云xx”. The material was the vocabulary that appeared or became widely used since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. Particular attention is paid to the study of word-formation and semantic patterns of the emergence of new words in modern Chinese, built according to the model “云xx”. The need to study the mechanism of the emergence of such words in order to determine their linguistic status and establish the specifics of their functioning in speech determines the relevance of this study. 15 abbreviated words built according to the “云xx” model were analyzed, naming current events in the life of Chinese society in the era of coronavirus. It was found that the morpheme 云 ‘in a cloud format’ is an affix that has regular reproducibility and forms a productive construction “云xx”, which creates a word-building mechanism for generating a whole group of new compound abbreviated words. It has been proved that this word-formation model has a high productivity, which makes it possible to regularly produce words expressing new concepts and phenomena associated with the development of network technologies.

Verbal means of reflecting the situation of the coronavirus pandemic through the prism of German humor are considered. The relevance of the study is due to the interest of modern language science in the study of discourses as a kind of markers of linguistic consciousness and speech behavior. The novelty of the study lies in the fact that German humorous texts about the pandemic have not yet become the subject of a special scientific study. The purpose of the study is to describe and interpret the motives, reactions, assessments that represent the main areas of life that have changed during the pandemic. It is shown that the pandemic appears in jokes as a discursive space that predetermines and models a jokingly ironic assessment of the current situation: forced self-isolation served as a pretext for an ironic rethinking of marital, parent-child relationships, a public negative assessment of distance education is given, the state of some members of the society is comprehended as a mental illness. The representation of reality is constructed not without the influence of ethno-cultural factors and stereotypes: the German is comprehended and evaluated within the framework of the “own — different — alien” modus. The study can be continued as part of an interlingual description of humor during the coronavirus pandemic in order to study the linguocognitive, linguocultural aspects of language activity. 

The events of 2019—2021 affected the social optimism index and the social well-being of Russians, strengthening the constantly present multidirectional trends towards consolidation and isolation in society. The object of the study is borrowed and appeared in the Runet functioning in the specified period Internet memes that translate the meanings of unity and isolation. The relevance of the research is determined by the need to study new principles of information dissemination and its desirable characteristics in an information-overloaded society, the cognitive potential of the “visual turn” in the humanities, the social significance of the content represented by the studied units, the lack of linguistic, interdisciplinary theoretical and empirical studies in this field. The source of the material is a variety of services and libraries of memes on the Internet. The article describes the current state of Internet meme research in the Russian and European humanities. The article presents the analysis of Internet memes selected in accordance with the given semantic characteristics in their dynamics within the framework of N. A. Zinovieva’s typology, built on six dichotomies (truth — lie, character — event, tradition — innovation, background — figure, image — text, thought — action). Observations on the specifics of the precedent phenomena in the formation and development of Internet memes are presented. The structure of the Internet meme is described. It has a field organization, including a constant core formed by a visual template and the generalized meaning of the Internet meme. The conclusion is made about the relevant features of Internet memes of the ideographic group under study, which determine the features of meme encoding of socially significant information and the translation of socio-cultural meanings.

The relevance of the study is due to the fact that in the Yakut epic studies there has not yet been an experience of reconstructing the epic text, and the problem reflected in the article is previously not specifically studied and promising. The purpose of the undertaken study is to describe the principles of reconstruction of the text of the Yakut olonkho “Tyobyo Tyoryuyokh hero” by I. M. Zhendrinsky, produced on the basis of the manuscript and audio recording (live performance of the narrator). The study applied a textological approach within the framework of the methodology developed in the field of epic plot construction and variability. The arguments of V. N. Toporov and S. Yu. Neklyudov on the methodology of the historical reconstruction of folklore traditions were fundamental. First of all, an olonkho plot common to the manuscript and transcription of the audio recording was revealed, which made it possible to establish their connection. Based on this, the stories were combined into two texts. As a result of the reconstruction, the text of the olonkho increased in volume to 1772 poetic lines, which significantly exceeded the number of lines in the manuscript (980 lines). It has been established that the reconstruction of the olonkho text is theoretically substantiated and possible, especially if both textual material and an audio recording of the performance are available, which can be considered as complementary equivalent options. The reconstructed text of the olonkho was published in the book “Olonkho of the Verkhnevilyui Ulus at the Turn of the 20th-11th Centuries” (Yakutsk, Dani-Almas, 2022).

