This article presents the results of the experimental studies under repeated sign-variable loadings of steel tubular specimens under stretching-compression and torsion. The experiments were carried out using an automated testing machine for complex loading SN-EVM named after A.A. Ilyushin in the vector space of deformations (rigid loading). The experimental data allowed to evaluate the Bauschinger effect and the magnitude of secondary yield limits at various allowances for residual deformation. The article provides the influence of the allowance for residual deformation on the radius and position of the center of the spherical yield surface in the stress space, used in plastic flow theories. With an increase of the allowance for residual deformation, both the parameter that characterizes the Bauschinger effect and the radius of the yield surface increase, while the displacement of its center decreases. When the length of the arc of plastic deformation increases, the parameter that characterizes the Bauschinger effect decreases and tends to a stationary value. It is established that the radius of the spherical yield surface makes a temporary decrease and then increases as the length of the arc of plastic deformation grows. Some mathematical models of the plastic flow theory relate this decrease in the radius of the yield surface not to a change in the material's internal structure at the mesolevel and the orientation of microstresses, but to the elastic softening of an initially isotropic body, considering this strain rate to be negative, by mistake. For the realized types of the experimental paths of the repeated loadingunloading with breaks by 180 degrees, the verification of the postulate of isotropy by A.A. Ilyushin shows that it is carried out quite well, when it comes to its scalar and vector properties.