The paper presents an analysis of the sources on the medieval history of the Maghrib in an attempt to identify the origin of the Berber tribal confederation of Ṣanhāja. The directions of research include the analysis of territories presumably occupied by the branches of this tribal confederation, in addition to the migration routes of the Yemeni region, central Sahara and the Maghreb; history of the Berbers mainly based on the texts of Ibn Khaldūn and his description and the genealogical tree of the Berber tribes and families. Furthermore, to recreate a more complete picture of the mixture of peoples we should take into account the Arab and the Vandals demographic contribution. Yemenis have played its role in the Maghreb, but the real Arabization took place not earlier than in 11th century, so the question is in the earlier relationships between Arab tribes. On the other hand, there is a demographic contribution that is systematically underestimated in the Maghrib, i.e. that of the slaves of sub-Saharan origin that supposedly had a much greater impact.
Various social and political conditions in the Middle East and North Africa as well as the evolution of Islamic written tradition in Arabic during the early medieval period account for the multiplicity and heterogeneity of data on the Berbers in Arab historical works. Thus, an accurate and consistent study of all the available sources is highly desirable. Correlation of medieval and modern regions, different spelling of toponyms and tribal names proper to authors of that period, different approaches to the perception of historical process, not to speak about a possibility of falsifications make it complicated to examine the issue. The difficulty also lies in the fact that some sources provide contradictory information that makes us doubt in their veracity. Therefore, the topic certainly deserves a detailed study.

Outer Mongolia officially declared independence from the Qing dynasty under the rule of the 8th Bogd Jebtsundamba Khutuktu on 29 December 1911, and the latter was enthroned as olnoo urgugdsun (Mong. ‘elected by the many’) Emperor of Mongolia. The sun-like radiant one supposed to have prospered for tens of thousands years, the holder of religion and power Bogd Khan accepted three seals: two for state affairs, and one for religion. The use of the seals for state affairs was legalized in the 30th volume of Mongolia’s Code of Laws: ‘Article 1. The sun-like radiant, tens of thousands years old, holder of religion and authority, Bogd Khan has one Jade seal and one Silver seal. The seals must be used for judicial pardons, official orders, to grant teachings, blessings, and yellow ribbon credentials’.
The Jade seal is the first seal of the Ruler of Mongolia bearing the legend ‘The imperial seal of His Holiness Bogd Khan who holds both religion and power’ inscripted in Soyombo, Classical Mongolian and Phags-pa, and was used to seal orders. The weight of the seal is 5 kg. In the upper left part there is a Soyombo symbol; in the middle one can see the mentioned inscription in Classical Mongolian, duplicated and on the left in Phags-pa and on the right — in Soyombo. The measurements of this seal are 8.5 cm x 8.5 cm, and according to a legend the handle was made of Cintamani ― the Wish Fulfilling Stone.
In addition to the Jade seal which was actually a replica of traditional seals once used in the Great Mongol Empire, the Bogd khan also used a seal made of pure silver bearing the same legend ― for state affairs. In terms of size, the Silver seal was 1.5 cm wider than the Jade one and weighted 5,89 kg. Its handle was in the form of a lion’s head. The inscription — in Classical Mongolian — in the left said: ‘May the Teaching be pure!’; the one on the right said: ‘May the state be inviolable!’ These illustrate the then aspiration of the Mongols to keep the holy Teaching pure and to strengthen their state. At the top of the seal one can read the engraved word ‘sky’, at the bottom ― the word ‘earth’. When combined with the words ‘peace’ and ‘tranquility’ engraved on the handle respectively, those reveal some deeper meanings, i. e. ‘peaceful sky’ and ‘tranquil earth’.