The author of the article refers to the comprehension of a personal biographical narrative, which reflects a person’s ideas about the geographical environment, that is, the phenomenon of “imagination of space”. The relevance of the study is explained by the fact that modern humanities develop and apply new methodological principles and approaches to identify mechanisms for adapting a person in fundamentally different, “foreign” conditions. The material of the study was the ego-documents, memoirs and fiction of V. L. Seroshevsky, a Polish political exile who spent 12 long years in Yakutia. The aim of the study is to identify the content basis of Vaclav Seroshevsky’s geopoetics, which consists in modeling and transforming the image of the North through the prism of “living and experiencing” space. The methodological principles of modern cross-cultural research, where human life is a narrative structure are applied in the article. As a result of historical-cognitive and linguo-culturological analysis, Seroshevsky’s autobiographical chronotope, consisting of three periods, broadcasting the formation, development and transformation of the geocultural image of the North, was analyzed for the first time. Three actual images-topoi (sea, forest, steppe valley) associated with the emotive-sensual factor that influenced the author’s landscape of Vaclav Seroshevsky were identified.

The issue of the history of the translation into Russian of the historical work of the German playwright August Kotzebue “Svitrigailo, the Grand Duke of Lithuania”, which was published in 1835, when the name of the famous German author had already become a sign of bad literary taste, and his works ceased to be published. For the first time, the study introduces into scientific circulation materials from several archives that store documents that allow us to draw conclusions about why Kotzebue’s essay on the history of Lithuania and Poland has been lying on the shelf of the censorship department for more than a decade. The results of the study showed that the manuscript could not be allowed for publication for a long time, not because of the scandal around the tragic death of its author, and not because of the new heroized interpretation of the image of Svitrigailo. The real reason for oblivion was the additions (documents from the Königsberg archive) with which Kotzebue supplied his work. The author of the article reports that, among various historical materials, three papal bulls were presented at the end of the manuscript, related to the project of a possible reunification of the Latin and Greek churches. It was these documents that delayed the publication of Kotzebue’s work in Russian. The archival materials involved show that the censorship of the first quarter of the 19th century considered the dissemination of materials related to the issue of unification of churches dangerous for Russian society.

The article is devoted to comprehension of the translational reception of William Shakespeare’s work in the legacy of Vadim Shershenevich (1893—1942) in the context of his author's translation strategies. The novelty of the study is connected with the identification of Shershenevich’s translation strategies as an adherent of “accurate translation”, with the reconstruction of the history of the poet’s translation achievements in the field of Shakespeariana. The authors comprehend Shershenevich’s report on the principles of Shakespeare’s translation, preserved in the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art funds, and analyze the application of these principles (equilinearity, equirhythm, preservation of rhyme and figurative structure) in the little-known translation of the chronicle “King John” and in the translation of the play “Cymbeline”. The question is raised about Shershenevich’s two main translation strategies in relation to Shakespeare: accurate translation (in the texts under study) and free adaptation of texts for the stage, corresponding to the avant-garde understanding of theater as an art that develops outside of direct dependence on literature (when he works with Shakespeare as a librettist, in particular, participating in the creation of the comic opera Gemini based on Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night). The relevance of the study is related to the need to rethink the scope and significance of Shakespeare's reception in the culture of the Silver Age.

The article is devoted to the characteristics of the voice-over text functions as a way to embody the film discourse of a documentary film that recreates the image of M. Gorky during the last ten years of his life. The material of the study was the correspondence of M. Gorky in 1924–1927 with writers, where his attitude to the transformations in the Soviet Union and work on the story “The Life of Klim Samgin” were discussed. In order to restore the amount of material underlying the script, work was carried out to decipher the sounding voice-over text, the addressees of the letters, the dating of the correspondence were established, and the fragments included in the voice-over text were compared with the full text of the letters. As a result of the study, it was proved that the voice-over text, considered in the history of documentary cinema as an auxiliary element of the video sequence, in the film by S. Aranovich and B. Dobrodeev acts as the main semantic element of the narrative, built on the principle of editing fragments of the epistolary, arranging them according to the problem-thematic principle with a violation of the chronology of correspondence. The most important feature of the documentary discourse of the film is the combination within one episode of fragments of quotations from M. Gorky’s letters to different addressees, which is dictated by the author’s concept of the image of the writer as a tragic personality who turned out to be a hostage of the myth created about him as a proletarian writer, a defender of the Bolshevik ideology.

