The article considers the concept of resilience of the scientific community, which is novel for the Russian science. By applying the conceptual analysis, the key message of the paper suggests that not only is the term instrumental in describing the traits of modern Russian science, but also it shows possible solutions of further development of science. The relevance of introducing this notion into scientific circulation is justified by both external and internal reasons, i.e. the science reform and the need to reflect on scientific and organizational processes, as scientific institutions face substantial challenges in adapting to new realities. The term is considered in a time continuum, as case studies focus on the following areas: scientists’ perceptions on funding, dilemmas of stable and competitive financing of science, organizational culture, the future image as seen by scientists and the interaction with the media. Comparative perspective is also included. Among the categories used to describe the functions and the status of scientific communities, collective subject is one that can focus on active role of such communities, on the interconnectedness and interdependence of individuals in a group, the ability of a group to show various forms of joint activity, the ability of a group to self-reflection – just like resilience. However, using subject for scientific needs seems not always suitable, for the sense it has covers not all the aspects that arise in conducting empirical research. Resilience, in contrast, suits perfectly. Another advantage the term resilience provides is that it seems to be appropriate for outlining the processes generated inside the scientific region, since it allows describing not only scientists as individuals, but also a community as a whole. This thesis is illustrated by a brief overview of research on the resilience of organizations and the resilience of families. The paper concludes with applying resilience to practice, as the state of the psychological community is assessed through the lenses of the crisis of resilience as opposed to the crisis of identity.

The article examines the Soviet project of engineering psychology, set out by Boris Fedorovich Lomov. Its origins, tracing back to Lomov’s book Man and Technology, and the subsequent practical development and implementation of ideas are analyzed. The central emphasis of the paper is put on the ways this special Soviet project was positioned in the context of the key trends that marked the development in the humanities in the 1960s, as well as on its specific features within the Soviet science culture. The engineering psychology, championed in the USSR by Lomov, followed the impetus of man-machine systems that had pioneered in the USA in the 1940s. The conceptualization of this scientific industry emerged in the design of high-tech military systems that were controlled by both operator’s actions and automatic control systems. The infusion of psychological approaches in the evolution of such systems was predetermined by the fact that the new defense technologies were operating at greatly increased speed, thus rendering significant even marginal psychological factors. But the psychologic aspect of this specter of issues lacked attention in the model existed. To transform engineering psychology into a civil discipline, it was necessary to find a field to apply it and not to lose the far-reaching character and scale and to secure its demand. As a model for solving this problem in the American context, the experience of Alphonse Chapanis, who sought to realize the potential of engineering psychology in the widest possible number of industries, is considered. The book Man and Technology suggests that Lomov viewed this pattern of scientific culture as a benchmark. However, the implementation of a similar approach in the Soviet scientific culture and institutional area required different organizational solutions. These circumstances predetermined that the project of engineering psychology, originally leaning towards applied research, was implemented on the basis of the Institute of Psychology of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

This paper outlines the main referent features of the culture‒education sphere in the framework of globalizing world order, viewed with the help of philosophical concepts, in particular, the heuristic. The relevance of the topic is determined by the problem of the transforming conditions of human life, which influence the formation of his personality as a result of civilizational changes in the globalizing world. The heterogeneity of the cultural space leads humanity to an awareness of the crisis and the search for non-standard solutions. The article sets the objective of revealing the possibilities whereby the education sector can influence the vector of civilizational developments, and of showing new perspectives of such a research. In following this, the study is based on the methodology of systems analysis, and on the interdisciplinary approach which is innovative in a sense that it highlights the heuristic nature of cognitive activity as a wide-format, conceptual solution of the central problem. The theoretical substantiation of the need to maintain the dynamic stability of the cultural and educational environment of Russia exposes the problem of the integrity of the national cultural and educational space. In this respect, the idea brought about is that heuristic can be applied as an analytical tool, balancing the vision on global and national civilizational processes. This can establish a stronger coherence of political and cultural bodies on the both levels mentioned, with heuristic foundation of sustainable development, public administration and governance. The results make it possible to single out a number of program documents of global importance that consolidate the concept of sustainable development as a priority for managing civilizational processes, contributing to the renewal of goal-setting and the formation of a new vision, a new way to treat the reality. The sustainable path that Russia took determines the tools for modeling the integrity of the cultural and educational space, based on the parameters of the balance of material needs, moral values, and ensures coordination of the goals of culture and education.

