Articles

The article is based on the analysis of the discussion that have taken place at the Department of Politics of Lomonosov Moscow State University on May 25, 2023. Participants represented different academic fields: political science, history, sociology, psychology, communication studies. The discussion was going around a question whether one can see serious transformations not only in the current political moods but also in deeper layers of public mind, especially in values, identity, mentality that constitute the basis of national self-consciousness. In Political psychology these phenomena are interpreted as particular mental matrixes that can be described as stable clusters of citizens’ images and representations of themselves, their country and the world in general, their Present, Past and Future.
Today we are visually transforming as a nation. These swings concern first of all the deeper layers of public mind that take place at the background of tectonic changes in political, cultural, economic, technological and communication spheres of public life. These swings give rise to serious social risks and challenges as well as to new opportunities of political development of the country.
There were several main points of discussion. The first concerned the issue of methodological equipment of socio-humanitarian knowledge for interpretation of those transformations. The second issue of discussion was focused on the changes on Russian national identity and interpretation of the factors that determine transformation of values and identity.

The article analyzes the concept of “sovereignty” as a value category in the socio-political discourse of the 19th century. The modern understanding of sovereignty in the 19th century corresponds to the concepts of “independence”, “autocracy”, “originality”, etc. Nine major semantic blocks have been identified, which reflect various aspects and nuances of the conceptual understanding of sovereignty in Russia in the 19th century. The analysis of the sources was carried out on the basis of the search base of the National Corpus of the Russian Language, while in total more than 4600 texts created in 1801–1900 were studied. As a result of content analysis and political-textual analysis of more than 4,600 texts created in 1801–1900, it was found that for Russian intellectual thought of the 19th century ideas about independence, identity, freedom, harmony, security, cultural and economic independence, autocracy and Orthodoxy constitute an ideological and value complex directly related to ideas about state sovereignty.

The article analyzes the concepts of ‘samoderzhaviye’ (‘autocracy’) and ‘soglasiye’ (‘consent’) as value categories, which are the most important for the Russian spiritual and political thought of the 11th-17th centuries. Both of these concepts have undergone some semantic changes, but in general they have retained their semantic core and continue to influence in social and political discourse in the present day. Being value categories, ‘samoderzhaviye’ and ‘soglasiye’ were used in texts of different genres and by different authors, which allows us to trace their development in detail. The concept of ‘samoderzhaviye’, related with sacred meaning and a strict hierarchical structure, is in many ways similar to the modern idea of sovereignty. The concept of ‘soglasiye’ implies a kind of universal agreement, good-neighborly cohabitation within a single community. In Russian spiritual and political thought of the 11th–17th centuries the concepts of ‘samoderzhaviye’ and ‘soglasiye’, although not in an obvious way, were linked together: autocracy ensured the preservation of consent; consent gave a permission to autocracy. Both autocracy and consent were aimed at maintaining the power and independence of the Russian state. These and other conclusions were made based on the study of Russian texts of the 11th–17th centuries using the search database of the National Corpus of the Russian Language.

This work is devoted to the consideration of issues related to the formation of a system of new scientific knowledge — sports policy, in particular, with its categorical and conceptual apparatus. Currently, there are no theoretically based scientific works devoted to the consideration of the categorical and conceptual apparatus of policy in the field of sports. A significant place in this study is devoted to the relationship between politics and sports, the challenges they currently face. Science need to form its own system of concepts and categories of sports policy.
The article points out significant differences between policy in the field of physical culture and sports as part of social policy and sports policy as an institutional system. The process of formation and development of sports policy as an independent field of scientific knowledge requires theoretical understanding in accordance with new scientific research and practical achievements, which will significantly eliminate the ambiguity in the interpretation of basic concepts and definitions. The study emphasizes that sports policy is a complex of scientific knowledge based on the achievements of other sciences. The article reveals the essence of the dualistic system of the concept of “sports policy”, examines the constituent elements of the categorical-conceptual apparatus of sports policy, including the categories of political and sports sciences, as well as its own.

The article contains an analysis of the current situation in the organization of air passenger traffic in the Far Eastern Federal District of Russia (FEFD) as an element of ensuring national security of the country. At the first stage of the research the core Russian sectoral strategic documents were analyzed in order to consider the main priorities of the development of the industry in the macroregion. These factors are development of key air hubs of the macroregion, their incorporation into the international system; development of local air traffic; development of the aircraft industry. At the second stage of the research, the analysis of key indicators of the state of the aviation industry in the FEFD was made. These indicators contain the number of interregional and intraregional routes, the state of the fleet, etc. The analysis took place in 2021 and 2022 in order to assess the dynamics of the regional civil aviation transformation. Basing on the research it was found out that interregional air communication within the FEFD was intensified between 2021–2022 as a consequence of the elaboration of the industrial and economic life of the regions, the development of interstate relations in the border territories and the growth of tourist flow. However, a similar effect is not observed concerning intraregional directions, the variety of routes is growing slightly within all subjects of the FEFD. Also the key problems hindering the further development of the industry in the regions of the FEFD have been identified: the significant age of the fleet; the active use of aircraft produced by the “unfriendly” countries, which complicates the maintenance of equipment; low rates of deliveries of modern domestic planes and helicopters to routes within the region.

