Опубликовано в журнале Неприкосновенный запас, номер 3, 2011
The 77th issue of NZ has three basic topics: university and academic science as national and social institutions, the problem of disputable universality of democracy with respect to those countries which are usually referred to the “third world”, and “material history” of post-war USSR. Besides the texts of these thematic sections, the reader can find the articles on “historical memory”, classical mini-research of an ideological politics of the state, and our regular headings and reviews.
The first of the main topics of this issue (“University: Reproduction of Knowledge or System Reproduction”) begins with the programmatic article by Italian researcher Gigi Roggero devoted to today’s (crisis, from the author’s point of view) stage of the university history. Roggero analyzes how it is affected by Bologna process and by attempts to create “the common educational space in Europe”. The topic is continued by Moscow philosopher Vitaly Kurennoy and the Rostov culturologist Roman Gromov. The correlation between “capital” and “provincial” in the modern exact sciences – in Great Britain and Russia – is considered in Anna Aslanyan’s conversation with the London mathematicians Brian Davies and Alexander Pushnitski (NZ Interview). The theme of “provinciality” in the modern science and education goes on with the sad-comical notes of the teacher of Novosibirsk high school, culturologist and philosopher, Michael Nemtsev; his diary reflects the current state of post-Soviet humanitarian-educational sphere (Morals and Mores). In our regular Comparative Studies there is an article by celtologist from the University of Galway (Ireland) Gram Isaac. Its plot is also connected with opposition “capital/provincial” in a science, however here this opposition is presented in a postcolonial way. The text deals with the attempts of Welsh celtologists to remove as far as possible the chronology of creation of classical work of the early Welsh literature “Y Gododdin” – with quite clear political purpose to “extend” national history and the literature. The “educational topic” of the 77th NZ issue ends with the article by Sergey Gogin about the first results of teaching of “The Basics of Orthodox Culture” at the Russian schools. The case of religious education and the general relation of society to religion is the subject of our traditional Sociological Lyrics by Alexey Levinson.
The next important topic of this issue – destiny of democracy, or to be more exact, concepts “democracy” and representations thereabout in different societies. So-called “Arabian Spring 2011” provokes this discussion. Alexander Kustarev (“After Representative Democracy”) comments on its preliminary lessons in his column Political Imaginary. This “theoretical text” is followed by a particular example – the article by Leonid Isaev “Democratic Winter in the North Africa” and the comparative analysis of the political scientist, NZ editor Andrey Zakharov ““Black Federalism”: African Experience and Russian Federation”. This section is adjoined by the work of the French Marxism classic Louis Althusser “Ideology and Ideological Apparatuses of the State (Notes for Research)” and conversation between artist Dmitry Vilensky and philosopher Alexey Penzin about the modern ideologemas and the modern art (Culture of Politics).
Finally, the topic of material history of the post-war Soviet society, represented in the Case Study section, consists of two articles. Larisa Leitner writes about Soviet toy industry in 1950–1960ies and comments the state ideological treatment of this sphere of life and manufacture. Anna Ivanova analyzes the representations of unequal struggle against deficiency of the goods and services in the Soviet cinema, literature and other art forms of Brezhnev’s epoch.
Historical memory – the permanent subject of NZ interest for the last years – is touched upon in Tatyana Voronina’s article “How to Read Letters from Battlefront? Personal Correspondence and Memory of the Second World War”. The 77th NZ issue ends with the Russian Intellectual Journals’ Review (by Vyacheslav Morozov) and the New Books section.