Ideas and Ideals

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.

The student’s movement in the 1960s in the Novosibirsk State University (NGU), the longest open legal student’s movement of the Soviet period, is analyzed in this article.  The previous publications on this subject do not present the movement in its entirety, nor properly reflect the nature of the phenomenon. The civil movement in Akademgorodok (the Academytown) and, in particular, at the NGU was a by-product of the famous Siberian experiment. Nowadays, this by-product is quite topical in search for the best strategy of social change. The article reconstructs and analyses the preconditions and factors of the student’s movement, as well as the spectrum and directions of its political activities: self-organization and self-management, club activities, participation in choosing the Rector, protection of student political and academic freedoms, preservation of the autonomy of the university, etc. The conclusions about the nature of the movement are made based on numerous memoirs and available documents.

The reciprocity between religion and culture is the key theme of the book by I. N. Morozova "Religion and Culture: the Cognitions of Acceptance and Reciprocity". In modern socio-humanitarian discourse there is an urgent need in elucidation of the logical-conceptual, thematic and content subject areas, where theology and a secular worldview can be the participants of the dialogue (keeping the distinction in their original spiritually-aimed orientations). The ideals and values of classical culture form one of the foundations for Christianity and secular culture. The origins of tensions are in the relations between religious and secular components in modern Russian education, the eclecticism of their combination. The author also introduces into the scientific circulation the original texts of foreign scientists-naturalists, who are speculating on cultural dimensions of the sacred; famous sociologists; religious scholars (S. Kaufman, H. Casanova, L. Woodhead, etc.), and theologians. The author considers post-secular culture at the stage of its denial of the rhetoric of confrontation with religion. The author collected and summarized the significant scientific and publicistic material, revealing the uncertain picture of the Russian society ̓ s searching for the necessary consensus in the relationship of religion and culture after Perestroika.

Computer engineering became a reality in the USSR in the mid-1950s. Capabilities of this new branch, demonstrated in the Soviet Atomic Project, generated an urge to expand the production of computers not only in the defense industry but in the civilian economy as well. Since the USSR’s economy developed in confrontation to the capitalist world, the political cliché “to catch up and outdo” introduced by V.I. Lenin back in 1917 was reiterated by other Soviet leaders in different situations. In particular, it was popular after the Second World War and, among other things, was applied to computer engineering. The comparative production of computers in the USSR and in the West was not in favor of our country. Our modest success was primarily attributed to the general slippage in this area. The situation with computer engineering is an example of the catching-up nature of the Soviet technological development during the period of late Stalinism. Nevertheless, since computer production was launched, there emerged a need for specialists both in industrial production and maintenance. Hence, appropriate disciplines were introduced in the Soviet higher educational institutions. Computer specialists were trained in Moscow, Leningrad, Gorky, Kiev, Penza, and in other leading universities of the USSR. Dating back to this period, until the mid-1950s, there are three out of the four principal academic programming schools, based in Moscow, Leningrad and Kiev.  At the same time, A.A. Lyapunov laid back the foundations of the theory of programming and L.A. Lusternik organized, in 1950, a workshop on programming at the Institute of Precise Mechanics and Computer Engineering, USSR Academy of Sciences. Computer design was improved simultaneously with software development. From the very beginning, the civilian applications of computers took computer engineering beyond mathematical calculations, to automatic translation, and with time this tendency grew stronger. The new industry developed in the conditions of severe competition between the two establishments: the USSR Machine-Building Ministry and Academy of Sciences, each promoting their own project. Various means were used in this struggle, up to classifying information about computers in academic and mass media. The ideological pressure on some scientific areas of biology, genetics and physics, characteristic of the late Stalin’s period, did not have any serious consequences for computer engineering. Yet, computer advocates intentionally distinguished themselves from the “bourgeois” theories of computer animation. Computer applications in civilian branches of economy were artificially held back: no small share in this had the authorities’ stance to strengthen, above all, the national defense potential.

