The XXth century has provided numerous examples of different forms of religious extremism, in particular the Orthodox Christian extremism. XXIth century demonstrates an explosion of neo-pagan and Orthodox extremist views in Russia grounded on syncretic theory of «Russian World».

The defeat of russia on the battlefield must be accompanied by the delegitimization of the “russian world”, that is, the loss of attractiveness for the russians themselves of the concept of the supremacy of everything Russian over everything non-russian. Cultivating russia’s greatness as a key task of “russian world” is one of the main reasons for the current Russian armed aggression against Ukraine, but also for Russia’s aggressive foreign policy in the world in general. The purpose of this article is (...) to clarify the main features of the delegitimization of the “russian world” in the regime of social education. To do this, the definition of “russian world” as a special symbolic system, which the modern russian political regime is trying to adjust from the standpoint of aggressive russian geopolitical subjectivity, has been previously clarified. This leads to the performative selfdenial of the “russian world”, which can be traced at the level of the accumulation of symbolic capital, the establishment of political elites (the authorities and the opposition), as well as at the level of the development of civil society. Social learning involves the search at the level of civil society for new forms of communicative self-organization at various levels of collective formation. A way out for such performative self-denial is possible only through the ways of social learning, the search for a change in one’s own identity, and not through attempts at autistic self-affirmation characteristic of the modern russian political regime, as well as the destruction of all political and cultural alternatives to the stateapproved canon. Social education is a way of soft and non-violent delegitimization of the “russian world”, in contrast to rebellion and revolutions, which in russia traditionally only lead to the emergence of even more brutal forms of state dictatorship. The monologic nature of the russian political space provokes the reation of new forms of social consensus outside the russian political system – in the sphere of culture, counterculture, and subcultures. (shrink)

The task of this article is to clarify the appropriateness and adequacy of peace-making (confessional) rhetoric in the situation of the war of aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, in particular, the meaningful correspondence of the concept of «peace» in its application or reading by the bearers of different worldview paradigms. The «russkii mir» cannot be translated either as «Russian peace» or as «Russian world». This is because the scope and content of these concepts are different. Rus (Kyiv`s Rus) (...) — a thousand-year-old princely state with its center in Kyiv, where the ancestors of modern Ukrainians lived, baptized by Prince Volodymyr in 988. Rus is not Russia. But Muscovy adopted the name Russia to derive its historiography from Rus. «Russkii mir» actually refutes the axiological principles laid down by ancient Rus’s civilization (freedom, dignity, partnership, co-creation, mutual responsibility). «Russkii mir» destroys peace in global or any local images, trying to grab the territory it decided to own. «Russkii mir» encroaches on world domination and therefore tries to impose its rules of the game on the world, which would reshape the world structure according to the wishes of the Russian dictators. For this, «russkii mir» uses any means and institutions as a tool: the army, weapons of mass destruction, atrocities, terror, lies, propaganda, the church and peace-making rhetoric. The goal is not to restore peace, but to establish the world domination of the Russian Empire in any of its variants (Muscovy, Russian Empire, Soviet Union, Russian Federation or Orthodox Civilization). Russian Orthodox Church plays a leading role in this — it uses religious rhetoric to formu- late a worldview model of the «russkii mir», consolidates the Russian population for a war of aggression, and justifies the atrocities of the Russian military with the sacred mission of restoring the Holy Rus’. Russian Orthodox Church justifies the «civilizing mission» of the Russian troops, actually calls to protect «our Common Russian Fatherland» by killing Ukrainians on the territo- ry of Ukraine. False messianism, manichaeism, paternalism, hatred of the civilized world that lives by democratic standards and respects the dignity and freedom of the individual, Russian arrogance, conceit, supremacy and egomania — this is what Russian Orthodoxy promotes with its religious rhetoric. Therefore, if we hear calls for «peace» from the bearer of the «russkii mir»’s worldview, it actually means a demand to come to terms with all their whims, to give up one’s own identity, one’s own world, one’s own life, if they do not fit into the concept of «russkii mir». (shrink)

The XXth century has provided numerous examples of different forms of religious extremism, in particular the Orthodox Christian extremism. XXIth century demonstrates an explosion of neo-pagan and Orthodox extremist views in Russia grounded on syncretic theory of «Russian World».

What is happening now in Ukraine is, in essence, the further implementation of the Stalinist plan to deprive Ukrainians of their historical memory, the continuation of the "Stalinist-Bolshevik" ethnocide. Not surprisingly, monuments began to appear in us as "the leader of the peoples", and the holiday of the Victory Day became a public holiday "the triumph of Stalin's ideas" and the Communist Party ideology "united and indivisible". Instead, dates such as the Day of Unity of Ukraine, the Day of Remembrance (...) of the Victims of Holodomor and political repressions are, to put it mildly, unpopular to the authorities. (shrink)

In 1991, new political discourses emerged in the Soviet republics that had to reinvent themselves as independent states, redefining their national identity on several dimensions. This process matured ambiguous attitudes toward the former imperial center and different visions over the scopes, perspectives, and claims of a ‘Russian World’ in the former Soviet space, where Moscow still asserted an exclusive political and cultural sphere of influence. In this article, we will review the cases of Armenia and Uzbekistan with peculiar national projects (...) and relationships with Moscow, reviewing their inclusion within the USSR, their path to independence, their post-Soviet relations with Moscow, and the changes during the turning points of 2014 with the annexation of Crimea and after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. (shrink)

