The collection contains articles by domestic and foreign historians, cultural scientists, literary scholars and art historians on the problems of socio-political and cultural development of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Overcoming the one-sided view of the Habsburg state as a "prison of peoples," the authors show how, as a result of centuries of living together in a single multi-ethnic state, the peoples of the Danube monarchy not only gained bitter experience of interethnic strife, but also developed mechanisms for peaceful coexistence of various ethnic groups, enriched their national culture with the best achievements of cultures of other peoples.