A collection of essays written in 2012-2019 on the evolution of Putin's regime in Russia in the perspective of Russian history, society and political culture. 

This book presents the main findings of a study on school learning environments and student outcomes, which the World Bank conducted in 2019 in three regions of the Russian Federation. Using data collected through the OECD School User Survey and the pilot “Trends in Mathematics and Science Study” (TIMSS), the book analyzes how a school’s infrastructure and learning environment may affect the progress and success of students in math and science. It also delves into teaching practices, analyzing their impact on learning and highlighting the important nexus between learning environments and teaching methods. The book concludes by recommending areas in which focused attention by educational authorities could improve educational policy and help maintain high-quality learning environments. The book will be useful for educators, school principals, architects, and policy makers who are involved in school infrastructure projects and are interested in increasing their knowledge of school design planning.

This book gathers the outcomes of several scientific events that were organized and conducted by the Institute of Scientific Communications (Volgograd, Russia) and the leading universities of the Volgograd region. The contributing authors include more than 700 scholars from various cities and regions of Russia. 124 works were selected out of 3,000 papers on the preconditions of formation, transformation, and legal provision of social institutes, topics that are in high demand in connection with a core aspect of digital modernization – the Internet of Things. The book is intended for a broad target audience, including scholars of various generations and various disciplines. These include young researchers (undergraduates and postgraduates) and recognized scholars (professors and lecturers) who study the socioeconomic and legal consequences of the emergence and dissemination of digital technologies, including the Internet of Things. In addition, the book will benefit all those who are interested in the development of the information society, information and telecommunication, and digital technologies. The content is divided into three logical parts, the first of which is devoted to the essence of the process of institutionalization and legal regulation of the information society.

This report summarizes the results of a German-Russian dialogue project, which was implemented and designed by inmedio peace consult gGmbh (Berlin) and the Institute for Law and Public Policy, ILPP (Moscow) and funded by the German Federal Foreign Office under the ‘Expanding Cooperation with Civil Society in the Eastern Partnership Countries and Russia’ Programme. Using a mediative dialogue approach, 20 experts from academia, thinks tanks and NGOs as well as journalists and cultural exchange/dialogue practitioners met near Moscow in September 2018 and in Berlin in November to analyse and reflect on the Russian and Western narratives on what went wrong since the end of the Cold War regarding the deterioration of Russian-Western relations.

quarter of a century has passed since the Constitution of the Russian Federation was adopted in 1993, yet the issue of the results and the prospects for constitutional transformation has not disappeared from the political agenda. For some, the Constitution signifies an ultimate break up with the communist past and a legal foundation for the advancement of the Russian society toward democracy and the rule of law; for the others, it is exactly the Constitution that is the culprit for the authoritarian trend that has prevailed, and for the sustained stagnation in Russia’s economic, social and political development. The author of this chapter is in the middle of these extreme viewpoints. He believes that the Constitution has truly played a pivotal role in Russia’s move toward democracy by establishing the basic principles of civil society and the rule of law, and in this respect, it remains of everlasting and paramount importance. Nevertheless, that does not mean that it should be utterly inaccessible for changes, especially given the elapsed time and the negative experience of the authoritarian transformation of the political regime, the amendments that were introduced between2008 and 2014, and the current objectives of the democratic movement. The rationale for changes is to return to the constitutional principles, reaffirm their initial democratic meaning by rejecting the excessive concentration of the Presidential power, the results of counter-reforms and the adulteration through legislative and regulatory compliance practices. Some of the proposed remedies aim to establish a new form of government (Presidential - Parliamentary), which would necessitate Constitutional amendments — adjustments that would regulate the separation of powers and redistribution of authority. Others seek to transform the system without changing the text of the Constitution through legislative reforms, judicial interpretation and the policy of law. Yet, the third approach prioritizes institutional reforms. Not everything in social development depends on the provisions of the law, political improvisation and practice can prove just as critical. In their cumulative entirety such initiatives can help avoid the two extremes: that of constitutional stagnation gravitating toward the bureaucratic asphyxiation, and that of constitutional populism which has a tendency to destabilize the political system. In its practical activities to transform the political regime, the opposition ought to remember the maximum repeatedly confirmed by experience, — the further a party is from power, the more radical tend to be its constitutional proposals. Conversely, empowered groups tend to be more moderate in their initiatives.

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.

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

This paper focuses on the scrutiny of structural units of myth within mass cultural discourse. The author reviews studies of the mythologeme and my theme in semiotics and also relevant research in other fields concerning the announced research object. The main aim of the paper is to distinguish inner semiotic markers of myth and to examine their application to mass cultural narratives. Drawing on the analysis of previous theoretical research and case studies, the author compares the two structural units and makes an attempt to formulate specifications towards existing definitions. Particular examples of mythemes and mythologemes in mass culture discourse are regarded within this paper. The author points out the mytheme of Transformation, the mytheme of Backtracking, the mythologeme of Childhood (Golden Age), the mythologeme of Armageddon (Flood), and the mythologeme of World Tree.

