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The biblical books included into the Velikie Minei Chetii (Great Menology) by Metropolitan Macarius compiled in the 1520-50s were perceived by scholars as a continuation of the tradition of the Old Russian Menology. However, their composition’s incompleteness compared to the complete Bible code compiled in the 1490s, known in science as Gennady’s Bible, was surprising. The Great Menology were based on a collection of lengthy Minea lives supplemented by the Prolog and Verse Prolog articles, with the Prolog readings placed at the beginning of each day, while the Verse Prolog texts completed each day; the daily readings are clearly structured, and their structure was developed in the process of the corpus creating. The biblical books included in a kind of hagiographic «convoy» usually occupy a сentral place in it, representing the main sacred «act» of their author or hero - a saint, whose memory is celebrated on the corresponding day. When creating Velikie Minei Chetii, the compilers turned to various types of biblical sources. The books of the New Testament are presented in elucidative editions: Explanatory Gospels, Explanatory Apostle, Explanatory Apocalypse. Various lists of Velikie Minei Chetii may contain different versions of the Bible books. The prophetic books in compiling Velikie Minei Chetii were used in three variants: interpretative, extracted from exegesis and divided into chapters, as in Gennady’s Bible, and a kind of «intermediate» one: taken from the commentaries but without division into chapters. The compilers of the hagiographic code did not give preference to any of the types of prophetic books, but set out to collect them all. The Explanatory Psalter and Maccabees books are read in Velikie Minei Chetii in a peculiar «historical» context, and the Explanatory Psalter in the assumption list is given in three versions: with the interpretations of Athanasius of Alexandria, Theodoret of Cyrus and Brunon of Würzburg, and 1-2 Maccabees books presented in all three lists of the Great Menology, are the Latin translation made for Gennady’s Bible.

The social, cultural and historical situation in Moscow Rus’ of the XVI century created the conditions for the rapid growth of public writings. Starets Artemius’ works represented by two stages (in Moscow Rus’ and in Lithuania), require a monographic study, new editions of his works, and defining the role of his written legacy in the Mediaeval book history. Two issues are the study subject: the information veracity that Maximus the Greek was transferred from Tver to the Trinity-St. Sergius Monastery in 1551 by the request of Starets Artemius, and the effect of Maximus the Greek on the monk’s works. Based on the analysis of legend of Maximus the Greek, it was suggested that Isaiah Kamenchanin (1591) could have authored the idea on Artemius’ participation in the fate of Maximus the Greek. The Life of Maximus the Greek, which is a novel-like narrative of the XVIII century, the story of Artemius was fictionalized and thus became the object of scholarly research via V.S. Ikonnikov’s works. The study represents the comparative analysis results of epistles by Starets and the Maximus the Greek’s writings; demonstrates the conclusion’s invalidity regarding dependence of the writing experience of Artemius on the learned monk’s works; reveals convergence between the issues raised in Starets’ epistle and Metropolitan Daniil’s words. The convergent themes, motives, and locations mentioned in the social and public writings of the XVI century may testify to the relevance of Moscow Rus’ social life discussed in the writers’ works without indicating relations among the writings, and the influence of works by Maximus the Greek on the writings by Starets Artemius, or Nil Sorsky on Metropolitan Daniil. It is likely that researchers’ statements regarding group identity of Artemius and Maximus the Greek were influenced by studying the biography and works by Andrey Kurbsky, whose writings were known to both elders. Researchers discovered cases of emulating the quotations by Maximus the Greek and borrowings from his writings in works by Isaiah Kamenchanin and Andrey Kurbsky, who, together with the learned monk, constituted a group of identical personalities, with the leading role played by the monk of the Holy Mount.

