The humanities and social science

In this article, I consider the institution of constitutional control and its development during the Enlightenment. I stress that enlighteners thoroughly disapproved of French parliaments as forerunners of modern bodies of consti­tutional justice and explain why this was the case. In an early modern state, conditions for constitutional control and its very possibility were viewed in conjunction with the principles of sovereignty and the division of power. I conclude that the enlightenment doctrine of general will affected the percep­tion by enlighteners of how the function of control over the constitutionality of laws and other normative legal acts was vested in an authority.

In this article, we discuss the importance of forensic identification as a source of tactical information. Although the theory of identification is a ma­ture and developed element of forensic science, some authors grossly misin­ter­pret its essence and incorrectly classify its objects. When embedded in re­search publications and textbooks, these misconceptions translate into uni­versity graduates and specialists having a distorted idea of this phenome­non. In this connection, we give a more complete definition of forensic iden­tification and demonstrate its essence and significance.

In this contribution, we analyse convergence within the integrative con­cept of legal thinking. Our article responds to the deficiencies of the estab­lished jurisprudence methodology, which is unable either to incorporate new facets of law or to provide a new perspective on the understanding of law. We investigate how the principle of uncertainty and complementarity works in the theory of law and explain why these principles have a similar effect within the concepts of integrative legal thinking. Further, we examine the appropri­ateness and efficacy of using in jurisprudence a transdisciplinary approach, i. e. extrapolating methodologies from across disciplines to the theory of law. We propose to extrapolate to jurisprudence the principles of uncertainty, which implies that a legal rule cannot deal with both elements of moral law and rules of conduct. I conclude that developing a single framework for the understanding of law by converging methodologies from across disciplines will help to identify new facets of law.

In this article, I consider the development and use of information sys­tems in the case of Russia’s agricultural industry. I compare the infor­mation system with information and the information infrastructure and show that agriculture lacks a single information infrastructure. Further, I review existing classifications of information systems and the types of in­formation provisions using such systems. I consider national and municipal information system as a means to provide state and municipal services and as a regulatory practice and examine the possibility of classifying infor­mation systems as a source of law.

In this article, I formulate the problem of a search for a new approach to the state in the modern economic system. The aim of this research is a critical analysis of the current scientific picture of the state and a search for a new way to describe interactions among states, organisations, and households. The methodology I employ relies on critical analysis, the noosphere economy con­cept, and the systemic-behavioural approach to economic processes and phe­nomena. In analysing existing approaches to the state and the socio-economic evolution, I emphasise the need to develop a special approach – a behavioural geoeconomics. It perceives states as single-order actors in the external and in­ternal segments of the economic space. I propose to treat states as economic agents of a special type, which have resources, fulfil a target function, and in­teract with organisations and households. I conclude that a behavioural geoe­conomics will dramatically change research discourse on the role of the state in the economy.

This study aims to explore the relationship between credit institutions and the Bank of Russia in implementing the national monetary policy. Anoth­er aim is to iden­tify the goals and objectives of the national monetary policy, as well as the means and ways to attain them. The methodology relies on both general scien­tific principles (the ontological principle, the unity of the histori­cal and the logical, the formal legal and comparative legal approaches) and domain-specific approaches. This research addresses urgent problems such as ensuring effective interactions between the Bank of Russia and credit organi­sations in implementing the national monetary policy; conducting a scientific analysis of current problems relating to banking activities; making effective use of objec­tive economic laws and all the means of administrative and eco­nomic influ­ence that the Bank of Russia has.

In 2017-2018, the historical community commemorated the centenary anniversaries of revolutions that took place at the end of the First World War. Although the revolutionary events in Russia attract greater attention, the German revolution of November 1918 is of no less interest. In this article, I set out to highlight the situation of the German ruling elite on the eve of the war. The absence of bright personalities among the country's political estab­lishment, on the one hand, and the lack of unity among the German elite, on the other, were the major causes of the bankruptcy of the Kaiser’s Germany. Social and class conflicts within the German elite, in particular, the tensions between the German bourgeoisie and agrarians rendered it impossible to de­vise coherent domestic and foreign policies. Incompetent leadership and fre­quent political scandals, which discredited the German ruling elite in the eyes of the public, created an extremely negative image of the monarchy. Thus, the lack of competent managers and political leaders able to take responsibility and lead the country out of the crisis created a revolutionary situation in the country.

Relying on previously unexamined archival documents and regional press materials, I consider the creation and later transformations of the histor­ical exposition at the Kaliningrad Regional Museum of History and Art. Analysis of exhibition boards dedicated to the past of the region reveals the po­litical and ideological context in which local museums developed. Moreover, it renders it possible to describe the politics of memory pursued by the local au­thorities and trace changes that took place in the regional historical con­sciousness from the first post-war years until Perestroika.

In this article, we analyse faculty recruitment practices at the Kalinin­grad State Pedagogical Institute. Our study relies primarily on the analysis of the 1946–1990s personal records database of the Immanuel Kant Baltic Feder­al University. In particular, the database was created to examine the phases and principles of faculty recruitment in the first decade of the pedagogical in­stitute. Although our project is still in the early stages, we can conclude that faculty recruitment had some controversial features. This is why the database includes sections on the social and professional characteristics of the faculty and mobility paths.

In analysing Pitirm Sorokin’s The Sociology of Revolution, future so­ciologists and political scientists assimilate revolutionary processes in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century and try to establish reasons and factors behind social shocks. Students seek to juxtapose the consideration of evolu­tionary changes with cardinal changes in the life of society and to register the existence of manipulated and spontaneous processes. In their essays, students arrive at conclusions about whether a revolution is possible today.

Studying the features of research by political science into internal migra­tion requires a reassessment of theoretical ideas about the essence of this social phenomenon, which are offered by other paradigms. This way, it becomes pos­sible to consider internal migration as a significant social determinant. In an­alysing theoretical and methodological approaches, I determine the scope of their applicability in political science. I conclude that the features of research into internal migration depend largely on changes in the perception of this phenomenon within the demographic, sociological, economic, and other related approaches.

This paper is a review of recent Polish studies on identity and collective memory in the Kaliningrad region of the Russian Federation. Polish authors have analysed the development of Kaliningrad regional identity – a process closely related to collective memory changes and politics of memory. Scholars have explored the ‘identity dilemmas’ of Kaliningraders, commemorative con­flicts between different groups about the past, and strategies for the ‘invention of traditions’. However, studies into the identity of certain groups of local res­idents (the Polish diaspora or Catholics) cast doubt on the very validity of the question about the identity of Kaliningraders. The experience of Polish schol­ars shows that the interpretation of the past and present of the Kaliningrad region in a multicultural perspective is a viable research area.