Between the 1600s and 1630s, the Khoshuts were the most powerful Oirat tribe. Therefore, when the leaders of the Gelug school made an appeal to Oirats for military assistance in the intersect struggle in Tibet, the chuulgan (Mong. ‘congress’) of Oirat rulers made a decision to send some combined forces to the Land of Snows. After the successful campaign of the Khoshut Güshi Khan in 1637–1642, the Fifth Dalai Lama Lobsang Gyatso, who became the spiritual and secular head of Tibet, granted him and his descendants the titles ‘Ruler of Faith’ (Tib. chogyal) and ‘King of Tibet’ (Tib. gyalpo). Then, Güshi Khan established close relations with the Manchu Qing dynasty, the new rulers of China, and managed the organization of his own state in Qinghai for which he wrote the main legislative act known as Khökhnuuryn chuulgany tsaazyn bichig. However, his sons divided the domain into two parts — Tibetan and Kokonor (Qinhai) ones between which, especially at the time of Gyalpo Lhabzang, Gushi Khan’s grand-grandson, tensions and hostility arose. Lhabzang also entered into a confrontation with the powerful desi (Tib. ‘regent’) Sangye Gyatso which resulted in death of the latter in 1705. The Sixth Dalai Lama Tsangyang Gyatso’s displacement by Lhabzang and the appointment of the new Dalai Lama, Ngawang Yeshe Gyatso, led to an escalation of hostilities with other Oirats which resulted in the capture of Lhasa by the Dzungars in 1717 and the establishment — due to the Qing support — of the Seventh Dalai Lama Kelzang Gyatso’s rule in Tibet. The Qing government had approved a new administrative structure in Tibet — Kashag — the leaders of which Kanchenne and Pholanay had somewhat special relationships with the Khoshuts: the first one was Lhabzang’s son-in-law, and the latter was considered an incarnation of Galdan Tsewang, Güshi Khan’s grandson. Khoshuts were viewed upon by the Fifth Dalai Lama as an important force for the future of the Gelug school, and Manchus also intended to preserve the role of Khoshuts in Tibet, but after the 1723 attempted Kokonor uprising by Luvsandanzan in the region, Beijing completely and dramatically changed its policies: the Khoshuts lost the right to be kings of Tibet, and were incorporated into the Qing Empire.

The system for governing the Kalmyk people was structurally hierarchical and based on an administrative-territorial principle; it also comprised related self-government bodies. In terms of functions, all power structures were to duly execute service records. Within records management documents special attention should be paid to those that facilitated adoption and execution of managerial decisions. The article aims to identify the structure and goals, rules and practices inherent to the records management system adopted by the Administrative Office of the Kalmyk People and Ulus Departments of the Kalmyk Steppe of Astrakhan Governorate in the 19th-early 20th centuries as a state body to govern one of the multiple non-Russian populations of the Russian Empire. This became possible due to the use of both common scientific research methods and some special ones. The reconstructive method was applied to restore certain aspects of records management processes within administrative departments of the Kalmyk Steppe during the period under consideration, while the historical sources classification method divided the service documentation into several groups and, thus, determine common and specific features of the latter. Special attention is paid to the analysis of documentary materials from Kalmykia’s National Archive which concluded that the common feature of all documents dealing with records management practices was co-subordination, i. e. inferior agencies and officials submitted reports, dispatches, petitions and accounts to superior ones, while the latter issued decrees, instructions, circular letters, prescripts and notifications. Another specific feature was the collegiate order of official document creation: during decision making each successive paper repeated the text of a previous one. Moreover, another peculiarity of the records management process in the early-to-mid 19th century had been the use of the Kalmyk language, while since the 1850s there was a trend towards the reduction of documents written in Old Kalmyk (Todo Bichiq).
The article suggests that the use of the Kalmyk language for official records management in the early-to-mid 19th century had been determined by the lack of Russian officials with sufficient Kalmyk language skills, and the situation was evidently aggravated by the lack of Russian-speaking Kalmyks. The supposition is confirmed by the ‘imperial’ Statute of the College for Kalmyks dated 23 April 1847 which was supposed to ‘teach Kalmyks Russian and educate talented translators’.
Finally, the paper concludes that being integral to the government infrastructure, the records management system of the Administrative Office of the Kalmyk People and ulus departments also aimed to incorporate the Kalmyk Steppe into the common Russian political landscape, including by means of intense acculturation practices.

