2017. vol. 16. No. 1

Our empirical tests generally confirm the validity of the Olson—Huntington hypothesis that suggests a bell-shaped relationship between the levels of economic development and socio-political instability. According to this hypothesis, lower values of average per capita income tends to lead to increased risks of sociopolitical destabilization (a positive correlation), while a decrease of sociopolitical destabilization risks correlates with higher levels of per capita income (a negative correlation). However, our analysis has shown that this curvilinear relationship can be quite different in some important details for various indices of sociopolitical destabilization, with a very important exception. We show that the relationship between per capita GDP and the intensity of coups and coup attempts is not curvilinear; a particularly strong negative correlation between this index and the logarithm of GDP per capita exists. We demonstrate that this fact makes the bell-shaped relationship considerably less distinct with respect to the integral index of sociopolitical destabilization, and makes a significant contribution to the formation of its asymmetry. Our analysis also shows that the bell-shaped relationship assumed by the Olson—Huntington hypothesis is observed for all other indices of sociopolitical destabilization. In relation to such indices as political strikes, riots, and anti-government demonstrations, we deal with an asymmetry that is directly opposite, since a positive correlation between GDP and instability for poorer countries is much stronger than the negative correlation for richer countries. An especially strong asymmetry of this kind is found for the intensity of anti-government demonstrations.

The article problematizes the relationship between music, nature, and culture in the heterogeneous discourse of the therapeutic effects of music and in Adorno’s critical theory of music. To determine the nature of this relationship, the article refers to the conceptual metaphors and ontological intuitions of the actor-network theory (ANT). Using ANT, the article articulates the concept of “hybrid discourse” that differs from the related concepts of social semiotics and postcolonial theory. This concept is used in a lesser degree to describe local communicative practices that mixes different languages, sociolects, ethnolects and functional styles of speech, and used in a higher degree to describe discursive constructions revealing the symptoms of hybrid activity on the borders of nature and culture. The article analyses the discursive practices of the New Age movement that invokes music, from theosophy in the late XIX century to modern esoteric-therapeutic narratives. In these discursive practices, we find the significant combination of pseudo-religious re-enchantment of the world and its radical nihilistic “de-musicalization” (in the terminology of Leo Spitzer). In hybrid esoteric discourses, the modern socio-acoustic texture of nature—culture is neutralized in favor of transcendent reality of the un-human. In Adorno’s critical theory, ontological dualities are synthesized into the ideological totality of the culture industry. It is only in the early vanguard of the Second Viennese School that Adorno discovers the ghostly possibility of an exit from culture industry, achieving the true nature of music and non-alienated sociality.

This study examines the status and the functions of the medical (“embryological”) argument in Pieter and Johan De la Court’s treatise Considerations of State, or Political Balance. In the beginning of the second book of the treatise, the co-authors decide not to confine themselves to the Hobbesian explanation of the causes of the state of nature, setting forth their own interpretation of this phenomenon, which is the certain “impressions” or “marks” (indrukselen) the foetus receives at the moment of conception and during the mother’s pregnancy. The article primarily focuses on this striking inversion of the commonplace regarding prenatal conditions, and on the particular way of merging the political arguments with medical arguments while approaching aporia,the famous state of nature. The authors proceed by sorting out the contexts of Cartesian and Harvean embryological writings (A. Deusing), popular medical texts describing the pathologies of conception and pregnancy (J. Cats and J. van Beverwijk), and treatises on “political natural philosophy” (R. Cumberland) which illuminates the reasons of using this “anomalous” argument as an explanation of the inevitability of the state of nature. The research emphasizes the ambivalence of the De la Courts’ political republicanism. Though preserving some significant elements of the ethical-rhetorical paradigm (parrhesia, the idea of the “Batavian liberty”), this political philosophy does not manage to coherently represent the relationships between the biological and the civil orders, or between heroic ethos and “beneficial violence”.

