“West-East Divan” (1/2018)
Issue’s Executive Editors: Andrey Korenevskiy, Dmitry Sen’
The issue is devoted to the description of European and Russian conceptions of the East. There is, on the one hand, a construction by European intellectuals of images of the East and Russia as its part (although specific), on the other, there is an ambivalent perception of the East by Russia, namely positioning itself as a “non-West” along with estrangement from the East and orientalization of its own, including new (newly acquired) territories. In the focus of the issue is the multiplicity of images and interpretations of the Orient in the identity of the West and Russia – from idealizing (“Ex Oriente lux”) and romanticizing to opposing (“The West is The West, The East is The East”) and radical rejection. The “invention” of the East and its images is seen as the result not only of cultural, academic creativity, but also the struggle for political and other domination. It is expected to appeal to cultural and political practices of mental mapping of the East with a particular emphasis on travel literature, Oriental studies and Oriental perspectives in history and philosophy. It is proposed to investigate the influence of primarily European and Russian intellectuals, who have studied the East, on the formation and evolution of the civilizational paradigm, theories of Westernization, Orientalism, indigenization, globalism and antiglobalism, Imperial discourse, and geopolitical concepts.
“The Decline of the West” (2/2018)
Issue’s Executive Editors: Victor Apryshchenko, Oxana Karnaukhova
The issue will devoted to the phenomenon of Europe as a political, cultural, historical integrity, having passed through a number of crises, as well as to ways of understanding and reflection on the critical aspects of the European development. There some crucial problems in the focus, namely: spatial and temporal boundaries of the continent, ways of conceptualization of the concept “Europe” (for example, “Ancien Régime”, “European civilization”, “Western” and “Eastern” Europe, etc.), history and politics of European integration, attempts to define European identity in different periods of its history. Articles also presumably include the analysis of current issues, such as security and migration, social and cultural desintegration and regionalization as challenges to the very existence of the European civilization in historical perspective, and ways to overcome them. Of particular interest is the analysis of theoretical and methodological approaches to studying the phenomenon of Europe and the reflection on the practices of interdisciplinary research.
“The Prisoner of the Caucasus” (3/2018)
Issue’s Executive Editors: Anton Ivanesko, Amiran Urushadze
The issue is devoted to the topical problems of the Caucasian studies. The main focus of the journal issue is a long and contradictory process of incorporating the peoples of the Caucasus into the political, economic and socio-cultural environment of Russia, and various aspects of the Russian-Caucasian interaction from the Middle Ages until the beginning of the XXI century: military, economic, institutional, human. We expect articles and reports on the past and the present of science about the Caucasus – Russian and foreign, on the problems of the civilizational characteristics of the region, the sociocultural specificity of the Caucasus when viewed from different disciplinary perspectives, the Caucasian wars and the memory of them in academic and everyday dimentions, the peculiarities of the modernization process in the Caucasus, the place and role of the region in the international politics of the XVIII – beginning of XXI century.
“1968: The Year that Rocked the World” (4/2018)
Issue’s Executive Editors: Radmila Airiyan, Viacheslav Savchuk
The issue is dedicated to the social, cultural and historical phenomenon of 1968, the culmination of so-called “turbulent sixties”, its perception “then and now”. It was a revolt against the system prevailing in the society: Eastern Europe rose up against communism, Western Europe, America, Asia – against capitalism. We propose to look at following events as the “Prague Spring” and the political crisis in Poland; the “red May” in France, the student movement in Germany, Mexico, Turkey, Japan; the ethnopolitical conflict in Ulster (United Kingdom) and Louvain (Belgium); the murder of Martin Luther King and the African-American riots in the United States, and other manifestations of “1968”, which became a household name. The focus is on the theoretical understanding of the phenomenon 1968, specific events and their reflection in the collective memory. Articles are accepted as following the context of the problem, including “revolution of manners”, the ideas of “human rights”, “freedom”, “discrimination”, “equality”.