The article considers the course and features of demographic processes inherent to the Don peasantry in the period after the Emancipation Reform of 1861. It also justifies the scientific, historical, and social significance of studies of demographic processes in peasant populations. The paper points out that the choice of the modern political agenda for settlement of the demographic situation should be supported with analytical studies of historical experiences supposed to reveal factors that influence that demographic situation. The historiography of the problem is analyzed, and it is emphasized that there have been no academic works dealing with issues of demography of the Don peasantry in the post-reform period.
The work analyzes the demographic situation in the region in general, provides statistical data on population dynamics, birth, death, and natural population growth rates. The demographic behavior of the Don peasantry is compared with that of other social groups in the region, and with demographic data from all over the country. Peculiar features of demographic processes typical for the Don peasantry, factors to influence the peasant population dynamics have been identified. The paper shows that one of the characteristic features of the investigated demographic processes was intensive external colonization of the Don River Region by agricultural population which basically had its certain impact on the socio-demographic development of the territory. The migrations resulted in the formation of two separate categories of peasant population ― the native peasantry and the non-native one ― with significantly differing situations and features of development. It is noted that the peasant population — as compared to the Cossacks — in common was characterized by higher birth rates though aggravated by heavy mortality due to less favorable living conditions, with a particularly high child mortality rate. Special attention is paid to such aspects as life expectancies, age and gender compositions. The article summarizes the analysis of peculiarities inherent to demographic processes of the Don peasantry in the mid-to-late 19th century, and concludes that despite the fact Don Host Oblast had historically been a region with a predominantly Cossack population the demographic processes were characterized by a rapid increase of the alien (primarily peasant) population. And unlike the case of most other territories, the population of the Don River Region significantly increased as a result of mass migrations of agricultural population thereto rather than as a result of natural population growth. Qualitative indicators of the demographic process were closely related to living conditions of the peasant population.

The article considers the early Soviet medical representations of Buryat everyday life when the newly established Buryat-Mongolian ASSR underwent rapid social transformation from the traditional lifestyle to a modernist socialist one. Health protection for national minorities, such as Buryats, was one of the main objectives of sovietization. At that period they did, indeed, face a serious problem of social diseases. Despite the fact that social diseases had long been a common problem in the Russian Empire, the Bolsheviks particularly highlighted this issue in the Buryat context, blaming tsarist colonial exploitation. In contrast, their efforts in helping Buryats overcome health problems represented concern of the Soviet government about their future and a well-calculated geopolitical strategy. The Bolsheviks endued the Buryats with a mission to propagate proletarian revolution in the ‘Buddhist Orient’ and envisaged Buryat-Mongolia as a positive example of Socialist transformation in the broader Mongolian world. Consequently, social diseases in Buryat-Mongolia had to be eradicated quickly, efficiently, once and for all. Thus, fighting social diseases turned into a campaign involving considerable healthcare workforce of highly skilled physicians from the People’s Commissariat of Health of the RSFSR.
Traditionally, Russian socio-medical discourse on social diseases concentrated on living conditions and lifestyle of unprivileged strata. As a result, abundant written accounts of Soviet physicians on venereal disease and tuberculosis in Buryat-Mongolia rendered traditional Buryat lifestyle as backward and anti-sanitary. Venereologists saw the causes of rampant syphilis in certain habits of Buryats, such as the use of shared kitchenware and utensils, smoking pipes and bedclothing. Moreover, sex life of Buryats was considered unhealthy and conducive to venereal disease. Soviet physicians and health activists unanimously claimed that the traditional Buryat lifestyle, from hospitality traditions to sex habits, was deeply outdated and urgently needed transformation through the adoption of European hygienic skills and medical assistance. Notably, the Soviet physicians did not see much difference between eastern and western Buryats, as well as Buryat-Russian half-bloods when it came to personal and communal hygiene. The descriptions of their traditional lifestyle were equally negative, sometimes close to depreciative ones and, to a modern eye, full of Orientalist clichés.
In this connection, a serious question arises whether Soviet physicians, despite their internationalist stance and, often, Bolshevik background really saw Buryats as uncultured autochthones in need of medical disciplining. Superimposing medical accounts on Soviet political goals in the region and professional background of the physicians, the paper concludes that critical descriptions of the Buryat lifestyle served a purpose of attracting Moscow’s attention to health problems, securing the support in finance and health workforce, and highlighting what was perceived by the doctors as deviations from the hygienic norm. Taking into account the political goals of spreading Communist ideas to Mongolia, this strategy appears beneficial to all stakeholders. The Buryats were the prime beneficiaries since they finally resolved the long-ignored health problems and received assistance in building a Socialist healthcare system.

