Vol. 3 No. 2 (2025)

The Second World War in Asia is traditionally presented in Russian historiography in a much more modest way than the European theater of military operations. This approach is due to the involvement of the Soviet Union in the struggle for survival with Germany, in comparison with which the confrontation with Japan takes less relevance. However, the modern conditions of the so-called new wars put on the agenda the study of armed conflicts of the 1920s and 1930s (battles on the CER, the era of militarists in China, conflicts on Hasan Island and the Khalkhin Gol River, the Red Army campaigns in Xinjiang). They occurred in conditions of unclear borders between territories that de facto appeared after the collapse of the Qing Empire. As in modern military operations outside the country, the participating contingents were often disguised. For example, the Red Army soldiers in Xinjiang and the Soviet pilots in Central China were officially positioned as White Guard formations and could receive payment from Moscowallied centers of power in the Tianxia (which partly makes them similar to modern PMCs around the world). Wars in China in the second quarter of the 20th century were often waged directly by private armies, and even the troops of fairly centralized Japan often acted on the orders of Kwantung generals without coordinating with the government in Tokyo. As in modern military conflicts in the Middle East, the same high-ranking figures could change their position several times in the course of situationally formed alliances

The article, based on archival materials, proves the participation of K.N. Popandopulo and L.D. Stetsenko in the activities of the Communist Underground Organization in the Rear of the Germans (KPOVTN) in occupied Sevastopol during the Great Patriotic War. The author tells how K.N. Popandopulo and L.D. Stetsenko, ones of many unknown heroes of the war, joined the Sevastopol underground and carried out the organization's tasks. It also talks about their fate after the discovery and defeat of KPOVTN in March-April 1944. The author states that the underground workers' activities involved agitation and propaganda work (distribution of leaflets), establishing contacts with Crimean partisans and the command of the Red Army, as well as obtaining weapons to prepare an armed uprising. The article underlines the underground workers' contribution to the common cause of the anti-fascist struggle and developing conditions for the liberation of the peninsula from the German-Romanian occupation in the spring of 1944. The article is based on the sources from the funds of the State Archive of the Republic of Crimea, which are being introduced into academic circulation for the first time. The article also uses materials from the Soviet periodical press and domestic publications

In recent decades, the ideology, practices and fate of Russian White émigrés — participants in the Resistance movement during the Second World War have attracted the attention of researchers. This study deals with Russian émigré returnees — heroes of the European Resistance movement. The article is based on documents from the collection of the Alexander Solzhenitsyn House of Russia Abroad, in particular from personal archives, containing unique information both about the French émigré period of the founders’ lives and about their arrangement in Soviet life after returning to the USSR. Thus, the article publishes the part of the correspondence between one of the founders of the Union of Soviet Patriots in Belgrade, the outstanding Slavic scholar I.N. Golenishchev-Kutuzov, who lived in Moscow after the war, and his friend, a participant in the Resistance movement in France, the poet Yuri Bek-Sofiev, who lived in Kazakhstan (Alma-Ata, now Almaty) after returning to the USSR. The documents helped to reconstruct some episodes from the lives of the resistance-returnees, related to their activities in the new conditions. The literary and artistic collection In Foreign Lands is considered as one of the channels of communication of former compatriots. The collection includes literary works of representatives of the white emigration who dreamed of returning to their homeland

The Italian Resistance movement as a phenomenon of World War II arose during the fall of Mussolini's regime in response to the subsequent invasion of the Italian Peninsula by Nazi Germany, as well as the gradual advance of the Anglo-American allies to the north of the peninsula after the landing in Sicily. Some former servicemen of the Royal Italian Army and representatives of the civilian population united in armed units based on their rejection of Nazifascism, an ideology characterized by the political and ideological rapprochement of fascism and Nazism that began in the 1930s. It was these units that Soviet people, mainly escaped prisoners of war and deserted eastern legionnaires, joined. In total, there were about 6,000 Soviet fighters in the ranks of the Resistance, i.e. about half of the foreign contingent of the Resistance, at least half a thousand people died. Many of them received awards from the Italian state

