Androsenko S. V. Nicholas Berdyaev’s Thoughts on Human Freedom in the Face of Contemporary Challenges: Technology, Civilization and “the Revolt of the Masses” // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2024. V.9. №4. P. 44-67.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2024-9-4-44-67

Annotation

The article reconstructs the ideas of one of the most famous Russian Christian thinkers Nikolai Berdyaev on the man’s relationship with technology, which became more complicated in the 20th century due to both the unprecedented growth of its power and the challenge that the philosopher called “democratization of culture”. On the one hand, technology reveals man’s creative power, and the growth of technology’s power to a certain extent makes man’s life easier. On the other hand, technology and technification in the broader sense mean a mediated and often alienated relationship of man with nature and other people, communities and ultimately to himself. Technification develops a specific engineering perception not only of nature but also of life in general, which carries the threat of dehumanization, i.e., turning of production, cognitive and cultural sphere, natural and urban environment and man himself into something similar to a machine. At the same time, Berdyaev considers the crisis generated by technology, the challenges posed by technification and automation, which tear man away from the mother-earth and cosmic rhythms, accelerate or slow down time, compress or stretch space, thus questioning the very natural order previously experienced as unshakable and given by God, as a positive phenomenon emphasizing the religious meaning of technology. The article shows how Berdyaev’s main intellectual ideas and philosophical-anthropological intuitions can be followed through the challenges of the 21st century.

Keywords

N. A. Berdyaev, man, philosophical anthropology, technology, nature, freedom, culture, civilization, peasants, mass culture, mass society, engineering.

About the author

Androsenko Sofia V., PhD Student, Philosophy Department, Moscow State University, Press Secretary, St Philaret’s Institute. Tokmakov per., 11, Moscow, 105066.
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N. A. Setnitsky. Labor worldview: From the philosopher’s archive // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2024. V.9. №3. P. 127-148.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2024-9-3-127-148

Annotation

This publication consists of the archival articles and notes by Nikolai Aleksandrovich Setnitsky (1888–1937), philosopher, economist, statistician and one of the leading representatives of the noospheric, cosmic thought of the 1920s–1930s, which is associated with the preservation and creative development of N. F. Fedorov’s ideas. These works were written in 1923–1924, when Setnitsky lived and worked in Moscow; together with his like-minded friends A. K. Gorsky and V.N. Muravyov he studied the issues of labor and its scientific organization, relevant for the first post-revolutionary decade. Unlike theorists of the scientific-organization-of-labor approach, cosmists of Fedorov’s orientation interpreted labor as a world- and cosmos-organizing human activity in nature, which aims at overcoming chaos, death and decay, thus opposing entropy. Some works were intended for the journal October Thought with which Gorsky and Setnitsky collaborated in 1924. Setnitsky’s reflections on the purpose of labor were combined with reflections on the meaning of culture as a good cultivation and a creative transformation of the world. Articles about the labor worldview as requiring human activity in nature and in this sense opposing the passive-consumer attitude to land led to the issue central for Setnitsky — exploitation or regulation, which he considered in a special article. In the subtext of his articles for the Soviet audience, Setnitsky practically removed the religious-philosophical interpretation of the concepts of regulation, labor and culture, which he linked to the fulfillment of the commandment to “subdue the earth” and the eschatological re-creation of the world; however, some verbal and semantic patterns hinted at the original active-Christian direction of his thought. The published texts are part of Setnitsky’s Harbin archive in the Fedoroviana Pragensia collection of the Literary Archive of the Museum of National Literature (Czech Republic). F. 341. 

Keywords

Archival heritage of N. A. Setnitsky, cosmism of the 1920s–1930s, philosophy of labor, regulation, culture, fight against entropy, transformation of the world, projectivism.

About the authors

Nikolai A. Setnitsky
Publisher — Anastasia G. Gacheva, DSc (Philology), Leading Researcher, A. M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences; Head of the Center for Cosmism Studies, Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences; Chief Librarian and Researcher, N. F. Fedorov Library No. 180 in the South-West Administrative District of Moscow. 25A, bld. 1, Povarskaya st., Moscow, 121069.
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Discussion of the presentation of T.G. Nefedova “Polarization of the social-economic space and prospects of rural areas in the old-developed regions of Central Russia” // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2021. V.6. №1. P. 154-169.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2021-6-1-154-169

Annotation

On March 11, 2021, at the joint seminar of the Center for Agrarian Studies of the RANEPA and the Chayanov Research Center of the MSSES, the researchers discussed the presentation of Tatyana Nefedova, DSc (Geography), the Chief Researcher of the Institute of Geography of the Russian Academy of Sciences, on the polarization of the Russian social-economic space and the prospects of rural areas in the old-developed regions of Central Russia. Geographers, sociologists and economists discussed the driving forces of the contemporary rural development in Russia, the relationship of the Soviet agrarian heritage with the new trends in the transformation of rural areas, the role of various rural-urban strata—migrant workers, summer residents and villagers—in the preservation and possible redevelopment of the countryside. The participants considered the key concepts of the presentation: polarization, reduction of rural areas, features of their previous development, regional and local examples of the mostly depressive but sometimes sustainable ways of rural development. Some participants focused on the latest trends of rural development (2020–2021) as determined by the impact of the pandemic on both the city and the countryside; discussed the meaning and directions of rural-urban migrations both in Russia and from neighboring countries to Russia; emphasized the role of the subjective factor (strong leaders) in the local sustainable rural development. The participants admitted that, under the increasing state and market centralization of resources accompanied by the so-called optimization of rural social infrastructure (in fact many rural schools, hospitals and cultural institutions were just closed) and given the weak and ineffective rural municipal self-government, there are growing negative trends of the strengthening depression in rural areas of Central Russia. However, the old-developed rural regions have the historical-cultural potential for a new rural development.

