Ideas and Ideals

The global economy has long demonstrated an increase in the scale of trade, leading to the openness of economic systems. National economies benefi ted from participation in the international division of labor due to the effects associated with the exploitation of comparative advantage, as discovered by the 18th-century political economist David Ricardo. Recent events indicate that this benefi cial process of global economic integration has come to an end. Here are the key facts: the widespread use of sanctions is turning them into a weapon of war; tariff blackmail, which the US uses to force the world to accept its terms of trade, is disrupting global value chains; the active formation of political and economic unions creates a protective barrier for the global South from the dictate of the global North, but at the same time weakens ties to sources of capital and technology – all of this is evidence of the disintegration of global economic ties, the emergence of a trend toward the localization of trade processes and the closure of economic interactions within local unions. This process has received the not yet widely used term ‘introversion’ in the literature. This study assesses trade introversion within BRICS since its inception. There are many theories regarding the founding of BRICS, ranging from Yevgeny Primakov’s proposal of a multipolar world in 1994 to the fi rst BRICS summit held in Yekaterinburg in 2009. The author favors the latter interpretation. BRICS is characterized by its amorphous nature, informal procedures, and relaxed governance practices. Nevertheless, BRICS has demonstrated a high degree of coordination in the trade policies of its member countries, as demonstrated by the study’s results.

For the purposes of this study, a simple statistical indicator, called the Trade Extroversion Index, was developed due to the fact that an introversion index already exists in the literature. The extroversion index addresses the same objectives as the introversion index, but has signifi cant advantages. UN databases serve as the statistical basis for the calculations.

This article examines the concept of ‘financial culture,’ which is particularly relevant in today’s dynamically developing world. The author draws on various theoretical concepts used to defi ne and measure financial culture and offers a classification of approaches to studying this phenomenon. Particular attention is given to empirical studies aimed at identifying the relationship between financial culture and the socioeconomic characteristics of individuals and society as a whole. The article describes the main areas of research devoted to determining levels of financial culture in various population groups, identifying the factors influencing its development, and evaluating the effectiveness of existing educational initiatives in this area. The author also examines international practices in developing financial culture, analyzing the experience of international authors such as Boyd R., Richardson P., Weber M., Parsons T. O., Rickert G., Scheler M., Stern A., Csorba L., and Hofstede G.

In preparing this article, classical theoretical research methods were applied, such as analysis, synthesis, generalization, classification, and a historical approach, allowing for a thorough examination of the subject and the formation of objective conclusions.

As a result of this study, the author concludes that the development of the concept of financial culture has undergone significant changes. In the 19th century, authors examined financial culture, focusing on the influence of institutional factors (savings, use of classical instruments), but modern research emphasizes the level of financial education, responsibility, and behavioral aspects of individuals in the financial sphere.

The author of the article proposes a framework for financial culture, consisting of the following components: financial literacy, financial skills, attitudes, and human behavior. This framework transforms the abstract idea of financial culture into a concrete object of study that can be measured, analyzed, and used to propose scientifically sound development strategies.

The conclusion highlights prospects for further research in studying the factors influencing the formation and development of financial culture in Russian society.

In the new geopolitical environment, the mineral fertilizer (MF) industry and market have undergone signifi cant changes. This has also affected Russian fertilizer producers, who are forced to diversify their foreign trade relations and reorient themselves toward countries in the Global South–Asia, Africa, and Latin America. This research focuses on the economic relations surrounding the export activities of Russian MF organizations and their strategies for entering foreign markets. This article was prepared using qualitative and quantitative methods, including comparative analysis, statistical analysis and market analytics, economic analysis of MF producers, and text visualization techniques. The extensive information base encompassed publications by Russian and international scholars; analytical materials from agencies, foundations, and associations; data from the Russian Government, Rosstat, and documents from UN and OECD departments. Conclusions were drawn regarding the dynamics of production volumes, exports, and foreign and domestic prices for key mineral fertilizers from 2011 to 2024, as well as the concentration level in three mineral fertilizer markets. Based on the developed classifi cation of types of strategies for foreign trade activities of organizations, the strategies of two leading Russian organizations producing nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizers are characterized. The institutional conditions for implementing export activities were examined. The conclusion presents prospects for the development of the mineral fertilizer industry, taking into account environmental and technological changes. The results of the study may be useful in the planning and analytical work of organizations producing mineral fertilizers, government agencies, and in the educational process in the areas of global economics and international business.

