This book is based on the collection of articles centered around Russia and its policies. The articles are grouped under three parts. The first part contains articles on international relations, Russian foreign policy, and the situation in the world. The main themes they cover include Russian policy in Asia and the Eurasian integration — in which Moscow plays the most active role.

The second part looks at the theorization of Russia’s internal processes, issues concerning reforms to the communist system, its troubled transition from Communism, and analysis of the country’s current political regime. While elaborating on various reforms and transition from the communist system, the author has suggested certain alternatives concepts. Many of the articles analyze the shortcomings and inconsistencies of the modern Russian political system.

The third part is devoted to current issues in Russian politics, the democratization process, growing authoritarian tendencies, mass protests, and that evaluate the programs and policies of individual leaders. The book will be of interest to those specializing in Russian foreign and domestic policy as well as to all those interested in following the developments of this country, its role in the world, and the global situation in general.

A number of recent events in the last decade have renewed interest in Russian discourses on international law. This book evaluates and presents a contemporary analysis of Russian discourses on international law from various perspectives, including sociological, theoretical, political and philosophical. The aim is to identify how Russian interacts with international law, the reasons behind such interactions, and how such interactions compare with the general practice of international law. It also examines whether legal culture and other phenomena can justify Russia's interaction in international law. Russian Discourses on International Law explains Russia's interpretation of international law thrugh the lens of both leading western scholars and contemporary western-based Russian scholars. It will be of value to international law scholars looking for a better understanding of Russia's behaviour in international legal relations, law and society, foreign policy, and domestic application of international law. Further, those in fields such as sociology, politics, pholosophy, or general graduate students, lawyers, think tanks, government departments, and specialised Russian studies programmes will find this book helpful.

Liberalism in Russia is one of the most complex, multifaced and, indeed, controversial phenomena in the history of political thought. Values and practices traditionally associated with Western liberalism—such as individual freedom, property rights, or the rule of law—have often emerged ambiguously in the Russian historical experience through different dimensions and combinations. Economic and political liberalism have often appeared disjointed, and liberal projects have been shaped by local circumstances, evolved in response to secular challenges and developed within often rapidly-changing institutional and international settings. This third volume of the Reset DOC “Russia Workshop” collects a selection of the Dimensions and Challenges of Russian Liberalism conference proceedings, providing a broad set of insights into the Russian liberal experience through a dialogue between past and present, and intellectual and empirical contextualization, involving historians, jurists, political scientists and theorists. The first part focuses on the Imperial period, analyzing the political philosophy and peculiarities of pre-revolutionary Russian liberalism, its relations with the rule of law (Pravovoe Gosudarstvo), and its institutionalization within the Constitutional Democratic Party (Kadets). The second part focuses on Soviet times, when liberal undercurrents emerged under the surface of the official Marxist-Leninist ideology. After Stalin’s death, the “thaw intelligentsia” of Soviet dissidents and human rights defenders represented a new liberal dimension in late Soviet history, while the reforms of Gorbachev’s “New Thinking” became a substitute for liberalism in the final decade of the USSR.  The third part focuses on the “time of troubles” under the Yeltsin presidency, and assesses the impact of liberal values and ethics, the bureaucratic difficulties in adapting to change, and the paradoxes of liberal reforms during the transition to post-Soviet Russia. Despite Russian liberals having begun to draw lessons from previous failures, their project was severely challenged by the rise of Vladimir Putin. Hence, the fourth part focuses on the 2000s, when the liberal alternative in Russian politics confronted the ascendance of Putin, surviving in parts of Russian culture and in the mindset of technocrats and “system liberals”. Today, however, the Russian liberal project faces the limits of reform cycles of public administration, suffers from a lack of federalist attitude in politics and is externally challenged from an illiberal world order. All this asks us to consider: what is the likelihood of a “reboot” of Russian liberalism?

    

This book provides a critical account of the third sector and its future in Europe. It offers an original conceptualization of the third sector in its European manifestations alongside an overview of its major contours, including its structure, sources of support, and recent trends. It also assesses the impact of this sector in Europe which considers its contributions to European economic development, citizen well-being and human development.

The Third Sector As A Renewable Resource for Europe presents the findings of the Third Sector Impact (TSI) project funded by the European Union’s Seventh Framework Program (FP7). It recognises that in a time of social and economic distress, as well as enormous pressures on governmental budgets, the third sector and volunteering represent a unique ‘renewable resource’ for social and economic problem-solving and civic engagement in Europe.

One of the key developments in 20th and 21st century history has been the demographic revolution, or demographic transition, which radically changed the course of fundamental demographic processes involving the birth rate, mortality and migration. These changes have had, and continue to have, a significant effect on all aspects of life in modern and developing societies, including their economies, social relations, culture and political life. In addition, they greatly influence the crucial sphere of international relations, and create unprecedented challenges for international security.