The article objective is to find out to what extent the story “On the murder of Boris and Gleb”, the earliest copy of which is in the manuscript of 1670-80s, correlates with the records of spiritual verses about Boris and Gleb. It was first published in the miscellany of spiritual verses by P.A. Bessonov in 1861 in his collection “The Itinerant Cripples”. There is a steady tradition to consider the story as a spiritual verse, although the scientist noticed that he had received the text from K. F. Kalaydovich, who handed him a copy of literature work from Count F. A. Tolstoy`s library, emphasizing that this copy was a book remake of the verse. It is rather difficult to give convincing proof of the oral tradition’s duration of folklore works. Besides, it is not clear to what extent the written fixation made in the New time is correlated with the oral version. Spiritual verses about Boris and Gleb were the subject of a special study by L. S. Soboleva, who considered spiritual verses and their book modifications as something unified. The researcher focused on identifying folk-poetic ideas about the first Russian saints in understanding the conflict and developing the plot among Old Believers. She found and published 4 new copies of the book version in the Ural collections of the late XVIII-XX centuries. The article reveals that when the text was included into the manuscript collection, it lost the rhythmic characteristic of spiritual poems, a number of motifs changed, and separate details were added. On the author’s opinion, the text originally reworked from the late XVII-century version was several times rewritten (the manuscript of F. A. Tolstoy collection including the earliest known copy of the story “On the Murder of Boris and Gleb” has been found in Russian National Linrary, Department of Old-Printed Books and Manuscripts, Inv. O. I. 61). So-called book versions of the spiritual verse are textologically connected, having received a steady handwritten tradition, mainly among Old Believers. The author prepared for publication the earliest copy of the novel to which later copies ascend.

The article presents the analysis results of the Prefaces to the collections compiled by the defenders of the Old Belief in the second half of the XVII - early XVIII centuries, and to the work by Feofan Prokopovich written in 1724 “Istinnoe opravdanie pravovernykh khristian, kreshcheniem polivatel’nym vo Khrista kreshchaemykh [The True Justification of Orthodox Christians with Watering Baptism Baptized in Christ]”. It shows ways of significant expanding the «canon of sacred texts” by Timofey Lysenin in the early XVIII century continuing the work that was started by the first generation of the church reform opponents. Lysenin compiled his book of quotations which served as arguments to prove the deviation of the official Church from Holy tradition. In the Preface, the Old Believer expressed confidence that this text could reveal «God truth» to a reader. The author entered into a discussion with opponents declared as heretics due to their misinterpretation of Holy Scripture. T. Lysenin had to validate his right to refer to the interpretation of the “canon of sacred texts” in order to explain to readers where the lies and truth were. In the Preface, the author said that he was able to present «a true belief» in his book. Naturally, such a conviction of the Old Believer’s ideological leaders could not remain unanswered by the official Church. Feofan Prokopovich in the Preface to the essay devoted to the refutation of the point of view of the Old Belief defenders on watering baptism, clearly disproved the opinion formulated by T. Lysenin in the Preface to the collection of preparatory materials for «Dyakon’s answers». Both authors relied on the same quotes, but interpreted them differently, turning against opponents. Each argued his invectives against opponents accusing them of ignorance of the Holy Scripture and its misunderstanding. The hierarch denied the right of Old Believers to interpret the Holy Scripture, as they do this based on the «canon of sacred texts». But in the end, he had to admit the success of the Old Believers` teachings. The author concludes that in the discussion reflected in the Prefaces, the Old Believers were more convincing, because they demonstrated unconditional confidence in their right to use the “canon of sacred texts”.

