Ideas and Ideals

The article analyzes the implementation of the control by the Party Control Commission of the Central Committee of the CPSU(b) over the political behavior of the Communists in the postwar period. The moral resistance of the members of the ruling party to the authorities’ policy is one of the brightest phenomena of the Soviet era. Documents of the Party Control Commission mostly consist of decisions on appeals of the punished Communists, which allow us to see the characteristic manifestations of dissent from both ordinary party members and the officials. These people denied the brutality of the regime and the limitation of themes available for criticizing. The PCC (the Party Control Commission) brought to justice those responsible for violations of party discipline and ethics. The dissent and perseverance in defending their views were considered to be particularly serious violations of party discipline. The article shows numerous examples of frequent disagreements with the official policy of the backbone of the Communist party: the officials, the old Bolsheviks, army officers, security officers, propagandists. The party punishment was often followed by the charge of a crime. It is obvious that in conditions of terror, the party members tried to hide their views. That’s why the information about different forms of open protest during the period of late Stalinism becomes more valuable, when the numerous controlling structures carefully suppressed intra-party dissent.

In the article the author shares his findings on understanding the uniqueness of Chinese culture. Understanding Chinese culture demands and deserves an innovative approach which helps us to shed light on Chinese culture’s “millions of truth”. And this approach is Yin Yang philosophy. The Yin Yang philosophy suggests that there exists neither absolute black nor absolute white; every universal phenomenon embraces paradox and change. Culture is perceived as possessing inherently paradoxical value orientations, thereby enabling it to embrace opposite traits of any given cultural dimension. Through the examination of eight pairs of paradoxical values in business and social contexts, the authors have argued that Chinese culture has undergone significant change. However, “change” occurs not in terms of old values being replaced by new values but rather that contradictory values coexisting more and more visibly in today’s Chinese society. The article analyses the modern communication characteristics.

This article examines the dynamics of the process of geographical perception of Siberia, in the aspect of the forming of the idea of Siberia as geographical and cultural unity. There are presented, in particular, quite legendary testimonies of foreign travelers who almost up to the end of the 17th century were getting pretty random information from Russian merchants; some data from the proper Siberian Chronicles is also given. Taking into account the idea of empire as a political structure that prevailed in the last 2,500 years of human history, author deals with the cultural and political factors which has determined the integrity of the idea of Siberia as a specific megaregion. Particularly the question of the nature of the development of Siberia in terms of the corresponding type of colonization is examined. It is concluded that the population of Siberia, despite the fact that it was used and even became in the first place famous as a region of exile, the consciousness of Siberians is not typical for colonial territory. Since the end of the 18th century the representation of a Siberian as a special group of the Russian population is firmly established.

In this article a reader can find the continuation of the offered in the previous publications the analysis of the concept Siberia as a megaregion. Understanding Siberia as the megaregion plays an exceptionally important role in contemporary geopolitics, taking into account the position of this megaregion, concerning China and South-Eastern Asia. No less significant appears to be the economic capacity of Siberia, taking into consideration it’s natural resources and also it’s industrial, scientific and educational levels. The concept of the megaregion allows to observe Siberia in it’s entity, from the Urals up to the Pacific Ocean. Such an attitude permits to get rid of the “fragment” approach, i.e. division into separate, weakly connected, regions and national territories. Popular in the Russian economic discourse the notion “macroregion” has purely economic character and in difference from “magerarion” doesn’t involve historic, social and cultural dimensions. In the case of New Industrial Revolution there are new opportunities for Siberia, depending on the rebirth of industrial production on the basis of modernization and innovations, and also launching the original projects. Siberia as Russia in whole needs this innovative impulse not only in the sphere of economics, but also in education and science. The positive results will be possible by saving and renewing basic values and cores of successful strategic projects. To reach ambitious aims it’s necessary to have highly-qualified specialists and investments in R&D. It’s important to shift social responses from the plain consumption to the authentic productive labor thru realizing such values as justice and equality.

The subject of analysis is the article by I.V. Zhezhko-Braun. It is useful to discuss the history of the Siberian city of science, taking into account the present state of the RAS. The author highlights the uniqueness of this historical phenomenon, where the appearance of certain structures of civil society could be even more important than scientific discoveries. The article is based on unique sources, the resources, used by the author, involved oral narratives, interviews with a number of contemporaries and participants in the events described. For further research it is recommended for the author to use more available sources, primarily documents of the party organs. The author has to deeper present the general context in which these events took place. It is very important to substantiate the application of the term «student movement» to the opposition phenomena in Novosibirsk Akademgorodok.

The monograph is devoted to the research of an international order problem as the most exigent for the theory and practice of international relations. The work has been performed at the intersection of subject fields of International Relations Theory, International Law and World Politics. The authors consider this range of problems conventional for all international relations schools - from classical political realism and political idealism to liberal institutionalism and neo-Marxism. The paper studied the ideas of T. Hobbes and I. Kant about the world order in detail. It has been shown that they formulated the classical approaches to the understanding of international security, which are also relevant to the contemporary political theory. The choice of the world political discourse predetermined an integrated approach to the study of this subject: the world order is studied in its relation to the evolution of the modern system of international relations and in connection with the main basis of foreign policy planning – security dilemma. The authors propose a classification of the world order, aimed at both the theoretical study of international relations and the understanding of the dynamics of the modern system of international cooperation after the Cold War.

