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This article puts forward a new later dating of the Greek manuscript BnF, Paris. gr. 1783 kept in the National Library of France and containing portraits of emperors of the Palaiologoi dynasty. The manuscript contains important texts related to the Constantinople period of court history and culture. Historiographers used to date the manuscript to the fifteenth century according to the portrait of Patriarch Joseph II (†1439), a famous participant of the Ferraro-Florence Council, which can be seen in the Italian fresco paintings of the fifteenth century. Meanwhile, the study of the manuscript's palaeographical features shows that it was written by an anonymous scribe from Crete who worked in Venice and Rome for Italian humanists in the middle — third quarter of the sixteenth century. The handwriting of the famous Cretan calligrapher, employee of Francis I's library in Fontainebleau Angelus Vergecius, as well as some other scribes associated with him was typologically close to the handwriting of the main scribe of the manuscript. Analogies to this handwriting can also be seen in the handwriting of Manuel Provataris, another famous scribe of the epoch, a Cretan Greek from Rethymno, employee and copyist of the Vatican Library. The new palaeographic dating of the Paris. gr. 1783 manuscript changes the date of creation of portrait drawings of the Byzantine emperors of the Palaiologoi dynasty and Patriarch Joseph II. Also, it is important to change the dating of all texts contained in the manuscript including such important texts as one of the three lists of imperial tombs of the Church of Sts. Apostles in Constantinople, as well the list of the offices of the Byzantine court. The Paris. gr. 1783 manuscript should be excluded from the circle of Late Byzantine booklore and attributed to post-Byzantine book heritage.

This article analyses economic reforms in Hungary and Bulgaria between the late 1950s and early 1970s, as well as the reaction of official Moscow to the changes in these countries. The main sources for this article were documents of the Soviet embassies in the HPR and the PRB, briefing notes of Soviet economists, reports of special services and materials of meetings and negotiations at the highest party and state level. The authors conclude that a significant role in the launch and curtailment of reforms belonged to the political leaders of Hungary and Bulgaria — Ya. Kadar, the first secretary of the Central Committee of the HSWP, and T. Zhivkov, the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the BCP, Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the PRB. Therefore, at the level of decision-making, these reforms differed from similar ones in other countries of the socialist camp. The authors demonstrate that the transition to self-supporting relations in the HPR and PRB did not solve a number of economic problems, but, on the contrary, provoked a departure from socialist principles and the strengthening of market elements. This circumstance led to an increase in the volume of external debt of Hungary and Bulgaria, mainly to capitalist countries, which caused concern on the part of the Soviet leadership. Therefore, the Kremlin, which had previously pursued a policy of detached observation, forced Zhivkov and Kadar to curtail economic reforms. At the same time, Moscow offered individual solutions in each case. In Bulgaria, for example, the economic independence of enterprises ended after the USSR repaid the country's internal debt, and in Hungary after Brezhnev's conversation with Kadar. The authors believe that the direct initiator of the curtailment of reforms in the HPR and the PRB was a rather narrow circle of Soviet leaders who realised the futility of introducing market mechanisms into the socialist economy and launched a large-scale revision of the concept of the development of the world system of socialism in the early 1970s.

The author of this article analyses the history of the complex and contradictory relations of Michel Vovelle (1933–2018), an outstanding French researcher of the Revolution of the eighteenth century, with Russian historians in the Soviet and post-Soviet times. It is noted that, unlike most French left-wing historians from A. Sobul's entourage, cooperation with whom was a priority for Soviet researchers, Vovelle invariably maintained a certain distance in relation to the latter: he did not publish his works in the USSR and did not go there for regular Russian-French colloquiums. The situation changed only when Vovelle, after Sobul's death, became head of the scholarly programme of the Bicentennial of the French Revolution. In this capacity, he made his first visit to the USSR in 1982. However, despite the warmest reception given to him by Soviet historians, he, as his memoirs demonstrate, still tried to keep a certain distance in his relations with them and was not much interested in the real situation in Soviet historical science, limiting himself to reproducing stereotypes common in the foreign press. Even less did Vovelle like his arrival in the USSR in the year of the Bicentennial of the French Revolution, when at a large conference in Moscow held at the height of Perestroika, the ideas of left-wing French historians were sharply criticised not only by their Soviet colleagues but also by the general public. The negative impressions left from that visit to Moscow were apparently so strong that in subsequent years, Vovelle refrained from any active cooperation with historians of post-Soviet Russia. And only a meeting with many of them at the colloquium in Visile (2006) showed Vovelle that, despite ideological and methodological differences with him, his Russian colleagues were infinitely far from the militant anti-communism that dominated in Eastern Europe and that they were open to fruitful cooperation with left-wing historians of France. He was finally convinced of this by a visit to Moscow in the same year, which, unfortunately, turned out to be the last for him.