Studying material is the literary heritage of the church writer’s community in the Patriarch circle in the second half of the XVII century preserved mainly in manuscript form. The paper analyzes writings by Afanasy Kholmogorsky, Evfimy Chudovsky, and Ignatius (Rimsky-Korsakov). In these author’ texts (polemical treatises, historical biographies, epistles, etc.) a description of modern realities and facts intertwines with the events of ancient history and later epochs, recorded not only in different time narratives, but in the historical memory of participants and eyewitnesses to events (including the memory of writers themselves). Some past events used by the authors are of oral origin. The specific character of the analyzed writings, that were created applying early texts with stories on historical themes and references to historical events, names of outstanding historical personalities, allows us to consider ways and purposes of their use, as well as to understand the nature of reception and evaluation of events of the past by the authors of the “transitional” era in relation to its current problems. Thus, the article objective is to study the peculiarities of describing the events of the past in the works of the Patriarchal circle’s church writers in the second half of the XVII century. Based on the materials analysis, the author identifies causes and nature of actualizing the events and images of the past, reflected in the texts of previous epochs, as well as captured in historical memory. The paper considers peculiarities of displaying historical subjects in the text structure in the second half of the XVII century; reveals that the creative strategy of authors, who used in their works certain historical events and facts, was based on the desire to extract the necessary information related to a given subject, to increase the emotional impact on the readers, to expand the arguments in the polemics with ideological opponents, to draw attention to current problems of modernity emphasizing the continuity of tradition.

Deacon Fedor is a writer and polemicist, and one of the ideological leaders of the first generation of the church reform opponents. He had an unconditional authority among his companions on the Pustozersky exile, as evidenced by the fact of writing journalistic treatises on their behalf in defense of the true Orthodoxy. Deacon Fyodor wrote such socially significant works as “The Orthodox Response” and the Epistle to Ioann Avvakumovich on the priesthood. The Orthodox Response is considered to be the main work by Deacon Fyodor. This work has become the main ideological document for the entire Old Believer heritage for many years. It presented a set of objections of the old rite defenders against church innovations, supported by convincing arguments and arguments in favor of a formulated point of view on the changes that occurred in the ritual and liturgical practice. The author has shown the illegality of editing liturgical books, as well as given evidences strong enough for the Christian that the experienced time is “anti-Christian”, “last” one. “The Orthodox Response” is considered together with another work significant for the whole Old Believer writings, written by Deacon Fyodor in summer of 1669 as an answer to Ioann, son of Archpriest Avvakum, who asked a question about the new priests. The author did this on behalf of all Pustozersky prisoners like in the previous work. In the Epistle on the Priesthood, the problem was thoroughly discussed how to perceive the priests assigned by Nikon, after Nikon was deprived of his patriarchal dignity. The paper concludes that these two works by Deacon Fedor were important for contemporaries and contributed to formation of a broad religious and social movement. They were also actively used in the XVIII century for creating the ideology of consent.

The article is devoted to such important historical and cultural source of the Buryatian Old Believers as marginalia on books and manuscripts. The source for the analysis are the results of expeditions in 2018-2019 to Tarbagatai, Mukhorshibir districts of the Republic of Buryatia and Ulan-Ude city. Field studies were carried out in frames of the project “The unique heritage preservation: manuscripts and books in private collections of Old Believers in Transbaikalia” supported by the Endangered Archives Program (EAP) of the British Library with ARCADIA Foundation support. However, the main work objective was to search, identify and digitalize the Old Believer’s personal archives and libraries, a detailed analysis considering certain aspects of the revealed manuscripts was possible only later, as a part of an ongoing study of the Old Believer book heritage in the region. The analysis included 73 books and manuscripts from 5 Old Believer’s collections. The author notes a significant amount of empirical data and the initial level of classification of records on books in the previous period; represents newly identified proprietary, scribal, memorial, narrative and other marginalities in 22 books. They contain information about the ways of forming family collections (inheritance, buying and selling, donating), and existing book memorialia of various groups. Marginalia allow personifying the book-written tradition of Buryatia, revealing the geography of interpersonal relationships, clarifying the circle and reading possibilities of Buryatian Semeiskie. The paper concludes on the necessity to study systematically records in the context of the diverse research topics of Russian history and culture.

