The next volume of the oldest academic yearbook presented to the reader presents works on various problems of the history and culture of Byzantium and neighboring countries. The volume opens with an article by R.M. Shukurov, which proposes an attempt at a general characterization of Byzantine culture in its attitude to multilingualism and willingness to master foreign languages. A new article by Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences S.P. Karpov, written on the material of Italian archives, is devoted to the slave trade in the Venetian Tanya.