The article analyzes archival materials to investigate the history of formation and initial activities of the Yandyko-Mochazhnaya party organization. It is found that the Yandyko-Mochazhny RCP(b) Ulus Committee was established at the plenary meeting of the Consolidated Yandyko-Mochazhnaya and Erketenevskaya RCP(b) Ulus Organization. The Yandyko-Mochazhnaya party nucleus had been first organized in December of 1918 by party official Kirillov. In October of 1919, the nucleus was restored by K. R. Herzenberg who acted as authorized representative of the Central Committee of the RCP(b) in Kalmyk Steppe.
Members of the party nucleus in Yandyko-Mochazhny Ulus were primarily fishery workers, such as Khokhol Dzhalykov, Tyurbya Kotvykov, Sangadzhi-Garya Khadylov and many others. According to archival documents, by 18 February 1921 the party register contained 13 party members and 10 candidates.
The paper concludes that the Yandyko-Mochazhny Uezd Party Committee took on the task of promoting political awareness in rural areas and paid special attention to activities of the Soviets, cooperative associations, and peasant mutual aid committees to introduce them into broad layers the peasant population. By September of 1924, the Yandyko-Mochazhnaya party organization numbered 168 communists already. In early 1925, inspection and ‘housecleaning’ of party nuclei — aiming to strengthen positions of the latter and revive their activities – were proclaimed in Kalmyk Autonomous Oblast. Papers compiled to characterize activities of the Yandyko-Mochazhnaya party nucleus mentioned a number of problems, namely: weak involvement of workers and farmhands, insufficient management of Komsomol organizations, weak control of works performed by groups of the poor, insufficient antireligious propaganda among communists, Komsomol members and non-party citizens. The mentioned shortfalls were inherent to other party nuclei as well.

The article primarily aims to explore the occupation and invasive policies of fascist Germany characterized by enslavement of Soviet citizens and their use as cheap labor force (when shipped for forced labor to Germany). In this regard, the goal of the paper is to cover a number of essentially different sources and, thus, investigate the topic of mass forced shipments of Soviet people from temporarily occupied USSR territories ― including that of the Kalmyk ASSR ― and their return to the Motherland in the context of general repatriation of Soviet residents enslaved by fascists during World War II. The methodological framework is represented by a cognition method based on the principles of historicism, objectiveness, and complete approach. Methods of historiographic and comparative analyses were applied for the investigation and use of historical sources.
The work also provides a comparative analysis of sources from neighboring regions (krais and oblasts) which shows some common tragic consequences of fascist barbarian policies of depopulating USSR territories by forcing Soviet citizens to work in hellish conditions.
A considerable number of people — including from little Kalmykia ― were shipped by fascists for forced labor in Germany, and the harsh working conditions in factories, mines, and farming fields claimed lives of a third of those prisoners. In the aftermath of fascist Germany’s defeat the surviving citizens of the USSR were brought back to their homelands. Still, for many years to come those were referred to as deplorables of Soviet society because of having been kept prisoners in the enemy territory. Only in the 1990s they were rehabilitated and their civil rights reinstated in Russia.