  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.

The article is devoted to the search of the hidden meaning of the Bible, and to the birth of the tradition of patristic hermeneutics and exegesis in the history of the early Christian Church. Actually, in the works of early Christian apologists, the five main methods of exegesis of the Holy Scripture were already used, including: literally-historical, moral, theoretical, typological, and allegorical. The author examines the influence of Philo of Alexandria, who identified two stages in the study of God – knowledge of God from the “created things”, and the ascent of mind to the understanding of the transcendence of deity. Clement of Alexandria, unlike his predecessor, didn’t try to turn the biblical text into a philosophical treatise, but sought to transform the philosophical ideas into the Christian ones, and with the help of the typological method he succeeded in it. The purpose of this study is to reveal the mechanism of interaction between two theoretical and methodological traditions: the tradition of the apology of the truths of Divine Revelation and the tradition of interpreting the text of the Scripture, which was systematized in the Alexandrian philosophical-theological school.

The specific images of man stand for any canon of values and for any behavioral code. They determine not only the desire to achieve certain public goals. In the end, any change in these images leads to revolutions, radically influencing the development of entire countries. The article highlights some of the linkages and concealed contradictions hidden behind the Ten commandments of the Old Testament, the Sermon on the Mount of Jesus Christ, the American Declaration of Independence of 1776, and related French Constitution of 1791, and finally, of the UN Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. The image of free and rightful man with innate dignity stands in glaring contradiction with the reality of modern humankind, which will reach the ten billion mark quite soon. The limited capacity of finite resources of planet Earth decidedly demands the change of our traditional ideas about man. The lives of our grandchildren will be determined by the new image of man and the way of when and how it will be developed.

The round table participants discussed a number of interrelated questions: how can we evaluate the relationship between the Church and society in Russia at the present stage? What is causing the obstacles for the dialogue between the Church and other social groups in modern Russia? Is there a possibility for such a dialogue in modern Russian society? What is the actual and possible role of intelligentsia in the formation of a neutral space for such a dialogue? The participants discussed different aspects of the problem: the history of the church and society relations, the problems of these relations at the present stage, the role of the church in the life of modern Russian society, the problem of the dialogue between the Church and atheists. The participants also discussed the burning problems of the Church's participation in the formation and education of youth, issues of influence of the church on the processes of cultural development, the acute problems of the fight between the Orthodox church and religious extremism, the danger of which influence, especially on young people, is often underestimated. In the final analysis, there is a multi-dimensional picture of the relationship between the institution of the Church and civil society represented by different social groups.

The article deals with the economic culture of the Old Believers, known as «chasovennye», who live in North and South America. The interviews and observations, collected during the expeditions to Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil and Canada; as well as previously published works became the material for the generalizations. The first part outlines the nature of the activities and the economic culture of the Old Believers in America, and the second part deals with the Old Believers’ choice of the place of residence and their main activity; finally, the third part reveals the phenomenon of the dialectics of escape from the world and earthly success. A comparative overview of the economic life of a community of Old Believers named “chasovennye” shows the intensity of movements and the voluntariness in choosing the place of residence. In terms of theory, the article shows the dialectical logic of economic and religious choice. Economic success, followed by the loss of traditional ways of life and the language, provoked searching for the new places of residence. Like medieval monasteries and mendicant orders, the Old Believers, who had consciously chosen isolation and escapism, often found themselves in even more advantageous economic conditions, as it can be seen in Alaska and the Canadian Alberta.

The authors present the main statements of the original Mongolian religious and philosophical doctrine – Аrga bilig, which means the unity of two opposites. This doctrine is considered as the culture constant. The authors analyse the Mongolian fine-art works on the basis of Arga bilig. The article substantiates the hypothesis of the universal character of the doctrine for the world view of Mongolians. The analysis and interpretations are made on the basis of works of art.