The humanities and social science

This article deals with the issue of the food supply problems on the territory of the Novgorod land in the 11th-16th centuries. Despite permanent bread budget deficit, Veliky Novgorod managed to maintain political and economic independence and avoid purchasing significant amounts of grain. The reconstruction of a budget of a peasant agricultural farm shows that, in the then conditions, it could not rest solely on own-grown corn and livestock products in the Novgorod land. For centuries, peasant diet included products compensating for the shortage of bread. Such adaptability to environmental conditions helped optimise the life of peasant families and minimise the food budget deficit throughout the Novgorod land.

For the first time in the Russian historiography, the issues of functioning of Riga censorship commission during Paul I’s reign are considered. The author arrives at a conclusion about the prosecution of cultural works filled with revolutionary spirit.

On the basis of archive sources, this article analyses the development of agriculture by peasants belonging to the tsar’s family in the Novgorod and Pskov provinces. The article offers author's methodology of numerical data processing for an accurate assessment of agricultural effectiveness.

This article considers the processes affecting land property in Russia in the 19th — the early 20th century through the case of the manor Trigorskoye in the Pskov province.

This article analyses the problems of school network expansion and the beginning of 1944/1945 academic year on the territory of the Karelian isthmus.

This paper considers the dynamics of different scientific opinions on the correlation between endogenous and exogenous factors in the choice of national modernization model. The authors formulate the question about the urgency of searching for the optimum in the choice between general and unique features for the construction of a more efficient modernization model.

The author considers the problem of regional self-government model functioning in the cities where the German right had not been introduced. The article analyses the systems of self-government in Vitebsk, Pinsk, Mogilev, Orsha and other settlements. The author introduced the notion of selfgovernment regulations, examines the functions of main government institutions in a number of cities, and identifies the features of their self-government models.

This article considers the image of medieval Lithuania in the historiography of the first half of the 19th century. The author identifies the key components of the formation of perception of Lithuania in the historical discourse of the first half of the 19th century.

This article considers the basic directions and research tasks of the study of Russian emigration to England in the 1870s-1890s, defines such important concept as “Russian diaspora”, and examines the methodology of the study of social and cultural adaptation of Russian emigrants.

This article investigates the causes of failure of the League of Nations initiative aimed to organize a plebiscite on the disputed territory of the Vilnius region (1920—1921).

This paper considers the history of the Swedish pension system. Universal pension coverage is one of the key elements of the Swedish model of socioeconomic development. The author identifies the main stages of Swedish pension system development and emphasizes the need for further reforming.

This article considers the issues of establishment and activity of commandant’s offices of the Third Belorussian front on the territory of Prussia at the closing stage of World War II.

On the basis of war-time sources, this article reconstructs the image of East Prussia created by Soviet propaganda and considers the context of its formation. The author demonstrates the use of this image over post-war decades. Propaganda discourse is interpreted as a practice of cultural assimilation of East Prussia.

The article is discussed about the structure analysis of the birth rate of the population of Kaliningrad region in 1949—1950th against All-Russian (RSFSR) and some regional indicators, drawn the conclusion about considerable originality of the structure of the birth rate as well as about greater significance of the extramarital birth rate in the system of reproduction of population.

This article characterizes the post-war period of urban development in the city of Klaipeda and draws attention to the problems in its restoration.

This article considers the history of one quotation from Winston Churchill’s article on the Gumbinnen battle (1914). The context of this reference is reconstructed on the basis of author’s correspondence with the American historian Richard M. Langworth.

This article analyzes the attitude of Marx and Engels to Kant’s philosophical legacy. The author proposes a similarity between Marx’s idea on nature as a substantive implementation of a human being, their reflection and analog, and Kant’s doctrine of the world of phenomena created by the subject from things-in-themselves. The article criticizes the Marxist interpretation of Kant's philosophy as agnostic and divorced from practice.

This article is dedicated to the analysis of the methodological framework of S. L. Frank’s philosophical reflection of culture. The basic principle of the philosopher’s methodology is the idea of “antinomic monodualism”, which interprets the ontological content of culture as a dual unity of the real and divine senses.

This article considers N. A. Berdyaev's views on the origins of culture from «cult» and analyses the types of mass behavior characteristic of industrial culture, namely, «bestialism», «naturalism», «technitsism», and «cesarism ».

This article analyses fashion from two points of view — as a closed system of “the world of the fashionable” with its own specific hierarchy, where creative imagination becomes a criterion for success and as a field of social imagination that influences social behavior and the structures of identity presentation formation. The concept of creative imagination is considered as a concept distinct from that of artist’s creativity and imagination. The author elucidates the connection between creative imagination and social space and symbolic power systems and analyses the specifics of Russian fashion space.

Critical objections to applying social contract theories towards Russian social and political reality are being analyzed, categorized and challenged.

This article considers different methodological approaches to research on anomie. The author analyses Durkheim’s approach to social pathology and the application of P. Sztompka’s concept of cultural trauma. Special attention is paid to R. Merton’s theory of anomie and strain and D. Murphy and M. Robinson’s concept of maximization. At the same time, the author takes into account
the specific features of post-communist transformations, Polish and Russian experience of overcoming social unrest relating to the period of transition, and the modern contemporary problems faced by states today.