This report presents the results of an ESRC-funded research project that examined the behavioural and attitudinal impacts of the English plastic bag charge that was introduced in October 2015. The project used a mixed-methods longitudinal approach, and included a national survey, a diary-interview study, and supermarket observation study. Overall, the research has shown that the English plastic bag charge has made a strong and positive impact on people’s behaviours and attitudes. The research found that the charge was eff ective at breaking old habits, and that it became more popular as people adapted to the policy. Evidence was also found that the charge increased environmental awareness and the acceptability of other environmental policies. The success of the plastic bag charge in eff ectively changing plastic bag use and increasing support for other charges to reduce waste suggests that similar policies could also be successfully implemented, such as a deposit return scheme on plastic bottles or a charge on disposable coff ee cups.

Background and aims. This research reported here presents findings from an evaluation of the development and implementation of the Healthy Community Challenge Fund (otherwise known as the ‘Healthy Towns’ programme). A key aim of the research has been to inform the development of future environmental and systems‐based ‘whole town’ approaches to obesity prevention. The overall aim of the Healthy Towns programme was to pilot and stimulate novel ‘whole town’ approaches that tackle the ‘obesogenic’ environment in order to reduce obesity, with a particular focus on improving diet and increasing physical activity. Through a competitive tender process, nine towns were selected that represented urban areas across England ranging from small market towns to areas of large cities. The fund provided £30 million over the period 2008‐2011, divided amongst the nine towns. The amounts awarded ranged from £900,000 to £4.85 million. Towns were instructed to be innovative and were given freedom to develop a locally‐specific programme of interventions. This report supplements local process and impact evaluations undertaken by each town (not reported here) by taking an overall view of the programme’s development and implementation. Our evaluation therefore addressed the following research questions: 1. What kinds of interventions were delivered across the Healthy Towns programme? 2. Were environmental and infrastructural interventions equitably delivered? 3. How was the Healthy Towns programme theorised and translated into practice? 4. How was evidence used in the selection and design of interventions? 5. What are the barriers and facilitators to the implementation of a systems approach to obesity prevention?

Drawing on the concept of a gale of creative destruction in a capitalistic economy, we argue that initiatives to assess the robustness of findings in the organizational literature should aim to simultaneously test competing ideas operating in the same theoretical space. In other words, replication efforts should seek not just to support or question the original findings, but also to replace them with revised, stronger theories with greater explanatory power. Achieving this will typically require adding new measures, conditions, and subject populations to research designs, in order to carry out conceptual tests of multiple theories in addition to directly replicating the original findings. To illustrate the value of the creative destruction approach for theory pruning in organizational scholarship, we describe recent replication initiatives re-examining culture and work morality, working parents’ reasoning about day care options, and gender discrimination in hiring decisions. 

This text is, above all, a grateful testament to a local saint’s continued liveliness. It is a new hagiography, a story of a woman who gave away everything—her house, her money, her possessions, and even her name—who wandered homeless, and who has helped people resolve desperate situations ever since. Retelling the fragmented stories of how people asked for her intervention, and of how, through their actions, new mycelia of power grew on the ruins of the Soviet socialist state, I hope that this essay helps opens a loophole: a space between naïve faith and sociological faithlessness in which we might understand today’s miracles without crushing them by the secular objectivist gaze. Looking through this loophole, this essay retells some of stories I heard about the Soviet collapse and about how people survived it: about gleaning the planned economy’s rubble, chance connections, personal ties, Divine Providence, fast fortunes, and the enclosure of fields.

The study looks into the problem of student–faculty communication. It addresses the issue of claimed scarcity of such interaction that exists despite the recognized benefits it can bring to students and instructors. It is suggested that examination and comparison of the participants’ interest and actual engagement in out-of-class communication (OCC) may shed light on this. Two populations from a university in Russia: 148 students and 35 instructors, were analyzed to measure their overall interest and engagement in OCC. The paper also addressed the question whether the studied populations are interested and engage in the same types of OCC. The results demonstrate that the reported overall interest in OCC was higher than the actual engagement in it among both groups of the respondents. Besides, students and faculty chose different types of OCC as most interest evincing and most frequently practiced. The research outcomes may help the parties concerned (scholars, teaching staff, educational managers and students) enhance understanding of the nature of OCC and its specifics and consider ways of harmonizing it in the best interests of all stakeholders.

Not all people with disabilities are provided with assistive technologies and devices (ATD) they need. The Russian researchers appeal to the development of assistive technologies, however, focus only on one specific social objective of ATD provision or on engineering, economic and production aspects of the problem. This study identifies the key determinants of the development of the assistive technologies market in Russia and trends over the next 10–15 years. We conducted a qualitative study using a grounded theory based on open and axial coding procedure. We collected data using semi-structured interviews with 12 experts recruited through snowball sampling with multiple entry points. The results show that the focus on the development of individual rehabilitation programs, individual fitting of devices, the increasing demand for measures of medical and social support for people with disabilities create conditions for the growth of demand for ATD. Changes in the paying capacity of the population, the rules of budget financing, as well as the population's attitude towards the inclusion of people with disabilities in everyday activities, the labor market, education will also cause changes in demand for ATD.