The initial period of energy relations between the USSR and the FRG is considered. The question is raised about the role of economic diplomacy in the development of bilateral dialogue. Particular attention is paid to the impact of sanctions factors and political pressure from third parties on the oil and gas partnership between Moscow and Bonn. Transcripts of Bundestag meetings of the 1960s and the archives of the German Foreign Ministry during the specified period were put into circulation and used as sources. It analyzes how the establishment of bilateral energy cooperation was due to the need to restore and strengthen the economies of countries after the Second World War, the crises in the Middle East in the energy exporting countries, as well as the increased foreign policy and foreign economic activity of the USSR and the FRG in the 1950s-1960s. It is proved that the parties maintained close ties in the field of energy, despite the sanctions pressure and political differences between states during the Cold War. At the same time, it was noted that the pragmatism of the leaderships of the Soviet Union and West Germany in the area under study became the reason for the sustainable nature of the energy dialogue in the following decades, already in a completely different international political environment.

The prerequisites for the formation of a modern model of relations between regional authorities and print media in the Rostov region, as well as the process of evolution of these relations from 1985 to 1991 is discussed in the article. The author singled out two characteristic stages, carried out their study, revealed characteristics and features. The results of a comparative analysis are presented on a number of fundamental parameters, such as the degree of independence of editorial teams in choosing an information agenda, administrative and legislative control by the party leadership. Particular attention is paid to the historical context, as well as the peculiarities of the development of the media institution itself. The novelty of the study is seen in the fact that a comprehensive study of the relationship between regional authorities and the print media on the materials of the Rostov region has not been previously carried out, a number of previously unpublished archival documents have been introduced into scientific circulation. It has been established that by 1991, horizontal ties had arisen and strengthened in the Don media, new approaches to interaction with state authorities began to take shape. A new generation of professional journalists who were actively involved in politics (they were elected to representative bodies of power at various levels), the development of commercial advertising began.

The relevance of the study is determined by the consideration of the issues of the socio-political structure of the medieval Alanian state, which are one of the debatable in modern alanistics, which is manifested mainly in the use of regressive or progressive approaches in interpreting the political system of Alania, as well as in the use of various approaches in describing its political structure. The avoidance of these approaches in the interpretation of social and political orders in Alanya during the period under review has become a scientific novelty of the study. As a result, it was concluded that the basis of the socio-political structure of Alania in the first forty years of the XIII century was a specific combination of forms of the suzerain-vassal hierarchy and patriarchal-tribal democracy, with weak political unity, supported by the presence of a common ruling dynasty, but in reality it was a conglomerate of several territorial and tribal possessions formed by a network of unilocal consanguineous collectives capable of being part of wider internal political associations formed on the basis of the principle of artificial kinship, which, perhaps, were similar in structure to the sworn brotherhoods known in the Caucasus until the middle of the 19th century.

A brief overview of contacts between the Muscovite kingdom and England in the 16th-17th centuries is given. The activity of C. Whitworth in Moscow from February 1705 to March 1710 is considered. An assessment of his work in the specified period is given. Particular attention is paid to the solution by the British diplomat of the tasks associated with providing his government with verified information about the events of the Russian-Turkish war. The relevance of the study is due to the fact that at present relations between the Russian Federation and Turkey have entered a new stage of development, which means that the history of their contacts cannot but attract the attention of historians. The novelty of the study is seen in the fact that earlier researchers paid little attention to how foreign observers assessed the events of the Prut campaign. The author of the article comes to the conclusion that C. Whitworth managed to obtain reliable information about the battle on the Prut River and the conditions of the subsequent peace treaty after it. It is noted that, despite of rather contradictory information, the British ambassador was able to identify the most and least reliable sources of information and draw up a complete picture of what happened. The most reliable sources of information for the ambassador were letters from foreign colleagues, in particular, the British ambassador to Istanbul, Robert Sutton, as well as the imperial resident in the capital of the Ottoman Empire, Johann Michel von Thalmann. The least plausible and confused information is presented in Polish letters and in a message from Count G. I. Golovkin to Prince Dolgorukov.