Despite the fact that there is now a general public agreement in Ukraine regarding the need to oppose the “russian world”, there are quite diverse and sometimes contradictory proposals among Ukrainian citizens regarding the ways to implement such an opposition. In state policy, the main line of implementing such countermeasures is gradually beginning to emerge, however, it is necessary to logically and organizationally substantiate the main stages of its implementation. The essence of opposition to the “russian world” lies in the (...) consistent implementation of decolonization in Ukraine, since it was russia that for centuries carried out the largest and for a long time quite successful project of colonization of Ukraine. The purpose of the article is to clarify the post-colonial situation for Ukraine, and, accordingly, the tasks of decolonization for it as a key direction of counteraction to the “russian world” in Ukraine. The degree of colonization of Ukraine is analyzed on the basis of a comparative analysis with other known histories of colonization in the world. Thanks to this, the degree of applicability of postcolonial studies and the theory of decolonization to modern Ukraine has been clarified. Ukraine repeats many classic features of a post-colonial country, but has every chance to make a significant new contribution to the theory of decolonization – thanks to its success in confronting the russian empire, which is now the russian federation, in its expansionist militarist foreign policy. Decolonization in Ukraine is carried out in three stages, during each of which the necessary institutional changes are successively implemented, each of which makes it impossible to return to the previous stage. Thus, the mirror opposition to russian colonization, the adoption of the best world experience of decolonization, and finally, the development of a self-sufficient Ukrainian world are three stages of successful decolonization in Ukraine, which can become a model for other former colonies. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to reconstruct the theoretical background and practical meaning of the so called war writings which emerged within the phenomenological movement during the First World War. The author exemplifies it by researching the works of two German representatives of this movement, Max Scheler and Kurt Stavenhagen. He focuses on their application of the phenomenological method to the analysis of Russian national identity, and historical as well as cultural foundations of Russian state. The paper’s main thesis (...) is that the politicization and militarization of phenomenology consisted in both “personalization” and “sociologization” of the phenomenological approach to the problem of the state. While interpreting Scheler’s personalism as an exemplification of the approach to the state as a problem of social ontology, the author reconstructs the theoretical conditions of analyzing the Russian imperial state in terms of the “world.” The focus of the paper is particularly on the phenomenology of, as Scheler put it, Russian collective personality and Russian national consciousness or “soul” as well as on the question of legitimacy of Ukrainian resistance against Russian imperialism. (shrink)

The paper deals withy the analysis and highlighting the concepts of First and third Rome under the context of the «Russian world» ideology and modern Vatican verification. The imperian segment of First and third Rome, interconnection between the ideologeme «Moscow – the Third Rome» and geopolitical in the essence concept of Kyryll patriarch. The process of historial fails of «Moscow the Third Rome» created for all the Christian world. It has been pinted out that the «Russian world» abd the ROC (...) were designated only for Eastern Slavonic countries of Europe. (shrink)

The paper deals withy the analysis and highlighting the concepts of First and third Rome under the context of the «Russian world» ideology and modern Vatican verification. The imperian segment of First and third Rome, interconnection between the ideologeme «Moscow – the Third Rome» and geopolitical in the essence concept of Kyryll patriarch. The process of historial fails of «Moscow the Third Rome» created for all the Christian world. It has been pinted out that the «Russian world» abd the ROC (...) were designated only for Eastern Slavonic countries of Europe. (shrink)

ABSTRACT We are interested in the case of Friedrich Christoph Mayer, who in the 1720s, while at the Imperial Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, developed a system of the aurora borealis, as well as a mathematical method for calculating the height of the aurora from the geometrical characteristics of the auroral arc. Mayer, encountering a major contradiction in his system which placed the aurora at the height of the clouds, whereas his mathematical method led to an altitude a hundred (...) times higher, never applied his method to concrete cases to deduce the height of the aurora, and quickly lost interest in their detailed description, a task that was nevertheless assigned to him at the St. Petersburg Observatory. Jean-Jacques Dortous de Mairan suggests that Mayer’s abandonment was due to his lack of confidence in observations. We set Mayer’s case against that of Leonhard Euler who, working with Mayer and being aware of the great height of the aurora, later developed a system of the aurora borealis that was compatible with the observational fact. We put forward possible hypotheses to explain Mayer’s disinterest in observing the aurora and in the mathematical method he himself had developed. (shrink)

In Russia a monotheism - Orthodox Christianity - and atheism in its Marxist version have succeeded each other as state systems of rites and representations. Rather than contrasting one with the other, term with term, this paper proposes to bring in a third term: the local religious systems of Russia’s animist minorities. We examine how Christianity and atheism tried one after the other to get established there and also consider the reactions they encountered. The analysis as planned is undertaken on (...) two levels: on an overall level we look at the strategies and aims of the state and its representatives, and on the local level - illustrated by the particular example of the Nenets - concrete and always specific mechanisms are presented, which application of general policy has implemented on the ground. (shrink)

