No 3 (2008)

The article contains an analysis of the development of the Siberian transport network which was a significant, but most often a constraining factor in this vast region's economic growth. The sharp focus is put on the projects of modernization of Asian Russia's transportation network in the second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries.

The article, founded primarily on the archival documents, displays the way the residents of the suburbs in the Central Chernozem Area provinces were incorporated into urban population in the 19th - early 20th centuries.

The article establishes the distinctive features of the use of military units at the Turkistan front in order to solve economic problems and examines the system of managing the labour units alongside the nature of their work.

The article touches upon the specific features of Margaret Thatcher's and John Major's conservative governments' social policy in Great Britain in 1979-1997. The author analyses the Conservative way of social problems solution, which was as follows: only the poorest people (the so-called "socially excluded people") should be provided with the state social support aiming to involve them back into independent life.

In the article the research is carried out into B.A.Rybakov's principal conclusions concerning the character and origins of chronicle records in Vladimir-Suzdal Russia in the closing quarter of the 12th - early 13th centuries. The author considers the scholar's reasoning and techniques of studying the book culture of the North-West of Russia and undertakes a critical analysis of his conclusions on the attribution of a number of records in Vladimir chronicles.

Soviet immigrant historian Mikhail Gheller, who was writing and debating the most topical USSR-related issues from abroad, had a very special, non-Western vision of the Soviet reality. He was not typical in his judgements for neither his former compatriots nor Western colleagues. Within the article an attempt is made to outline the general directions and clarify the distinctive features of this vision as well as the signs of the Soviet reality of the critical 1980s which were reflected in it.

The article, relying on a wide range of documentary evidence, reveals the way the issue of repatriating the Kazakhs and the Kirghiz who had taken part in the anti-Russian insurrection caused by Nicolas II's edict of the conscription of aboriginals for back areas labour was handled in Sinjiang in 1917.