Keywords

Polarization, differentiation, center, periphery, depression, regionalization, old-developed regions, culture.

About the authors

Averkieva Kseniya V., PhD (Geography), Senior Researcher, Institute of Geography, Russian Academy of Sciences, Staromonetny Per., 29, Moscow, 119017.
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Glezer Olga B., PhD (Geography), Senior Researcher, Institute of Geography, Russian Academy of Sciences; 119017, Moscow, Staromonetny per., 29.
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Nefedova Tatyana G., DSc (Geography), Chief Researcher, Institute of Geography, Russian Academy of Sciences; 119017, Moscow, Staromonetny per., 29.
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Nikulin Alexander M., PhD (Economics), Head of the Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration; 119571, Moscow, Vernadskogo Prosp, 82.
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Pokrovsky Nikita E., DSc (Sociology), Chief Researcher, Institute of Sociology, FCTAS RAS; Professor, National Research University Higher School of Economics; 101000, Moscow, Myasnitskaya St., 20.
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Pugacheva Marina G., Researcher, Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration; 119571, Moscow, Vernadskogo Prosp, 82.
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Sergey N. Smirnov, DSc (Economics), Head of the Center for Analysis of Social Programs and Risks, Institute for Social Policy, National Research University Higher School of Economics; 101000 Myasnitskaya St., 20, Moscow,
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Treivish Andrei I., DSc (Geography), Chief Researcher, Institute of Geography, Russian Academy of Sciences; 119017, Moscow, Staromonetny per., 29.
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Zaslavskaya T.I. “... I am pressed for time now” (Letters of Tatiana Ivanovna Zaslavskaya of 1972–1974) // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2019. V.4. №3. P. 78-139.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2019-4-3-78-139

Annotation

The letters of the academician Tatyana Ivanovna Zaslavskaya (1927–2013) describe her life in Novosibirsk and her work at the Institute of Economics and Organization of Industrial Production of the Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences (currently the IEOIP SB RAS). These letters present a chronicle of thoughts and feelings of T.I. Zaslavskaya about problems and conflicts in the Soviet science, about paradoxes of economics, culture, education, and everyday life of the Soviet society in the first half of the 1970s. In these letters, T.I. Zaslavskaya’s assessments and characteristics of her contemporaries—colleagues in science, politicians, figures of art and culture—are of particular interest. The letters also reveal the identity of their author—a strong and talented woman, hardworking and cheerful, curious and friendly, tender and vulnerable, keenly feeling injustice and rudeness, falsehood and stupidity. The addressee of these letters is a friend of T.I. Zaslavskaya—Yuri Efimovich Sokolovsky (1927–1984)—PhD (Pedagogy), Associate Professor of the Moscow State Institute of Culture, a Cultural Studies scholar, true expert in the historical-cultural heritage of Moscow, prominent researcher of the psychological-pedagogical issues of the artistic creativity and of the organization and development of rural and urban cultural-educational institutions. The letters were provided for publication in the Russian Peasant Studies by G.I. Reprintseva, the widow of Yu.E. Sokolovsky. The letters were edited and commented by G.I. Reprintseva and A.M. Nikulin.

Keywords

Zaslavskaya, Soviet society, science, sociology, economics, culture, Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, Moscow, rural Russia

About the authors

Zaslavskaya Tatyana Ivanovna

Editors: Reprintseva Galina I., PhD (Pedagogy); for more than 40 years, she was conducting research at the Russian Academy of Education, in particular in the Laboratory of SocialPedagogical Issues of Family Relations at the Institute of Social Pedagogy; for the achievements in the field of pedagogy, she was awarded the medal of K.D. Ushinsky.
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Nikulin Alexander M., PhD (Economics), Head of the Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, Head of the Chayanov Research Center, MSSES. 119571, Moscow, Vernadskogo Prosp, 82.
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Kiselev S.V., Nikulin A.M. “Culture is a factor of labor productivity” // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2019. V.4. №2. P. 160-176.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2019-4-2-160-176

Annotation

In his interview to the Russian Peasant Studies, Sergei Kiselev, the Head of the Department of Agricultural Economics of the Lomonosov Moscow State University, refers to the facts of his biography to provide an extensive overview of the evolution of some important approaches in the Russian and foreign agrarian economic science and politics in the late 20th—early 21st centuries. The interview focuses on the agrarian and economic policy of the perestroika, the creation of the Agrarian Institute headed by the Academician A.A. Nikonov, the interaction of the state regulation of agriculture with emerging market-economy institutions and relations. One of the topics of the interview is the long-term accession of Russia to the WTO as connected with negotiations on various areas of the economy and especially on agriculture, in which Kiselev took part. The interview also describes the studies of foreign agrarian economies, especially of the USA, which were conducted by meetings of Kiselev with American farmers, scientists and businessmen. When describing the current development of the Russian agriculture Kiselev stresses that Russia has reached a plateau of economic indicators, and to increase them the country needs a substantial increase in agricultural labor productivity, which depends not only on the successes of the national economy as a whole, but also on the quality of agricultural science and education, and the most important factor of their successful improvement is culture in the most extensive and deep meaning of the word.

Keywords

agrarian economy, agrarian policy, agricultural education, perestroika, WTO, farming, labor productivity, culture

About the authors

Kiselev Sergei V., DSc (Economics), Professor, Head of the Department of Agroeconomics, Faculty of Economics, Lomonosov Moscow State University. 119992, Moscow, Leninsky Gory, New Building, Faculty of Economics, Room 422.
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Nikulin Alexander M., PhD (Economics), Head of the Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. 119571, Moscow, Vernadskogo Prosp, 82.
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