This essay uses the case of Russian, in its relation to other languages, to look at the ways in which the architects of internationalism in the aftermath of World War II established a new hegemony of world languages, responding to the challenge posed by the rise of Russian as a scientific and political language. What was initially a campaign by the Soviet delegation at UNESCO for one cause—recognition of the status of the Russian language within the organization—was turned by other (...) delegations into a campaign for a different cause—multilingualism. Rather than establishing Russian on a par with English and French, the Soviet intervention helped to create a new triumvirate of world languages—Russian, Spanish, and Arabic—as these were recognized by international organizations such as the United Nations and UNESCO. The case of the rise of Russian as a language of science and politics helps to underscore the complexities and the ambiguities involved in the negotiation of the language regime, in which political arguments were translated into technological choices, the diplomats’ problems were cast as a problem of communication, and the language in which political arguments were made oftentimes mattered as much as the arguments themselves. (shrink)

This article considers the evolution of the Russian University system during the First World War. Most of the imperial period, until the end of 1916, thanks to the liberal policy of the Minister of People’s Education, Pavel Nikolayevič Ignat’ev, a reformist course was implemented (drafting of a new statute, increasing the autonomy of universities). Particularly important and promising was the expansion of universities’ network and opening of new universities in Rostov-on-Don, Perm, as well as the expansion of Saratov and Tomsk (...) universities. In 1917 Ministers of Education of the Provisional Government (A. Manuilov, S. Oldenburg, S. Salazkin) also followed the Ignat’ev’s liberal course received support with the bottom-up initiatives (introduction of regular institution of associate professors, attracting of younger lecturers to the university management). Paradoxically, for the university system the result of crisis which lasted through the war period and the beginning of the revolution marked the democratization of management and the expansion of the students’ enrollment and the number of universities. (shrink)

Book review: Teresa Obolevitch, Faith and Science in Russian Religious Thought, Oxford University Press, Oxford-New York 2019, pp.240.

This paper sketches the ambitious outlines of an assessment of the place of Russian philosophy in philosophical history ‘at large’, i.e. on a global and world-historical scale. At the same time, it indicates, rather modestly, a number of elements and aspects of such a project. A retrospective reflection and reconstruction is not only a recurrent phenomenon in philosophical culture (which, the author assumes, has become global), it also is, by virtue of its being a philosophical reflection, one among many possible (...) perspectives. The central claim of the paper is that the key to an assessment of the world-historical place of Russian philosophy is to be found in the Soviet period, not only because it was, through its isolation policy and its subordination of philosophy to political and ideological goals, a determining factor for a large part of the 20th century, but also, and more importantly, because it has systematically distorted the perception of Russia’s philosophical history, including of the Soviet episode itself. The very undoing of these distortions, however, risks becoming a distortion because of, on the one hand, a demonization of the Soviet factor and, on the other hand, a disregard for its philosophical and meta-philosophical relevance. (shrink)

In this article, the author concentrates on the space of contemporary Russian poetry and through the means of allusive proper names specifically focuses upon reflections of international culture. In this regard, expressive possibilities, text-formation role, as well as typological, semantic and functional characteristics of allusive proper names are considered. Attempts are made to analyze, formulate basic mechanisms of intertextual connections and identify the readers’ role in the creation of meaning of precedent anthroponyms in accordance with the context of the world (...) cultural heritage. The corpus of the texts, which we deal with, demonstrate that precedent anthroponyms function as an implement of parody and a way of ciphering some semantic of the intentions. Thus, a mechanism of contextual augmentation of cultural implications comes into effect at the readers’ perception of a connotative meaning of precedent names. Here at a close interaction between some common cultural and author’s individual connotations, which is provoked by consciousness of poet and reader and their creativity, are realized. References to ancient and Biblical heroes, as well as to other famous people, have a rich spectrum of connotations as a consequence and form a wide space for semantic games, interweaving and variations of meanings, which are typical for postmodern discourse and present day human’s world view. Such frames of mind on the one hand, explain the high frequency of desperate motives, ironic or sometimes even cynical attitude of the lyrical subject to the reality in which he lives. On the other hand, applying precedent names, using such anthroponyms, contemporary authors try to use cultural basic units, in order to save significant constants, guiding line, which the cultural inheritance of the past centuries generously provides. (shrink)

The focus of the article is the role of the Russian language in the world system of languages, the current status of the Russian language and the language policy measures that should be taken to preserve the Russian language and for the strengthening of its positions. The law ‘On the state language of the Russian Federation‘ adopted in 2005 should be supplemented by the list of grammar books and dictionaries of various types as listed in the appendixes to the article. (...) The main actions aimed at ensuring the effective functioning of the law ‘On the state language of the Russian Federation‘ are also enlisted in the article. (shrink)

This paper investigates the interpretation of the modal particle bylo in Modern Russian. On the intuitive level, sentences in which this particle appears report events that do not proceed normally and fail to receive an expected continuation. For instance, the particle is appropriate in a context whereby an eventuality begins but fails to reach completion, is intended but fails to be realized, or reaches completion, but its result is annulled. The paper proposes an intensional analysis of the particle, making use (...) of the notion of inertia worlds, worlds in which events are not interrupted and reach their normal completion (Dowty, Word and meaning in Montague grammar, 1979 ). The particle signals that an event that takes place in the actual world is followed by an eventuality of a certain type in all of the corresponding inertia worlds but not in reality. The bylo construction is further compared to the progressive aspect, which has been argued to involve a statement about inertia worlds. It is shown that the two phenomena describe eventualities from different perspectives but are unified by their intensional flavor, as well as by pointing to a distinction between the actual world and the inertia ones. (shrink)

