Contemporary changes in historical culture associated with various states of modernity actualize the problem of the foundations and prerequisites of historicism as a principle of thinking characteristic of modern societies. The ancient historicism background consists primarily in the advanced concepts of time and eternity, which contain the potential variability in the understanding of historicity in modern philosophy and culture. At the same time, the problem of the historical variability of the world remained on the periphery of ancient philosophy and culture, and classical historicism, which was established in the second half of the 18th century, was based on the rejection of some aspects of the ancient heritage. In opposing being and becoming, ancient philosophy preferred being, which was also manifested in the preference for truth over time, for one over multiple. Classical historicism of modern times is focused on the idea of becoming, which in a new way reveals the contradictions between truth and time, one and multiple. Relativism and plurality are becoming features of modern transformations of historicism, in which the structures of time are preserved, dating back to the ancient concepts of chronos, kairos, eon, etc. Of particular interest are modern ideas about time, which go back to the ancient concept of objectified chronological time and its correlation with other forms of time conceptualization. In the historical consciousness of modern times, the ancient concepts of time were transformed under the influence of the prophetic sense of time, characteristic of the biblical tradition, in which the historical process is considered in the context of the gradual revelation of the original intention and meaning of history.

History has no subjunctive mood. This cliché has done a lot of harm to the science of history, even though it is usually voiced on its behalf and is presumed to express its basic methodological attitude. However, the maxim obviously disagrees with the practice of historiography as attested by numerous examples or, rather, counterexamples from classical texts, Greek as well as Roman, ancient Chinese as well as modern European, including Russian. Rejection of the subjunctive mood is usually due to the belief that conjectures can serve no positive function in the science of history and, therefore, have no right to appear in historical writings. However, if a serious scholar’s natural distaste for vain speculations turns into a virtual taboo on the study of historic opportunities, one is prone to ask whether this healthy scepticism about the trustworthiness of our cognitive procedures when applied to such fleeting matters as opportunities, possibilities and potentialities would not eventually lead to utter denial of the very existence of options and alternatives other than those actualised, i.e. to full-fledged fatalism. The matter is not that fatalism is unacceptable on both ontological and epistemological grounds, though it is. From the perspective of this paper the matter consists in that fatalism renders the historian’s craft meaningless. For to assert that there is but one reality is one thing, but to allege that this one reality is devoid of alternative opportunities is something dramatically different. It is impossible even to describe, least so understand, the course of events without reference to alternatives. He who ignores alternatives presents a distorted, oversimplified image of the past — an artificial, contrived construct that does not correspond to the past reality. A reality without alternatives is not a reality as it was, hence, any analysis, any explanation based on it or ensuing from it proves inadequate. Past was not devoid of alternative opportunities, and though these are not easy to study, they should not be left unstudied. And they are, indeed, not easy to study, because, unlike opportunities availed of, those unrealised are seldom properly portrayed in our sources. But who says that science is easy?

Even now German society is painfully aware of its past. For German historians and cultural scientists, the problem of overcoming the past is an important topic for discussion. The purpose of this research article is to explore the genesis of the phenomenon of overcoming the past in post-war Germany. To investigate the phenomenon and the development of the concept, the article analyzes the approaches of German historians to the study of this problem from the formation of the Federal Republic of Germany to this day. The research is based on the principles of memory studies to reflect on the problem of guilt and collective responsibility of the Germans for the Nazi era. In 1949–1990 the German society acknowledged Nazi crimes and established memorials. Political disputes on the reassessment of national socialism attracted public attention and transformed memory politics in the country. The author also applies a comparative historical method to determine how this went in two German states, Germany and the GDR. The results of the study show that after the unification of Germany, the concept of overcoming the past has changed and the problem of overcoming the past has got a new dimension in German scientific discourse. As the study has shown, at present not only overcoming the period of National Socialism but also rethinking the SED regime is a significant problem of public historical consciousness and the culture of memory in Germany. This double problem is widely discussed in the media and is finding its way into the collective consciousness and identity of the German people. The article describes and analyzes the specificities of the process of transformation. Scientific discussion of the differences between the understanding of the concept of overcoming the past and its practical applications described in the paper is another finding of the study.