The article touches upon the issue of functions and features of screen text. Being generally a form of text, being expressed, semiotically separated and structured, screen text follows the same lines of general and linguistic semiotics as average texts. However, it is a multicomponent system. Among its characteristics it is possible to distinguish heterogeneity and polysemy that render it the audio-visual reflection, or rather simulation of reality. This article is a case study of a specific type of texts which are called polycode-polymodal. Logical and descriptive methods as well as observation, generalization, interpretation are the foundation of analyzing heterogeneous screen texts such as film texts, television texts and video texts of the Internet. On the exempl of various texts of visual arts and media the root process of text as specific mechanisms of framing the language used and, thus, the images and the meaning. Fundamental characteristics of the screen text – openness, psychological and aesthetic stimuli – are illustrated in descriptions of the root process. The paper contributes to revealing that the screen text obtains such features as heterogeneity, hierarchy, and polysemy, deriving from the root process of the screen text. Heterogeneity of the screen text directly influences its polysemy and makes screen text an open system. Polysemy, experience and likelihood, then, belong to the psychological stimulus; affectability, suggestive potential, suggestive infusion belong to the aesthetic stimulus. In turn, psychological and aesthetic stimuli are manifested in the screen text. Study of the root process and peculiarities of the screen text helps describe the schemes of constructing the secondary reality and simulacra on the screen, and also helps list the means of manipulation with the consciousness of the viewer in more detail.

The article is devoted to religious syncretism, in particular, the history of its research in Western European and Russian science. Most foreign researchers give an ambiguous assessment of the mother concept of syncretism. However, when for Russian researchers syncretism is a universal term used to describe a group of processes and seems not to be problematic, in the Western European scientific community anthropologists and religious scholars have been actively discussing its application for almost fifty years: works devoted to religious syncretism, as a rule, are necessarily accompanied by a number of reservations, and in other cases researchers deliberately avoid it altogether, preferring to use synonymous concepts with a less complicated history. In this way the main objective this paper sets is to compare the visions of the Russian and the foreign academy on the term, map and draw the margins of the conceptual use that both Russian and European scholars share, shedding light on contexts and reasons. Positioning the concept within the field of its use, the text also notes the wide context of the referent phenomenon. Processes of spreading the boundaries of identity and religious self-determination are now taking place against the background of globalization. In this regard, the topic of religious syncretism not only has not lost its relevance, but, on the contrary, is increasingly at the center of religious studies. The author of the article covers the history of the emergence of the concept in religious studies. On the basis of comparative analysis, the traces of the coverage of this phenomenon in scientific publications of Western European and Russian researchers are shown. It is also revealed, how the connotations of the concept of religious syncretism have changed, with the key discrepancies and gaps in scientific approaches identified, and the main types of contexts in which it appears differentiated.

The paper is dedicated to the emergence of progressive artificial intelligence technologies and its relations to the human nature and soul, as viewed by experts and in such specific community as the church. We seem now to be entering a new phase of the comprehension of the moral aspects of the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) into the life of different societies. The romantic period of high expectations and excessive anxiety is replaced by the growing understanding of the complexity of the man‒machine interaction, which implies the intersection moral, legal, political and utilitarian dimensions of both a person and an artifact. The problematic issues are now more obvious, clear and difficult, as the disciplinary boundaries are revealed and highlighted. Among the crucial issues one should mention deficiencies in definitions; weakness of research optics and the vision that would be friendly to other areas of study or practice. This also includes the issues of integral assessment of the existing dangers, difficulties in describing the mechanisms of fulfilling both ethical and technically viable requirements. As scientific knowledge accumulates, both the benefits of introducing AI technologies into everyday life and previously underestimated new threats become more obvious. These societal and humanitarian ones include, in particular, social turbulence, neuroticism, digital crimes and crimes associated freedom abuses and losses of identity. Over the past few years, state and non-governmental institutions have proposed different approaches to determining what is included in the moral core of the problem under consideration. The efforts of many, if not most, of them turn out to be compromised by suspicions in willful intents. In this context, the broad consensus with the key agent facilitators is required, and the role such actors play in providing social stability is indisputable. One of the key roles in offering society the broadest vision on the anthropocentric development and AI progress belongs to the Roman Catholic Church. The Vatican’s quest to unite philosophers, AI developers, and religious leaders to address the ethical challenges of designing and implementing robotics is becoming an important element of the Christian witness in a world that is consider ed irrevocably secularized by many.