Nowadays the Buryat people are a community characterized by multiple levels of ethno-social identity ― from the level of individual clans and tribal associations to that of the Buryat people as a unity with its proximity to the Mongolic world. The relevance of belonging to a clan, tribe, and some administrative-territorial formation or political community ― including interaction of different Buryat ethno-territorial groups ― has been topical enough. The formation of the bulk of these representations is associated with certain stages in the development of Buryat society. Belonging to a clan / tribe had constituted the basis of self-identification for Buryat ethnic formations in the pre-Russian period. The annexation of their ancestral lands to the Russian Empire established a new vector for the development of ethnic processes in accordance with the territorial principle prescribed by the structure of the Russian state. The isolated conditions of life of the Buryat groups were aggravated by the boundaries of Buryat self-government districts — the Steppe Duma. Other transformations in the administrative structure of Siberia, in particular, the separation of Transbaikalia from Irkutsk Governorate in 1851, resulted in subsequent ethnic development of the Buryats within two large communities ― ‘Irkutsk Buryats’ and ‘Transbaikal Buryats’. This administratively and territorially determined separation was subsequently intensified by the priority influence of shamanism and Orthodoxy in Irkutsk Governorate ― and that of Buddhism in Transbaikalia. Thus, the religious factor became a key one for the differentiation between the ‘western’ and ‘eastern’ groups of Buryats.
Representations that form images of ‘strangers’ and ‘kinsmen’ are especially required in situations of close communication, e. g., when it comes to establish some conjugal unions. Drawing of verbal ‘portraits’ to characterize foreigners is a special genre of Buryat folklore. Special songs were traditionally performed at weddings. In accordance with the traditional worldview, such images clearly exaggerated both virtues of the clan (tribe) the singer belongs to ― and the otherness and shortcomings of the other clan (tribe). The traditional social hierarchy of Buryats was characterized by the absence of such aspects in inter-clan / inter-tribal relations: differences in social status existed only within clan structures.
Such detailed ‘portraits of foreigners’ are currently distributed poorly enough in Buryat society, once vivid epithets and characteristics have been forgotten. However, the process of forming new ‘portraits’ still continues up to the present days. Clan and tribal identity used to be the main and most informative layer of individual and group identity. These have not lost their significance for Buryats, especially in rural areas. Other levels of ethnosocial identity typical for the 19th century have disappeared. Those were replaced by ones based on the administrative and territorial structure of federal subjects of the RSFSR and the Russian Federation (Irkutsk Oblast, Republic of Buryatia, Zabaikalsky Krai): the ‘Bokhanskie’, ‘Alarskie’, ‘Zakamenskie’, ‘Aginskie’ and others. So, the differentiation of Buryats not only persists but also develops new meanings of ‘westernness’ and ‘easternness’. Once borrowed from the religious sphere such differences get transformed into attributed traits of character and even claim to explain vocational abilities and inclinations.

The paper attempts to estimate the frequency of use of Mongolian analytical word forms. A wide approach to analytical structures represented in the so called grammaticalization (grammatization) theory is considered to be most heuristically efficient; but the approach should be supplemented with quantitative methods developed in corpus linguistics. The estimation used materials of the General Corpus of Mongolian (Rus. GKMYa-1a) and served the basis for the investigation of most frequently used analytical word forms. The latter are organized in direct alphabetical order (by structural analytical modules), within the framework synthetical grammatemes (as constituent parts of analytical grammatemes) are represented in inverse order, and inside that order — in the descending order of corresponding frequencies. The article mentions the most frequently used analytical word forms the absolute frequency of which exceeds 10 entries, and the relative one — 9 ipm. Such word forms of GKMYa-1a number 1 818.
One of the major difficulties faced by the researcher was that the very list of properties inherent to analytical forms as such is not clear enough. Evidently, the multitude is of diffusive nature, i.e. its boundaries are vague. Still, those can be investigated with some quite precise methods, given that the methods essentially correlate with their real object, i.e. are basically quantitative. For that purpose specific formal properties of analytical forms should be identified at the initial stage of the study.
The mentioned so-called ‘wide approach’ to analytical forms has been developed in works by V. Vinogradov, S. Katsnelson, V. Zhirmunsky, V. Gak, Yu. Maslov and others. But when it comes identification of analytical word forms the authors ignore quantitative (statistical) methods and examine only semantic and syntactical specifics of analytical structures constituted by such analytical forms; thus, it is necessary to clarify the applicability of the probabilistic-distributive approach to analytical forms identification procedures as such.
The paper aims to provide a primary quantitative systematization of Mongolian language materials resulting from a case study of the General Corpus of Mongolian developed by the author and presented in a number of publications.
Materials shall be more descriptive if presented in a dictionary form.

