Ideas and Ideals

The article is devoted to identifying the lessons of national history in the context of the processes of transformation of history education in the XIX-XX and XX-XXI centuries. Their relevance is linked with the development of modern historical culture and the problem of formation of historical consciousness and self-consciousness of youth. The theoretical foundation of the study is the results of a comparative analysis of undertaken investigations on the issue of school history education in the conditions of social transformations. The empirical basis is the results of research performed by the author on the problem of historical consciousness and self-awareness of school youth in 2014-2015. Theoretical and practical importance of identifying the lessons of history is being revealed during the process of reforming and further development of national history education, which is a factor of historical culture and socialization. The author presents the identified trends of the historical culture formation, historical consciousness and self-consciousness of the post-Soviet generation, philosophical, methodological principles of teaching history in schools in accordance with the contents and the condition of historical consciousness and self-consciousness of modern students.

This paper deals with the post-war period (late 1940s – mid 1950s) in the development of Soviet digital electronic computational tools and formation of the USSR science and technology policy in this field. The authors studied how well the Soviet scientists and managers were aware of the new aspects of this policy, detected its primary application area – the Soviet Atomic project and considered the conditions of its formation. Evidently, information about the new computational tools came to the Soviet Union from abroad. One of the sources of such information was academic and science and technical journals. Possibly, intelligence agencies played a certain role in obtaining this information. It was then that some contradictions between approaches to computer hardware appeared. On the one hand, leaders of the Atomic project realized its benefits and planned to produce and apply it, though in a limited scope. On the other hand, advocates of the development of computer hardware affiliated with the USSR Academy of Sciences and Ministry for Machine Building and Instrument Making were in favor of a more comprehensive approach, which implied the creation of new types of computers, increasing their capacity and extending prospective applications beyond the military-industrial complex. Participation of the two establishments in the development of computer hardware was highly competitive, with each body pursuing its own goals and lacking resources. The fact that the developments by S.A. Lebedev got ultimately higher priority testifies to the deep insight of the USSR Academy of Sciences into scientific and engineering problems. Ideological pressure, characteristic of the late period of Stalin’s rule with respect to some areas of science, did not have any serious implications for the development of computer hardware. The general situation with electronic computational tools confirms the fact that Soviet engineering in the period of late Stalinism was of the catch-up nature.

The author analyses the student movement in 1960s in the Novosibirsk State University (NGU), the longest open legal student movement of the Soviet period. The previous publications on this subject do not present the movement in its entirety, and they also do not reflect the nature of the phenomenon properly. The civil movement in Akademgorodok (Academic Town) 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 movement, as well as the spectrum and directions of its political activities: self-organization and self-management, club activities, participation in the Rector’s elections, 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 article discusses the attitudes of different nations and national cultures to the memory of the Fallen on the battlefield. The author emphasizes the historical, cultural and religious peculiarities of the formation of traditions and customs of honoring and preserving the memory of them. It is concluded that the attitude to the memory of the Fallen demonstrates the level of development of national culture.

The article is devoted to the moral and ethical search and God-seeking of a prominent socialist-revolutionary Boris Savinkov. He earned a reputation not only as one of the leaders of the PSR “Fighting organization”, who participated in the organization of the most resonant attacks – on Interior Minister V.K. Pleve and Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, but also as a writer whose works "The Pale Horse" and "That Which Was Not (Three Brothers)" had a great public resonance. The contradictory nature of his personality, attitudes and actions, clearly manifested in the fact that he simultaneously combined leadership of “Fighting organization” and public reflection on moral inadmissibility of the murder, and in the fact that his anti-Bolshevik activities he combined with writing "The Black Horse", still attracts the attention of researchers and journalists. The circumstances of his death also attract the attention. The author explores them using the documents of "Savinkov case," initially stored in the secret archives of the Politburo of the CPSU (b), which allow us to speak with confidence about his suicide.