Today the rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia is one of the defining factors in the Middle East political arena. The Islamic world's division into Shiite and Sunni is often considered a factor affecting bilateral relations between Tehran and Riyadh. Iran positions itself as the center of gravity for all the Shiites in the region, while Saudi Arabia seeks to form an anti-Iranian alliance on a Sunni basis. This article assesses the impact of the doctrinal tensions between these two branches of Islam on the Iranian approach towards its relations with Saudi Arabia. For this purpose, the author analyses the rhetoric of Iranian officials, clerics, and state-run media in the context of the main concepts of the Iranian contemporary religious ideology. The author concludes that criticism of Saudi Arabia has lost its religious connotation and Tehran does not position its confrontation with Riyadh as a fight against the enemies of Islam or apostates. The traditional epithets classifying their holders as supporters of the forces of darkness and actively used against the Western countries and Israel are not cited by critics of the Saudi dynasty. Moreover, the criticism of Wahhabism as a religious movement is not linked to the kingdom's current political leadership. On the contrary, the Iranian criticism of the Saudi foreign and domestic policies focuses on condemning the Saudi authorities' infringement on human rights and media freedom, supporting the protest movement in Iran, and fighting the Houthis. Even the persecution of Shiites in Saudi Arabia, to which the Iranian press has devoted considerable attention, is viewed from the perspective of the global concept of human rights, rather than as the struggle of one religious group against another. The kingdom itself is not considered an ideological enemy of Iran, which since the Islamic Revolution has been the US and Israel. The statements by some representatives of the Iranian political establishment on the need for peaceful coexistence between the two countries, along with the March 2023 agreements on normalizing bilateral relations indicate Tehran's pragmatic approach to interaction with Riyadh which is not affected by the ShiaSunni controversy in its dogmatic and religious dimensions.

An analysis of the evolution of academic approaches to security issues in Turkish politics will help shed light on the development of Turkish political thought and the main theories and ideas that served as a catalyst for this process. This study is especially relevant in the modern context when the Turkish political establishment is regarded as more private and the underlying foreign policy documents are primarily classified. In addition, this study is able to give a new evaluation of a number of problems related to changes in the foreign policy of the Republic of Türkiye and provide a more relevant understanding of the logic behind Ankara's actions. The subject of this paper is the philosophical and theoretical justification of the Turkish state's political approach to security issues. The main methodological tools in this regard seem historical-chronological and historicalgenetic methods — their use will allow to consider and highlight the causal factors in the evolution of Turkey's approaches to ensuring its own security. The novelty of the research lies in the fact that the issues of the evolution of the security concept in the Turkish political discourse have been little addressed in Russian Turkology and mainly do not go beyond the foreign policy of the ruling Justice and Development Party. The present paper aims at a comprehensive study of security issues in the perspective of Turkish history from the early days of the Beylik of Osman to the modern Republic of Türkiye. The conducted research shows that Turkish political thought has gradually changed according to Türkiye's foreign policy agenda and the goals that the ruling circles of the Turkish state set for themselves throughout its history.

Recent decades have seen a drastic increase of academic interest in non-verbal communication of various ethnic groups. However, gestural behaviour of the Vietnamese, particularly in the sphere of etiquette, has been rarely analyzed by modern scholars. Research papers on this topic describe etiquette gestures of Vietnamese culture, especially bows, vaguely and sketchily. Although in the past bows used to be widespread in Vietnam, nowadays the gesture seems to have lost its popularity, in comparison with Vietnam’s regional neighbours, such as China, South Korea or Japan. During the preliminary stage of the research, we identified many problem areas concerning rules and situations when people must bow, types, names, and physical forms of Vietnamese bows, which defined the purposes of the research. The goals of the paper are to analyze and systemize the descriptions of Vietnamese bows, rules and situations of their use collected in research literature; to analyze current articles on bows, published by Vietnamese media to understand public opinion about bows and to conduct an online-survey of Vietnamese people (71 people) to obtain additional data, which will help to get more accurate and up-to-date information on the subject. The objective of the research is to identify the role and types of bows in modern Vietnamese culture. The results of the paper show that Vietnamese culture has two basic types (forms) of bows — vái and lạy, with many reduced and intermediate forms, and a nod, which do not have any specific names and require further investigation. The research also identifies numerous etiquette situations where bows are still used and describes rules of bowing in three major contexts of social interaction, such as religious, ceremonial and every-day communication. The results of the media articles and survey analyses show that bows, banned by the Vietnamese Communist Party several decades ago, are gradually starting to acquire more significance in modern society than they had in the past, particularly in business sphere and during religious worships. The results of the paper are not final as the research has outlined new vectors and areas of investigation that require field studies in the country.