The article explores the specific communicative regime established in Thomas More’s Utopia. Classical utopia possesses the status of a didactic narrative which imposes a rigid pattern of perception. However, in recent decades, reception studies demonstrates that actual practices of reading utopias are various, contradictory, and often associated with confusion and a lack of understanding of the motivations for utopian writing, as well as with the recognition of its hermeticity. The conclusion which usually follows from this is that utopia implies “dialogical” reading, intentionally inspiring an active and creative reader’s response. This article provides more a radical suggestion: the type of writing used by More in his Utopia, in many respects, contradicts the value principles on which the European institute of literature was based. This is why it is difficult to apply the approaches of literary theory to classical utopia (for example, to identify the “program of reading” foreseen by the text). As a phenomenon of early modern culture, utopia, on the one hand, reflects the new patterns of personal relationship with reality (the “classical representation” issue described by Mikhail Yampolsky), and with the self (the “Renaissance self-fashioning” issue, examined by Stephen Greenblatt). On the other hand, utopia becomes an indicator of the cultural distrust of these patterns of their “illusiveness,” “fictitiousness,” or “artificiality.” As the article demonstrates, More’s Utopia absorbs new tools of representation and identity while attempting to block them at the same time. Thus, the well-known effect of hermeticity, or the “autoreference” of classical utopia, could be produced.

A new Russian translation of Bertrand Russell’s 1950 Nobel lecture is necessary on the basis of the critique of the two previous attempts. The first attempt by Dr. Boris Gilenson in 1998 is considered deficient for having over one hundred major and minor mistranslations. Ten examples of Gilenson’s mis-translations are cited and discussed. The second attempt, by an anonymous translator of Yunost magazine in 2001, is ruled inadequate for omitting 24% of the text. The author of this paper suggests that a deficiency of sources may have hampered the efforts of previous translators, and presents a more holistic approach as a way to detect and overcome the errors. In particular, a brief history of the publications of the speech and its translations into other languages is related. A gramophone recording of the speech is used as a source to help conclusively distinguish between the statements Russell makes in earnest and the ones made in jest. Additionally, some difficulties with the literal translation of particular expressions are commented upon. A specific memoir from Russell’s autobiography is invoked to support the claim of the interdependency of his writings. Above all, the lecture is presented to the readers as a keystone document of the laureate’s political worldview, and as a typical specimen of his wit and style.

The article provides a Russian translation of Bertrand Russell’s Nobel lecture delivered on December 11^th, 1950, at the Nobel Prize Awards Ceremony in Stockholm. The text is based on a collation of two versions of the speech, one as available on NobelPrize.org, and the other as transcribed from a 1952 recording of the same speech for an American audience. The differences in the wording of the sources are indicated. Audience reactions and Russell’s non-verbal signals have also been included. The translator’s comments are added to clarify the translation, to disambiguate a mentioned fact, or to identify a person. For historical purposes, parts of the text that were omitted in an earlier Russian translation are also marked. The speech deals with the political impact of the desires deemed unessential to an immediate human self-preservation and limitless in terms of their fulfillment. Of these desires, acquisitiveness, rivalry, vanity, and the love of power are classified as the main ones, while boredom, fear, hate, and compassion are classified as corollary ones. Each kind of desire is defined, and then discussed through historical, anecdotal, and hypothetical examples. Desires are seen as an integral part of human life and cannot be eliminated completely, but their practical impact differs greatly depending on the venue they are allowed to take in a particular social system. Therefore, the importance of neutral and socially beneficial venues for the venting of passions is highly stressed. In conclusion, Russell suggests the cultivation of intelligence as the best antidote for social strife.

Konstantin Petrovich Pobedonostsev (1827–1907) is one of the most prominent and politically influential representatives of the Russian conservative and nationalist lines of thought. For a quarter century, he held the position of ober-procurator of the Holy Synod, undertaking a more-or-less active interference into the other directions of the ideological policy of the Russian Empire. At times, his influence turned out to be decisive, or at least significant. Our aim is to show that Pobedonostsev possessed consistent political views but underwent rather subtle alterations that were definitive for the direction of his political efforts. Our primary focus is on the system of ideas of the organization of Russian monarchy, as reconstructed on the basis of utterances in articles and epistolary heritage, though first of all on the analysis of the concepts of “lowborn folk” and “lowborn people” in their political meaning. We also focus on his understanding of the nature of the Russian monarchy and the idea of the ideal “Russian Sovereign.” “Being lowborn” is understood by Pobedonostsev as the ability to “feel properly”, that is, the truthfulness of an immediate reaction which cannot be obscured with consequential pressures or one’s own reflexive agency. Pobedonostsev claims that his own role, as well as the role of those of his kind close to the throne, is to be the spokesman of feelings and aspirations of those “lowborn people,” and, in the most responsible cases, to become a “lowborn man” himself, reacting to what is happening in accordance with “people’s feelings,” “tradition”, and “legend.” Additionally, the concept of “freedom” within Pobedonostsev’s views, and its relation to the notions of “authority” and “free might,” is analyzed.