The article aims to identify some phonostructural and lexical-semantic features of the Yakut-Mongolian lexical parallels denoting horse coat colors. It is known that the horse is a sacred animal in the Yakut and Mongolian cultures and, therefore, horse breeding terminology is elaborate and rich enough in both the languages. The study of words denoting horse coat colors, thus, would facilitate revealing some questions of the historical development of the Yakut language. In furtherance of this goal, the paper applies several research methods of, the main ones being those involving component and distributive analysis. The component analysis was used to reveal lexical-semantic features of such parallels. The lexemes were divided into three groups, namely: a) those characterized by stability of the lexical meaning of the word; b) those with a partial coincidence of the lexical meaning of the word; c) those featured by a noticeable change in the lexical meaning of the word. The distributive analysis showed the phonostructural features of adjectives denoting horse coat colors, and also revealed ethnocultural differences and similarities. As a result of the study, 13 Yakut-Mongolian parallels have been discovered. As is known, there are about 200 horse coat colors, and to distinguish between them different nations use their complex adjectives. Therefore, the revealed Yakut-Mongolian parallels are divided into 2 categories: one-component (9) and two-component (4). The analysis of the structural type of one-component lexical parallels concluded that 4 out of 9 parallels were subjected to structural changes. Of the 5 parallels with absolute structural coincidences there are three Yakut stems — saalir, buulur, kyreng — that are most probably late borrowings from the Mongolian language. This assumption is based on the criterion developed by professor V. I. Rassadin. The component analysis has shown that preservation of the stability of lexical meanings is noted in 31 % (4) of the parallels, some slight lexical changes occurred in 39 % (5), and notable lexical changes — in 31 % (4). The investigation of lexical meanings and phonetic structures of the borrowed stems in the Yakut language leads to a consistent conclusion that the Mongolian tribes from which the Yakuts had borrowed a large number of horse and cattle breeding, haymaking terms — had mastered livestock breeding activities much earlier than the Yakut people.

The article studies some specific features of Russian to Chinese translations of word combinations — both fixed and free phrases — containing the lexeme ‘God’ within literary text. The study proves topical enough due to increased Chinese-Russian cultural contacts which requires that new adequate language units be discovered to translate the fundamental concepts (including that of ‘God’) constituting the worldviews of the nations. The Russian and Chinese religious and linguistics world-images are classified as ‘divine (deific)’ and ‘heavenly’ respectively which is mirrored in phraseological units: the words ‘God’ and ‘Heaven’ are widely used in Russian and Chinese standard collocations.
The paper examines A. S. Pushkin’s novel The Captains Daughter along with its seven Chinese translations (editions issued between 1956 and 2013), paying special attention to translation variants of word combinations containing the word/concept ‘God’. Due consideration is also given to lexical semantics and syntactical functions of the analyzed phrases. The study primarily aims to discover linguocultural and contextual consistent translation patterns, and reveal some individual preferences of the translators. It also analyzes a number of Russian dictionaries and accordingly introduces a typology of communicative situations to use collocations containing the word ‘God’.
The study materials are constituted by 33 constructions to be met in the original text from 1 to 17 times (with a total of 84 patterns). The paper asserts translation variants depend upon specific communicative situations that can be differently identified by ethnic Russians and Chinese, and determines the two situations: a) similar translation variants to be discovered in virtually all editions, b) more frequent (twice as many) differing translation patterns, including individual ones.
The author’s analysis reveals two translation strategies. First, commitment to specific linguoculture of the original text when the image of God is basically viewed as that of the Heavenly Emperor 上帝. The strategy is represented in 50,6 % to 82,3 % (depending upon individual preferences) of the analyzed translation patterns which makes it possible to classify such ‘God’-stemmed phraseological units as ‘culturonims’. Secondly, fixation on the national linguoculture when preference is given to the image of Heaven 天. This variant proved less widespread, and has been discovered only in 6,9 % to 34,5 % lexical units.
The analysis of lexical co-occurrence within the source Russian-language constructions and their translations concluded that the image of God in Russian discourse is not necessarily perceived as such 上帝(бог) in Chinese-language texts. In Chinese culture, people are inclined to thank Heaven 天 rather than God 上帝. And it is Heaven 天 who fundamentally knows it all and plays somewhat objective — though passive — role within the structure of the universe.
In Chinese linguoculture, the active role — predetermined by a contact with the individual — is attributed to God who sees something (including the individual’s actions) and gives (or gives not) this or that to a person who, in turn, believes in the former and, thus, can turn to the one with prayers and requests: human well-being depends upon God that functionally acts as the Heavenly Emperor to make some crucial decisions in human life. But in daily situations, e. g., when greeting or treating someone, one should not turn to Supreme Forces (neither to 上帝, nor to 天), and it is improper to attest them to assert one’s honesty.

