Moscow University Bulletin. Series 12. Political Science. 2024. 1.

The article is devoted to the analysis of digital practices of commemoration of a special military operation. The material of the analysis is digital memory, concentrated in telegram channels. It is concluded that the memorialization of a special military operation in the public space is associated with the creation of images of heroes and the types of heroization are distinguished. The classical perception of heroism as extraordinary combat professionalism in a one-against-many situation dominates. A prominent place in commemoration is occupied by the non-combat heroism of martyrs (for example, Darya Dugina and Vladlen Tatarsky), with the help of which the idea of a common pantheon of heroes of the special military operation, Donbass and the Russian world is emphasized in the Russian public space. Digital practices include primarily memorial texts in blogs, as well as a range of digital artefacts, from comics to digital drawings. New forms of digital commemorations are being explored, such as the recording of military operations on video and “digital immortality”. There are different types of comments, divided according to four criteria: traditional and digital, official and unofficial.

The article explores the problem of transforming military commemorative practices in a contemporary Russian school with the help of a comparative analysis of Soviet practices related to the Great Patriotic War and new ways to perpetuate participants in a special military operation. There are three types of commemorative practices that updated the memory of the Great Patriotic War in the educational space of the Soviet school: nominative and organizational (renaming educational institutions, installing memorial plaques), museum and exhibition (expositions in school museums) and ceremonial (inviting veterans to conduct open lessons). Current commemorations related to the perpetuation of a special military operation rely on those symbolic practices that were developed in Soviet society. At the same time, they do not replace, but prolong existing practices, forming the interpretation of a special military operation as a logical continuation of the struggle of the Soviet people against Nazism. The difficult point of current military commemorations remains the question how memory of local conflicts (for example, the war in Afghanistan) can relate to the indicated continuity of commemorative practices as well as how to define the criteria for the selection of those characters and events that need commemoration.

The paper is devoted to the analysis of public speeches by Russian Orthodox Church members on socially significant issues in the late Soviet period. It is shown that, despite serious limitations, the Church continued to play a significant role in the functioning of the semantic foundations of national politics. This role was associated with active patriotic rhetoric, which to a certain extent acquired a pro-Soviet character. Soviet patriotism gave the Orthodox community the opportunity to remain a part of Soviet society in a cultural sense and demonstrate loyalty to the state. In addition, it corresponded to the expanding social demand of believers for a synthesis of Soviet and Orthodox values.

The author of the article proposes a program for studying the language of Nazism by using an analysis of the language codes that define and structure the dominant discourse of Western social thought. The first stage of the study consists of a comparative analysis of the linguistic facts accumulated during the periods of Hitlerism (1930–40s) and late Atlanticism (2020s).
The Atlanticist narrative is defined as representing the ideology of the struggle against world evil for the metaphysically and fatalistically understood progress (“progress of everything”, Progress with a capital letter, which is both its own goal and criterion), while the victims of this struggle are presented as inevitable “collateral damage” in the course of human development.
It is noted that the semantics of the concept “Other” in contemporary Nazi language is split into two meanings: the official, “desirable” Other and the unofficial, “undesirable” Other (otherwise: “the Other Other”), which does not fall into the zone of tolerance, does not succumb to Westernization, and therefore is supposedly “aggressive” and “dangerous” (“patriarchal”, “traditional” or “populist”). The reproduction of ideology in the Atlanticist Nazi language is defined as a four-step process: pluralism — nihilism — Nazism (racism) — splitting of the Nazi discourse, revealing its ambivalence.
The semiotic system of the contemporary Nazi language is described in the article as having a core (generating the semantics of Nazi myths) and a conceptual “protective belt”, which includes, in particular, the “retro-discourse of classical liberalism”, formulas of “liberal war” (“military pacifism”, “humanitarian bombing”, “coercion to peace”, etc.), themes of “new ethics”, “post-material values”, “multiple identities”, a general attitude towards technocracy and digitalization of social relations.

The article, using the example of two interrelated categories ‘independence’ and ‘service’, which have been constantly present in the domestic spiritual and political discourse for several centuries, traces the process of transformation of the value foundations of Russian civilization in the spiritual and political thought of the 18th century. Analysis of the works by the authors of the 18th century was carried out on the basis of the search database of the National Corpus of the Russian Language. In total more than 600 texts created in 1701–1800 were studied. The main research methods in addition to the general scientific methodological apparatus were content analysis and political-textual analysis. The concepts of ‘independence’ and ‘service’ in the 18th century were largely linked. The concept of ‘independence’ was using in the literature of this period in two meanings: ‘state independence’ (state sovereignty) and ‘personal independence’ (private sovereignty). Personal independence had to be sacrificed by the subjects of the Russian sovereign in favor of state sovereignty. This sacrifice was most often justified by the need for each resident of Russia to serve the sovereign, the state and the Fatherland.

The article analyses Russian playwright and philosopher A. Sukhovo-Kobylin’s study about Vsemir (Allworld) from the point of view of its socio-political content. This topic is insufficiently covered in scientific discourse and the article aims to fill that gap. The origins of A. Sukhovo-Kobylin’s ideas are examined through historicalpolitological reconstruction and political-textual analysis and as a result a reconstruction of his socio-political conception is presented. The article demonstrates the evolutionary orientation of the study about Vsemir which makes it close to the ideas of Russian cosmism and highlights the stages of humanity’s development (telluric, solar and sidereal) and the ways of achieving its ideal state described by A. Sukhovo-Kobylin. It considers the ratio of Spirit and Matter in the study about Vsemir and notes the dependence of human evolution on the mode of cognition and the way of interacting with other human beings. In addition, the article demonstrates such important socio-political component of these ideas as the necessity of overcoming individualism and building a unified planetary community.

The article briefly describes the biography, scientific path and political ideas of Noam Chomsky (born in 1928), a prominent intellectual of our time. Beginning his scientific research in linguistics, but with a keen interest in politics, Chomsky already in the middle of the last century became known as a scientist who made the second cognitive revolution, a political activist condemning the US foreign policy and a political philosopher consistently justifying his political ideal - libertarian socialism. One of the main tasks of the study is to build a holistic image of the scientist, whose political concept is a logical continuation of his discoveries in the field of linguistics, reasoning about the nature of man, about the responsibility of people (ordinary people and intellectuals) for the injustices and iniquities occurring in the world. The methodology of the research includes the use of textual analysis and historical-analytical approach, allowing to present the concept of N. Chomsky in the context of political realities and scientific research in the United States in the last third of the 20th century. As a result of the study, the author concludes that N. Chomsky is a real example of a “responsible intellectual” who consistently defends his unpopular and sometimes dangerous position proving the incompatibility of democracy and capitalism.