Demographic change affects the international situation both directly and indirectly, through the social processes experienced by all societies which embrace this change.

Miscommunicating Social Change analyzes the discourses of three social movements and the alternative media associated with them, revealing that the Enlightenment narrative, though widely critiqued in academia, remains the dominant way of conceptualizing social change in the name of democratization in the post-Soviet terrain. The main argument of this book is that the “progressive” imaginary, which envisages progress in the unidirectional terms of catching up with the “more advanced” Western condition, is inherently anti-democratic and deeply antagonistic. Instead of fostering an inclusive democratic process in which all strata of populations holding different views are involved, it draws solid dividing frontiers between “progressive” and “retrograde” forces, deepening existing antagonisms and provoking new ones; it also naturalizes the hierarchies of the global neocolonial/neoliberal power of the West. Using case studies of the “White Ribbons” social movement for fair elections in Russia (2012), the Ukrainian Euromaidan (2013–2014), and anti-corruption protests in Russia organized by Alexei Navalny (2017) and drawing on the theories of Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, and Nico Carpetntier, this book shows how “progressive” articulations by the social movements under consideration ended up undermining the basis of the democratic public sphere through the closure of democratic space.

While workers movements have been largely phased out and considered out-dated in most parts of the world during the 1990s, the 21st century has seen a surge in new and unprecedented forms of strikes and workers organisations. The collection of essays in this book, spanning countries across global South and North, provides an account of strikes and working class resistance in the 21st century. Through original case studies, the book looks at the various shades of workers’ movements, analysing different forms of popular organisation as responses to new social and economic conditions, such as restructuring of work and new areas of investment.

The end of socialism in the Soviet Union and its satellite states ushered in a new era of choice. Yet the idea that people are really free to live as they choose turns out to be problematic.  Personal choice is limited by a range of factors such as a person’s economic situation, class, age, government policies and social expectations, especially regarding  gender roles. Furthermore, the notion of free choice is a crucial feature of capitalist ideology, and can be manipulated in the interests of the market. This edited collection explores the complexity of choice in Russia and Ukraine. The contributors explore how the new choices available to people after the collapse of the Soviet Union have interacted with and influenced gender identities and gender, and how choice has become one of the driving forces of class-formation in countries which were, in the Soviet era, supposedly classless.

The book will of interest to students and scholars across a range of subjects including gender and sexualities studies, history, sociology and political science.

Intended to bridge the gap between the latest methodological developments and cross-cultural research, this interdisciplinary resource presents the latest strategies for analyzing cross-cultural data. Techniques are demonstrated through the use of applications that employ cross-national data sets such as the latest European Social Survey. With an emphasis on the generalized latent variable approach, internationally prominent researchers from a variety of fields explain how the methods work, how to apply them, and how they relate to other methods presented in the book. Syntax and graphical and verbal explanations of the techniques are included. Online resources, available at www.routledge.com/9781138690271, include some of the data sets and syntax commands used in the book.

The Report predicts that the coming five years will witness the five countries keep improving in national innovative competitiveness, with China and Russia maintaining their strong growth momentum, India growing at a moderate rate, and Brazil and South Africa gradually picking up speed and climbing out of the trough. It estimates that the five countries’ national innovative competitiveness will be keeping steady growth by 2030. 

 

The General Reports part presents a comprehensive analysis of the current status and achievements of STI cooperation between China and other BRICS countries and proposes priority areas of BRICS STI cooperation to provide valuable decision inputs for the BRICS countries to accelerate the improvement of their national innovative competitiveness. The Country Reports part respectively analyzes and makes predictions on the national innovative competitiveness of the BRICS countries based on a survey of their STI development and STI cooperation within the BRICS framework. The Thematic Reports part focuses on four thematic areas closely related to STI, i.e. digital economy, financial inclusion, energy, and agriculture, and offers detailed analysis of the STI development and potential of the countries in relevant areas, providing additional inputs for a further understanding of the national innovative competitiveness of the BRICS countries.

This book combines the approaches of history and criminology to study parricide and non-fatal violence against parents from across traditional period and geographical boundaries, encompassing research on Asia as well as Europe and North America. Parricide and non-fatal violence against parents are rare but significant forms of family violence. They have been perceived to be a recent phenomenon related to bad parenting and child abuse often in poorer socioeconomic circumstances – yet they have a history, which provides insights for modern-day explanation and intervention. Research on violence against parents has concentrated on child abuse and mental illness but, by using a rich array of primary and secondary documents, such as court cases, criminal statistics, newspaper reports, and legal and medical literature, this book shows that violence against parents is also shaped by conflicts related to parental authority, the rise of children’s rights, conflicting economic and emotional expectations, and other sociohistorical factors.