Contemporary linguists pay great attention to the issue of lexical co-occurrence of words. Co-occurrence of Kalmyk adjectives remains largely understudied, and there have been only some few articles dealing with syntagmatics of adjectives denoting motion, size, quantity and geometric form. With evidence from texts of the Kalmyk heroic epic of Jangar and materials of the Kalmyk National Corpus (Rus. НККЯ, http://kalmcorpora.ru), the paper aims to investigate the peculiarities of lexical co-occurrence inherent to the adjective dogšin which denotes negative personal qualities.
The study has identified and examined lexical combinations of the mentioned (most widespread) adjective dogšin which signifies intense and somewhat negative traits of character. The adjective is characterized by extensive lexical co-occurrence with different nouns. E.g., dogšin as a means to describe personal qualities may be used to designate some external manifestations (a glance, look) ― dogšin khӓlӓts ‘furious look / glance’. It also co-occurs with nouns denoting parts of human body: dogšin nüdn ‘fierce eyes’, dogšin chirӓ ‘fierce face’. Co-occurrence with the somatism ‘heart’ is not that productive ― dogšin zürkn ‘hard heart’. But it often combines with the nouns ‘speech, voice, word’: dogšin dun ‘ferocious voice’, dogšin ӓ ‘intense sound’, dogšin üg ‘hard word’.
The lexeme dogšin has both a direct meaning (‘man of physical vigor, cruelty and ferocity’) and an indirect one (‘super-tough, strong, he who smites others dead’). Since the Jangar is a heroic text describing warriors and their deeds of valor, strength, and bravery, dogšin here often co-occurs with names of different bladed weapons. Another indirect meaning of dogšin is ‘exceptionally strong / severe’: dogšin kün ‘cruel man’ ― dogšin nooldan ‘vicious fight’ ― dogšin sal’kn ‘severe frost’.
The paper concludes that the main nominative meanings of the adjective dogšin are as follows:
1. ‘cruel’ — exceptionally severe, merciless, ruthless, non-compassionate.
2. ‘fierce, strong, restless’ (about animals and birds).
3. ‘rampant, smashing, relentless’ (about bladed weapons of warriors).
4. ‘severe, fierce, furious, bitterly intense’ (about frost, wind).
5. ‘expressing atrocity’ (about appearances, look, face).
6. ‘indomitable, furious’ (about water reservoirs).
7. ‘strict, fierce’ (epithets of warriors).

The article examines one of the most popular aspiration prayers of Tibetan Buddhism — Ārya Bhadracarya Praṇidhāna Rāja (shortly referred to as Bhadracarya), known in the Tibetan tradition as Zangcho monlam (Tib. Bzang spyod smon lam). It is considered both in the context of grand sutras — the Avataṃsaka Sūtra and Gaṇḍavyūha Sutra — as a part of which it once entered the canonical collections of Kangyur and Tengyur, and as an independent text. Its popularity and wide dispersion in the written culture since the very beginnings of the Buddhist era in Tibet (Tib. snga dar) are evidenced by numerous written versions, as well as some epigraphic sources, e. g., an inscription in the Brag Yerpa monastic complex dated to the 9th century AD. Moreover, the Dunhuang manuscripts dated to the same period comprise over forty texts of this monument represented by Tibetan and Chinese translations along with some related narratives. One such narrative, manuscript PT 149, most likely contains attempts by Tibetan translators to identify the transmission line of Bhadracarya, which definitely adds to its significance in the tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. The text dealt with the cult of the Pure Land of Buddha Amitabha — Sukhavati — in China and, probably, in Tibet, and, as researchers S. van Schaik and L. Doney suggested, was had been recited for the long life of King Trisong Detsen. Also, in the Tibetan written tradition Bhadracarya was often quoted by Buddhist teachers as an example of the sevenfold ritual which is very important to Vajrayana practices.
The article also deals with biographies of the translators mentioned in the colophons of Tibetan translations of Bhadracarya — Kawa Peltseg (Tib. Ska ba dpal rtsegs), Cogro Lui Gyaltsen (Tib. Cog ro klu’i rgyal mtshan) and Ma Ratna Yatra (тиб. Rma rad na ya kra) whose translation is contained by the Dunhuang sources; and Yeshe De (Tib. Ye shes sde), Indian pandits Jinamitra (Tib. Dzi na mitra) and Surendrabodhi (Tib. Su rendra bo dhi), and Vairocana (Tib. Bai ro tsā na) whose translation was included in the Kangyur and Tengyur. Bhadracarya is still very popular in contemporary Tibetan Buddhism, and the fact is emphasized by many scholars.