The process of the formation of independent states on the territories of post-Soviet republics raised the problem of the construction of their national identities. This process was propelled by the rejection of Soviet identity and the cultural legacy of the Soviet era. This rejection necessitated a reinterpretation of the historical past of the nations and a revision of the pantheon of national heroes. To achieve this goal, the mechanism of cancel culture was used, which aimed at rejecting the values of a certain culture and constructing a new worldview. In this research, we are interested in the Caspian macro-region, which is an object of interest both geopolitically and economically not only for the five international actors (Russia, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Iran, Azerbaijan) having access to the water area but also for more distant states (China, Turkey, the USA, and leading European countries) fighting for influence in the Caspian basin. In the Caspian region there is heightened tension, manifested in ethnic conflicts (Armenian-Azerbaijani, Kazakhstan, Iran, etc.), therefore the study of the process of national identity construction in each subject individually and in the whole region is not only a matter of scientific interest but also a strategic task to ensure both Caspian and Russian security. The main purpose of the article is to analyze the mechanisms of constructing a new national identity of the Caspian countries through the cancel culture, reconsidering their experience and historical development. This process can be seen most clearly in the example of changes in the educational systems of the Caspian region countries. To conduct a comparative analysis, we took history and local history textbooks from secondary schools and institutions of higher education in the republics of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. This research was limited to the study of textbooks published in the Russian language. The selection was made by random sampling. A series of research projects on the construction of national identity in the post-Soviet space through the mechanism of cancel culture starts with this article presenting the results of the study of two countries in the Caspian Sea region — Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.

The phenomenon of the miraculous cannot be removed from human existence, no matter how much its presence contradicts the arguments of reason, legislation, or common sense. Its attractiveness for philosophical reflection has been evident since the ancient classics (4th century BC), when the very phenomenon of admiration was considered the root cause of knowledge by Plato and Aristotle. The miraculous turns out to be semantically interconnected with religious communication, understood as the observation of the unknown, inexpressible, inaccessible within the familiar (N. Luhmann), including its naming and classification. This study is devoted to identifying the basic sociocultural differences and their dynamics associated with the lexeme miracle in the Russian context of the 11th–18th centuries based on the analysis of written sources. Tracing the evolution of the semantics of the miraculous, identifying the criteria for assigning such a characteristic to a certain phenomenon and the value assessment of what was called a miracle, the following trends are revealed. On the one hand, it is a differentiation from religious communication, which distinguishes between true and false miracles depending on the origin (for example, the Christian God or the Magi, fortune tellers, sorcerers, etc.). On the other hand, there is an increase in the complexity of the phenomenon itself, acquiring by the end of the 18th century various communication features. These are true/false miracles in religion; legal/ illegal in the field of state regulation of public life (starting with the legislation of Peter the Great); miracle as superstition, deceit and quackery for selfish purposes, i.e. marginal communication, contrary to science, morality, law and the ideals of the Enlightenment as the worldview of the elites; as a historical and cultural phenomenon (in works related to the history, ethnography and folklore that are emerging in Russia); as an artistic mean (functional element) in literature.

