Book
Русский авангард и война
The collection of papers written by Slavic philologists, (cultural and art) historians, philosophers is devoted to the 100th anniversary of WWI and traces its reflections and references in European culture of the XX-XXI c.
The article consifders the transportation priorities of Viktor Shklovsky demonstrated in his memoir book "Sentimental Journey" and justifies a hypothesis that the protagonist's usage of different means of transport correlates with the structure of the text, i. e. works as a trigger of narration.
Christianity is a missionary religion by definition. Yet, as Christianity became imperial ideology, the attitude towards "barbarians" began to change: the classical Greco-Roman perception of "other" as non-human finds its way into the concept of Christianization. The author tries to outline methods of Byzantine mission, which Byzantines themselves never theoretize upon. Orthodox Christianity lost to its spiritual rivals the Nilr valley, the Middle East, Moravia, Croatia, Abkhazia, Hungary, Lithuania, Khazaria. This book explains why.
The chapter examines the origins of Jewish pogroms during the Civil War in Russia (1918-1921), shows the genetic connection between the "military pogroms" of the World War I and pogroms of the Civil War. Among other issues, the article analyzes the motive of a "shot in the back" as a pretext for pogroms.
The interrelations between culture and economic development cause noticeable interest in the academic community in recent years, however a set of questions still remain open. In particular, there isn’t a lot of works about the interdependence of visual culture and economic practices. The paper shows the interdependence of accounting practices that ensure transparency in society, with the evolution of visual culture for the last one thousand years. Accounting history for this period is presented as a consequence of the stages which provide the increasing of transparency in economic units (or availability of information) to the actorsinterested in their activity – from owners to society in general. Visual culture is considered as set of objects suggesting their visual perception, and the technologies supporting them. Synchronism is shown between accounting revolutions and significant changes in visual culture and technologies: these are cultural innovations of the beginning of the 2nd millennium, period of the Renaissance, second half of XIX and end of the XX centuries. Joint periodization is offered for the accounting practices and visual culture, on the basis of changes in the mechanisms of transparency in society, i.e. technologies and instruments of information perception and cultural practices’ reproduction. It is shown that visual aspects and innovative technologies supporting them had the greatest impact on development of accounting from all aspects of culture, and this impact can be traced only in the context of the European culture.
This collection of papers articles is dedicated to the memory of outstanding Russian historian of Middle ages A.L.Yastrebitskaya (1932-2010). The texts included in the collection discuss subjects which concern different fields of her reserch interests.
The article provides a comparison of two intellectual accounts of experiences in the First World War – From the Letters of an Artillery Ensign (1918) by the Russian philosopher and writer Fjodor Stepun and The Storm of Steel (1920) by the German essayist Ernst Jünger. The aim of this article is to reveal similarities and differences between “optics” of Jünger and Stepun who are reporting one and the same event but deal with two different images of the Great War.
“Throughout human history, perhaps even pre-human, there has been a tension between the need for order and the forces that cause change. That tension is greater now than ever, because, in our increasingly globalized world, the rate of change is also increasing. This book finally explains how we can cope: we have stories. We live our narratives.” Brian Spooner, University of Pennsylvania, is editor of Globalization: The Crucial Phase and Literacy in the Persianate World: Writing and the Social Order "The idea that Axial Ages occurred, and that they provide warnings/opportunities for us today, seems both new and useful. But the value of this book is additional to this stance, in that it looks at cultural change - civilizations - from a complexity viewpoint. These changes are certainly complicated, but the pressures are interwoven and therefore need to be understood as complex. The book does a good job of explaining our present cultural difficulties - our prospective emergencies social, ecological and physical - in a wholly new way. Perhaps we'll get new answers..." Jack Cohen, evolutionary biologist, is co-author of The Collapse of Chaos, with Ian Steward. "This is a challenging and creative tour de force on comparative, global, world history and cross-cultural, complex societal dynamics. Without doubt one of the most stimulating works in the tradition of big history and macro analysis.” Claudio Cioffi-Revilla, George Mason University, is author of Power Laws in the Social Sciences: Discovering Non-equilibrium Dynamics in the Social Universe. “In this book, Dmitri Bondarenko (Russia) and Ken Baskin (USA) compare Modernity with the period historians know as the Axial Age (800-200 BCE) as times of transformation, responding to rapidly increasing social complexity. In doing so, they try to apply the experience of the earlier period, and the time of cultural achievement that followed it, to our time of ideological tension among civilizations. The great achievement of this relatively small book is the lucid way in which the co-authors present a picture of complex worldwide developments, based upon their mastery of recent and older literature, and their efforts to point to a way out of the hopelessly divided socio-political situation of today.” Henri J.M. Claessen, Emeritus Professor of Cultural Anthropology, Leiden University, is author of Structural Change; Evolution and Evolutionism in Cultural Anthropology. “With a lens of great magnification, the authors search through the intricacies of history, selecting its most important threads to weave together. What emerges is a rich tapestry in which the underlying trajectory of history, not clearly visible to the untutored eye, is brought boldly to the surface. And far from being couched in academic jargon—as one might have supposed—the book is a rare combination of brilliant analysis and beautifully crafted prose. Moreover, it ends on a hopeful note with the authors prescribing what they think societies must do if they are to confront and surmount the challenges that lie ahead.” Robert L. Carneiro, Curator Emeritus of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History, is author of Evolutionism in Cultural Anthropology: A Critical History. "I find this a very insightful book, that will help readers to place current cultural developments within the framework of our common past, while contemplating what the future may bring." Fred Spier, University of Amsterdam, is President, International Big History Association, and author of Big History and the Future of Humanity.