The focus of this paper is on the Korean aesthetic model of taste. In order to investigate the origins of aesthetics in Korea and its current place in Koreans’ lives, it analyzes the key concepts of the Korean aesthetics and spiritual aspects of life for Koreans. In a way to exemplify this cultural system, traditional Korean food is presented as a conceptual representation of the aesthetic experience. Its role in integrating different aspects of meanings and values in everyday lives of Koreans is also discussed. The research subject is studied through the complex lenses: its association with both the gastronomic taste, which comprises organoleptic perception and aesthetic judgements, and the semiotic aspect of culture, represented by basic units thereof – words. The optics of the interdisciplinary outlook of this method suggests a new approach to viewing Korean aesthetic of taste. The research shows that scientific approach to aesthetics was first adopted in Korea in the 1930s under the cospicuous cultural influence of the Japanese colonial rule; the ideas formed at that time still remain important aesthetic concepts. The study proposes that meot should be viewed as the most important and representative concept in Koreans’ everyday aesthetic experience. The cultural and historical analysis of Korean gastronomic culture suggests there is a number of specific cultural and cosmogonic meanings that were typical of the royal cuisine during the Joseon era and demonstrates how certain Korean dishes are endowed with aesthetic and existential values today.

The article is devoted to the attitude to various numbers among Arabs and their reflection on the issue in national and Arabic folklore. The cross-cultural oral lore dedicated to numerals is manifested in a pecular way in Arab world, mixing both pre-Islam expressions and those inherited after the Prophet. Veneration or fear of certain numbers, respect or disapproval of others is certainly associated with religious or everyday views, centuries-old traditions, mundane usages and experience of peoples, who, in turn, live in certain regions with various natural conditions, cultural and ethnic environment. This paper outlines major narratives existing in various regions of the Arab world that are connected to numbers – and provides inductive evidence of their common roots on examples of certain numerical expressions. The ideas Arabs shaped in connection with various numbers reflected the mental and cultural foundations, filling everyday human life with additional aspiration. Some pieces of such folklore are considered sacred and can be found in the Qur’an and in the Hadith of the Prophet. Others, no less significant, were fixed in proverbs and sayings – in some of the most stable and unchangeable sources that can help trace back national and supranational ethics, mentality and aesthtics. However, such a research faces challenges concerning the nature and the usage of numerics. While some numbers enjoy a priority value shared interregionally, there are also numeral expressions that are generally difficult to find in the culture of all Arab ethnic groups. Moreover, the proverbial phraseological fund of the Arab peoples tends to focus on some numbers mostly (i.e. one, two, three) and at the same time tends to overlook other numbers. The study draws closer attention to the functions of a range of numbers in the moral and educational sphere, such as promoting popular unity, consolidation, sharing experience of older generations, teching basic communicative principles. As the topic of the research was hardly explored outside the Qur’an studies framework or the historical context, the attempt of a comprehensive outlook on numerics in Arabic folklore the paper takes is innovative.

The article provides a sociocultural analysis of parameters of the millennials, the generation which will become the basic workforce in Russia in the next 10 years. It being topical, the major attention of the paper is dedicated to market and micro-interactionist influence of basic traits of millennials. The issue of treating millennials is faced both sociologically and managerially. It is said that the large number of conflicts between millennials and older generations leads to systematic inconvenience and turbulence, as it does not allow young employees to integrate in corporate cultures and increase own labor efficiency, at the same time affecting older employees, the management and corporative performance. Another aspect of the core issue raised by the author is educating the youth. Understanding the set of core values of millennials, their strategies and tactics of behavior in the workplace also becomes a prerequisite for teachers to successfully train students of this generation in universities. This research, in addition to many recent ones, examines that millennials can be characterized with such distinctive features. They, being digital natives, shift to more rapid, discrete and depersonalized forms of communication. Focused on managing their personal image and identity, millennials prefer playing socially desirable roles and tend to reframe own failures into external misfortunes. This brings about the issue of meeting the set goals, and nowadays the youth tends to plan less and rather get more usual feedback which is expected to be positive. These features are most likely to breed intergeneration misunderstanding. However, what is surely discovered to be helpful in settling controversies is that millennials tend to be more flexible and tolerant than other generations, which tells on general success of interaction and effort. The author, addressing the challenges of communication with modern youth, offers recommendations based on his own pedagogical experience of interaction with millennials. These are: provide basic guidelines and time plans as well as assessment benchmarks. Managerial staff should also dedicate more effort to mentorship and peer-level communication.