In the context of the emerging new geopolitical and socio-economic reality, a serious transformation of culture and its values is taking place. One of these values is the phenomenon of the holiday. Firstly, the holiday is an important recreational factor in people's lives and, secondly, it acts as a translator of tradition from one generation to another. The article is devoted to investigating the issues of the essence and role of the holiday in the life of an individual and society. The holiday phenomenon as an object of philosophical and cultural analysis is characterized by a rich morphology. The article proposes the authors’ original classification of holidays based on the comparison of private and public festive spaces and the ratio of sacred and secular content in the structure of the holiday. On the basis of available publications and practical research conducted by the authors, the system, hierarchy, and features of the motivation of festive culture subjects are revealed. With the help of program-targeted, structural-functional, hermeneutic, and sociological methods, the main features of the holiday, its features and functions have been studied. This framework made it possible to carry out a theoretical and methodological reconstruction of the phenomenon of the holiday, analyze its scenario and identify its structure, algorithm, order, and influence on people. The holiday phenomenon is considered in the context of the dialectical contradiction between the labor and leisure contexts of human existence. By utilizing the method of nomothetic diagnostics, the system of motivation of different age groups of the population participating in the holidays is generalized and specified. The authors suggest a hypothesis about the essential transformation and formal metamorphosis of the holiday phenomenon, taking place in the context of growing socio-economic, geopolitical, and cultural instability and uncertainty in the modern world.

Philologist Olga Alieva studied the formation and development of the protreptic and parenese genres in ancient Greek and early Christian literature within her PhD thesis. Later, she taught ancient languages at the Yuriy Shichalin's Museum Graeco-Latinum Classical School, and since 2013 she has been working at the HSE School of Philosophy. The book under the headline “Philosophical text in antiquity” is a continuation of the research that took place from 2014 to 2017, revised for publication in this form in 2022. The book is composed of seven lectures covering the form and content of the ancient philosophical text, the dichotomy of written and oral word in ancient Greek culture, the relationship between ancient science and philosophy, poetry and prose, myth and logos, the features of the rhetorical situation and the object of the text, its purpose, the status of the author and the publisher. Of course, a much longer list of problems is addressed, but let's not forget that the main content of the work, without the preface, the appendix, which is also very interesting in itself, a nominal index and list of references, occupies only one hundred and thirty-three pages. And here the question arises: how suitable is the lecture genre for disclosing such extensive material in a very limited framework? The solution is the lecture genre itself, which always assumes that what the author is going to tell will be too voluminous and one will have to deal with the management of available facts, evidence and data. This review shows that Olga Aliyeva's style of data composition is a worthy example of such work, which turns a lecture into an adventure.

The article is written on the basis of a conversation on the philosophy of music by Professor G.G. Kolomiets, author of the book Value of music: philosophical aspect, with a musician from France, Dmitry Rasul-Kareev, Clarinet solo of Orchestra de la Suisse Romande. The dialogue gives a detailed and simple understanding of the philosophical view of music on the example of the ancient philosopher Pythagoras. His cosmological teaching saw the kinship of music, mathematics and philosophy and stated that the divine perception of the world is contained in the divine Number permeating the entire cosmos and our life. Music is made of numerical proportions and acts as a substance that exists even without a person, yet this unchanging principle of divine harmony, can be felt, experienced and expressed in musical art. Cosmologists believed there is a comprehensive law, according to which objects obey the divine mind, the great Rhythm. Music seemed to be the embodiment of the rhythm of the universe and harmony. The essence of the harmony of the spheres is that the cosmos is a harmoniously arranged and musical-sounding body. The movement of the starry sky creates the music of the cosmic spheres, which is refracted when playing musical instruments, and this lends itself to precise mathematical calculations. The intervals between the cosmic spheres are mathematically correlated with each other like the intervals of tones in music. The Pythagorean understanding of the numerical harmony of the structure of the universe largely determined the path of development of music theory, forming the main musical categories: fret, rhythm, interval, modulation and others. The modern philosophy of music deepens the Pythagorean ideas of harmony of spheres, putting forward the principles of functionality and processivity as properties of music, and allows us to talk about the law of cyclicity on a global scale. For example, following Pythagoras, music outside of the actual musical art is interpreted as a reflection of the vibrations of a complex communicative system: man-society-nature-cosmos.

