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Thearticle is a response to the criticism of the author's work in the article by Yu.A.Shkuratok and contains both an analysis of her specific comments on the hydronyms Chesnokovka, Serebryanka and toponymic series in ukht-, and an analysis of fundamental methodological differences in the work with toponyms of linguists, geographers and historians. It is emphasized that for historians, the etiology (origin of the phenomenon) is much more important than the etymology (origin of the word)

In recent decades, in the context of the transformation of national states and the development of multi-level government, there has been an increase in ethnic/regional political parties in Europe. Ethno-regionalism in the CEE countries has a specific basis related to their imperial past, but despite the similarities, each country has special features concerning the strength of parties, their demands and development. The analysis of the most significant ethnic/regional parties in the CEE countries shows that the main factor affecting their strength is the ethnic structure of the population, especially if it is combined with intense ethnic identity, and the ethnic minority has a historical experience of autonomy/statehood. A favorable combination of these factors results in the stability of the electoral strength of ethnic parties, which makes them an important player in the political arena. Concerning the demands of ethnic parties, it has been confirmed that the localization of the respective ethnic minority has a significant effect. If it is in one administrative unit, it stimulates regionalist aspirations; if it dwells in some compactly located administrative units, an ethnic party usually promotes cross-regionalist demands to create a new region. Under conditions of dispersed localization of a minority, an ethnic party does not put forward regionalist claims.

The system of national states as territorially organized polities remains the core of the political order, but their configuration becomes more complex, the forms and mechanisms, principles and results of interaction between territorial political units of different levels are changing. In this context, scholars focus on such phenomena as multi-level governance (MLG) and regionalism that is one of the most important factors influencing the depth of political transformations and the degree of development of MLG. Despite the large amount of studies on different issues, the relationship between regionalism and multi-level governance needs more systematic research, specifically large-N comparative studies. For the purpose of carrying out this kind of studies, the Database «Subnational Regionalism and Multi-Level Governance (REG-MLG)» has been created. This article describes the general characteristics and structure of the REG-MLG, demonstrates its differences from other databases and datasets, and presents some examples of large-N comparative studies carried out on the basis of the REG-MLG.

The article analyzes the approaches and methods of sublimation of cultural and social trauma among believers using the example of localized cases. The subject of research is the established mechanism of experiencing and rethinking the traumatic experience between generations of believers of different faiths. The research question is posed by determining the role of religion as a compensatory social institution that registers the negative elements of the past in a soteriological aspect. The research field includes a part of the Western Urals as a traditionally multicultural region, characterized by the traditional residence of representatives of the so-called "non-traditional" religious communities. The study involved members of the local ummah, as well as Christians included in the communities of "classical" Pentecostals and Baptists belonging to the so-called "Separated Brotherhood". The method of collecting information was a semi-standardized interview, verified through an appeal to the memoir publications of one of the groups. The respondents included believers whose older relatives belonging to the second or third generation were subjected to repressive influences. The main attention was paid to prevailing techniques that have doctrinal foundations and contribute to a change in the emotional vector in assessing the resulting traumatic experience. The concept of injury soteriology is introduced, in which injury is perceived as a way of self-improvement and solving life-saving tasks. Three models of sublimation of a trauma of the past are identified, associated with confessional belonging and forming different strategies for working with this trauma. The influence of these models on the value system of an individual and a group and on the formation of markers for assessing events is determined. A correlation was revealed between the way of perceiving the negative past, the level of individual participation of believers in the processes of commemoration and the basic teaching principles of the community. The legitimate role of religion in relation to traumatic experience built into the pan-religious soteriological concept is established.

The article analyzes the situation of border conflicts between the Ural region and the Bashkir Autonomous Socialist Republic (BASSR) over the territory of the bend of the Belaya and Kama rivers in the 1920s. It is emphasized that nowadays, there is a narrative in historiography about the predominance of "national republics" in the USSR in the 1920s, but this provision may be revised. Until 1918, the lands in question belonged to Bashkir landowners, but were inhabited by Russian peasants who took them on lease. After the Bolsheviks came to power and the abolition of lease relations, both the Ural region and the Republic of Bashkortostan claimed these territories. The former pointed to the Russian composition of the population, the latter indicated the established economic ties. The paper examines in detail the development of this conflict, the application of the existing mechanisms and tools of decision-making of that time, as well as the role of the ethnic component in them. After lengthy negotiations at the level of local authorities, no compromise was reached. The authorities of the Republic of Bashkortostan campaigned among the local population and engaged specially trained respondents for surveys, while representatives of the Ural region refused to accept any opinion that did not correspond to the idea of local peasants transferring with their land to the Ural region. As a result, the issue was considered by the Administrative Commission of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, and the disputed territories were assigned to the Ural region. Therefore, in a state that has abandoned the prejudices of the past, the ethnic principle has played a key role in defining the boundaries of regions. This example shows that the Bolsheviks, even in the early years of Soviet power, were guided not only by the policy of unconditional preferential treatment of "national republics".

The authors propose a typology of sites of memory of political repressions that took place in different periods of Russian history, which emerged under the influence of a set of historical, social and cultural factors. The purpose of the study is to trace the logic of the formation of specific types of monuments, including those existing in the form of the so-called counter-monuments, in the process of implementing the politics of memory and formulating ideas about the traumatic past. The authors used the chronotopic method of examining sites of memory in a number of regions of Russia, such as the memorial complex Perm-36, multiple sites of commemoration at the Bolshoy Solovetsky Island, places of memory at the Rybinsk water reservoir, the Butovo polygon, memorial objects in the Saratov region, and the Republic of Mordovia, architectural constructions in the Russian Far East, etc. Theoretically, the research is rooted in the concept of "memory sites" proposed by Pierre Nora and understood as a combination of material and spiritual elements of culture that carry a symbolic load associated with understanding the social past. The authors demonstrate the presence of several types of memorial sites. It turned out that in the Russian domain of memory about the political repressions there are no sites that meet the criteria of a traditional monument. Conditionally traditional monuments can be territorially localized (solitary or complex) or dispersed (standard or heterogeneous). The second type of monuments is defined as hybrid, including vernacular, alternative and palimpsest varieties. Vernacular monuments are determined by their agents of construction, while the alternative ones are associated with specific interpretations of the past and can be supplemented with new constructive elements in the course of existence, palimpsests imply the explicit or hidden presence of many symbolically loaded layers. Counter-monuments constitute a special type represented by walking, landscape, ecological, and disappearing monuments. They are characterized as performative and participatory. The presence of different types of monuments proves not so much the absence of a unified strategy of commemoration in Russian society, but rather the fact that multiple social groups participate in the process of commemoration, producing heterogeneous and polyphonic monuments.