These reflections are dedicated to the creative heritage of the outstanding researcher of the “Soviet man,” Natalya Nikitichna Kozlova (1946–2002). In her works of the 1990s on the sociology of everyday life and socio-historical anthropology, a unique methodology was developed for the investigation of the human dimension of “modernization from above” that was provided within the politics of building a socialist society in the USSR. Her research program was focused on the theoretical reconstruction of social practices and modes of existence of the «ordinary Soviet man», understood as an “anthropological consequence” of the attempt of the realization of the communist project in Russia. However, her intention for the “disclosure of traces of little man in big history,” as it was expressed by the researcher herself, has nothing to do with the ideology-laden discourse of “totalitarianism.” N. N. Kozlova was not so interested in the forms of controlling the society as the lacunas in it, or in the techniques of totalitarian supremacy as in the practices of non-political resistance from below, or even in the totality as much as the discreteness of social matter of the new mass society. The “wrong” Soviet modern dropping out from the normative representations of Modernity was the main epistemological interest in her works, which is innovative from both the substantial and methodological standpoints. The investigative vision developed in Kozlova’s works retains its heuristic significance even today when Russia is experiencing a “Soviet Renaissance.” Moreover, her approaches to the study of the society of the “new type” allows for the anthropological understanding of the current state of our country. The paper reconstructs Kozlova’s research program regarding Soviet sociality as an object of social philosophy and social anthropology. The main focus will be the theoretical approaches to the analysis of the daily practices which allowed her to develop her unique methodology.

The article attempts to outline new theoretical approaches to the study of the Soviet past, based on the cultural-anthropological research program of “the Soviet man” as proposed by N. N. Kozlova. Our assumption is that, in the implementation of her research program, Kozlova was trying to solve a double problem: on the one hand, to overcome the ideological framework posed by the concept of totalitarianism as the basic model of understanding Soviet society, and on the other, to understand Soviet society as an unintended social invention, In the framework of the model of Soviet society as an unintended social invention, classical social-theoretical views and conceptions enter into a complex theoretical alliance with the postclassical social theories of Norbert Elias, Michel Foucault, Michel de Certeau, and Pierre Bourdieu. The purpose of this strategy of research is to find adequate intellectual models and a basic theoretical framework for understanding the relationship between the individual and society. The qualification of the Soviet society as a social invention implies that a functional interdependent network of individuals arises in the course of common life of the individuals from the interactions between them. This network moves in a certain direction and has its own regularities, which, as specific patterns of relations between individuals, is not defined exactly by any one individual. The role of the basic model for the understanding of such a functional network of interdependent individuals does not play the model of the system, but the model of the common game and the social grammar, which is at the core of this game. Special attention is paid to the assessment of the heuristic potential of Kozlova’s hypothesis of Soviet civilization as a special type of modern society, and its importance for the studies of Soviet society and culture.

The article was originally intended as a review of A. I. Reytblat’s book Writing Across: Articles on Biographics, Sociology and History of Literature. However, the text turned into a brief overview and even an attempt to “classify” the works which every sociologist focused on textual analysis should read. Such a change of the author’s intention was determined by three factors. The first is the “methodological trauma” of sociologists who constantly clarify the grounds of their empirical work and conceptualizations under the nowadays-exalted interdisciplinarity of sociology. The second factor is the aggravation of this problem in the field of textual analysis which lacks conventional nominations of analytical approaches, not to mention rules and procedures of the “classical” scientific methodology. The third factor responsible for the change in the author’s intention is the need for some minimum competence in the disciplines that influence textual analysis in sociology and, thus, their impact has to be evaluated in terms of their causes, consequences, and limits. The author identifies four types of non-sociological works on different linguistic aspects of social life that can form such a competence: (1) practical guidelines for the linguistic analysis essential for correct content analytical studies; (2) publicist estimates of the role of language in social life and of the transformations of the current Russian language/discourse; (3) philosophical works devoted not as much to the discursive construction of social reality as to the fundamental role of language in its constitution and destruction, and; (4) works on the social life of texts that can conditionally fit into the notion of the “sociology of literature”.