Financial stability is one of the main concepts in the economy of an enterprise, demonstrating its ability to develop, remain competitive and solvent, as well as rationally manage its obligations. Financial stability is a characteristic reflecting the potential of an enterprise and its investment attractiveness. The variety of methods for assessing financial stability leads to the fact that their application gives different and sometimes contradictory results, which is due, among other things, to the lack of emphasis on the specifics of the company’s activities. This highlights the importance of choosing the right methodological approach for assessing this financial condition parameter. The purpose of the study is to develop an analytical tool for assessing financial stability. The object of the study is the financial stability of manufacturing enterprises, and the subject is the analytical tool for assessing it. A comparative analysis of traditional and modern methodological approaches to assessing financial stability revealed the advantages and disadvantages of each approach. The features of production processes at enterprises were systematized, and their possible impact on the structure of resources and indicators of f nancial stability was shown. Correlation and regression analysis was used in the development of the author’s methodology for assessing the financial stability of production enterprises. The proposed methodology takes into account specific factors and eliminates the disadvantages of the most common traditional methodological approaches. The resulting model is significant and clarifying in nature, as it clearly demonstrates the degree of influence of various aspects of the financial and economic activities of the enterprise on its financial stability, which makes it possible to make informed management decisions aimed at minimizing risks and improving the effi ciency of the enterprise as a whole.

This article proposes an ontological revision of the foundations of art historical analysis, which has traditionally relied on the hermeneutics of style expressed through a system of binary oppositions (from Wölffl in to Baxandall). In contrast to this relational model, which defi nes an artistic phenomenon through its difference from another style, the theory of apophatic stylistics is put forward. Borrowing its fundamental gesture from negative theology, the theory postulates that an artistic principle or pattern asserts itself not dialectically, but through a radical negation of all that it is not–of the entire mute materiality of the world of “things themselves.” The article provides numerous examples from various arts, from classical to the most recent, substantiating the necessity of apophatic stylistics as a sub-discipline of art history and, simultaneously, an essential practical component of the philosophy of art, crucial for the accuracy of intermedial generalizations.

The article argues that this approach has direct ontological implications, resonating with Graham Harman’s project of Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO). Within OOO, a work of art is understood not as a representation or a product of artistic will, but as an autonomous object possessing a “withdrawn reality.” The task of the artist, therefore, shifts from mimesis to the act of revealing this objecthood, which transforms the formula summarizing the spirit of Duchamp’s enterprise: “the whole world readymades itself.” Through a reinterpretation of Rosalind Krauss’s concept of the index and the category of “zadannost” (“givenness,” in the Neo-Kantian and Bakhtinian tradition), the article demonstrates how apophatic stylistics shifts the focus from anthropocentric categories of intention and cultural context (“point of assemblage”) to an encounter with the otherness of the artistic object itself in its self-suffi cient being (“point of vivifi cation”).

The article substantiates the apparatus of apophatic stylistics, provides a detailed innovative terminology for this discipline, and justifi es its analytical procedures. This enhances the practical signifi cance of the article, making it not only a contribution to the philosophy of art but also an instructive foundation for analyzing any work of art using the author’s proposed method.

This article is a critical attempt to understand the phenomenon of Derzhavin’s infl uence   on the ideologies of the median culture in Russia. The research methodology is based on the concept of A.S. Ahiezer. He proposed a “mediational methodology for the socio–cultural analysis of Russian society”, in which there are categorial concepts: ‘inversion’, ‘mediation’, ‘median culture’, ‘inversion trap’, etc.  The main issue for Derzhavin was the question of self–determination of the individual in the context of serving the state system. In these conditions, individuals will have to leave the fi eld of ‘inversion’ traditional thinking through ‘mediation’, the search for mediation. Derzhavin, engaged in serving the autocratic state, sought to avoid the extremes of the binary approach.

 The author tried to analyze the phenomenon of Derzhavin’s poetic and prose vocabulary in order to discover elements of the median culture in the writer’s texts. It is important for the author to show Derzhavin’s poetic space fi lled with binary oppositions that are intricately related to each other.  This space, in turn, is connected to the socio–cultural space of Russian Classicism in general. The author presents his methodology for studying the Russian Enlightenment of the XVIII^th century.

Derzhavin’s work is presented as a focus on developing a new type of relationship with the government. The poetic discourse is a response to a system of historical challenges, the main one being the challenge of binary consciousness. The deployment of mediation practices in some cases determines the specifi c structure of his literary work. The author shows how all of this relates to the poetics of Russian classicism and the state ideology of autocracy. The new forms of social organization in the 18^th century involved the struggle for personal liberation including from state violence. Speaking about the relationship between the individual and the state, Derzhavin enters into internal polemic with the revolutionaries on the one hand and the court conformists on the other.  