The article introduces into scientific circulation an unknown Belokrinitsky (“Austrian”) polemical essay “Brief analysis of Dolgov’s letter” directed against a radical group of Belokrinitsky consent, whose leaders did not agree with the ideas of the famous “District Message”, 1862. This conflict brought a new round of a long-term internal controversy among the “Austrians” Old Believers which caused a new Neokruzhnik consent’s formation. All this changed the situation in the Beglopopovtsy community as a whole. Discussions touched upon both Belokrinitsky societies, and Siberian communities. “Brief analysis of Dolgov’s letter” is an original Siberian essay written in support of the ideas of the “District Message”. It was compiled by an experienced polemicist and dated by the early 1900s. The article presents the result of analysis of documentary and narrative sources, which reflected the discussion about the “District Message”; it concludes that the conflict’s basis in Belokrinitsky consent in the early XX century were contradictions in the episcopate, as well as between ordinary community members and its leadership. They covered both dogmatic and ritual disputes, and discussions on such key and politically sensitive issues as the Antichrist origin, time of his coming, permissibility of prayer for reigning persons.

To study reading is an urgent task of modern research by virtue of its great social significance. Due to the small number of comprehensive studies on the reading of Siberian and Far Eastern residents, the article considers for the first time the entertainment reading as its independent modification among the remote province inhabitants. The work objective is a specific-historical characteristic of entertainment reading of Siberian and Far Eastern citizens in the late XX - early XXI centuries. Data were collected in reports of local libraries, questionnaires, a wide range of research literature on the topic, which allows characterizing the source base as sufficiently complete and representative. The study’s methodological basis is the theory of reading modification. The study was carried out in accordance with principles of historicism, objectivity, systematicity, using the following approaches: terminological, inductive, deductive ones, structural and statistical analysis, comparative analysis, questionnaire, localization of historical facts. The identified data make it possible to clarify and supplement the picture of reading in the post-Soviet period. The results show that the entertainment reading’s share was significant and depended, first, on the reader’s age and occupation: the least share was among the students, decreasing with each class and lagging behind the educational reading, falling to the minimum among high school students, the highest - in persons with higher education, pensioners and unemployed. The obtained results give an idea of the most popular fiction genres and writers in the region, who were the authors of detectives, love and historical novels, adventures. This study developed the position of the theory of reading modification. It clarifies the definitions of the terms «entertainment reading» and «leisure reading» shows a portrait of the reading audience of entertainment reading; reconstructs the text corpus, expands significantly its functional field.

The article objective is to determine the role of the energy factor under the frontier modernization conditions in the Ural-Siberian region of imperial Russia where imperial and frontier modernizations were combined. While Russian colonization has long been actively studied, investigation of the frontier modernization is just beginning, without mentioning its energy factor, which was not paid attention in historical sciences. The author explains concept of “frontier modernization” and reveals its energy component. The paper focuses on the transition from a water wheel of a traditional society to a steam engine of the early industrial era. This process was traced on the mining industry materials, as it ushered the region’s industrial development. The Altai and the Urals historical experience showed that water-producing facilities appeared rather early and outperformed similar devices in central Russia, they contributed to forming large and time-efficient mining enterprises and provided the empire with the world leading positions in obtaining ferrous and nonferrous products metallurgy. Growing the power supply ratio led to raising production efficiency and solved the unattainable task, as demonstrated by the Kolyvano-Voskresensk plants in the Altai and the Urals metallurgical enterprises. However, the steam engine advent has dramatically changed the situation. Waterworks could not compete with steam engines, which came into use in our country much later than in West Europe. The transition from a water to steam engine lasted for almost half a century and even longer in eastern regions. Russia began to lag catastrophically behind the Western world, and until the empire’s end was unable to complete its modernization, especially in new development territories, for which there were many reasons, and energy shortage is one of them.