The article is devoted to the study of the schooling formation on the territory of the Siberian province in the first quarter of the 18th century. The process of origin and development of spiritual and secular education in Siberia is characterized. The study was carried out on the basis of an analysis of the decrees of Peter I published in the Complete Collection of Laws of the Russian Empire, which regulate the organization of educational institutions in Siberia. A number of clerical sources of the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts, in particular, the cases of the Siberian Order, are analyzed. Also, to study the topic, materials from the newspaper “Tobolsk Gubernskie Vedomosti” were involved. The authors of the article show that Peter’s modernization processes in the field of education were reflected in the life of the Siberian province in the first quarter of the 18th century. It is concluded that the main changes that affected the field of education are associated with the implementation of the reforms of Peter I. The role of the first theological schools in the education system of the Siberian province, the significance of the decrees of Peter I and the activities of the Orthodox Church in their formation are considered. At the same time, it is proved that the political events and cultural innovations of the Petrine era contributed to the formation of secular education and the spread of enlightenment among Siberians.

The relevance of the study is due to the enduring theoretical and practical interest shown by Russian society in the historical period studied in the article. The novelty of the study is seen in the fact that the materials from the funds of three regional archives are used in the article. It is emphasized that the decade under study was the peak of the historical period known as “stagnant”, becoming the last relatively prosperous decade in the history of the USSR. It is argued that the 1970s occupy a special place in the history of the former USSR. The authors state that the policy of “détente” provided the country with a certain foreign policy stability. Attention is focused on the fact that the development of stagnation phenomena in the economy of the country and the region in the 1970s are clearly visible when analyzing the state of affairs in the agricultural sector of the economy. It is proved that during the decade under study, as a whole, there was no significant improvement in providing the population of the region with agricultural products. It is concluded that in the region’s agriculture in the 1970s, opposite processes took place: the growth of investment, on the one hand, and the growth of stagnation, on the other. 

The attempt to characterize the process of “building of friendship” within the socialist bloc on the example of relations between the USSR and the GDR is made in the article. The leadership of these countries sought to establish the most friendly relations, the basis for which was a memorial consensus based on the unconditional acceptance by the official German side of the Soviet view of the events of World War II. However, at the level of interpersonal contacts, the “negative tail” of the communicative memory of the events of 1941—1945 persisted (moving into the “zone of silence”), even despite the widespread introduction of institutions, practices and rituals of friendship into relations between citizens of the two countries, a vivid example of which was regularly mass festivals of friendship between the youth of the USSR and the GDR, held in the 1970s and 1980s. In general, the author of the article concludes that the project of constructing the Soviet-German friendship was not effective enough not only because of the hidden memorial contradictions, but also because of the lack of a promising picture of a common future. By the 1970s and 1980s, citizens of the two countries, especially young people, had not received a clear, realistic idea of the future joint development of their countries within the framework of the common project of socialist integration, which contributed to the growth of skepticism in this direction and, as a result, became one of the reasons for the collapse of the socialist bloc in the late 1980s.

“Bastard feudalism” is a system of patronage-client relations that existed in England in the late Middle Ages, opposed to the vassal-seigneurial relations of classical feudalism. This concept has been used in historiography since the 19th century, but is still debatable. The relevance of the study is due to the question of the degree of “bastard feudalism” relations distribution in society. Based on the sources, a prosopographic database of active participants in the Wars of the Roses (1455–1487) was formed, a significant part of which were secular lords and representatives of the middle and lower nobility (gentry): knights, squires and gentlemen. The retinues of the lords had a motley social composition, but, as a rule, included precisely the nobles. Analysis of the database showed that at least 16 % of the representatives of the gentry were in the service or were part of the entourage of the lords who supported the Lancasters or Yorks. Most of the gentry did not belong to the retinue of the lords, but were dependent on them and were recruited into military service in cases of aggravation of the socio-political conflict.

The activity of officials in the creation of public organizations and objects of socio-cultural infrastructure of the Primorsky region in the last quarter of the 19th — early 20th centuries is considered. Based on the analysis of archival office materials, reports of public organizations and sources of personal origin, the composition of participants, motives, areas of activity, forms and content of the contribution of Primorye employees are revealed. It is concluded that socio-cultural activities are widespread among officials, including representatives of the regional and district administrations, as well as officials of the Main Directorate of the Amur Governorate General. The author established the main motives for the participation of representatives of the administration in the formation of new societies and socio-cultural objects: official duty, imitation of fashion, personal interest, social significance. The key areas of socio-cultural activities are identified — charity, care and science, as well as individual initiatives in the areas of education, creativity and art, leisure. The main forms of contribution are determined: participation, assistance in the development and approval of statutory documents, financial and material donations, personal guidance, search for like-minded people. The importance of activities to create societies and socio-cultural objects for building a dialogue between the administration and the population and strengthening the connection of officials with the region is noted.