Social Cataclysms Research Articles

Formation of the Volunteering Institute in Russia as an Indicator of the Civil Society Development

In conditions of exacerbation of social problems, complexity of modern societies and the limited capacity of public authorities in their decision, attraction and activation of internal resources of the Russian society become urgent for social development. One of these resources is volunteering. Volunteer activities aimed primarily at helping needy segments of the population who can not help themselves due to objective circumstances and conditions (including elderly people, street children, people with disabilities or people who find themselves in the area of natural disasters and social cataclysms). The authors examine the legal conditions for the development of volunteering in Russia at federal and regional levels. They concluded that the potential for citizens’ involvement in volunteer activities, at both the regional and federal levels, is higher than the participation itself. The development of the institutional environment for volunteering, including increasing the efficiency of public institutions of social development, are crucial for the actualization and realization of the hidden, untapped potential. Thus, to solve the problems of social development system requires more than just external, but, primarily, internal additional resources, methods of their searching, and technologies of its attraction. Volunteering as a social institution meets the objective challenges of our time and necessity of social and political modernization of regional society and Russian society as a whole. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n2s5p402

SOCIALLY ETHICAL MARKETING AS THE WAY OF BALANCING THE INTERESTS OF THE STATE, CORPORATIONS AND THE PERSONALITY IN RUSSIA

In the report the author discusses problems of the modern society leading to social cataclysms and explosions. The author has analyzed the socio-economic situation in Russia, as well the role of socially ethical marketing concept in overcoming the economic and social crises through achievement of harmony between the market subjects.

On the statistical relationship between solar activity and spontaneous social processes

The starting times of mass spontaneous social movements have been compared with temporal changes in solar activity (Wolf numbers) and in the Aa index of geomagnetic activity. It is shown that relatively high values of solar and, hence, geomagnetic activity are typical (on average) of a set of years when social cataclysms began. In addition, the relationship between social activity and geomagnetic activity is expressed somewhat more strongly than with solar activity. Heliogeomagnetic activity itself is not, however, the cause of social conflicts, as is evidenced by the weakness of the statistical relationship and the fact that the time intervals of an extremely large number of social conflicts (the decades of the 1800s, 1910s, and 1990s) occur during periods of a reduced mean level of solar and geomagnetic activity. From an averaged statistical model of the solar-geomagnetic influence on social activity and the current status and forecast of the 24th solar cycle, we can assume that heliogeomagnetic factors will contribute to an increased level of sociopolitical activity at least until the end of 2014 and, possibly, a little longer.

Sustainable Development as a Priority of Contemporary Cultural Policy

The human civilization as the planetary phenomenon is constantly occupied with justification of its socio-cultural bases. If the 21st century and the first half of the 20th century are considered to be the era of technical civilization, social cataclysms, the linear growth of the world population, urbanization, then from the 1950th the content of the planetary civilization processes has radically changed. One of the priority values of the new civilization is the concept of sustainable development. The principle of sustainable development is not limited by the environmental and economic factors. Sustainable development is an important part of modern culture in the world. To achieve sustainable and balanced development there should be taken some measures to stabilize the economic and population growth by ensuring the necessary volume of agricultural production, resource consumption per capita and the permissible level of pollution. In the scientific literature, also in the UNESCO documents concerning the world culture, sustainable development is understood as balanced state of the globalized world culture, where the desire to preserve the environmental sustainability is combined with actions aimed at poverty eradication, poorness, social and ethnic conflicts and cataclysms.

The Western Front of the Eastern Church: Uniate and Orthodox Conflict in 18th-Century Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia (review)

