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.

Working Title: From Corporate Social Responsibility to Corporate Social Liability

Subtitle: A Socio-Legal Study of Corporate Liability in Global Value Chains

Series: N/A 

 

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 examines the waves of protest that broke out in the 2010s as the collective actions of self-organized publics. Drawing on theories of publics/counter-publics and developing an analytical framework that allows the comparison of different country cases, this volume explores the transformation from spontaneous demonstrations, driven by civic outrage against injustice to more institutionalized forms of protest. Presenting comparative research and case studies on e.g. the Portuguese Generation in Trouble, the Arab Spring in Northern Africa, or Occupy Wall Street in the USA, the authors explore how protest publics emerge and evolve in very different ways – from creating many small citizen groups focused on particular projects to more articulated political agendas for both state and society. These protest publics have provoked and legitimized concrete socio-political changes, altering the balance of power in specific political spaces, and in some cases generating profound moments of instability that can lead both to revolutions and to peaceful transformations of political institutions.

The authors argue that this recent wave of protests is driven by a new type of social actor: self-organized publics. In some cases these protest publics can lead to democratic reform and redistributive policies, while in others they can produce destabilization, ethnic and nationalist populism, and authoritarianism. This book will help readers to better understand how seemingly spontaneous public events and protests evolve into meaningful, well-structured collective action and come to shape political processes in diverse regions of the globe.

    

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.

Personal values are reliable cross-situational predictors of attitudes and behavior. Since the resurgence in research on values following the introduction of Schwartz’s theory of basic values, efforts were focused on identifying universal patterns in value-attitude relations. While some evidence for such universal patterns exists more recent studies point out, there is still considerable variation in value-attitude and value-behavior links across cultures and contexts. Extending the existing literature on potential moderators in this paper we introduce the concept of value-instantiating beliefs.   This study looks at subjective construal of the value relevance of specific behaviors as a proximal moderator of value-attitude and value-behavior relations. We argue that a belief that construes a behavior as a valid instantiation of a value is a prerequisite for the relationship between said value and the behavior. We also argue that such value-instantiating beliefs play a central role in determining the direction of the relationship. 

In a web-based survey experiment (N = 1724) consisting of three trials, we presented participants with vignettes describing behavioral choices. In order to manipulate the value-instantiating beliefs, the behaviors were described either neutrally, as reinforcing the value, or as inhibiting the value. We then measured the value instantiating beliefs, the attitude towards the behavior, and the intention to perform it.  Instantiating beliefs strongly moderated the relationship between the personal values and the dependent variables in all three trials. Moreover, the direction of the relationship was determined by the instantiating beliefs.  

    The results emphasize the plasticity of the value-behavior relation and the role of social construction in directing the motivational power of values towards concrete instantiating behaviors. 

Russia has a widespread injection drug use epidemic with high prevalence of HIV and HCV among people who inject drugs (PWID). We conducted a mixed methods study of young (age 18-26) hard drug users in St. Petersburg. Thirty-nine structured and 10 semi-structured interviews were conducted. No HIV cases and two HCV cases were detected among the PWID subsample (n=29).  Amphetamine and other stimulants were common (70%), opioid use was rare and episodic. Consistent condom use was low. No PWID reported syringe-sharing, 51% reported other drug paraphernalia sharing.  Contacts with older (30+) PWID were rare. A new cohort of drug users in St. Petersburg may have emerged, which is much safer in its injection practices compared to previous cohorts. However, risky sexual practices of this new cohort may expose them to the possibility of sexual transmission of HIV and widespread drug paraphernalia sharing to the HCV epidemic.

This two-part overview of contemporary Russian anthropology focuses in detail on the work of several scholars and situates it in the changing landscape of Russian academia. The main issue I address is the debated academic identity of anthropology as ‘historical science’ as it is officially classed in Russia. Proceeding in a case-study manner, I aim to re-conceptualise the relationship between anthropology and history from the point of view of the anthropology of time, not merely by historicising anthropology but also by anthropologising history. I ask what temporal frameworks underscore the relationship between anthropology and history as it is thought about by the scholars I explore.

This two-part overview of contemporary Russian anthropology focuses in detail on the work of several scholars and situates it in the changing landscape of Russian academia. The main issue I address is debates about an academic identity of Russian anthropology as ‘historical science’. Given that in Western anthropology, history has become one of the leading modes of anthropological analysis and that the turn to history marked a radical repositioning of anthropology’s very subject, it is important to explore how such configurations of history and anthropology work in other anthropological traditions and what the reasons are for turning to history or, conversely, avoiding it, for specific national, continental and transnational anthropological schools. In this article, I explore these questions by focusing on anthropology in Russia with an aim of reassembling the relationship between anthropology and history from the point of view of the anthropology of time. I ask what temporal frameworks underscore the relationship between anthropology and history. I explore these understandings ethnographically, that is, through ethnographic interviews with Russian scholars in addition to close readings of their works.