This book offers a comparative analysis of value and identity changes in several post-Communist countries. In light of the tremendous economic, social and political changes in former communist states, the authors compare the values, attitudes and identities of different generations and cultural groups. Based on extensive empirical data, using quantitative and qualitative methods to study complex social identities, this book examines how intergenerational value and identity changes are linked to socio-economic and political development. Topics include the rise of nationalist sentiments, identity formation of ethnic and religious groups and minorities, youth identity formation and intergenerational value conflicts

Higher Education has become a central institution of society, building individual knowledge, skills, agency, and relational social networks at unprecedented depth and scale. Within a generation there has been an extraordinary global expansion of Higher Education, in every region in all but the poorest countries, outstripping economic growth and deriving primarily from familial aspirations for betterment. By focusing on the systems and countries that have already achieved near universal participation, High Participation Systems of Higher Education explores this remarkable transformation. The world enrolment ratio, now rising by 10 per cent every decade, is approaching 40 per cent, mostly in degree-granting institutions, including three quarters of young people in North America and Europe. Higher Education systems in the one in three countries that enrol more than 50 per cent are here classified as 'high participation systems'. Part I of the book measures, maps, and explains the growth of participation, and the implications for society and Higher Education itself. Drawing on a wide range of literature and data, the chapters theorize the changes in governance, institutional diversity, and stratification in Higher Education systems, and the subsequent effects in educational and social equity. The theoretical propositions regarding high-participation Higher Education developed in these chapters are then tested in the country case studies in Part II, presenting a comprehensive enquiry into the nature of the emerging 'high participation society'.

Big History is a new field that has been gaining ground rapidly around the world. It deals with the universe's grand narrative of 13.8 billion years and attempts to provide a connection between our past, present and future. Appearing in three volumes, this is the first international anthology of Big History. The  first volume, Our Place in the Universe: An Introduction to Big History, provides an overview and notes trends in Big History today. The second volume, Education and Understanding: Big History around the World, considers humanity's search for meaning and expression.

The third volume, The Ways that Big History Works: Cosmos, Life, Society and our Future, reflects on how Big History helps us understand the nature of our existence and consider the pathways to our future. This volume will challenge and excite your vision of your own life as well as focus on the new discoveries happening around us. Together with the authors, who come from all the inhabited continents of our planet, you will embark on a fascinating trip into the depths of time and space, and—we hope—will join us in coming to an understanding of our origins and our future. 

The publication is the latest in the African Studies in Russia series of compilations and contains full articles and annotations of the most important – from the point of view of editors – works of Russian Africanists over a certain period. The authors work at the Institute for African Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS). The present issue covers the years 2014 to 2016 and consists of two sections. The first section presents conceptual articles on Africa published in authoritative journals. The second section offers synopses of books by Russian authors on economics, cultural anthropology, social and political development, gender studies, and international relations of African countries. The main objective of the triennial series of compilations is to introduce new findings of Russian Africanists to interested foreign scholars who do not speak Russian.

Presenting the findings of a major research project, this  volume investigates the regional, ethnic and socio-cultural aspects of poverty and social exclusion in Russia in recent years. In-depth household interviews and survey data allowed teams from the UK, Denmark and Russia to compare different societies and communities in Russia across several different themes: the definition of poverty in different regional, ethnic and socio-cultural settings; the reproduction and formation of poverty subcultures in different societies and communities; the ethnic/national and political values of poor people; the readiness of poor people for social protest; and a comparison of Russia with other EU countries. Offering a wealth of original data collected following a period of rapid impoverishment of the Russian population, the study considers the challenge this presents to Western European models of poverty and social exclusion.

This essay examines the development of a form of Russian-speaking Belarusian national identity. While Belarus’s early post-Soviet nationalists relied upon Belarusian as the central pillar of national identity, this has been challenged by more ‘pragmatic’ nationalists using the ‘language of the people’, namely, Russian. Analysing history textbooks and popular history books that represent three key identity projects in Belarus, this study sheds light on the specific programmatic ideas of a new Russian-speaking Belarusian nationalism. Despite the emergence of the geopolitically-motivated Russian World (Russkii Mir) concept, some Russian-speaking nationalists have articulated a programme that paradoxically draws upon Russian neo-Eurasianist thought, but which is simultaneously anti-Russian.