The most important problems in the history of Russia, including its imperial period, is a problem of implementing dialogue between the authority and society providing communication channels between administration and intelligentsia. The article considers an original form of such communication - meetings of the «well-informed people» initiated by Priamur Governor-General A.N. Korf. The analysis is carried out within several problematic areas: administrating, intellectual and personal histories. The main sources are records management documents (reports, «Program of Priamur General Governorship Development «), press materials, ego-documents. A.N. Korf and his entourage are defined as intellectual officials. The author argues in favor of such characteristics based on the governor-general’s deep understanding of economic, geopolitical and sociocultural situation in the region, ways of its development, his awareness of the need to study the region and his various actions to this direction. The paper focuses on A.N. Korf’s initiative to organize meetings of «well-informed» people as a communication channel between the power and society. The paper lists key issues studied during these meetings, characterizes the ways they were organized, the debate proceedings and their participants. The article shows the local intelligentsia’s perception of these meetings reflected in the materials published in the Far Eastern and Siberian newspapers, as well as in the diary by A.V. Kirillov, an outstanding local intellectual. The author concludes that the meetings of «well-informed people» have become a communication platform, or a place where members of regional administration, business and intellectual elites could exchange their ideas and knowledge; emphasizes the role of joint activities of the governor-general and local intellectuals aimed to create the Program of Priamur Region Development.

The article objective is to review the process of formation and development of regional head annual reports evidently for Yakutsk Oblast. Modern national historiography pays attention to studying the annual reports of other local chief administrators of Siberia, such as governor-generals and governors; however, many aspects of the topic have not been investigated yet, that explains its relevance. The process of forming and developing the annual report of the regional heads of Yakutia to the Ministry of Internal Affairs is related to the process of bureaucratization of the Nicholas’ era. The author notes the absence of a special regulatory framework of reporting documentation form for regional heads, so the reports are based on rules for governors. The paper shows features of annual reports, the influence of the priority areas of local government’s activity on the report information contents, etc. The annual reports of the heads of Yakutsk Oblast are an important historical source, which undoubtedly requires a comprehensive study and analysis.

The article is devoted to the activities of city self-government bodies (City Council, City Duma) during the First World War (1915-1916). Despite the fact that the city was located on the Lena river banks and surrounded by lakes, one of the key problems was water supply. The lack of quality water supply and a culture of life support led to chronic outbreaks of infectious diseases. The author analyzed the problems faced by the city government and measures taken to solve the issue of creating a water supply system. The paper shows that the constructed water pumping facility, use of modern purification systems and control over the water carrier industry in 1916, allowed the city to create a unified centralized water supply system existed until 1944.

The history of science in Siberia has gone through several stages of development. The authors focus on the post-Soviet stage, when certain changes in approaches and methods to historical research in general and history of science in particular took place. Understanding the historiography of the science history as a special field concerned the process of accumulating historical knowledge in a specific social and political context that has affected the formation and development of historical thought, historians’ concepts, and topics of historical studies, the author pays attention to the context transformation. Essential for this kind of transformation is the partial de-ideologization of historical science occurred in Russia in 1990s- 2015. The paper dwells on a number of areas of the historiography of the science history in Siberia. Interpretation of the concept of “historical heritage” is particular historical importance, as it allows studying the research activities of scientists and academic schools created by them. The authors examine historiographic approaches to the concept of historical heritage in the hierarchy of cultural heritage and scientific contribution. Importantly, a new practice has evolved in humanities studies - computerization of the source base and its use in historical research; new approaches to study the history of Soviet science and education (general and specific issues) that are in the focus of the authors’ interest. Research into the history of some institutions, people and publications gives good examples of how the development of science in Siberia can be studied. Generally speaking, the historiographic analysis has demonstrated a continuing interest in the history of national science and technology. Undoubtedly, this area has received new impetus in the post-Soviet era thanks to a greater availability of some previously classified sources and introduction of new research topics, such as the Soviet atomic project, repressed science, specifics of the USSR modernization projects, ideological campaigns etc.), and new research areas, such as the social history of science.