The mode, general understanding, and practices of science diplomacy revolve around a country’s history, the formation of its scientific institutions, the specifics of its foreign policy approaches, and its diplomatic practices. The nexus between science and diplomacy gives various results but ultimately are predetermined by individual creativity, community values, and state interests and support. The core element of diplomatic interactions between nations relies on their historical and contemporary backgrounds. Understanding phenomena of science diplomacy and their implementing practices helps to promote a state’s power and influence on both national and international levels to secure and promote its foreign policy.

Putting oneself into the shoes of others is an important aspect of social cognition.We measured brain hemodynamic activity and eye-gaze patterns while participants were viewing a shortened version of the movie ‘My Sister’s Keeper’ from two perspectives: that of a potential organ donor, who violates moral norms by refusing to donate her kidney, and that of a potential organ recipient, who suffers in pain. Inter-subject correlation (ISC) of brain activity was significantly higher during the potential organ donor’s perspective in dorsolateral and inferior prefrontal, lateral and inferior occipital, and inferior–anterior temporal areas. In the reverse contrast, stronger ISC was observed in superior temporal, posterior frontal and anterior parietal areas. Eye-gaze analysis showed higher proportion of fixations on the potential organ recipient during both perspectives. Taken together, these results suggest that during social perspective-taking different brain areas can be flexibly recruited depending on the nature of the perspective that is taken.

Brazil's Movimento de Trabalhadores Sem Teto (MTST, Homeless Workers' Movement) has grown dramatically in recent years. This growth was partly provided for by the use of a large government housing programme, Minha Casa Minha Vida (MCMV, My House My Life), which allowed the MTST to construct housing for its members and swell its ranks with thousands of new members. Yet some have argued that the MCMV programme used by the MTST may compromise the autonomy of civil society organisations. This article, by contrast, argues that while the MCMV programme encouraged bureaucratic practices, it also helped to promote the cultural politics of the MTST.

Review of the book "Universities and Global Human Development" (by A.Boni and M.Walker) 

This paper is devoted to the issue of so–called ‘trophy films’ in the context of Soviet foreign policy. The aim of this research is to reveal how the cultural competition between the USSR and the USA during the early Cold War caused the emergence of the famous credit title «This film was captured as a trophy after the Soviet Army defeated Nazi troops near Berlin in 1945», and, as a consequence, resulted in the establishing of ‘Trophy Film’ concept in public discourse.

By 2050, the elderly population is expected to reach 2 billion, with 80% living in low- and middle-income countries. In today’s COVID-19 pandemic reality, income and health support for these older adults is a critical concern.  What have the world’s countries been doing to ensure that their elderly do not live in poverty? Are there national policies to ensure their health needs are adequately met?  How are the countries helping working adults who are responsible for providing caregiving to their elderly parents? In this paper, the globally comparable, quantitative data is used to examine the availability of social security policies relevant to older adults across 193 United Nations member states.  These policies include the availability of contributory and non-contributory pensions to ensure that all older adults are guaranteed a minimum level of income. The paper also investigates the availability of health insurance to defray medical expenses in old age.  Finally, because many older adults must rely on their working adult children for care, the availability of leave for working adults to care for their elderly family members’ health needs is examined.  Throughout the paper, the differences in policy coverage by region and country income level, with particular attention paid to low- and middle-income countries, are analyzed. The recommendations on addressing throughout the world the issues of avoiding aging population to live in poverty and meeting their health needs are formulated.

This paper expands the existing informational and analytical opportunities of application of the results of business tendency surveys which solve the problem of the loss of valuable statistical information in its traditional aggregation into simple and composite indicators. Based on methods of multidimensional classification, an algorithm of statistical analysis significantly raises the analytical opportunities for the more wide measurement of trajectories of development and short-term fluctuations of branch of the information technology (IT) is developed and discussed. This allows the construction of behavioral models of business tendency data which improve the understanding of the business cycle in more detail. Furthermore the empirical results confirm the possibility of receiving various information which increases the analytical potential of business tendency surveys.

Cognitive dissonance arises as a reaction to conflict appearing in choices between two equally attractive options. It leads to changes in the desirability of these options. The chosen option becomes more desirable whereas the rejected option is devalued. Despite cognitive dissonance being largely used by social psychologists to explain social conformity and preference reevaluation, little is known about the neural mechanisms of such choice-induced preference changes. In this study, we modulated the activity of the posterior medial frontal cortex (pMFC), which has been found to be involved in cognitive dissonance in neuroimaging studies. We influenced the activity of the pMFC before individual choices using both cathodal and anodal transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) during a revised version of Brehm's free-choice paradigm. Our results showed that cathodal tDCS over the pMFC significantly decreased the typical choice-induced preference change relative to a sham stimulation. On the contrary, no significant effect of anodal tDCS was observed. Our findings of the influence cathodal tDCS on preference re-evaluation highlight the central contribution of the pMFC in cognitive dissonance and provide evidence that pMFC plays a key role in the implementation of subsequent post-decision preference change.