In this paper, we propose an alternative approach to analysing the current duality of the Russian media system, which for a long time was regarded as transitional. We propose to interpret the current Russian media system in terms of institutional conflict between norms, which were artificially implemented and the grounded informal rules embodied in everyday practices both from market agents and audiences. Mainly implemented after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the norms were based on a neo-liberal representation of the media system, involving financial independence of the media from the state, a ‘news culture’ instead of a ‘propaganda culture’ and so on. At the same time, the informal rules were based on the paternalistic role of the state, the accessibility tradition and the fragmentation of the public sphere. The interaction of such elements forms the dualist or ‘uncertain’ character of the media system.

Plastic bags create large amounts of waste and cause lasting environmental problems when inappropriately discarded. In 2015, England introduced a mandatory five pence (US$0.06/€0.06) charge to customers for each single-use plastic bag taken from large stores. Combining a longitudinal survey (n=1,230), supermarket observations (n=3,762), and a longitudinal interview study (n=43), we investigated people’s behavioural and attitudinal responses to the charge. We show that all age, gender, and income groups in England substantially reduced their plastic bag usage within one month after the charge was introduced, with interviewees highlighting the ease of taking their own bags. Support for the bag charge also increased among all key demographic groups. Increased support for the plastic bag charge in turn predicted greater support for other charges to reduce plastic waste, suggesting a ‘policy spillover’ effect. Results indicate a broad and positive effect of the bag charge, which appears to have catalysed wider waste awareness among the British public. This may facilitate the introduction of other policies to eliminate avoidable single-use plastics and packaging.

The article examines a key attribute of Russian national identity—national pride—as it is reflected in mass consciousness. To trace the dynamics of multiple facets of national pride and related phenomena from 1996 to 2015, we use data from five surveys. The results demonstrate a substantial growth in Russian national pride in specific country achievements and general pride in Russian citizenship over the last 20 years. This change is the result of the population’s and state’s need for positive social identity as well as from both real and imagined progress in the Russian economy and political influence, and it started long before the Crimea mobilization and Olympics of 2014. The structural difference in pride in various achievements persisted for the 20 years examined here, but became less distinct. Across the years examined here, Russian national pride has become more strongly related to belief in the superiority of the country and is therefore increasingly competitive.

Gender inequality starts early in life. Parents tend to prefer boys over girls, which is manifested in reproductive behavior, marital life, and parents’ pastimes and investments in their children. While social media and sharing information about children (so-called “sharenting”) have become an integral part of parenthood, whether and how gender preference shapes the online behavior of users are not well known. In this paper we use public posts made by 635,665 users from Saint Petersburg on a popular Russian social networking site, to investigate public mentions of daughters and sons on social media. We find that both men and women mention sons more often than daughters in their posts. We also find that posts featuring sons receive more “likes” on average. Our results indicate that girls are underrepresented in parents’ digital narratives about their children, in a country with an above-average ranking on gender parity. This gender imbalance may send a message that girls are less important than boys or that they deserve less attention, thus reinforcing gender inequality from an early age.

This introduction article is divided into three parts that together provide an overview of concepts which guide this special issues overarching vision. First, we interrogate the idea of the “Cold War” as a discrete historical period and narrative frame for understanding religion's histories and politics. When doing this, we point to asymmetries in experiencing the Cold War legacies in different “worlds.”  Second, we introduce “religion” as an empirical object of analysis, considering various methods for approaching the rhetorical, ritual and political-theological aspects of everyday religious life. Third, we consider how the post-WWII era of decolonization shaped the border and territorial politics of the Cold War, and consequently, examine various concepts of the “border.”

This paper explores age-specific migration flows between regions of Russia. Using age-disaggregated data of the Russian Census 2010, we cluster interregional migration flows based on prevailing age-groups of migrants, analyse diversity and similarity in the choice of age-specific migration destinations and describe general socio-economic characteristics of these flows. It is for the first time that the relationship between migration and migrants’ age and life-cycle events is analysed in the Russian context. Similar to migrants in other countries, migrants in Russia choose the place of residence depending on their age. Migration flows which differ by dominating age group of migrants quite often have opposite destinations, because motivations of migration also differ. Migration follows various stages of the life-cycle: people are born in one region, study in another region, go to work in a different region, and resettle to another place after retirement. Migration modeling turns to be complicated if the impact of age factor is ignored. Therefore, the age of migrants should be considered when analyzing, modeling and interpreting interregional migration in Russia.

This article examines the relationships between the sociology of morality and behavioural sciences. It is argued that, although the classical sociological tradition provides valuable theoretical resources for understanding moral phenomena, the prevalence of behavioural sciences in the field is problematic for the ‘new’ sociology of morality, particularly given a wider naturalist movement represented by some modern social theorists. In the context of the current discussion about the future of the sociology of morality, especially the question of how it should react to the dominating biological and psychological approaches, I propose two possible perspectives for the field’s ongoing development.