This article examines Russian realist landscape paintings of the Peredvižniki. It demonstrates how in the course of the formation of a national identity during the late nineteenth century, an originally ideology-free space was politically charged and in the course of decades has been incorporated through various measures and media into the collective memory. In this way, the topos of the ‘Russian Landscape’ became lieu de mémoire for Russianness that transcends social order. Through identification with supposedly Russian scenery, which knows no (...) regional or national borders, love of the motherland can be created and strengthened. In their various reproductions, these landscape images developed into a kind of world parallel to the world of everyday experience in the Stalin era. The ideology of Russian landscape painting is now experiencing a new level of appreciation in the West, the effect of which is a shift in focus in their evaluation, from national to universal criteria. (shrink)

В монографии посредством этического вопрошания раскрывается особое место открытого научного мышления в становлении отечественной культуры. С одной стороны, культура мыслится в качестве детерминанты личностного самоопределения, формирующей личность как элементарную единицу и мерило ценностной системы, с другой — является объектом теоретической рефлексии, сложным системным феноменом, обуславливающим социальные изменения и ход истории. Книга адресована студентам социальных и гуманитарных дисциплин, ученым, философам и педагогам. In the monograph, through the method of ethical questioning, a special place of open scientific thinking in the development of (...) national culture is revealed. On the one hand, culture is conceived as a determinant of personal self-determination, which forms a person as an elementary unit and measure of a value system, on the other hand, it is an object of theoretical reflection, a complex systematic phenomenon causing social changes and the course of history. The book is written for students of social and humanitarian disciplines, scientists, philosophers and educators. (shrink)

Crucial texts, many available in English for the first time, written before and during the Bolshevik Revolution by the radical biopolitical utopianists of Russian Cosmism. Cosmism emerged in Russia before the October Revolution and developed through the 1920s and 1930s; like Marxism and the European avant-garde, two other movements that shared this intellectual moment, Russian Cosmism rejected the contemplative for the transformative, aiming to create not merely new art or philosophy but a new world. Cosmism went the furthest in its (...) visions of transformation, calling for the end of death, the resuscitation of the dead, and free movement in cosmic space. This volume collects crucial texts, many available in English for the first time, by the radical biopolitical utopianists of Russian Cosmism. Cosmism was developed by the Russian philosopher Nikolai Fedorov in the late nineteenth century; he believed that humans had an ethical obligation not only to care for the sick but to cure death using science and technology; outer space was the territory of both immortal life and infinite resources. After the revolution, a new generation pursued Fedorov's vision. Cosmist ideas inspired visual artists, poets, filmmakers, theater directors, novelists (Tolstoy and Dostoevsky read Fedorov's writings), architects, and composers, and influenced Soviet politics and technology. In the 1930s, Stalin quashed Cosmism, jailing or executing many members of the movement. Today, when the philosophical imagination has again become entangled with scientific and technological imagination, the works of the Russian Cosmists seem newly relevant. Contributors Alexander Bogdanov, Alexander Chizhevsky, Nikolai Fedorov, Boris Groys, Valerian Muravyev, Alexander Svyatogor, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Anton Vidokle, Brian Kuan Wood A copublication with e-flux, New York. (shrink)

1. Russian thought is a collective and symbolic concept. The intellect of any people on the planet Earth is great in its own way; nor can its contribution to the common planetary home of mankind be assessed on the basis of the generally accepted events of history. First, because these events in the history of mankind are overestimated; second, because many of them are still beyond the bounds of knowledge and understanding. The true mechanisms of the evolution of mankind are (...) still awaiting their Columbuses. The histories of the utilization of nature by social organisms, economics, natural science, culture, and religions are becoming increasingly disassociated; mankind, as the only cosmoplanetary system, remains in the world of hypotheses; pragmatic aspirations supplant strategies of development and survival. The established priority of scientific and technical thought rejects empirical and a priori indicators. The experience of mankind's survival is condescendingly received or arrogantly ignored if it does not accord with the contemporary paradigms of science. This total, hidden scientific-cognitive actualism as regards how we see the world was established as the highest level for the evaluation of national cultures in history and in modern times. The formula of civilized countries —"STP + Nature + Man"—is accepted as an ideal model for the world of the planet. Thus, for most Asian, African, and South American cultures, the contemporary civilizations of the developed countries are becoming a kind of sole ideal, the paths along which all the nations of the globe should move. The measure of this evaluation is the measure of STP, that is, of modern established science. (shrink)

The question of the Russian man – his past, present and future – is the central one in the philosophy of history. Unfortunately, at present this area of philosophy is not suffciently developed in Russia. Partly the reason for this situation is the lack of understanding by researchers of the role played by Russian classical literature and its philosophizing writers in historiosophy. The Hunting Sketches, a collection of short stories by I.S. Turgenev, is a work still undervalued, not fully considered (...) not only in details but also in general meanings. And this is understandable because it is the frst systematic encyclopedia of Russian worldview, which is not envisaged by the literary genre. To a certain extent, Turgenev’s line is continued by I. Goncharov, L. Tolstoy, F. Dostoevsky, A. Chekhov. This article examines the philosophical nature of The Hunting Sketches, its structure and content. According to author’s opinion, stories can be divided into ten groups according to their dominant meanings. Thus, in The Hunting Sketches the main Russian types are depicted: “natural man,” rational, submissive, cunning, honest, sensitive, passionate, poetic, homeless, suffering, calmly accepting death, imbued with the immensity of the world. In the image and the comments of the wandering protagonist, Ivan Turgenev reveals his own philosophical credo, which he defnes as a moderate liberalism – freedom of thought and action, without prejudice to others. (shrink)

