The humanities and social science

The article analyzes the preventive function of the notary, defines the concept and place of the notary in the Russian legal system and among the bodies of civil jurisdiction, reveals the issues of notarial mediation, makes some proposals for improving the legislation. The notary, as an institution of preventive justice, carries out pre-trial resolution of conflicts, ensures the rule of law and plays a huge role in the successful resolution of disputes without going to court, thereby facilitating their work, protecting their rights and interests, and also establishing mutual understanding between the subjects of civil circulation. Taking into account the main preventive function of the notaries, some additions should be made to the legislation on notaries, namely, Art. 1 of the Fundamentals of the legislation of the Russian Federation on the notary, the provision that the main purpose of the notary is to prevent offenses by performing notarial acts, provided for in Art. 35 Fundamentals.

The article provides an overview of information technologies used by courts in criminal proceedings at the present time. The authors analyze the current technical innovations used in the criminal process which acquired increased relevance during the fight on COVID-19. Special attention is paid to court videoconferencing. The authors analyze positive and negative aspects of online court sessions, which allow determining the further vector of information technology development in modern criminal proceedings. The research considers the possibility of holding court sessions using public messengers, and possible risks of this method of communication in the framework of legal proceedings are shown. Taking into account the existing specifics of modern videoconferencing, which causes not only the impossibility of personal presence in the courtroom, but also the ineffectiveness of some rhetoric and psychological techniques, the question is raised about the feasibility of developing forensic psychology and rhetoric for online meetings.

A distinctive feature of the legal regulation of entrepreneurship in the Kaliningrad region is the possibility for investors to use specific business regimes in the region using the legal preferences of the Special Economic Zone and the Special Administrative Region. The article examines the features of the applied special business regimes and periodization of their development. The author describes the tax benefits used by investors, subsidies for the deve­lopment of the labor market, indicates the existing shortcomings and problems in the legal regulation of entrepreneurship. Proposals for developing the in­vest­ment attractiveness of a special legal regime for entrepreneurship and to improving legislation have been formulated.

The article examines the personality of Pavel Smirnov/Tulsky who fled from the synodal church in 1831 to the Old Believers as a priest. Keeping in touch with the center of the Belokrinitsky accord — the Rogozhsky cemetery, Pavel gradually went into schism. On Pavel Smirnov's biography, the author seeks to identify and characterize the concept of the fugitive priesthood; the peculiarities of the approaches of the authorities and the official church to solving the problem of a "schismatic" priest; the behavior patterns of the "new" Old Believer hierarchy in relation to schism. To solve these problems, a corpus of historical sources reflecting the reaction of public institutions to a recalcitrant priest was studied. These include state authorities, the synodal and the Old Believer church. The author concludes that the beglopopovtsy successfully existed before the appearance of the belokrinitsky hierarchy. The article also notes the inability of the local secular and ecclesiastical authorities to solve problems related to the Old Believers.

The article discusses the major areas of theoretical research by foreign scholars (historians, sociologists, political scientists and other specialists), who are engaged in the study of the history of the Kaliningrad region of the So­viet period and use the category Homo sovieticus (the Soviet man). The first part of the article covers the history of the concept “Soviet people”, ac­ti­vely used by the Soviet researchers in 1970s-1980s. The second part describes the understanding of “Homo sovieticus”, which was developed in the national (first of all, in the émigré) literature of the late Soviet period. The third part pre­sents the works of foreign scholars that deal with the aspects of making of Ho­mo sovieticus in the Kaliningrad region (first of all, the factors of So­vie­ti­sation and the reasons for its failure). The author of the article concludes that the application of this category is not always sufficiently justified, but a number of observations by foreign researchers are undoubtedly worthy of attention. The conclusion provides an overview of research perspectives in the study of the history of the westernmost Russian region during the Soviet period.

The article considers the news content of the information environment in the Kaliningrad region, the new Soviet region, in 1947, when the main media of the first post-war years were formed here. The authors describe the process of organisation of radio and press. They also analyse key topics through the texts of Kaliningrad and district newspapers as well as radio programmes. The research draws the following conclusions: the tone of radio and newspaper reports, which was ideological and prevailingly positive, created a picture of the active post-war development of the Kaliningrad region. This measure should have helped to make the settlers arriving in the region stay here. The mass media “reminded” the population of the region of its inseparability from the rest of the Soviet Union by informing residents about events and processes that were taking place in the whole state and by using the categories “our homeland” and “our country”. The press emphasised that residents of the Kaliningrad region were a part of the Soviet people and along with the rest of the citizens of the USSR were involved in the overall development of the country. At the same time, the high rate of emigration from the region in the post-war years suggests that the work of the local media could not mask the problems that existed.

Through publications in the German Democratic Republic newspapers from 1949—1990 the article reveals dominant images of residents of the Kaliningrad region, such as ocean fishing pioneers, builders of a new city on the ruins of Königsberg and keepers of German heritage, particularly the Immanuel Kant's grave and other historical monuments in Kaliningrad. The author of the article describes factors that influenced the representation of the images of the Kaliningrad region’s population as the Soviet people as well as concludes that the images were not constructed independently in the editorial offices of German newspapers, but were imposed through publications of Soviet news agencies together with articles and notes of Soviet journalists printed in the GDR.

The article reveals the problems of political communication in modern Poland, the role of the Internet in the dialogue between the authorities and society. Particular attention is paid to the impact of social networks on the quality of political communication. The characteristic features of the position of ordinary users and representatives of political elites in the communication process are singled out and described. As a research task, the authors identified the main characteristics of political communication in the Internet space of Poland. The article analyzes the views of Polish researchers of the problem. Based on the study of statistical data and a comparison of their interpretation, it has been established that the most significant problem in the field of political communication in the Polish Internet space is the exit from the "information cocoons", and not the issues of technical re-equipment of the communication infrastructure. The authors concluded that the current polarization of opinions, multiple provocations and acts of information aggression carry the risks of destabilizing the internal political situation in the country.

The author of the article analyzes the shaping of the Russian identity of the region’s inhabitants on particular examples and personal impressions and experience. A common term “the site of memory” applied to the Kaliningrad region, makes it possible to speak of a strong regional, or Kaliningrad, component of identity. The regional public consciousness and particularly its collective memory, which is in the process of its shaping, is influenced by the previous German (East Prussian) history. The diversity of memory sites in the region with different national and cultural characteristics requires a specific approach to ranking the identity emphasis.

This article follows the previous publication, which showed the growth of the organized crime in the Soviet period of Russian social history. This part of the article reveals the features of organized criminal activity during the so-called "stagnation period." At the same time, the author emphasizes that the 1980s were the most favorable for the sprawl of organized crime. It was during these years that this type of antisocial activity reached its peak, covering all spheres of social life with its influence, bringing to life a massive near-criminal social world. In particular, it was a matter of increasing corruption of local structures, the apparatus of management, including Party officials at various levels, which had not been known before. Corruption also affected law enforcement agencies, especially the police. In this part of the ar­ticle, the author noted that in a very short period of history related Y. V. And­ro­pov certain steps were taken to curb the most visible and dangerous ma­ni­festations of organized crime, but this period itself was not long. Later rest­ruc­turing essentially crossed out what was done and marked the onset of a new stage in the development of organized forms of criminal activity. Various ma­nifestations of organized crime, which has always tried to merge with legal forms of economic and other activity, are also considered. Suggestions have been made about the possibility of further limiting the spheres of influence of or­ganized criminal activity.