Vilna governors (1864-1917): construction of historical myths and reality

The article discusses the mythologization in the Soviet historiography of the image of the pre-revolutionary governor. It is shown that for an objective assessment of this category of officials, it is necessary to reveal their real socio-cultural appearance. A mechanism for such an analysis is proposed using the example of Vilna governors (1864-1917) for key positions (educational level, origin, religion, age, marital status, career).В статье рассматривается мифологизация в советской историографии образа дореволюционного губернатора. Показано, что для объективной оценки этой категории чиновников необходимо раскрыть их реальный социокультурный облик. Предлагается механизм подобного анализа на примере виленских губернаторов (1864-1917 гг.) по ключевым позициям (образовательный уровень, происхождение, вероисповедание, возраст, семейное положение, карьера)

On Two Models of the Light Pulse Delay in a Saturable Absorber

A comparative analysis of two approaches to description of the light modulation pulse delay in a saturable absorber is presented. According to the simplest model, the delay of the optical pulse is a result of distortion of its shape due to absorption self-modulation in the nonlinear medium. The second model of the effect, proposed at the beginning of our century, connects the pulse delay with the so-called "slow light" resulting from the group velocity reduction under conditions of the coherent population oscillations. It is shown that all the known experimental data on the light pulse delay in saturable absorbers can be comprehensively described in the framework of the simplest model of saturable absorber and do not require invoking the effect of coherent population oscillations with spectral hole-burning and anomalous modifications of the light group velocity. It is concluded that the effect of group velocity reduction under conditions of coherent population oscillations has not received so far any experimental confirmation, and the assertions about real observation of the "slow light" based on this mechanism are groundless.Comment: Regretfully, the journal version of the paper (in Optics and Spectroscopy) appeared to be strongly corrupted due to ignorant editing. In particular, "coherent population oscillations" (CPO) was replaced by "population coherent oscillations" (PCO), "bleaching" - by "clearing", and "bleachable absorber " - by "clearable absorber". Here we present original version of the pape