This article examines the formation and transformation of English aesthetic thought within the framework of the British philosophical tradition. The study focuses on the development of key aesthetic concepts such as taste, imagination, the sublime, and beauty from eighteenth-century empiricism to analytic aesthetics and contemporary interdisciplinary approaches. The research employs a historical-philosophical method combined with conceptual analysis of major aesthetic theories articulated by British philosophers and theorists of art. The article demonstrates that English aesthetics did not emerge as an abstract speculative system but developed as a reflection on perceptual experience, moral sentiment, and cultural practices, closely connected with moral philosophy, literary criticism, and philosophy of language. The analysis reveals a consistent internal logic in the evolution of British aesthetics, moving from the problem of taste and sensibility toward the examination of artistic practices, institutional forms of art, and the linguistic conditions of aesthetic judgment. The article argues that the specificity of the British aesthetic tradition lies in its empirical orientation, emphasis on individual experience, and openness to interdisciplinary dialogue, which ensures its continued relevance for contemporary philosophy of culture and theory of art.

Ordering the world of things and phenomena is one of the tasks of symbolic activity as an important anthropological characteristic of man. An individual builds and uses a system of reference points in the socio-cultural space of traditional and modernist societies with the help of objectifi cation and de-objectifi cation of symbols. A monument as one of the forms of symbolic culture historically plays the role of such a reference point: it perpetuates generally signifi cant meanings that have the highest value, provides an axiological connection between generations, sets existential coordinates on the path of life. However, at the modern (post-historical) stage, traditional and modernist meanings and values  are losing their signifi cance as universal pointers. Nevertheless, the need for orientation not only does not disappear, but turns out to be extremely relevant in the conditions of uncertainty of a complex world. Today, a number of artists create their works in new territories of a complex world, inhabited through art. The author examines this trend using examples from works by Anish Kapoor (ArcelorMittal Orbit, Cloud Gate and the sculpture at 56 Leonard Street in New York City) and Antony Gormley’s project (One & Other). These artistic experiments offer an unconventional experience for the viewer, revealing the possibility of harnessing the creative potential of uncertainty. The works discussed in the article act as accumulators of ambiguity. Installed in public spaces, they not only accumulate uncertainty but also transmit it back into the human world, repeatedly concentrated through artistic means. The author demonstrates that among the goals of contemporary monumental art, one of the main objectives is reconciling people with an unstable reality through pre-adaptation. In modern psychology, pre-adaptation is viewed as a preventative measure that allows people to adjust to constant, unpredictable change. Pre-adaptation, carried out with the help of monumental art, is based on the principles of developing a creative attitude to the world.

The Sakha (Yakuts) are the northernmost Turkic people. Like many peoples they preserved folklore art in a living existence. Part of it consists of myths, including cosmogonic ones, which are found primarily in the heroic epic of Olonkho, religious beliefs and in the form of separate mythological narratives. In this work the main attention is paid to the cosmogonic and related myths of the Yakuts, searching for parallels to them mainly from the mythology of the ancient Indo-Iranians. These searches are motivated by ancient ethnogenetic ties. The main source for the preparation of the work was materials from Olonkho. In the religious beliefs of the Yakuts, the cult of the bright god Yuryung Ar Aiyy Tangara occupies a central place, with which the kumysny ysyakh is associated. It is associated with the early nomadic Indo-Iranian mythological view, which was based on the cult of the bright deity Ahura Mazda.

Using comparative, geographical, etymological and genetic methods as well as the author’s fi eld materials the evidence of the Yakut epic Olonkho ‘about the valley-mother of Kyaladyky in the Middle World, where sacred white cranes winter – sterkhes (Siberian Cranes)’ is confi rmed. The sterches who spent their summers in Western Siberia wintered in northern Afghanistan, Pakistan and India before their complete extermination. The conclusions of the works of geneticists on the Aryan and Turkic ancestry of the Sakha (Yakuts) are presented, which also confi rm the evidence of the Yakut Olonkho. The materials obtained as a result of the study lead to parallels between the myths of the ancient IndoIranians and the Sakha (Yakuts), which indicates the origin of Yakut tengrism – the belief in the Ar Aiyy Tangara, in the same region.

As a result, a conclusion is drawn about the ancient cultural and ethnogenetic contacts of the proto–ancestors of the Indo–Iranians and the Uranhai Sakha, which took place in the area of the junction of the highest mountains of Asia: Karakorum – Hindu Kush – Himalayas.