The phenomenon of political reintegration is getting ever more relevance under the conditions of the current development of social-political relations, however, theoretical approaches to this phenomenon are poorly developed. This work’s purpose is to analyse the theory of the reintegration phenomenon. As a result of the analysis of various definitions, the following definition is formulated: reintegration is the return of a social group, political party, group influence, state entity or territory to the corresponding object with which they were historically associated. The article also contains a review of theoretical and empiric literature on the problems of reintegration, identifying the characteristic features of the phenomenon and the features of its manifestation in different spheres of society. Current reintegration research is often related to the project approach and is aimed at solving problems of reintegration of territories and individuals. The conducted research indicates the opportunity for studying this phenomenon within the framework of political science.

The author examines the historical evolution of the process of autonomization in Russia and the political mechanisms that contribute to the emergence of autonomies. It is noted that the process of forming autonomies in Russia has been developing for many centuries, it continued after the revolution of 1917, already in the system of cardinal transformation of the internal state structure, and with some changes it was preserved by the beginning of the 21th century. The study of the historical prerequisites for the emergence of autonomies is particularly in demand in the context of the need to unite the country, actively improve the forms of statehood and implement effective national policy.
The emergence of autonomies in Russia throughout its history is associated with the constant increment of state lands, with the intensive or extensive expansion of the state, with the diversity of national characteristics of their population. However, despite the fact that the autonomies in Russia in most cases were voluntarily attached to the Center and had some degree of independence, these territories did not violate the principle of unity of the vast empire due to their subordinate position. At the same time, granting partial autonomy to certain regions of the Russian Empire did not contradict the principle of the integrity and indivisibility of the country as a single political entity and was culturally, economically and politically expedient.

The article offers an assessment of the process of self-organization of communities and the formation of their living space through the use of grad models (civitas, cités), consideration of the practices of strategic and tactical symbolic construction of the reality of localities (cities). The urgency of the problem is dictated by the need to understand the mechanisms of self-organization of communities in the context of the processes of the Western model of globalization, the implementation of resource flows outside the regulatory administrative boundaries of territories, the development of information and communication capabilities of interested participation. An attempt is made to explain the processes of self-organization of communities and the construction of space in the vector of development and maximization using theoretical models of rent-orientation, as well as the justification of the integrating political platform of the civitas is proposed. Examples of interaction of civitas as models of justification of justice and legitimacy, their synthesis as conditions for obtaining a competitive advantage of individual and collective actors of the political processes of the city are considered. In modern conditions, the dominance of the Market civitas as a universal platform for community self-organization and organization of physical, communicative, symbolic spaces is noted. An approach is proposed to determine the status of a full-fledged subject of the community and the nature of its positioning in space by analyzing the application of political practices of objectification, the organization of structured personal and public spaces of vital activity. In the context of self-organization, the article touches on the mechanisms of interested individual and group exploration of space, the use of the “name — define — involve” algorithm. The practices of self-organization of local communities and the formation of spaces using a symbolic resource and a complex of other intangible and material resources are considered. The study also touched upon the problem of the foundations of citizenship in modern communities, the circumstances of the use of inclusion and exclusion practices by communities.

The subject of the essay is the main stages of the historical past of French civilization, in the depths of which the political mentality of the ruling elites was formed. In the beginning, the authors consider the mental and civilizational results of the five hundred years of Romanization of Gaul as a province of the Roman Empire. The role of Christian proselytism in the formation of the monotheistic mentality and the political role of the Church of Gaul are revealed. The thesis about the mental heritage of the Roman Empire in the conditions of its collapse and the formation of the foundations of an original Christian nation is revealed. Then there is the convergence of the Roman and barbarian social structures of the Frankish Empire, as a result of which a monotheistic mental space was formed and Catholicism became the state religion. The conclusion is made about the historical and mental-political significance of chivalry. In the next section, the authors turned to the philosophical, theological and scientific heritage of the enlighteners of the Middle Ages and the New Age, who influenced the development of the political mentality of the French elites. The separate part of the essay examines the influence of the French Renaissance on the ruling elites, who, having mastered the mental models of the Italian Renaissance, began to build their national identity on their basis. The centuries-old theological and political nature of French political power in the Renaissance was transformed into a subject-pragmatic one. For the first time in the political history of Europe, politics was separated from religion. Christian dogmas as the basic mental attitudes of the elites gave way to the semantic primacy of secular principles of existence. During the period of absolutism, on the soil cultivated by the Renaissance, anti-absolutist and anti-clerical mental and political attitudes were formed in the elite environment, which determined the nature of the revolutionary events of the 18th-19th centuries. During the period of the Consulate and the First Empire, Napoleon I, seeking to ensure the economic dominance of the Empire and its military superiority over the countries of the continent, pursued a policy of mental reconstruction of the elite in order to create a new nobility. In the course of the analysis, the authors reveal the dialectical nature of the mental dynamics of the French elites.

Combating corruption in rapidly developing countries is one of the key directions of state policy. Despite decades of research, no universal approach has been proposed that can guarantee a minimum level of abuse of power for personal gain. Governments of countries, considering successful experiences, have to develop unique management approaches to address this issue, taking into account the specific political system, sociocultural characteristics, and dynamics of economic development. The goal of this article is to trace the evolution of anti-corruption policies in China. The study has demonstrated that the party leadership promptly changed approaches to combating corruption, in line with the changing forms and scales of corruption, understanding its origins and causes at different stages of the country’s development. China has a zero tolerance policy towards any manifestations of corruption and is actively combating abuses in government agencies. China’s current anti-corruption policy in the territory uses coercive instruments.