Current predictive models of collective action have devoted little attention to personal values, such as morals or ideology. The present research addresses this issue by incorporating a new axiological path in a novel predictive model of collective action, named AICAM. The axiological path is formed by two constructs: ideology and moral obligation. The model has been tested for real normative participation (Study 1) and intentional non-normative participation (Study 2). The sample for Study 1 included 531 randomly selected demonstrators and non-demonstrators at the time of a protest that took place in Madrid, May 2017. Study 2 comprised 607 randomly selected participants who filled out an online questionnaire. Structural equation modelling analysis was performed in order to examine the fit and predictive power of the model. Results show that the model is a good fit in both studies. It has also been observed that the new model entails a significant addition of overall effect size when compared with alternative models, including SIMCA. The present research contributes to the literature of collective action by unearthing a new, independent path towards collective action that is nonetheless compatible with previous motives. Implications for future research are discussed, mainly stressing the need to include moral and ideological motives in the study of collective action engagement.

University mergers are a common practice in higher education systems around the world. Merger-related aspects such as the transformation of organizational and administrative structures, the impact on the internal funding allocation mechanisms, or changes in academic strategies and profiles, are well researched. However, the role of students in university mergers and their understanding of these processes are hardly investigated. The aim of this study was to identify how students are affected by merger processes. Through the conceptual framework, integrating university organizational identity theory and studies of the human side of mergers and acquisitions, this article encompasses six institutional cases in Russian higher education. These cases were selected to illustrate different scenarios of university mergers and accordingly to analyze the variety of student experience in changing universities. The project’s data included the results of document analysis, analysis of the merged universities’ representation in the public space, interviews and focus-groups with university administrators and with students who studied during the process of university merger. It highlights such perceived effects of mergers as anxiety and perceived unfairness due to post-merger changes, activization of we-they opposition between the students of merged universities, loss or transformation of organizational identity, and clash of university cultures. 

The paper seeks to introduce the definition and to specify the characteristic features of “non-routine entrepreneurs”. Using the notion of entrepreneurship by Shane and Venkataraman (2000), it explains “non-routine entrepreneurs” as persons driven primarily by the idea of exploring entrepreneurial opportunities, but less interested in being formally engaged in owing/managing a business or to claim additional incomes from it. The empirical base of the papers is two cases, labelled as a “patriot” and a “big tipster”, from a panel of entrepreneurs, self-employees and start-ups the author surveyed in Moscow in three annual waves (2013–2015, N = 13). The paper shows the differences between the “non-routine entrepreneurs” and already well investigated groups (latent entrepreneurs, informal entrepreneurs, hybrid entrepreneurs, freelancers) and examines the personal (human capital) and social (transitional shock) context of the evolution of entrepreneurial intentions and their motivation. The “non-routine-entrepreneurs” fill in the lack of evidence about entrepreneurially minded persons with non-monetary goals, or non-economic meaning of results from such activities. Thus, the paper contributes to the literature on the reason and the intentionality of entrepreneurship. It concludes that “non-routine entrepreneurship” might become the choice of many people in contemporary societies where the boundaries between different kinds of economic activities are blurred.

This article analyses the discourse about the opposition politician Alexei Navalny in Russian media. Navalny has been actively engaging with his audience through social media and online platforms; however, some media continue to ignore the politician, practically not covering his activities. The article analyses the intensity and sentiment of the media coverage of Navalny based on data from Medialogia. It is concluded that the media in general do cover the politician’s activities and attempts to deliberately ignore news about him are only made by TV stations. However, news about Navalny is often negative. While blogs offer a more positive outlook on the politician’s activities than do the other types of media that the article considers, the majority of the coverage of Navalny in Russian media is of a critical nature. In addition, an analysis of positive and negative news in various types of media suggests that the way the politician’s activities are covered primarily involves not information about what he did or did not do but rather the various media interpretations of these actions.

Several large international surveys, including the World Values Survey and the European Values Study, have been using the moral attitudes scale (MAS) to measure individual and country differences for decades. However, the validity of the instrument has been barely assessed. The current study addressed the concurrent and content validity of four popular MAS items (justifiability of homosexuality, suicide, prostitution, and euthanasia). A sample of 493 Russians completed both MAS and the four validated multi-item scales. Results demonstrated that, except for the homosexuality item, the MAS items had low concurrent validity, explaining less than 50% of the variance of the corresponding multi-item scales. The MAS items underestimated the justifiability of homosexuality, prostitution, and suicide, and overestimated the justifiability of euthanasia. The MAS homosexuality item appeared to be a precise measure of attitude towards male (but not female) homosexuality, responses to the prostitution and suicide items overlooked the positive arguments, and the euthanasia item tapped more into attitudes towards euthanasia of a dying person. The four items showed strong dependence on the overall justifiability. We conclude that separate MAS items should be used with caution, given the detected content bias and the items’ strong link to non-specific overall justifiability.

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.