The paper addresses the issue of the genesis and the evolution of the conceptual formation of the official attitudes toward the principles governing the representation of the Russian Federation and their scientific covering. It appearance in key foreign policy documents and its significance is analyzed with the view to two major conceptual schemes: the international image and the objective perception. Both concepts were examined with comparative research methods. The problems of tracing the current transformations in the official rhetoric to the transformations that are now taking shape in promoting Russia are the factors why this issue is relevant. The particular aspects of the research included the key documents of official bodies endowed with powers to shape foreign policy that were published in the period between 2000 and 2019. The activities of the key institutions and content providers in what concerns international positioning were outlines. Holding and covering mega-events, such as the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics and the 2018 FIFA World Cup, also served the image needs and, in this respect, was examined in the paper. The concept and method of soft power is introduced for analysis, as it is increasingly efficient and useful in both these respects. The paper concludes with stating that the practice of positive positioning of Russia abroad was substituted in favour of the one of engendering objective perception. The main concern for that consisted in foreign pressure and negative information campaigns, so the decision was a counter measure. In this context, the shift between the two concepts of international promotion is revealed in official documents, having a considerable effect on the communicative potential in terms of acting in accordance with the fundamental values and real attitudes inherent in the Russian culture. Esse quam videri is now not only the national principle, but also the foreign image.

The article is dedicated to the outlook on the socio-cultural transformations of the 20th century brought by global conflicts. The main attention is paid to the problems arisen from overcoming traumas by the means of art and to the influence the traumatic experience has had on the transformation of the artistic language. The themes of the horrors of war, war and post-war experience and reflections acquire special significance in the artistic culture of the 20th century, with traumas brought by both world wars and other conflicts giving rise not only to emotional responses to ongoing disasters, but also being a catalyst for global reshaping of artistic content, form and industry, expressed in the visual revolution. In this regard, the paper turns to the essential cultural characteristics of the art of this period, to consider the similarities and differences in the individual trends that followed the general trend. Then, revealing the specifics of the artistic process, considered within the framework of the historical and cultural approach, the reasons that determined the global transformations of art were discovered. In this work, the issues mentioned above are perceived at the junction of the problems studied in the history of emotions and the history of art. So is the conceptual focus of this interdisciplinary text. Such an approach not only attempts to consider the visual revolution through the prism of personal experience, to link the transformation of visual expression with the inner state of a person and one’s perceptions of current events. It also underlines the specificities of historiography, represented both by research on the history of art and by works related to such a direction of historical science as the history of emotions. The main results of the research are as follows. Works of art related to the experience and display of the horrors of war, on the one hand, help to understand and survive the traumatic experience, telling about it in a metaphorical form, and on the other hand, embodying these goals, they radically change the artistic language in the context of the visual revolution of the 20th century.

The main issue the paper concerns is the theoretical and cultural interpretation of the 1940- 1950s social realist art depicting the Soviet school. The study advocates for a closer attention of cultural studies to the intertwining phenomena of Soviet mundanity and politically-charged painting. Hypothetically, the interconnection could be attributed to the transformation of the Soviet culture as a whole, with the pedagogical model of Soviet school as one key institutional elements. As Soviet art represented the state political project, each topic and body served some ideological needs. Thus, the paper aims at clarifying the cultural functions school art played. The analysis is dedicated to the post-WW2 canvases, to the period of the late 1940s‒1950s in particular due to the basic shifts in socialist realist painting both in terms of form and essence, which paralleled social and political transformations. The visual studies’ approach to artistic objects adopted by the authors serves as methodological contribution to cultural studies closely connected to political history, as it highlights the ideological sources of Soviet school painting and implicit pedagogical strategies designed to implement the Soviet social policy. The article provides the examples of the most significant paintings concerning the issue. The study has revealed that the era of school art combined a significant feature of early Soviet art – monumental pathos (however, deprived of motifs connected with the Great patriotic war and the 1917 revolution) – with micro-level mundane topics, mostly labour episodes. What is particular about school as such a topic is the role this institution played in the Soviet anthropologic project. As early stages of education are proved to be the most efficient in accelerating a new type of a socialist person, a future Soviet worker, the school realm was the base of value and practices indoctrination. The state policy translated the societal needs and purposes into the art. Having examined the key ideological concepts of the Soviet culture being inherent in Soviet school painting, certain functions were discovered. School is firstly depicted just as a background of state apotheosis. Secondly, it is perceived as a sacral locus where one becomes a Soviet person is both rituals and practices. Thirdly, school art is used to explain the novel principles of constructing a new person – personal approaches combined with growing group responsibility. And, finally, all that contributes to depicting the character traits which pupils was supposed to develop at school.