Representatives of the Russian Neo-Eurasianism, trying to root this intellectual tradition, turned to the identification and analysis of the Eurasian motives in the Russian classical literature of XIX century. This research assumes the presence of the structural components in literary texts that correspond to the Eurasian vision of Russia as the "Middle World" in the East-West dichotomy. The author of the article, using the method of structural analysis, reveals the presence of such components in Nikolai Chernyshevsky novel "What Is to Be Done?" One of them is represented in the structural core of the novel in the form of clear anthropological oppositions using two narrative functions: appearance and character (temperament) of the heroes. Another component is Rakhmetov, one of the main characters of the novel. The author comes to the conclusion that Rakhmetov is the first image of a Eurasian in Russian literature. At the same time, the ideology of this image, imposed to the reader by the author, appears to be inconsistent with the art material used for its construction.This is due to the fact that Chernyshevsky himself was not a Eurasian, he was a typical Westerner, who believed that oriental components in Russian culture hinder the development of Russia and they have to be suppressed.

The main scope of this study is the metamorphosis of the set of objects into the set of symbols in fine arts and literature of Art Nouveau. This article overviews the use of artifacts in the literature of Art Nouveau, in particular, in critical essays and literary works by Oscar Wilde. The study intends to elucidate why the process of “sacralization” of beauty expressed in specific artifacts is reflected in the literature of Art Nouveau in the form of “aesthetic game.” The main objectives of this study are: to provide a brief background behind the emergence of “neomythological” aspirations in the culture of Art Nouveau, to show how the pursuit of aestheticizing life and turning it into art leads to destruction of traditional boundaries of the aesthetic space, since canons and rules of high creative art are being transferred to everyday objects, to identify the main principles of the “aesthetic game” in the literary texts of Art Nouveau, and to explain how the “destruction” of the artifact, that is, the transition from describing a real thing to the emblem-symbol which expands the semantic boundaries of artistic space, occurs in the literature of Art Nouveau. The article provides a brief overview of the aesthetic movement in England in the context of the general development of European “panaesteticism.” The author shows how the cult of beautiful things constitutes the basis of the worldview of Art Nouveau and results in the desire of writers and artists to endow everyday objects with aesthetic functions. The majority of the writers and artists, striving to rich “aesthetic autocracy,” created the space (of text, canvas, or real room), which was oversaturated with the description of beautiful things. Such space very quickly begins to be perceived as aestheticized banality. Objects of everyday life, perceived as the objects of art overwhelm not only the real space, but also the artistic space. Their ekphrasis becomes an important part of the literary text. The literature of Art Nouveau quickly came to exhaustion of the expressive capacities of such an ekphrasis which was based on the external quality of things. The example of J.-K. Huysmans can be a good illustration of this point. Oscar Wilde was one of the few writers of Art Nouveau who continued to provoke a continuous interest on the part of the following generations. Considering himself to be a disciple of Huysmans, Oscar Wilde also gave great importance to describing things, but at the same time he insisted on the fundamental importance of the symbolic (secret, profound) meaning, inherent in things. This is why the ekphrasis of Oscar Wilde does not lose its literary relevance, since in addition to aesthetic autocracy it is saturated with the interplay of various meanings of the thing, extending and deepening the artistic space of the text.

This article is a continuation of the article "Russian Universities and the Russian Intelligentsia" Part 1, published in this journal, №3, 2016. The author discusses the problem of the Russian intelligentsia formation and the role, which the Russian university community played in the process. He also demonstrated the origins of the "groundlessness", which has always distinguished the Russian intelligentsia, and analyzed the reasons for its invariable opposition to any authority. The author proves the thesis that the revolutionaries of all stripes represented a semi-intelligentsia: instead of thick books, these people read the brochures, and they replaced the philosophy with the party ideology. Semi-intelligentsia played a leading role in all French Revolutions, and later in the Russian one. The article analyzes the destiny of Russian universities during the years of Soviet power. The years of "stagnation" meant already the agony of Russian universities, which had lost all the impulses to scientific activities. The experimenters were without instruments, theorists were without books ─ they were isolated from the world; they were under a bureaucratic ban. The author gives a brilliant analysis of the role and significance of the Russian intelligentsia in the Russian and world history. In his opinion, the main distinctive characteristic of the Russian intelligentsia was unselfishness. In the West, “freedom” and “equality” meant protecting group and class interests; in Russia, however, these words were understood as “brotherhood” with all oppressed people without any self-interest.

  The article is devoted to the problematic character of the relations of Christianity with other cultures as one of the brightest features of European civilization. Attempts to understand it were made throughout the History of Christianity. It is necessary to consider continuous penetration into Europe of the most diverse cultures from the other continents which entered into the existential conflict with this religion. At the same time it is necessary to consider the problem relations of Christianity with the European mental and cultural arrangements. They naturally came into conflict with Christianity which had been created outside the continent. It is especially vividly seen in the period of early Christianity when Christianity was more presented by a set of ideas, than the sum of artifacts. Besides, Christianity was formed not due to the evolution of a certain initial paradigm, but as a result of synthesis of elements of almost all known at that time cultures. The author gives a general characteristic of the history of interaction between Christianity and the European cultural streams, and also he considers some forms and methods of fight, which Christianity used against those cultural streams. The Church played a special role in this fight, and сhristianization might be presented as the movement of the Church, not a religion. At the same time сhristianization is an information gain of new space. Simultaneously, it is necessary to highlight the role of this religion in preservation of the European information unity and also in the fight against cultural interventions from the outside.