Articles

This article presents an analysis of the personnel reserve management structure of the state bodies of the Russian Federation. On the basis of current legislation, the author describes two independent categories of personnel reserve, diff ering in goals and objectives, within the Federation system of public administration. The fi rst category includes the personnel reserve in public service, designed to ensure the activities of state bodies at the federal and regional levels. The general management of the system of selection and training of new employees is carried out by the government. A second category includes the reserve of managerial personnel created to replace senior managers in state bodies at the federal and regional levels. A separate type of reserve of managerial personnel is the presidential personnel reserve, designed for the rapid replacement of key positions by decision of the head of state. According to the author, the defi nition of the structure of the personnel reserve will help to eliminate contradictions in the understanding of the specifi cs of the formation of the personnel reserve at diff erent levels of government and to identify the features of the selection and preparation of new candidates for positions in each category.

This article is devoted to the study of the food regime, a concept little known in Russian academic literature. The author identifi es the “theoretical and methodological platform” of the concept using a comparative approach and retrospective analysis. The ensemble of a comparative-historical approach, a method of analyzing secondary data and a forecasting method contributed to the consolidation of the concept of the food regime as a tool capable of streamlining the global stages of production, consumption and distribution of food in historical retrospect as well as in the foreseeable future. The author demonstrates that the consistent transformation of food regimes comes about due to the confl ict between two principles, “protectionism” and “ free trade,” which are eff ectively adapted to diff erent political and economic realities. The identifi ed “sequence” is consistent with the general position of the theory of Karl Polanyi (the Double Movement) and allows us to assert that the foundation of the Fourth Food Regime will be based on a modifi ed version of protectionism. This is confi rmed by the growing popularity of the transnational movement La Via Campesina and the growing demand for its revolutionary strategy of Food Sovereignty.

Modern global development trends and the tasks set in the annual presidential address to the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation make clear the necessity for signifi cant socio-political transformations. These changes require the development of modern criteria for new politicians and socio-political leaders and managers as well as the defi nition of approaches to their identifi cation and preparation. The results of a single voting day — September 9, 2018 — have rendered this task immediate. The political system has begun a transformation and is putting forward new demands for political governance. This article presents an analysis of the following: the socio-political prerequisites for the formation of new requirements for political leadership; the theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of political leadership during sociopolitical transformations and to forecasting in the fi eld of political leadership; and the method of determining the requirements for political leadership (characteristics of politicians) based on the principle of mutual infl uence of political leaders and the political environment. The author concludes by presenting the results of expert studies conducted in September, 2018 of the requirements made of politicians and the political environment.

The purpose of this article is to clarify the term “historical myth” and to defi ne its relation to the notion of “political myth.” The goals of the research are to determine the content of the concept “historical myth,” to understand the essence of the concept “political myth” and to compare the meanings of the two terms. The author uses traditional and typological analysis, and also applies the method of expert interview. The article argues the position that the historical myth is a particular form of the myth of the political. Accordingly, the historical myth initially represents an artifi cially constructed form of perception of the world, based on an appeal to the sphere of emotions and aimed at manipulating the public consciousness. At the same time, it has the property of acquiring autonomy over time, infl uencing its own creators. The specifi c factor diff erentiating the historical myth is that it is constructed with the help of historical facts and changes the perception of reality by changing the model of perception of events of the past.

This article off ers a review of the reports presented at the round table “Political Globalistics: Research Directions in a Context of Global Uncertainty” convened by Lomonosov Moscow State University’s Political Science Department as part of the III Congress of the Russian Society of Political Scientists (Moscow, September 10–12, 2018). Among a number of key issues considered by the participants, special attention was paid to current problems of the development of globalistics as an interdisciplinary fi eld of scholarship; the transformation of the subject area of globalistics; and new challenges facing the academic community and the role of interdisciplinary knowledge in their resolution.

This article is devoted to the substantiation of the concept of the political and philosophical phenomenon of scientifi c-technical romanticism. This phenomenon arose during the Enlightenment at the junction of political philosophy and culture, was developed in the worldview of 19th century thinkers and reached its apogee in the 20th century, primarily in the Soviet Union during the era of breakthroughs in space science and atomic energy. Scientifi c-technical romanticism is considered in the article as a formed unity of three component elements: a) anthropological optimism; b) socio-political scientism; and c) humanistic technocratism. The authors lay out the essence of this phenomenon, in its development aspiring to become the highest demiurge capable of radically changing the world. The immanence of the expression of political-philosophical refl ection in both rational and artistic-fi gurative forms allows us to attribute the phenomenon of scientifi c-technical romanticism, the article maintains, to the sphere of political and philosophical research and consider it in this context outside the subject fi elds of literary criticism, cultural studies and philosophy of culture.

The historical events of May 1968 have a rich intellectual history. A reexamination of the theoretical discussions that preceded the famous slogans allows us not only to explore the socio-cultural context of the student protests but also to critically revisit the foundations of their means and ends. In this article the author reconstructs key premises of the theory of Henri Lefebvre, who actively participated in the intellectual and political life of the Gaullist France. Representing heterodox Marxist philosophy, Lefebvre was also a close ally — as well as a critic — of the Situationist movement. While today Lefebvre is mainly associated with urban studies, the main subject of his interest was always the socio-critical theory that exists without separation from political practice. So the critique of everyday life, the theory of its temporal organization and the reinterpretation of romanticism allowed Lefevre to formulate a critical and positive program in line with “phenomenological Marxism” — a program for changing those historical circumstances, the answer to which was the student revolution.

This article examines the process of political transformation of social movements, the vectors and means of their evolution and the factors that determine the procedures of their changes. In historical perspective, it was the process of development of social movements that ensured the progressive development of society, its transition to a higher level of social development. The study of the problem of transformation of social movements allows us to address the questions of ensuring sustainable social development, of the role of the masses and the leadership in politics, and to determine the vector of further development of the system of social relations. The author examines the issues of internal and external determinants of the development of social movements, as well as potential forms of their further transformation. The article also examines global trends in social development and answers the question of what impact they have on the process of transformation of social movements.

The article examines the philosophical bases and utopian features of transhumanism. Transhumanism is considered by the author as an ideology. The author sees the transhumanism as a kind of late humanism including the characteristics of the secular worldview of Modern times: materialism (immanentism), progressivism, technologism. The article also shows how the birth of transhumanism was promoted by the aesthetic principle that has dominated the culture of the Western world since the Renaissance. The author characterizes the transhumanist utopia, that is used as a motivating force to transforms philosophical ideas of transhumanism into transhumanist ideology. It is noted that the discussions about the realization of the transhumanist utopia is not so important for modern society, because transhumanism at present does not create a world of transhumanoids (beings physically and biologically diff erent from modern people), but a world of transhumanists, i.e. individuals committed to the transhumanist worldview. Like any ideology, transhumanism forms its supporters. Therefore, the study of the infl uence of the ideology of transhumanism on the human worldview should precede the criticism of specifi c “transhuman” technologies and the discussion of bioethics.