The review considers the 5^th All-Russian Sociological Congress held at the Ural Federal University in Yekaterinburg in October, 2016. The event, entitled “Sociology and Society: Social Inequality and Social Justice,” attracted more than 1000 delegates from Russia and abroad. The Congress took place against a background of increasing social inequality in Russia, following the economic crisis of 2015. The program included 17 sessions, 37 panels, and 35 round tables which covered burning topics such as the unequal distribution of resources in Russian regions, the reduction of social welfare, the low living standards of vulnerable social groups, the growth of ethnic tension, and others. One of the plenary talks was given by the president of the International Sociological Association, Margaret Abraham, who spoke on the humanistic mission of Sociology, and called to coalesce in the struggle against social injustice in the world. The discussions at the Congress have shown that sociologists in Russia follow the global trends in examining urgent social problems, as well as in reflecting methodological issues, e.g., the application of new approaches in inequality studies. The debate on the restriction of academic freedoms in Russia at the closing plenary session made it obvious that the solution to this problem can be found in professional solidarity and is the responsibility of everyone who belongs to the sociological community. 

Those who study in-migrations of the populations in modern Russia know how difficult it is to give accurate assessments of the scale of these processes within regions, between regions, and within the country. It is possible to define the trends, directions, the participants of these migrations, the obstacles which the migrants face, and the resources which they use for successful relocation. As for the scale of this phenomenon, it is extremely difficult to give accurate estimates. We have discovered a book whose authors immediately notice that it helps to understand how many people in Russia actually live in different places at different times of the day, the days of the week, and the seasons. For researchers, this thesis sounds very intriguing. The monograph of six scientific fellows of the Institute of Geography RAS is dedicated to the spatial (geographic) mobility of the population. Two types of return mobility, labour migration and seasonal migration of Russians to dachas, as well as the settlement systems formed by them (the rural-urban continuum), are analyzed in detail. The authors examine the background, directions, and scales of these migrations in determining regional differences. The study concerns the entirety of Russia, though the authors pay particular attention to its central and north-western regions. The monograph summarizes the longstanding elaborations of the authors, and provides a comfortable immersion into a quite extensive interdisciplinary subject. The series of geo-information systems in the form of schematic maps clearly demonstrating regional differences, sources and zones of migration and settlement systems raise the level of excellence of the monograph among other individual and collective studies of sociologists and demographers in this subject field. 

This article represents a genre of philosophical criticism that can be defined as a reflection of the book on N. G. Chernyshevsky written by V. K. Kantor, a historian of Russian philosophy. Kantor creates a new intellectual biography of Chernyshevsky as opposed to the Soviet version, inherited from Lenin, of Chernyshevsky as a revolutionary Democrat. Chernyshevsky’s biography reflects the transformation of intellectual and political culture that took place in Russian society in the second half of the 19th century. I attempt to analyze the main ideas of the book through addressing the historiography of the subject in this critical article. The two main questions posed are whether a writer’s legacy can be “cleared” from the revolutionary myth and ideological interpretations, and is it fair to define him as a supporter of gradual reform and as a Christian thinker? The article also introduces the reader to the historical-philosophical tradition of research on Chernyshevsky. I also demonstrate the literary and philosophical sources for the study of Chernyshevsky’s work in the periods between three Russian revolutions and emigration. This essay presents a critical overview of the key instruments of historical and philosophical Chernyshevsky studies in the Russian intellectual context of the 20th century. Identifying the actual intention of the thoughts of Chernyshevsky is extremely important today. This paper responds to the relevance of studying the texts of Russian social and religious thought in the present stage of the problematic field of the history of philosophy.

Review: Pierre Rosanvallon, Le bon gouvernement (Paris: Seuil, 2011).