The availability of alternative information via online news sources is often said to induce social discontent, especially in states, where traditional media are under state control. But does this relation really exist, and is it universal? In contrast to previous studies, where generalized Internet use is treated as a proxy for online news consumption and general political participation is a proxy for protest participation, we render a test of relationship specifically between online news and protest participation. We explore survey data from WVS for 48 nations in 2010-2014. The analysis provides evidence that the likelihood of individual protest participation is positively associated with online news consumption. The study also shows that the magnitude of the effect varies depending upon the political context: surprisingly, despite supposedly unlimited control offline as well as online media, autocratic countries demonstrated higher effects of online news than transitional regimes, where the Internet media are relatively uninhibited.  

This article discusses the phenomenon of recent decades associated with the redevelopment of former industrial areas and factory districts. These areas previously had a homogeneous environment in which residents construct a local solidarity, but now functions and image of industrial districts are changing. Transformations of former industrial spaces is analyzed on example of two Moscow neighborhoods. The author’s research based on case study includes interviews with residents and developers, observations, analysis of media discussion and online communities, and secondary data analysis. Relying on concepts of social differentiation and social identity, the author considers former industrial neighborhood in terms of housing statuses, visual representations, senses and subjective perception.Redevelopment accentuates the differences between the “old” residents of industrial neighborhoods who live in the former factory buildings, and the “new” residents who buy dwelling in new buildings constructed on the former factory spaces or in nearby areas. These differences related with spatial representations and helps to build a model of socio-cultural and territorial dynamics of the industrial areas. The research shows that the formation of a new territorial identity occurs in conditions of social and housing inequality.

This study provides new evidence on the impact of historic household formation patterns on present day levels of social capital (SC). We distinguish effects on bonding and bridging social capital, of which only the latter is beneficial for a society as a whole. Our results challenge the view that large household size in the past per se was responsible for institutional drawbacks of contemporary societies restricting social capital. We unveil the true processes lying behind the idea that prevalence of nuclear households fostered institutional development, testing three mechanisms through which household size may influence social capital: (a) family size in terms of the number of household members; (b) the strength of loyalty bonds within the family, and (c) generational and gendered power hierarchies within the family. Our hypotheses are explored on the basis of 26 European countries covered by the Life in Transition Survey (LiTs) in 2010. The contrast between Western and Eastern European countries in the LiTs provides a controlled environment that is free from the potentially confounding influence of European colonialism. We generate a new historical database using historical census data for 429 sub-national regions in 5 West European and 21 East European countries. Individual responses from the LiTs are attributed to the sub-national region in which the respondent lives. We find that power relations within the family have more essential consequences for contemporary values and attitudes than nuclearity/extendedness dimension. Within-family hierarchies revealed to be the strongest predictor of social capital today, indicating lower levels of bridging SC and higher level of corruption in form of monetary transfers or exchange of favors. We suggest that within-family hierarchies in the past might have affected the contemporary level of SC provoking a longstanding commitment to authority within the society. This evidence is illustrated by the significant positive correlation between the historical index of within-family hierarchy and autocracy preference as measured on LiTs data. Societal commitment to authority rooted in historical family pattern might have prevented generalized trust formation and fostered vertical patron-client relations, favoritism and corruption. Our results may drive further research from concentrating on family extendedness (nuclearity) as a predictor of the current state of modernization towards using more meaningful indicators of within-family hierarchies.

There is an extensive body of research devoted to how political satire affects political knowledge and political behavior. Extant studies are focused on political satire in democratic countries and do not pay enough attention to authoritarian regimes. This study extends this research to non- democratic regimes, while also adding to it by exploring the extent to which the use of political satire encourages exposure to political information. We conduct an online experiment on the sample of Russian students. We borrow satirical pictures from Lentach – popular Russian socialmedia public page, whose motto is “a propaganda of common sense” as opposed to biasedpolitical messages proliferated by government-controlled media outlets. Using both frequentist and Bayesian approaches, we found that access to political information containing satirical illustrating content increases attention to the information, relative to political news reports accompanied by standard news illustrations. The findings contribute to the literature on the political entertainment and exposure to political information, as well as to research on media under authoritarianism.

The correspondence study has now become a standard method of measuring discrimination in the labour market. For the first time in the literature, we present a correspondence study of ethnic discrimination in Russia. A sample of over 9,000 job applications makes it one of the largest such studies ever conducted. We include 10 ethnic groups and run the experiment in four Russian cities, whose populations have varying ethnic compositions. Ethnic preferences of Russian employers are different across locations. In Moscow and St Petersburg, employers treat applications from ethnic Russians and ethnic groups of European origin (Germans, Jews, and Ukrainians) in about the same way. Visible minorities of Southern origin are discriminated against. Men from ethnic groups of Southern origin experience stronger discrimination than women. In Kazan and Ufa, two cities with ethnically mixed populations, and in which indigenous ethnic groups have a privileged status, all applicants are treated about equally. We discuss the effects, on discrimination, of ethnic autonomy and of the ethnic composition of a population; these effects may apply to other ethnic federations beyond the Russian case.  