Modern science transformed our notion of the universe which appears now as an integrated, continuously developing system which is characterized by the interaction of the chance and the law. Philosophical comprehension of the new picture of the world demands essential changes in the worldview of people. Many western Christian theologians suppose that Christianity in this connection also must and may improve its doctrine of the Creator and creation. The author considers the conception elaborated by one of the most prominent specialists on the problem «science and the modern Christianity», an English scientist and an Anglican theologian A. Peacocke, which is directed at solving that problem. He motivates the legitimation of a new vision of God where the Creator appears as dynamic, limited in His power and knowledge, suffering, loving, personally connected with His creation, exploring it and developing with it. Peacocke’s conception enriches not only Christian theology but also our notion of it.

The article explores the role of Russia in the post-Soviet space, the purpose and the results of cooperation with the newly independent countries in 25 years after the liquidation of the Soviet Union. The main task is to analyze the Russian policy towards the countries that emerged from the former Soviet Union, measures aimed at the development of mutually advantageous cooperation, and their outcomes. It is important to develop the further strategy of Russia taking into account all the pitfalls in the interaction of Russia with all the newly independent countries taken together, to understand the reasons why there have been arising some periodical economic, political and cultural contradictions, and sometimes even conflicts. Today, it has become vital in the period of the new world order formation, in the conditions of worsening relations with Ukraine. The article substantiates the reasons for the lack of efficiency of interaction between Russia and CIS countries in the 1990s in the economic and military-political spheres. The author also highlights the historical significance of the efforts to preserve the declared unity of post-Soviet space in the organizational documents. The article shows the changes that have been made in Russia's policy towards the CIS countries since 2000s, the intense integration of regional parts of the countries to jointly emerge from the crisis, the creation of the collective security system of a group of countries of the former Soviet Union, awareness of the need to move towards multi-level cooperation with these countries as they are ready to join in the interests of mutually beneficial cooperation.

The paper analyses how the set of images and events in the poem “Dionysiaca” by Nonnus of Panopolis reflects the ancient notion of time. The immortal gods of Olympus abide in eternity; however they have to reckon with the earth time and the order of things. Nevertheless, the time of the gods and the time of human beings are represented by different gods: Chronos and Aion, respectively. The original ancient gods, Phanes, Chaos, Chronos, can claim to be fully independent of the time of the mortal, and they abide in a sort of “timelessness” rather than eternity. Thus, there are three positions in relation to time: timelessness – complete independence from time of ancient gods, immortality, and eternity. At the same time, there is Olympic gods’ involvement in the earth time and complete subordination to the laws of the earth time on the part of the mortal. Dionysus is characterized by a spiral pattern of time. Zagreus, Dionysus, Iovakh are both a single whole and different. They are the past, the present and the future. Events in their lives are repeated, but not precisely. The above corresponds to the Platonic interpretation of time, and substantial similarity can be noticed.

The article analyses the text of the mystical «Revelations» of st. Birgitta and references to her “Revelations” in diplomatic correspondence during Hundred Years' War. In this text she calls on those warring parties for laying their arms down in the name of Jesus. The focus is on the argument in favor of the authenticity of the divine origin of the "Revelations" contained inside the text, and in external comments. These techniques of persuasion, as addressed to the recipient of the message, attempt to use conventional conceptions of established law. Based on a detailed analysis of how they were used, as well as how and why they were successful, we can reconstruct the role of religious elements in the legal and political relations of this era.

The author considers the degradation of peasant labour culture in the Soviet kolkhozes, which still affects the modern village. Peasantry is presented as the community of rural inhabitants occupied with crop growing and cattle breeding who possess socio-cultural legacy of ancestors. The author highlights the idea, that traditional culture of peasant labour in Russia was very high. To prove the fact, the examples from the research work of classical writers of the Russian history, ethnographers’, foreigners’ evidence about Russia and the Russian folklore are given in the article. According to the author the policy of collectivization led to the socio-cultural degradation of the traditional labour culture of peasants. The absence of private property, material and moral interests as well as super-exploitation of peasants by the state, low-paid work, cultural revolution and "equal rights" for everybody were the main factors, which led to degradation. And as the result, such phenomena as low productivity of labour, economic indifference, imitation of labour were formed and all the previously mentioned factors led to moral degradation. The author supports the formulated conclusions with the testimonies of former peasants which have been collected in the new scientific genre "oral history". In the opinion of eyewitnesses of collectivization and the author of the article for the modern village recovery it is necessary to give peasants private property and freedom of creativity.