The paper objective is to reconstruct the process of formation of institutions (stations, observatories, institute) involved in meteorological, geophysical and cosmic physical research and their role in Yakutia’s development. The authors use the biographics research achievements, which reconstruct the life of individuals based on personal texts (ego-documents), as well as the network analysis of scientific institutions’ organization and activities in Yakutia on the basis of communications between intellectuals in the center and regions. As the first stage, 1925-1941, the fruitful activities of prominent Soviet scientists contributed to forming a network of 23 stationary meteorological, aerological, hydrometeorological stations, a geophysical observatory and a polar station on an island in the Arctic Ocean. The results of the institution activities were important for development of aviation, Aldan gold mining and the Amur-Yakutsk highway construction. In the 1930s, regular measurements of the cosmic ray intensity started under Yu. G. Shafer guidance in Yakutsk, interrupted in 1941. The second stage, 1947-1962, began after Yu. G. Scafer coming back from the front. The prominent Russian space physicists developed unique innovative semiconductor devices for artificial Earth satellites, cameras for imaging auroras, ionization cameras for continuous registration of cosmic rays installed on nine stations; and most importantly - a research team was formed by the Pedagogical Institute graduates. Studying the radiation situation in the near-Earth space during high-altitude thermonuclear explosions testified to the involvement of Yakutia in improving the country defense. The station on the Bolshaya Lyakhovsky Island has contributed to provide Arctic aviation flights and coastal navigation along the Northern Sea Route.

Scientific book publishing plays an important role in the presentation and dissemination of scientific knowledge. The article first considers the publishing activity of the Russian Academy of Sciences during the last decade of the XX century. The paper objective is to characterize scientific book publishing in the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1990-2000. The research source base includes numerous documents of archives of the Siberian publishing company “Nauka” of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Siberian enterprise “Nauka” of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Novosibirsk Printing House no. 4). The work’s methodological basis is the theory of modernization - bringing scientific book publishing in line with the current situation. The study uses the principles of historicism, objectivity, systematicity, as well as structural, comparative analysis, historical fact localization approaches. To lower the cost and speed up the process of publishing scientific literature, the Russian Academy of Sciences forced to create its own autonomous Publishing House in March 1995. In a short period of time, it went from the initial stage, when several journal editions were created based on a printing site, to a full-fledged publishing house producing and distributing scientific literature and periodicals. Some institutions of the Russian Academy of Sciences started to create and equip their own publishing centers with modern printing equipment. The Editorial-Publishing Council of SB RAS played a major role in creating an autonomous system of scientific book publishing and its improvement. The article presents the normative and legal documents prepared by the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences regulating the organizational and financial aspects of the activities of the Branch in the scientific book publishing field, especially during the transition from centralized to autonomous scientific and publishing activities in the Branch. It reveals relationships in the field of scientific book publishing between the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Siberian publishing company “Nauka” of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk printing house no. 4 “Nauka” of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Publishing House of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The obtained results give a complete idea on the structure of book publishing in the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, difficulties of scientific book publishing, and ways to overcome them, allow completing the picture of scientific book publishing in the Siberian region.

The report analyzes the sculptural materials made of wood, originating from the Ulan Kherem Shoronbumba-gar mound in the Bayannuur Somon of Bulgansky aimak, Mongolia. The study objective is the introduction of new materials on the anthropology of Medieval Mongolia into scientific circulation. It considers possibility of using sculptural images to reconstruct the anthropological composition of the region’s population. The author has recorded indisputable analogs with sculptures from Turkic time ShoroonBumbagar mound in ZamarSomon of the Central aimak in Mongolia, dedicated to the ruler of the Pugu tribe and the province head of the Tan I-shu-to-e empire unequivocally dated 678 A.D. The author studied four full-length figures and 17 fragmented images. Based on the analysis of the statuettes’ anthropological features, the paper concludes on the presence of a Chinese (Tan) element among the Turkic-speaking nomads of Mongolia in the VII century.

The article presents an overview of the activities and generalization of the experience of five-year work of the Crimean Museological school “Museum Studio” opened in Koktebel in 2016. The history of Russian museology, which is closely connected with creating the first public museums at the early XIX century, was a great importance in organization of M. Voloshin House as a center of culture of the early XX century. The Russian Institute of Cultural Studies became the basis for the School’s museological activities. Based on the existing traditions of Russian Museum studies, the School functions as a research and discussion platform to hold annual events with the participation of leading experts from Russia and foreign countries. It has proposed and developed an innovative model of interaction with specialists aimed to improve their skills and competence.