The paper analyzes the existing approaches to the concept of scientific career, as well as career patterns of PhD holders. The authors consider the choice of alternative career options that do not involve a strict hierarchy or a clear understanding of where a person’s career path will take him. Taking into account the approaches developed earlier in the framework of the sociology of science, the sociology of employment and the theory of life cycles, as well as on the basis of the results of modern empirical research, including the results of the international project “Careers of Doctorate Holders (CDH)” (OECD, Eurostat, UNESCO Institute for Statistics), the authors propose a new model of academic career and identify the main factors, allowing to assess the success of a career. The model was tested on the data obtained during a survey among Russian researchers involving 828 respondents aged between 30 and 49 and employed by universities, research institutes, organizations of engineering services, industrial enterprises, medical centers and clinics. The analysis revealed 5 main factors determining the research career: recognition in the academic community; application of the scientific results in practice; implementation of research interests; formal criteria for successful employment (salary and level of position); mobility (including international). The results of the study confirmed the initial hypothesis that the factors affecting career success can be classified by their significance for the individual / for the professional community / for society as a whole.

The purpose of this research is to reveal how macro-, meso- and micro-level factors influence the choice of matrimonial behaviour. The ability of determinants of various levels to explain cross-country differences in matrimonial behaviour was examined (second wave of the Generations and Gender Survey); differences in matrimonial behaviour of the Russians were also investigated (a panel part of three waves of the Russian part of the same survey). It was revealed that the form of marriage historically formed in the country, the values profile of the citizens, and the family policy of the government can explain the cross-country differences in matrimonial behaviour at the macro-level. The type of settlement determines the choice between cohabitation and marriage as a first union at the meso-level, while at the micro-level it is determined by the age at entry into the union, conception prior to the union, matrimonial experience of parents, circumstances of leaving the parental home and entering the labour market and educational level. The explanatory ability of these variables is different for men and women, as well as for various generations of the Russians.

The study is devoted to the investigation of the interrelations between migration and demographic behavior (partnerships, marriages, and childbearing) of modern Russian women. The quantitative research conducted on 2,229 individual biographies of women between 19 and 43 implies the use of descriptive analysis and Event History Analysis (Cox regression) within the Life-Course Approach. The results of the research are viewed within the framework of the hypotheses explaining the impact of migration on demographic behavior already described in scientific literature. The Russian female population is characterized as mostly immobile (more than two thirds of women never experienced migration, at least before age 43). The paper discusses various economic and demographic factors affecting the risks of occurrence of demographic events in migrant and non-migrant life careers. The disruption hypothesis describing the negative effect of migration on marital and reproductive behavior, is partially disproved: 1st migration exhibits no effect on the risk of 1st childbearing or 1st partnership among adult women; the risk of 1st marriage is negatively affected among women after 21.  The selection and the interrelations-of-events hypotheses may explain the demographic behavior of the two suggested groups of migrant women in Russia: educational migrants and marriage migrants.

The study analyzes the construction of the network links of Vladimir Putin and Alexei Navalny with various issues of Russian public discussion in the national print media. The theoretical framework is issue ownership theory, according to which political actors have a range of issues that are most strongly associated with them. Ownership by the politician of topics that are perceived as important in the society determines his popularity among the population. In this study, we use the Integrum database, which contains extensive print media archives of approximately 500 Russian magazines and more than 250 national newspapers. We analyze the period from 12.12.2016 to 12.12.2017, i.е., one year after Alexey Navalny's announcement of his intention to participate in the presidential election in 2018. The analysis shows that Putin has more opportunities to form an agenda, as he attracts much more attention from national media than Navalny does. Putin is often mentioned in connection with economic issues and international relations, which attract the attention of the population and are perceived as important, while his activity in these spheres is perceived as successful. Navalny is associated with the issues of corruption, NGOs and civic activism. Corruption is an important topic for Russians, but the low attention of the media to Navalny does not allow him to gain the maximum benefit from owning this story.