Preservation and development of the Tatar language is a relevant objective of the Republic of Tatarstan. Future of any language largely depends upon strategies to be selected by younger generations: whether the language shall be spoken in the family, studied at education establishments and used in different spheres of life. The latest surveys show that the use of the Tatar language within the urban Tatar youth communities is limited to somewhat household and family spheres, while Russian serves as the main communicative means for urban residents. In rural areas, the Tatar language still remains the main language of everyday communication. But the urbanization rates and limited language use areas (rural districts only) are insufficient conditions for further preservation and development of the language in its entirety.
Despite attending Tatar language learning programs in preschool facilities and taking complete school courses of the Tatar language and literature, residents of the republic of non-Tatar descent as well as Russian-speaking Tatars basically have low language competence and do not speak the language in everyday life. Moreover, all topical events in the spheres of culture, IT, and business are organized with the use of Russian, the Tatar language thus progressively becoming a language of household and family communication.
The article considers judgments made by the younger generation of Tatarstan, and some projects they support and implement to preserve and develop the language. The study analyzes the youth projects for further development of the Tatar language, namely: 1) projects aimed to create and elaborate Tatar language learning/teaching methods and practices, 2) projects to represent Tatarstan as a bilingual society, 3) projects aimed to widen the sphere of use of Tatar, including projects for children.

The article is topical enough since for further development of the agricultural sector in the republic it is urgent to comprehensively analyze some social consequences of the agrarian reforms and adaptational patterns of the population. Adaptation here shall be understood to mean processes individuals and social groups experience to accommodate themselves to varied environment, some permanent changes caused by market and democratic reforms. And those are labor related economic factors that virtually play first fiddle. Nowadays rural settlements of the republic basically experience financial hardships and can be characterized by poor economic potential which results in the lack of investment resources required for production development and creation of jobs. Consequently, labor migration has increased in the region, in search of job opportunities rural residents leave their villages, the republic. Almost half of the informants (48 %) have travelled away (or intended to) to start a business of their own or purchase a dwelling in the republic. For the purposes of the study we shall designate this as a positive indicator of social adaptation. Since the informants have certain life plans, they think over opportunities for success and make steps on the basis of available material and social capital.
The paper uses the results of 2016/2017 opinion surveys conducted by employees of the Department in 2016 and 2017 in rural areas of the region. It analyzes assessments of the current economic conditions, topical social problems and social well-being given by rural residents.
The increased state support of rural manufacturers and enhanced opportunities for obtaining credit resources gradually improved conditions for the national agri-food sector. So, villagers now could develop household plots and farming enterprises. Rural dwellers gradually adapt to market conditions.
The obtained results show that over half of the informants (51,9 %) characterize the economic situation in the republic as ‘positive’, while some individuals would describe it as ‘negative’ (44 %). And those are optimists who create the social mental determination to overcome difficulties and sustain political stability.
Most informants (84 %) assessed their personal economic conditions as poor or hardcore poor. This signifies that a large part of the rural population never adapted to the market society. Those people are still dependent upon wages and transfer payments of the government that help disadvantaged groups survive the tough time of crisis.
There still remain quite a number of unsettled problems related to labor market, low wages, absence of village-forming enterprises, investment resources, and poor social infrastructure required for the development of rural territories and adaptation of villagers to market conditions.

Book review: The Yellow Chronicle (Šir-a tuγuǰi). A. D. Tsendina (transl., translit., introd. and comment.). Moscow: Nauka – Vost. Lit., 2017. 406 p. (Written monuments of the Orient. CXLVII. A. B. Kudelin et al. (eds.).) – ISBN 978-5-02-039768-2. (In Rus.).