Catalonia’s historical fate, the peculiarities of regional history drawn against the background of relations with the Spanish capital and, thus, the Catalan separatism are the issues examined in Ramón Tamames’ book that has appeared in its seventh edition in 2018. Showing both diachronic and comparative perspectives, the work of Prof. Tamames provides fruitful insights into modern traces of centurieslasting complex, complicated, if not to say tense attitudes of the Spanish government to Barcelona and local visions of the central authority. The new edition of the book embraces the nuances of this phenomenon in the period from the rise of the unified Spanish monarchy in 1479 up to the 2017 controversial independence referendum. According to the findings of Prof. Tamames, Catalonia’s independence project lacks legitimacy in many ways and, consequently, is absurd. This issue is growing in importance now, in the wake of the coronavirus crisis shaking the precarious balance of Spain’s center-region relations.

The book of Ken Wilber, a philosopher, psychologist and the founder of integral theory, is devoted to the role of spirituality, faith and religion nowadays and in the future. The author systematically applies the holist integral theory to many aspects of spirituality, considering modern methodologies and philosophical and religious traditions. He analyzes various practical approaches to the states and the stages of consciousness, views parallels and finds common ground between the Western and the Eastern, scientific and meditative branches of various spiritual systems, and complements them to build his own project – integral postmetaphysics – an area that, according to K. Wilber, can withstand the criticism of postmodernism. Although the author sometimes presents the ideas in a rather partial manner, one should note his erudition and his broad outlook on world religions, phenomenology, behaviorism, structuralism, yoga, meditation, philosophy of mind, psychophysiology and many other spheres. Certainly, the integral theory is a sphere of philosophic analysis that tends to be ambiguous and not universal in application. As it is noted by K. Wilber: “An integral map is just a map. This is not a territory. It would be an obvious mistake to confuse them” [Wilber, 2006: 2]. Nevertheless, it seems that this book can be useful for those interested in the development of holism and modern approaches to spirituality.

On November 1, 2020 Lomonosov Moscow State University welcomed the participants of Camões Readings for the seventh time – now via video conference. The biennial event was devoted to the history of Portugal, Brazil and the countries of the Portuguese-speaking Africa, political, cultural and social processes taking place in these regions, literature heritage of the authors who wrote in Portuguese and the aspects of the Portuguese linguistics. The event, organized by the MSU Faculty of Philology, saw participants, scholars and researches from such institutions as the Russian Foreign Ministry, the Embassy of Brazil in Moscow, five institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Institute of Latin American Studies, Institute of World History, Institute of Linguistics, Gorki Institute of World Literature and Institute for African Studies), MGIMO University, Moscow State Linguistic University, Russian State University for the Humanities, Saint Petersburg State University and the Military University of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation. Foreign speakers from Instituto Camões, Portugal, Université de Provence Aix-Marseille I, France, and other organisations also took part. The contemporary situation in the bilateral Russia‒Brazil dialogue, national and linguistic identity of the Portuguese-speaking regions, linguistic usages, the polyglottism‒ multilinguism dynamics and other topics of high interest were discussed. Among the thirty presentations several were dedicated to the historic landmark of the 45th anniversary of the independence of Angola, Mozambique, Cabo Verde and São Tomé and Príncipe. The conference concluded with common decision to hold such meetings once a year.

Modern literature – both as book industry and as an art – is a sphere that reflects general cultural and intercultural trends. Mutual interest and understanding between Moscow and Seoul, the Russians and the Koreans manifests itself in such cultural derivatives – in works of art, in translated books in particular. The Yasnaya Polyana literary prize awarded November 23, 2020, in Moscow once again brought into light the novel of a South Korean writer Han Kang, The Vegetarian, that, at the same time, received less attention than other foreign works. What is therefore observed is that, in the wider milieu of foreign literatures, the South Korean achieves modest success in Russia and vice versa. With many prominent authors and their works translated, market success and wide publicity of Korean authors and books is what is lacking at the current stage of cultural interactions. This could be caused by the genre specificities of contemporary South Korean literature, as dramatism and realism of everyday problems feature prominently in novels and other works. Historical tragedies and the difficult life of Korean society are unlikely to be the details inciting wide public interest in Russia. What also imperils the cultural dialogue in this field is the unsystematic choice of texts to be published abroad and translated, which can be attributed to Russian editorial houses. This concern is the major obstacle to promoting both Russian and Korean cultures. Consequently, the development of intercultural bonds between Russia and South Korea is to a certain degree hindered by mutual stereotypes and standard patterns.