The article presents the results of the study of radical innovations in the global food industry which were obtained through semantic analysis of heterogeneous unstructured text data sources by applying innovative big data text mining system. The approach used allows performing rapid, yet comprehensive aggregation of the whole polyphony of existing knowledge of the technology development in any sector for traditional foresight, future oriented technology analysis, and horizon scanning studies. The sources for the analysis include research papers, patent applications with both full-text data and additional structured metadata, analytical reports by main international organizations and national key players, various media and news resources, including all the major technology innovation, disruption and venture capital news websites. Their processing with an introduced approach for trend- and technology-mapping helps to identify ongoing and emerging technology-related trends, weak signals on possible scientific breakthroughs in the global food industry, including most promising startup strategies and food innovation controversies. This kind of analysis can be performed on a regular basis owing to constant accumulation of textual data and serve as a framework for constant science and technology (S&T) monitoring for early warning on changing technology landscape and its implications on agriculture and food markets.

The paper analyses problems associated with technologies classification for the purposes of futures studies, in order to ensure definitive inclusion of technologies in specific classes/types when conventional approaches to classification are applied. The evolution of classification approaches in the scope of science philosophy is shortly reviewed, together with the latest research on expert-based and computerised (algorithmic) classification and methodological dilemmas related to hierarchical aggregation of technological and production processes are analysed. Common problems with classifying technologies and industries frequently encountered in the age of converging technologies are examined, using the agricultural sector and related industries as an example. A case study of computerised classification of agricultural technologies based on clustering algorithms is presented, with a brief analysis of the potential and limitations of the methodology. For doing so a two-stage approach to classifying technologies is suggested, based on distinguishing between platform (multipurpose) and industry-specific technologies. An adaptive approach to analysing technological structures is proposed, based on many-to-many relationships and fuzzy logic principles.

The working paper presents the results of a study of language transmission in small communities of Russian-speaking migrants living in Madrid. The research seeks to clarify the role played in this process by the characteristics of the environment, the resources of small communities and families, as well as the motivation of parents, the barriers and difficulties they face, and the strategies they use to overcome them. The empirical base consists of interviews with Russian-speaking parents, teachers and organizers of Russian-language structured forms of activities for children, as well as data of observation conducted during visits to these programs, meetings and walks with parents and children. The study demonstrates that while the super-diversity framework describes well what happens with the first-generation migrants, intergenerational changes in the practices of the use of language are great relates to the main conclusions of the assimilation theory. Using the superdiversity lens to study the language transmission has made it possible to pay attention to various combinations of migrants' attributes, which ultimately determine the existing diversity in the language practices and communicative environments of first-generation migrants. There are important similarities, which lie across borders of the dichotomy of mixedness - migrantness of a family. Many parents consider bilingualism as an integral part of good parenting, possess a number of techniques that are considered important, but in practice they face a lot of difficulties caused by specific features of family, “communities” and social context that they cannot overcome.

The collapse of the USSR and structural changes in society gave rise to family and marriage transformations in Russia and other post-Soviet countries of Eastern Europe. Estonia is among the examples of rapid marriage transformation and the spread of cohabitations and extramarital births. At the same time, throughout the post-war era Estonia accepted Russian migrants. Studies show that the adaptation of the Russian population in Estonia proceeds slowly, and that patterns of matrimonial behavior among the Russian migrants and their descendants in Estonia are closer to patterns of ethnic Russians in Russia. In this study, the Generation and Gender Survey data for Russia (2004) and Estonia (2005) were used to analyze the prevalence of first and second childbirths in first and higher-order unions and the determinants of fertility after repartnering among the Russian and Estonian populations in Estonia and Russians in Russia. We consider the impact of partners’ age and parenthood status at the beginning of higher-order unions, as well as social variables (e.g. education, type of settlement and ethnicity).  The results show that the contribution of higher-order unions to total fertility increased significantly in all studied populations. However, first childbirths in high-order unions are rare among both the Russians and the Estonians, second births after repartnering are more widespread among Russians in Russia. Divorces and separations significantly increase the interval between first and second births, but there is no difference in time interval duration between the three considered population groups. The determinants of childbearing among Russians in Russia and Estonia in higher-order unions are very similar: they are the age of women, the type of habitation and the initial nature of the union. The effect of the parenthood status and marriage cohort is individual for each population group: in Russia, if a male partner has no child(ren) from previous relationships, the couple has a higher chance of having a mutual child. The probability of childbearing after repartnering significantly increased in 1990-1999 in Estonia.

The present paper operationalizes one of the oldest concepts in the sociological literature about social stratification. Relying on Weber’s theory, the authors consider life chances in terms of positive and negative privileges. This framework is fertile ground for constructing a series of indices measuring opportunities and risks in key areas of life such as economic conditions, work situation, human capital accumulation, and consumption and leisure activities. Drawing on empirical data from three 2015 representative Russian surveys, the authors classified the Russian population on a continuum of life chances. The majority of Russians obtain just one third of the maximum scores on the life-chance scale. It is also shown that the life-chance scale has a strong correlation with the peaks of income distribution; however, the relationship between lower- and middle-income groups are not that salient. Finally, we show that life chances are uniquely distributed across different localities in contemporary Russia. We admit therefore the high analytical power of the neo-Weberian concept of life chances in stratification studies. Measured via a multidimensional index, life chances appear a good alternative to a gradational approach and the relational stratification schema developed particularly for the working population. 

