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Through their article, the author considers the features of the organizational and staff structure and combat training of 12 divisions of people's militia of Moscow during the summer and autumn of 1941. The research is based on archival sources, most of them are introduced into scientific use for the first time: documents of management and record keeping of the Moscow Military District and the Reserve Front, accounting and statistical materials of the highest military authorities, and an array of documents of the Commission on the History of the Great Patriotic War from the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. The documents show that shortcomings revealed already during the first field exercises, such as the inadequacy of some personnel for the requirements of combat service, low qualifications of the command staff, diversity of small arms and artillery weapons, poor rear service of divisions, etc., were in fact a common occurrence. These issues required a significant reorganization of the divisions of people's militia. Eventually, all the divisions of people's militia were reorganized into regular infantry divisions of the Red Army and entered battle in this status in early October 1941. The author also follows the process and results of this reorganization.

In this article, the author examines little-studied and controversial aspects of the issue of defectors from among soldiers of the German army and its allies on the Eastern Front during the Great Patriotic War. Special attention is given to the methodology and source study of the problem under consideration as well as to the analysis of the ideological and psychological prerequisites for the phenomenon of defecting to the enemy. The author comes to the conclusion that a comprehensive study of the problem of defectors opens up new perspectives for studying the history of military captivity during the Great Patriotic War.

Based on the example of the history of the 1st Czechoslovak Army Corps and the 1st Yugoslav Infantry Brigade created on the territory of the USSR during the Great Patriotic War, there are revealed the peculiarities of the effectiveness of “foreign” military units on the territory of a third country. To date, these issues have not been sufficiently studied in historical science. The source base used in the research includes both published and unpublished documents from the funds of the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History, the Russian State Military Archive and Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation. It is shown that despite similar conditions of the formation and assistance from the USSR, the destinies of the Czechoslovak army corps and the Yugoslav brigade were different. The former became a symbol of Czechoslovakia’s struggle against Nazism and the basis of the new Czechoslovak army, whereas the Yugoslav brigade underwent “reformatting”, “dissolved” in the People’s Liberation Army of Yugoslavia; it did not become the basis of the new Yugoslav army and then practically passed into oblivion. The author concludes that with regard to the effectiveness of the Czechoslovak army corps and the Yugoslav brigade, the decisive role was played by the relationship of their command with the main political participant in the process of creating these military units, on whose will both the achievement of the goals set and their very existence depended; the other factors were indirect.

The article is devoted to the study of the process of preparation of the Tehran conference of leaders of the USSR, USA and Great Britain, held in the Iranian capital from November 28 to December 1, 1943. Based on the analysis of the trilateral correspondence of I.V. Stalin, F.D. Roosevelt and W. Churchill, the authors determine the objectives of the meeting and indicate the positions of the parties regarding the time and place of its holding. It is proved that each of the leaders wanted to organize a conference on the territory under their control, but the desire to resolve controversial issues prevailed over political ambitions, which was a decisive factor in rallying the allies of World War II to fight the aggressors. The novelty of the study is due to the lack of study in the domestic historiography of the organizational aspect of the Tehran conference, which in turn is extremely important for an objective understanding of how the conditions favorable for the adoption of crucial military and political decisions of the time and the development of initial projects of the post-war world order were achieved.