In the article, the author studies the Russian influence on the literary, philosophical and critical works of Mikhail Naimy, the world renowned figure in modern Arabic literature. His writings contributed to changing its topics, language and style. Numerous researchers have studied the impact of British, American and French cultures and literatures on the writings of Naimy and his colleagues from the Pen Association, the literary league founded in New York by several young Arab-American emigrants. Meanwhile, it was Russian literature that (...) had the most important impact on Naimy, especially at the earliest stages of his world formation. Scholars have only studied this influence superficially, or bring up specific Russian writers’ influence, without generalization of all the Russian factors. The current work shows how Naimy incorporates Russian viewpoints on critical social reform, anticlericalism and mysticism as well as Russian literary criticism into his works. The author sums up the previous researches, generalizes all the factors, and significantly deepens the materials of the previous researches. This paper has an important methodological value, as it identifies the typology and significance of cultural contacts between the East and the West. It also contributes to an important topic that has received renewed interest from the academy - Russian influences on the Arabic world in general and on Arabic literature in particular. (shrink)

(2000). Russian Enterprises in conditions of Globalization. World Futures: Vol. 55, Challenges of Evolution at the Turn of the Millennium: Part III: The Chllenges of Globalization and Sustainability, pp. 173-181.

Important achievements were obtained in the fields of mathematics, medicine, chemistry, astronomy, physics, optics, mechanics, zoology, botanic, mineralogy, geography and etc. in the Turkish-Islamic world between the ninth and thirteenth centuries. According to the leading historians of science, scholars living in different parts of the TurkishIslamic world not only surpassed their Greek and Byzantine predecessors. They also paved the way for development of these fields of science for following centuries. It is possible to mention many physicians that left non-erasable marks (...) in the medicine history among these distinguished scholars. One of these names is an Andalusian surgeon-physician called Abul-Qāsim alZahrāwī. He is known for his solid and unique contributions to the surgical world and regarded as the founder of surgery in the TurkishIslamic world. al-Zahrāwī wrote many books. One of these books, called al-Taṣrīf (The Method of Medicine) regarded as a medical encyclopedia has reached until today. The book attracted more attention in the European countries than in the Turkish-Islamic world and had an impact on Europe. Different chapters from the book were translated into languages such as Hebrew, French, English and especially Latin. al-Zahrāwī’s scientific heritage has also been discussed with all its aspects in Russia where scientists in the Turkish-Islamic world have especially been studied. Even though it was translated at a later period than Avicenna’s al-Qānūn fī al-Ṭibb (The Canon of Medicine), al-Taṣrīf was translated into Russian. The aim of this study is to identify Russian studies on Zahrawi and his main work, al-Taṣrīf -within the framework of available opportunitiesand to present prominent ones among these. In conclusion, this article also aims to contribute to the Turkish literature on al-Zahrāwī and al-Taṣrīf. Therefore, the author wishes to assist the relevant ongoing studies and the ones to be conducted in the future in terms of bibliography and material index. (shrink)

This article explores the problems of Russian engineering in the context of the world studies in philosophy of engineering. Firstly, the author highlights the main questions and topics of the modern philosophy of engineering: what engineering is, the “magic” and “human-oriented” nature of technologies, and models of engineering ethics. Secondly, the article presents a specific mythological narrative of domestic engineers (“the theory of a missed chance”) and shows the inclusion of this “theory” in alternate historical fiction. Thirdly, the article identifies (...) the reasons for emergence of such mythology in the engineering environment. The author highlights a historical context of “missed chances” for the turning of technical inventions into innovations and claims that the country's engineering potential was not used to a full extent. For greater objectivity, the article uses the works both of foreign and domestic researchers. In addition, the author raised a question about the relatedness of the concepts of engineer and innovation. Finally, the article gives an answer to the question about the essence of the engineer; the author believes that the engineering is primarily an environment, close to the human life world, understanding and maintaining the links between science and technology, providing the necessary channels for transforming inventions into innovations, i.e. commercially realized technologies. The given definition demonstrates the prospects for the development of socio-humanitarian research in the field of engineering. (shrink)

Russian-Estonian Relations After 2007: Current Status and Development Prospects The article highlights the major points that have influenced relations between Russia and Estonia after 2007. These relations were rather poor during the post-Soviet period. The number of Russian people who lived in Estonia after gaining independence in 1991 exceeded 30%, which resulted in the very keen interest of Russia in Estonian politics. April 2007 created a new reality for relations between the countries. The decision to move the statues of Second (...) World War Soviet soldiers from main squares to cemeteries provoked negative reactions from Russians living in Estonia, but also infuriated leaders of the Russian government. As a consequence there were harsh verbal attacks from Moscow, the Estonian ambassador to Moscow was harassed, cyberspace attacks took place and traffic over the bridge in Narva, which is a key highway from Russia, was blocked. The Estonian authorities know there is no point in maintaining conflict with Russia. The President of Estonia, Toomas Hendrik Ilves, has stressed that Estonia's relationship with its biggest neighbour, Russia, can only get better. Russia plays an incredibly important role in the Estonian economy and tourist industry, according to Andrus Ansip, the Prime Minister of Estonia. (shrink)