The April War of 1941 found approximately 30,000 Russian emigrants in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. As a result of the revolutionary events of 1917 and the Civil War (1918-1922), they left Russia and came to the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (KSS) (since 1929, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia) between 1919 and 1923. After the division of Yugoslavia as a result of the invasion of Germany and Italy in April 1941 and its capitulation, most of the representatives of this community remained passive, some decided to collaborate with the Germans, but there were also those who chose active resistance to the occupiers. Russian emigrants from a wide variety of professions (engineers, artists, academics, doctors) joined the fight against the occupiers on the territory of the former Yugoslavia. According to the calculations of the leading specialist in the history of the Russian diaspora in Yugoslavia, Aleksey Borisovich Arsenyev, more than 90 Russian doctors and nurses participated in the Resistance movement. Russian doctors were specialists in various fields of medicine. Most of those about whom we have information received their education in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia itself; some joined the Resistance as students of medical faculties. Among the doctors who fought fascism were representatives of the first generation of Russian refugees, including participants in the White movement. During the years of occupation, Russian doctors who participated in the partisan movement, joined the People's Liberation Army of Yugoslavia, ran hospitals, headed the epidemiological service, thus contributing to the fight against fascism. The article provides biographical information about only some of them

The article presents the results of a search for information about a Soviet partisan, a participant in the Italian Resistance, who died in the suburbs of Novi Ligure (Piedmont) in April 1945, on the eve of the final collapse of Nazifascism in Italy. According to Italian sources, his name was Denadi Aglamore, but a number of details allowed the authors of this article to restore his real name — Gennady Nikolaevich Aglamov. A Red Army soldier, born in 1923, called up at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War from Sverdlovsk, where he worked as a car mechanic. He was captured by the Germans and sent to labor in Italy. He managed to escape from captivity and join a detachment of local partisans under the combat nickname Gennaro. Sent, probably on reconnaissance together with two other Italian partisans, G.N. Aglamov was killed by punitive forces and later buried in the city cemetery of Novi Ligure in the honorary crypt of partisans. Due to the uncertainty of information about the fighter, there is the laconic inscription Soviet partisan on his tombstone

The article analyzes the diary entries of Vladimir Dedijer about the first wave of Russian emigrants who took part in the national liberation struggle, which was led by the Communist Party of Yugoslavia during the Second World War. V. Dedijer was a Yugoslav journalist, a participant in the Yugoslav Resistance, a close associate of JB Tito. Two parts of the diary were published in 1945—1946, the third part in 1950. The second edition of the diary was published in 1951. The author of the article concludes that Dedijer's attitude towards Russian emigrants was largely determined by the policy of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia towards the Soviet Union during the period of cooling relations between the two states

The article features a new type of historical sources — payment (pension) files of participants and disabled veterans of the Great Patriotic War. This type of documents has not been described in Russian historiography before. The article is based on documentary materials from the state archive of the Novosibirsk region, collection R-2801 (Collection of payment (pension) files of citizens formed in the activities of territorial bodies of the Pension Fund of Russia in the Novosibirsk region). The documents are described and introduced into academic circulation for the first time. Payment (pension) files contain valuable information for historians in order to clarify not only personalized information about participants and their families, but also about settlements, including those that have disappeared. These files, as a rule, contain valuable archival materials: certified copies of documents and, sometimes, originals. The value for researchers is also in the fact that the payment file contains all the information about a person, which facilitates the search for information about a specific person

The article presents the memoirs of Elizaveta Nikolaevna Kuris (1874—1950) Days of Terror in Tsarskoye Selo, published in Russian for the first time. It examines the biography of Elizaveta Nikolaevna and members of her family, analyzes the circumstances of writing and discovery of the memoirs, the content and language of the text, and traces parallels with the memoirs of Princess A.N. Golitsyna. The memoirs of E.N. Kuris describe in detail the trials that befell her family in the period from October 1918 to October 1919: arrest, interrogations in the Cheka, imprisonment, typhus epidemic, survival after liberation and departure from Russia