Although conflict representation in media has been widely studied, few attempts have been made to perform large-scale comparisons of agendas in the media of conflicting parties, especially for armed country-level confrontations. In this paper, we introduce quantitative evidence of agenda divergence between the media of conflicting parties in the course of the Ukrainian crisis 2013-2014. Using 45,000 messages from the online newsfeeds of a Russian and a Ukrainian TV channels, we perform topic modelling coupled with qualitative analysis to reveal crisis-related topics, assess their salience and map evolution of attention of both channels to each of those topics. We find that the two channels produce fundamentally different agenda sequences: in particular, while the Russian channel pays little attention to confrontation between the Ukrainian government and the opposition before the regime change, the Ukrainian channel is less inclined to cover armed violence in East Ukraine and refugees after the regime change.

In most countries, women live longer than men. Differences in longevities are country-specific and change over time. We perform a cross-country panel data analysis in developed countries (OECD and EU) to study the gender-longevity gap dependence on various socio-economic indicators and test a number of contradicting theories. We show that a lower gender longevity gap is associated with a higher real GDP per capita, a higher level of urbanization, lower income inequality, lower per capita alcohol consumption and a better ecological environment. An increase in women’s aggregate unemployment rate and a decline in men’s unemployment are associated with a higher gap in life expectancies. The effect of the share of women in parliaments in the gender-longevity gap is estimated to have a U-shape; it has a better descriptive efficiency if taken with a 5-years lag, which approximately corresponds to the length of political cycles.

The aim of this study is to compare the sociodemographic events marking the transition to adulthood in France, Estonia and Russia: first leaving parents, completion of education, first partnership, first marriage and first childbirth. We used the first waves of the Generations and Gender Survey for these three countries and an advanced method – Sequence Analysis. According to the Second Demographic Transition Theory, we expected a convergence in the sequencing, timing and tempo of the occurrence of target events. The results showed the slow convergence of sequences, but not of timing and tempo. Estonia and Russia are still close in the timing of the occurrence of events, but in tempo Estonia and France are more alike. The ages at which people start families in Estonia and Russia have decreased in younger generations in comparison with older ones, despite our expectation that they would increase. For the youngest generation (1970s), the time between leaving parents and becoming a parent is 5-7 years in France, 4-6 years in Estonia and 2-3 years in Russia. The sociodemographic behaviour of Estonians clearly positions them between Europe and Russia. Thus, the comparison of France, Estonia and Russia only partially confirms the Second Demographic Transition Theory.

This paper presents an analytical description of working-class identity in three key periods of the socioeconomic transformations which changed the structure of a plant’s industry and working-class life: the Soviet era (1930s-1980s), the time of economical change (1990s), and the post-Soviet years (2000s-2010s). The analytical framework of the study is based on the concept of ‘cultural class analysis’ (Savage 2015). It includes the concepts of habitus and cultural capital, and culture as embedded in economic and social relations (Bourdieu 1980). In the course of the research we conducted an ethnographic case-study in 2017 and lived in the neighborhood of Uralmash, which was designed for workers of a heavy machinery plant dating back to the 1920s in the city of Yekaterinburg. Based on 15 in-depth interviews with Uralmash workers living in the neighborhood and 8 experts, and our field observations, we discovered 3 restructuring shapes of the Uralmash worker identity. These working class identities shapes referred to 3 determined periods. The Soviet period showed a ‘consistent’ working-class identity of the Uralmash workers, whereby the plant and working spirits were the centers of their lives. The 1990s was marked by severe deterioration of workers’ social conditions and the loss of their familiar bearings in life. As a consequence, the Uralmash workers perceived themselves as ‘victims of circumstances’ with ‘collapsing’ worker identity in 1990s. Currently, ‘Soviet’ and ‘post-Soviet’ practices and values are combined in today’s ‘mixing’ and an inconsistent worker identity. The notions of ‘simple’ and ‘working-class’ as sense-making images are encapsulated in nostalgic memories and retain their role as criteria for the delineation between inequalities and social discrimination along the ‘them’ and ‘us’: ‘we are those who live belonging to the past’. The Soviet past still continues to be an important sense-making resource; in fact, it is the only ‘universal’ prop for them that support their subjective perception of themselves.