This article develops an analytical model for studying the phenomenon of the Siberian supertext through a cultural studies lens, conceptualizing it as a cultural hyperpalimpsest. The research is motivated by a methodological defi cit in the study of complex regional cultural texts, which require comprehensive tools to account for their multi-dimensionality, depth, and inherent conflict. The methodological framework synthesizes N.E. Mednis’s concept of the supertext [10], V.N. Toporov’s semiotics of local texts [14], and the theory of the cultural hyperpalimpsest, adapted from the works of A.A. Zaliznyak [4] and A. Huyssen [21]. The core of the study involves examining the urban subtext as a multi-layered semiotic formation within the three-component fi eld structure of the Siberia concept: the historical-eventual, cultural-geographical, and fi gurative-metaphorical components (the latter falls outside the scope of this article). Each of these components undergoes a dual-aspect analysis – synchronic and diachronic – to reveal both current semiotic interactions and the historical stratifi cation of meanings. The totality of such urban subtexts, united by the overarching Siberia concept, forms the Siberian supertextin its hyper-palimpsestic multi-dimensionality. The practical application of the model is demonstrated through a case study of Kemerovo, which represents a type of industrial center with high semiotic tension. The analysis reveals the conflictual interaction of its historical layers (agrarian, resource-extractive, industrial), structured around binary oppositions such as center – periphery and victim – hero. The study confirms the model’s heuristic potential in identifying dense semantic stratifi cations, significant regional lacunae, and the multi-channel, non-linear dynamics of regional identity formation.

There is a paradoxical situation in the world. It is becoming increasingly diffi cult to qualify what is happening as an expansion of military operations in the fi eld of economics and fi nance or the formation of special instruments of war in them. In these conditions, the roles of economic and national economic security are changing from providing economic and fi nancial activities to determining the very existence of the nation. A perfect system of economic and national economic security should be guided by the principle of maximizing effi ciency while minimizing risks and threats. It is impossible to fulfi ll this requirement without science and education, as they prepare the human and intellectual potential for the expanded and safe reproduction of Russia. The article aims to show that, without detracting from the world-class achievements of our country in science and education, internal problems are growing in them, determining the areas of vulnerability of the national economic security of the Russian Federation. Attention is focused on topics representing areas of vulnerability of the Russian economy: a reduction in the number of faculty members of the country’s universities in qualitative and quantitative terms, disruption of the process of personnel reproduction in science and education, teachers and researchers receiving academic degrees of candidates and doctors of sciences. The existing dissertation defense mechanisms are analyzed and the legal and economic gaps fi lled by shadow relations are demonstrated. As a result, many scientists are economically unable to pay for the preparation and defense of their dissertation. The dialogue between the article’s co-authors is used as a method that allows for a comprehensive and multifaceted demonstration of the gaps and shortcomings in the mechanisms for preparing and defending dissertations in economic, legal, and ethical terms. The authors propose a national project to fi nd a way out of this situation – the creation of the digital platform “Science and Education of Russia”.  Automation and digitalization of multiple interactions will become easier, faster, more economical and more transparent for applicants and the government, displacing shadow relations.

Improving the system of scientifi c knowledge inevitably leads to changes in the social reality. In the work “Cognitive Turn: The Change in the Foundations of Intellectual Culture” V.I. Razumov calls the process of changes – “a cognitive turn”. The purpose of the article is to predict their implementation in practice on the basis of the most signifi cant tasks of the cognitive turn. To achieve the goal, the author uses such methods as analysis and forecasting. The main tasks of the cognitive turn include: the formulation of the provisions forming their new base on which science and education will be built; the formation of a new scientifi c approach to scientifi c activity; the realization that the most complex subject of the Universe is a man himself. When formulating the provisions forming the new educational base, the orientation of the cognitive turn in education is revealed. Instead of mechanically assimilating information, students get the opportunity to develop as active participants in their own learning, acquire the skills of independent search and processing of knowledge, which makes them ready for the challenges of our time. The formulation of the provisions forming the new base of science required an analysis of existing developments using the example of the application of categorical methodology, which made it possible to determine the existing effects of the cognitive imperative on the components of science: research methods, categories, theories. It is important that the examples are taken from various fi elds of scientifi c knowledge. The given examples of the resourcefulness of cognitive technologies in the development of science have shown the movement of modern science towards a multidimensional approach.

Analyzing the role of cognitive technologies in shaping modern scientifi c activity, it is shown that it is provided through automation, increased accuracy, improved visualization, decision support and expansion of interdisciplinary connections, which creates favorable conditions for accelerating scientifi c research and stimulating innovation. In studying Man as an object of the Universe, cognitive technologies will allow for a deeper understanding of his nature as a biological, psychological and social being, through promising studies of his cognitive, emotional and behavioral aspects. During the analysis of cognitive turn tasks, an attempt was made to predict the implementation of some aspects of them in practice – in education, science, scientifi c activity and in research.