This groundbreaking work by one of the world's foremost theoreticians of Russian literature, culture, and thought gives for the first time an extensive and detailed examination of the development of Russian thought during the late Soviet period. Countering the traditional view of an intellectual wilderness under the Soviet regime, Mikhail Epstein offers a systematic account of Russian thought in the second half of the 20th century. In doing so, he provides new insights into previously ignored areas such as Russian liberalism, (...) personalism, structuralism, neo-rationalism, and culturology. Epstein shows how Russian philosophy and culture has long been trapped in an intellectual prison of its own making as it sought to create its own utopia. However, he demonstrates that it is time to reappraise Russian philosophical thought and cultural theory, now freed from the bonds of totalitarianism. We are left with not only a new and exciting interpretation of Russian thought, but also an opportunity to rethink our own intellectual heritage. (shrink)

In this article the author notes that Russian phenomenology has a long history that has contributed to European progress in philosophy. He presents the main ideas of Gustav Shpet, a well-known Russian thinker and original follower of Husserl. The heart of Shpet's positive philosophy is a special, skeptical state of mind—hermeneutic phenomenology. This positive philosophy, with its synthesis of hermeneutics and phenomenology, opposes Kant's negative, relativistic thought. In his work, Shpet focuses on the concept of a text. A text's meaning (...) is objective and grasped via the nonpsychological methods of hermeneutics. Language largely determines the development of the human spiritual world, and so the problematics of language merge with the problematics of consciousness. Because texts are human products that express the influence of linguistic consciousness, our understanding of texts should be based on the analysis of language consciousness. Shpet characterizes the whole culture as a sign-symbolical, objectified expression of the human spirit. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviews 105 NEW RUSSIAN WORK ON RUSSELL IRVING H. ANELLIS Modern Logic Publishing I Box 1036, Welch Ave. Station Ames, JA 5°010-1036, USA A. S. Kolesnikov. cI»HJIOCOcPHJl BepTPaHa PacceJIa [Filosofija Bertrana Rassela]. Leningrad: Izdatel'srvo Leningradskogo Universiteta, 1991. Pp. 232. 3 rub. 30 kop.. Anatolii Sergeevich Kolesnikov is a relatively new name in Russell studies,.r1.a1though his book shows a deep knowledge of the material available on Russell in Russian and (...) a wide acquaintance with Russell's publications in English and in Russian translation.1 In this work, which translates as The Philosophy ofBertrand Russel~ Kolesnikov traces the evolution of Russell's "world-view", while presenting a traditional Soviet interpretation of Russell's place in "bourgeois" philosophy. This monograph presents for the first time in Russian a thorough analysis of the evolution of Russell's philosophy as the outstanding representation of contemporary bourgeois philosophy, and is the first major study on Russell's philosophy in Russian since the appearance in'1962 ofSoviet philosopher 1. S. Narskii's The Philosophy ofBertrand Russell2 Russell himself is viewed by Kolesnikov as the best representative of the bourgeois humanist, philosopher, and mathematician. The author seeks a critical understanding of the historical and philosophical sources of Russell's ideas and conceptions and of the influence which these exercised and continue to exercise on contemporary Western philosophy and science. The author's aim is to "uncover" the neo-realist empiricist direction of Russell's philosophy as it manifested itself as a condition of his scientific and epistemological thinking. As had been usual for Soviet studies of Western "bourgeois" philosophers and their philosophies, Lenin and his empiriocriticism serves as a foil for the elucidation of Russell's thought and its development. Probably the most famous example of the dialectical attack on anaI Kolesnikov is also the author of The Freethought ofBertrand Russell [Svobodomyslie Bertrana Rassela] (Moscow: Mysl', 1978). 2 The Philosophy ofBertrand Russell: Lectures for Students in the University Philosophy Faculty [Filosofija Bertrana Rassela: lekcija dlja studentovfilosofikih fakul'tov universitetov] (Moscow: 1962). In the first footnote (on p. 60) to his translation of the article on "Bertrand Russell in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia: Translation from Russian", Russel~ nos. 23-4 (1976): 60-2, Charles Haynes wrote that "Narskiy... appears to be a leading Soviet writet on Russell's philosophy." In fact Narskii wrote extensively on philosophy of logic, for which work he is bcst known. 106 Reviews lytic philosophy revolved around the rather rough treatment accorded to A. J. Ayer when he lectured at Moscow State University in 1962. This methodology for criticizing "bourgeois idealism" has declined in recent years as a consequence of perestroika; from as early as 1987 Soviet philosophers have managed to refrain from employing this tactic in their writings (as one may readily see, e.g., from Zinaida Sokuler's recent paper on "Wirrgenstein on the Contradictions in Logic and in the Foundations of Mathematics"3). Kolesnikov's discussion of political-ideological, social and moral issues is limited to the Preface, which also presents a brief sketch of Russell's life, especially his education and the earliest of the philosophical influences at Cambridge, of course Russell's visit in 1920 to Soviet Russia and the writings that derived from that trip, especially his book The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism, and of his travels in China. Here Kolesnikov notes Russell's ties to the Fabian socialists and names in particular the Webbs, H. G. Wells and "other members representative of the bourgeois intelligentsia" (p. 5). Mention is also made here of his activism for nuclear disarmament and against the American war in Indochina, and of the essay "Why I Am Not a Christian". We are told at the very outset (p. 3) that "the name of this philosopher is widely known in our country." The remainder of the book is concerned with Russell's technical philosophy, i.e. with his work in philosophy of mathematics, logic, philosophy of language, metaphysics and epistemology. Kolesnikov divides Russell's philosophical evolution into three stages (p. 22). The "early" period (1894-1910) is the developmental stage, characterized by the influence ofneo-Hegelianism and neo-Kantianism and by the development of the conception of... (shrink)