This article examines attempts at multilateral cooperation between the USSR and European Comecon members which experienced a shortage of primary energy resources, in the acquisition and transportation of large volumes of oil from the developing world in the early 1970s. The paper focuses on the creation of the so-called Bureau of Petroleum, a new Comecon working body as part of the Standing Commission on Foreign Trade. This Bureau carried out its activities, which were of a closed nature, in 1973–1978. The Petroleum Bureau was created to fulfill the functions of an effective focal point of the Comecon member countries interested in jointly solving the problems of increasing oil imports from developing countries and expanding economic and technical cooperation with said countries. This is the first study dedicated to the causes and the process of creating the Bureau of Petroleum. It is based on documents of the XXV and XXVI sessions of the CMEA, the CMEA Executive Committee, the CMEA Standing Commission on Foreign Trade, as well as other materials from the CMEA fund in the Russian State Archive of Economics (RGAE). The author concludes that the creation of the Petroleum Bureau was associated with the shortage of oil at the beginning of the 1970s in the socialist countries of Eastern Europe and the nationalisation of Iraq's oil industry adopted by the Baathist government on 1 June 1972.

This article examines the history behind the writing of the three-volume History of Byzantium (1967). In the 1950s and 1960s, the writing of "meta-narratives" meant covering the history of different states from the standpoint of the Marxist interpretation of the historical process and using the methods of historical materialism. In addition, collective work on them demonstrated the scholarly convention of Marxist historians. These principles were also implemented during the preparation of the History of Byzantium. A member of the editorial board and one of the main authors of the multi-volume work was Mikhail Jakovlevich Sjuzjumov (1893–1982), a Sverdlovsk scholar. Some letters kept in the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the State Archive of Sverdlovsk Region reflect his participation in the preparation of the History of Byzantium, the difficulties his texts underwent during the publication process, and his assessment of the results of the collective work. The article considers the scholar's concept which he adhered to when writing the chapters, analyses critical remarks about his texts, and emphasises the discrepancy between his interpretations and the assessment of the history of Byzantium established in Russian historiography. The chapters prepared by Sjuzjumov and devoted to sources on early Byzantine history, the history of the church, and the historical role of Byzantium were criticised especially harshly. Sjuzjumov's assessment of the Byzantine opposition and denial of the progressiveness of their views, his interpretation of Byzantine feudalism and the place of the Empire in world history contradicted the spirit and concept of the collective work. As a result, his two chapters were not included in the final version of the History of Byzantium. To achieve an academic convention, it was necessary to sacrifice the original interpretations proposed by the Sverdlovsk scholar. Nevertheless, Mikhail Sjuzjumov highly appreciated the publication of the History of Byzantium, although he noted its obvious shortcomings and weak points.

During the so-called 'Gallican crisis' between 1551 and 1552, Pope Julius III accused the French king of preparing an ecclesiastical schism, while the possibility of establishing a French patriarchate was discussed in the royal council. Before long, however, the conflict gave way to a close alliance between the Pope and King Henry II. Was the 'Gallican crisis' just a tool of political pressure on Julius III? To what extent were the plans of the king and his entourage to reform the Gallican Church serious? The lack of sources can be filled, at least in part, by turning to the work by Raoul Spifame, a lawyer of the Paris Parliament, titled Dicaearchiae Henrici Regis Christianissimi Progymnasmata (1556). In its essence, it is a collection of rhetorical exercises in the field of jurisprudence written in the form of royal decrees designed to reform everything in the kingdom. Surprisingly, some of these fictional measures later would be actually implemented. The reason for the author's 'clairvoyance' lies in his contacts with the secretaries of state who were then preparing large-scale reforms, which would eventually be cancelled due to the unexpected death of the king and the outbreak of the Wars of Religion. A considerable part of the decrees is devoted to plans of the reform of the Gallican Church: from the elevation of the Bishopric of Paris to the rank of an archdiocese to tightening control over the morals of prelates. This article pays special attention to how the Dicaearchiae regulated the elements of 'everyday piety' — the rituals of blessing of the bridal chamber, purification after childbirth, and belief in the existence of limb. A limitation of 'luxury' was also to be introduced: refusal of precious ecclesiastical ornaments, redundant bells, and a reduction in the number of holidays associated with the veneration of saints. Without abandoning the cult of saints, Spifame undertakes a reform of the ecclesiastical calendar and creates a sort of national martyrology of warriors who died for their homeland and 'are venerated as saints without a canonisation'.