Russian Language and Literature in the Modern World: Problems and Prospects, the 3d International Forum of the Iranian Association of Russian Language and Literature (IARLL) took place in Tehran on February, 25-26, 2023. It was timed to the 10th anniversary of the foundation of the Association, as well as to the Year of the Russian Language. Despite the difficult international situation, philologists from Iran, Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Tunisia, Georgia, Ukraine, China, Bulgaria took part in the conference. Representatives of Russian universities and research centers from Moscow, St. Petersburg, Minsk together with scientists from 10 Iranian universities formed the core of the conference. Russian scientists are attracted by the high scientific level of the forum, the interest of Iranian colleagues in Russian culture, the success of students in learning the Russian language, a cultural program that allows to get acquainted with the cultural treasures of ancient Persia and, most importantly, the tradition of Russian-Iranian cooperation. The expanding ties between Iran and Russia have made the Russian language significant in university teaching in Iran. It has been conducted for 90 years, since the foundation of the University of Tehran in 1934. Today, Russian language and literature departments have been established in 15 Iranian universities, where about 270 students begin their studies every year. The Russian Language and Literature Association was established in 2012 on the initiative of professors of the Tehran University Janolah Karimi-Motakhhar and Marzieh Yahyapur. Its activities enjoy great respect and full support among Russian scientists: 28 literary scholars and 72 linguists are represented in the collection of abstracts of scientific reports published by the Tehran University by the beginning of the conference. The reports delivered at the conference focused primarily on the topical problems of learning the Russian language in Iran and a selection of the reports will be published in The Research Journal of Russian Language and Literature published by IARLL, is an only scientific peer–reviewed journal in Russian in Iran.

On April 10, the 7th International Student Research Conference organized by the Russian Language Department was held at MGIMO University. This year the conference was devoted to the role of the Russian language in international relations. The conference was aimed at stimulating the research and project activities of young scientists in the field of studying the Russian language and its use in the field of scientific and professional communication. The opening plenary session included speeches by MGIMO professors M. V. Belyakov, A. A. Vasilyeva, N. D. Afanasyeva, and the Head of Science Department of RUDN U. M. Bakhtikireeva. The plenary session was followed by breakout sessions in two topic areas. The conference was attended by dozens of university students from Russia, from neighboring and distant foreign countries, including Turkey and China. Students delivered reports on various subjects, including the role of the Russian language in international politics and diplomacy, the Russian language in the context of the dialogue of cultures, the reflection of the national culture in the Russian language, the role of the Russian language in the post-Soviet space, etc. This event is held twice a year to give young scientists a venue to share the results of their research and serves as a discussion platform. Summing up, the participants noted the scientific and practical significance and relevance of the materials presented at the conference, the high professionalism of the speakers, the clear and high-quality organization of the conference, and expressed their gratitude to the organizers.

In early April the Department of Philosophy at Moscow State University for two days held the Second Mironov Readings, held in the memory of our colleague, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Science Vladimir Vasilyevich Mironov, a long-time head of the Department. The speeches at the Conference touched upon a wide range of philosophical topics from exiting the Plato’s cage (by Professor Dagmar Mironova) to developing courseware for certain branches of philosophy. Professors of MGIMO University were represented at the Conference by Professor V. S. Glagolev and M. V. Silantyeva. The plenary report by B. I. Pruzhinin and T. G. Shchedrina from the editorial board of the Journal Voprosy Filosofii was followed by an energetic discussion of cultural problems and intellectual continuity. In the track devoted to the problems of culture, the reports by N. V. Kuznetsov (SPbU), A. M. Sokolov (SPbU), A. A. Krotov (MSU), and A. P. Zabiyako (Amur State University) stood out. M. O. Kedrova (MSU) deconstructed the text theory of Paul de Man, head of the Yale School of Criticism. M. A. Kobrinets (MSU) revealed the features of the interpretation of time in the philosophy of the theater of the second half of the 20th century. A brilliant analysis of the theories of historical memory was presented in the report by D. A. Anikina. These and other speeches presented the main directions of the development of domestic cultural knowledge. The influence of V. V. Mironov on this process, as well as on the whole process of the development of philosophy in our Fatherland, can hardly be overestimated.