There is its own philosophical tradition in Russia. The traditional Russian philosophy is idealistic and religious. The basic categories of traditional Russian philosophy: "Ideal", "Sofia", "Sobornost", « Beauty, True, Kind (the Blessing)». The basic problem of Russian philosophy is to find the way of rescue mankind. One of the cardinal problems is the problem of civilization choice: East – West - Russia. According to the method of Russian philosophy it is not so analytic, but it is synthetic. Synthetic character of (...) Russian philosophy was most full embodied in V.S.Solovjev's philosophical system (1853-1900). In Russian philosophy the person, its destiny in the world was considered as a rule, globally - in universal, space scale. Russian cosmizm has formulated antropocosmik a paradigmon principles coevolution the nature and a noosphere which demands special culture. (shrink)

The academic community in the West tends to be suspicious of Russian philosophy, often relegating it to another category, such as “ideology” or “social thought.” But what is philosophy? There is no simple universal definition, and many thinkers consider it impossible to formulate one. The most credible attempt is nominalistic: philosophy is the practice in which Plato and Aristotle were involved. As Alfred North Whitehead wrote, “The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a (...) series of footnotes to Plato.”If so, then Russian thought needs to be understood as an important part of the Western philosophical heritage, given that it offers perhaps the most elaborate set of footnotes to Plato's most mature and comprehensive dialogues: the Republic and the Laws. The status of ideas in Russian philosophy mirrors Plato's vision of them as ontological and political entities, “laws,” or ideal principles—as distinct from mere epistemic units or tools of cognition. The Platonic tendency to integrate and implement religious, philosophical, and political teachings culminated in twentieth-century Russia. In the Soviet state, perhaps more than anywhere else in history, philosophy became a supreme legal and political institution, acquiring the power of a suprapersonal, universal reason. Hence thought itself, in the moment of its triumph, became a prisoner in the social structures that Soviet ideocracy erected on a philosophical foundation. In discussing Russian philosophy, we inevitably consider the practical application of Platonic conceptions by the Soviet ideocracy to a state in which philosophy was called upon to rule.According to Sergei Averintsev, the emphasis on Platonism in the Russian intellectual tradition is nothing to be proud of; it should rather be lamented and repented. Despite the obvious Platonic preferences of Russian thinkers (from Ivan Kireyevsky to Aleksei Losev), Averintsev asks whether even now we might be able to reorient the tradition toward Aristotle instead—toward a more secular, tolerant, and analytic philosophy of human nature. “If Plato is the first utopian,” Averintsev writes, “Aristotle is the first thinker to look the spirit of utopia right in the eye and overcome it.... Aristotle's technique of thought is more neutral toward religion than is Plato's ecstasy.” Characteristically, the name index to the Palgrave Handbook of Russian Thought contains almost twice as many mentions of Plato as of Aristotle.Each national tradition has its own “strange attractor,” as they say now in complexity theory. English empiricism, French rationalism, German Idealism, American pragmatism... However stereotypical these generalizations are, they help to clarify the nations’ distinctive contributions to philosophy. Where does Russia stand in this row? I think that Caryl Emerson is correct to pinpoint, among the most distinctive features of the Russian intellectual tradition, the striving for “wholeness” (tselostnost’). Many Russian thinkers seem to evade definitive and particular “isms,” preferring to find ways of complementing (and thus diluting) those that are on offer. Faced with the claims for rationalism, for example, the Russian response tends to be that true rationality is or should be coupled with fullness of feeling. The characteristic Russian “ism” is at best “holism,” at worst “totalitarianism,” and is usually directed against Western thought. Kireyevsky declares: There [in the West] is a bifurcation [razdvoenie] of the spirit, a bifurcation of thoughts, a bifurcation of the sciences, a bifurcation of the state, a bifurcation of estates, a bifurcation of society, a bifurcation of family rights and duties, a bifurcation of morality and the heart.... In Russia, on the contrary, there is a predominant tendency toward the wholeness of the inner and the outer, of public and moral being.Vladimir Solovyov held that the goal of all knowledge was to comprehend “total unity” and to overcome all kinds of unilateralism, which he referred to as “abstract elements” (otvlechennye nachala). These one-sided elements included Realism, rationalism, empiricism, and positivism, all of which had been advanced by Western philosophical movements.Reading the Handbook, I was struck by how steadily, from one thinker to another, the concept of “unity” is reiterated in various synonyms and contexts: “all-unity,” “wholeness,” “totality,” “integrity,” “edinstvo,” “tsel'nost,’” “tselostnost,” “sobornost,” and so forth. Russian thinkers endeavor not to create something original and special but to unify everything that has already been done and known. Consider opponents, like the Slavophiles and Westernizers; take Petr Chaadaev and Vissarion Belinsky, Kireyevsky and Alexander Herzen, Dostoevsky and Solovyov—all are united by this “super-idea,” proclaiming its embodiment to be the all-embracing vocation of the Russian people. At the same time, they sharply reject all “private principles” and “trashy certainty” (Belinsky's driannaia opredelennost’)—anything that restricts and divides individuals or nations. All these forms of privacy and particularity must be overcome on the way to a universal whole that is even greater in scale than Western Catholicism. According to this logic of totality, we would be better off left with nothing than to be content with the particular and the limited. The first original Russian thinker, Chaadaev (1794–1856), makes the salto mortale of declaring Russia a country that has given nothing to the world, then proclaiming that Russia's destiny is to rise above the rest of the world and resolve all its contradictions. From nothing to everything: such are the philosophical foundations for the totalitarian aspiration of Russian thought, which eventually expressed itself in the revolutionary movements and communist experiments of the twentieth century.As is well known, Russian literature is considered in the West a far more powerful and original expression of philosophical ideas than Russian philosophy as such. Characteristically, then, almost half of the Handbook, its entire second part, is devoted to the dialogue of Russian philosophy with literature and art. As M. N. Forster remarks in the Handbook's concluding essay: “It is natural to wonder why this striking asymmetry between relatively modest achievements in pure philosophy and spectacularly high achievements in literature came about.” To the literary focus of Russian philosophy, we can add a political focus. At least a third of part one of the Handbook is devoted to Russian political and revolutionary philosophy, to Lenin and other Marxists, to Ivan Ilyin, and so on. In this context, both literature and politics assumed philosophical dimensions, often overshadowing philosophy itself.Bertrand Russell lamented that the system of philosophical categories in the West featured mostly nouns (being, consciousness, idea, matter, substance, and so forth), omitting adjectives, verbs, prefixes, and other parts of speech. This criticism should be applied to the category philosophy itself. Why the noun philosophy rather than the adjective philosophical, which can be applied to many areas of activity and creativity, including literature and politics?In Russian intellectual history, the philosophical, rather than philosophy, is the predominant category. The state, ideology, economics, politics and geopolitics, literature, art, warfare, space exploration—all these spheres in Russia and the USSR have been and remain abundantly philosophical, subordinated to certain philosophical tasks, though philosophy as such has never been as developed and sophisticated as in the West. As a discipline, Western philosophy “outsourced” itself to Russian disciples, leaving it to Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, Lenin and Trotsky, to test in literary and political practices a host of Western philosophical ideas, from those of Plato, Rousseau, and Hegel to those of Feuerbach, Marx, and Nietzsche.Likewise, the verb to philosophize is used in ways unusual and awkward in the West. “It is characteristic of the Russian people to philosophize [filosofstvovat'],” as Nikolai Berdyaev observed: “An illiterate Russian peasant likes to pose questions of a philosophical nature—about the meaning of life, about God, about eternal life, about evil and untruth, about how to realize the Kingdom of God.” The philosophical and philosophizing, as attributes and actions of the state and society, overpowered philosophy as a noun—as an academic discipline, if you will. Russian philosophy has had a very modest impact on the West, but the impact of the philosophical has been immense. Nineteenth-century Russian literature influenced Western culture with its philosophical interrogations and existential dilemmas, just as, in the twentieth century, the USSR influenced the West with the philosophical ideas (Marxism, materialism, dialectics, collectivism, socialism, communism) that determined Soviet ideology, politics, and economics.In the USSR of the 1920 and 1930s, for instance, philosophy as an independent academic subject was in a subdued position, as a servant of party ideology. But, meanwhile, the sphere of the philosophical spread to such distant domains as theater (Stanislavsky), physiology (Pavlov), and agriculture (Michurin), with all such activities glorified and sponsored by the state as “philosophically correct”—as faithful to “materialism” and “Realism.” Paradoxically, in the quintessentially philosophical state that was the USSR, the state of philosophy, with the repression of all independent thought and thinkers, was miserable. The fateful and often disastrous originality of Russian philosophy consisted precisely in its dissemination to other areas, in an act of kenosis or self-transcendence that can be viewed both as an aggressive philosophical appropriation of politics, economics, ideology, and literature—and as philosophy's sacrificial devotion to the world beyond its professional boundaries.So there are three features that make Russian thought relevant and dangerous: its Platonic utopian aspiration; its spirit of totality; and its tendency to transcend the boundaries of academic philosophy and to philosophize society, politics, and life in general. Russian philosophy has not been as good at explaining the world as at changing it, sometimes ethically and poetically, sometimes violently and aggressively. Teachers and students of Russian culture should be deeply motivated to draw more attention to the philosophical in Russia and to raise its status in the Western academy. In my view, we would do better service to Russian philosophy if we are frank enough to qualify it as dangerous, sometimes very toxic and addictive, fraught with totalistic tendencies. This philosophy is the voice of the “underground,” both in the Dostoevskian and Leninist senses.At the same time, however, the antidotes concocted in the Russian metaphysical laboratory are of enormous value: the Russian versions of personalism, existentialism, secular and religious liberalism, neorationalism, culturology, conceptualism, and postmodernism. These movements, which counteract totalization, need to be studied precisely because they were cooked up and tested under the same extreme conditions in which the most dangerous intellectual poisons have been produced. (shrink)