Reviewed by: The Western Front of the Eastern Church: Uniate and Orthodox Conflict in 18th-Century Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia Oksana Mykhed Barbara Skinner , The Western Front of the Eastern Church: Uniate and Orthodox Conflict in 18th-Century Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2009). Pp. ix + 295, maps. $42.00. After Catherine II and her Habsburg and Prussian counterparts divided the lands of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, she found herself in possession of territories settled not as much by fellow Orthodox as by alien Uniates—the followers of a church that combined the Orthodox rituals and calendar with Catholic dogma and subordination to the pope. In The Western Front of the Eastern Church, Barbara Skinner explores the complex history of the Uniate and Orthodox churches in the Ruthenian (Ukrainian and Belarusian) palatinates of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which were incorporated into the Russian empire during the partitions of Poland in 1772, 1793, and 1795. Going beyond the theme of hostile relations between the two churches, the author skillfully incorporates into her narrative the abundant social conflicts, rebellions, Polish and Russian military interventions, and violence in the Ruthenian palatinates at the time of the partitions. This impressive and informative research proposes a new look at the history of the two churches in the region and links it to political instability, shifting borders, and the changing loyalties of local inhabitants. Even though it focuses on the eighteenth century—specifically, on the reigns of Catherine II in the Russian empire and Stanislaw Poniatowski in the Commonwealth (roughly the early 1760s to late 1790s)—Skinner's narrative depicts the history of the Uniate church into the early 1800s. Founded by the Union of Brest in 1596, this church was a response of the clergy of the Ruthenian palatinates to religious reforms and confessionalization in both the Commonwealth [End Page 642] and Europe in general. The formation of this church was preceded by the crisis within the Orthodox community and its slow reaction to Protestant and Catholic church reforms in the late seventeenth century. Although they shared one cultural background and were supported by intellectually similar elites, the two churches went in different directions. According to the ambitious project of its creators, the Uniate church attempted to unite with the Roman Catholic church dominant in the Commonwealth in order to obtain political rights and privileges not available to the Orthodox (23-24). The Orthodox church, on the other hand, gained the support of the Cossack Hetmanate and accepted the protectorate of Muscovy and the Russian empire in 1686. Skinner emphasizes that diplomatic tensions between the Russian and Polish states in the Ruthenian provinces forced the two churches to choose between two opposing loyalties. The second and third chapters of the book explore in detail Uniate parish life, the development of Uniate moral theology, and the education of priests. In particular, Skinner recognizes the diversity of Ruthenian parishes in size and population (48) and the lack of uniformity in the Uniate liturgy (59). Development of the Basilian order within the church increased the quality of education and professionalism of the Uniates, enhancing their confessional distinctiveness in the late eighteenth century (79). This distinctiveness and the Russian and Polish-Lithuanian politics in the region escalated the confrontation between the Uniate and Orthodox churches. Both states attempted to implement a "one state, one religion" policy (100, 105) in the contested multiethnic and confessionally diverse Ukrainian and Belarusian palatinates. In its focus on analyzing the development of the Uniate church, however, the book does not examine in detail the advancement of the Orthodox church in the early eighteenth century. Skinner does argue that both churches developed under the patronage of powerful local elites that founded new schools and monasteries, but her work would benefit from a more detailed discussion of the connections between the Uniate parishioners and priests and their patrons, as well as how these patrons protected their protégés during turbulent social cataclysms preceding the first partition. The partitions of Poland created new geographic and political borders for the Russian and Polish states. These borders did not coincide with the earlier fault line between the Western and Eastern churches, and...

Russian Federation: From the first to second demographic transition

The demographic transition in Russia was accelerated by several social cataclysms during the "Soviet type" modernization. Frequent changes in the timing of births and marriages engendered a mass "abortion culture". Contraceptive devices of poor quality

Hiliatic theories in the context of Protestant eschatology (exegetical-comparative analysis

At the intersection of the second and third millennia in connection with the natural (destruction of the state of the earth, water and atmosphere) and social (alcoholism, drug addiction, immoralism, extremism, wars, etc.) cataclysms that are taking on a global character, the eschatological prophecies about the end of the world have intensified the coming of the millennial Kingdom of God. In contrast to the existing problems, the Kingdom of God is offered as an ideal system of government with such qualitative characteristics as equality, justice, material and spiritual completeness.

The Spectre in Leopold Andrianis Garden of Knowledge

In the closing decades of the nineteenth century a foreboding of crisis and impending doom was felt by European intellectuals, ideologues, and literati. Regarding Austria in particular, a widespread omen of imminent collapse in the realm of politics, prevalent among the upper classes, reflected a general awareness that the liberal ideals upon which bourgeois culture was presumed to be founded were being eroded by fateful economic vagaries and the social cataclysms that followed upon them. The political upheavals that occurred in Europe at the fin de siecle were accompanied by a deep sense of yearning for fading religious values that were once held to ground and to legitimize society. In science and philosophy, an extreme skepticism had developed since the onset of the critical philosophy movement in the wake of Immanuel Kant's writings. Put very simply, this crisis of skepticism centred on the question whether the mind has the capability of reproducing, in Aristotelean fashion, the structures and processes of external reality. In an overarching sense, skepticism's critique of epistemological realism claimed that the mind is encased, as it were, within its own cognitional apparatus; this conditions the sensible world as a unified phenomenon of experience, but makes it impossible for objective reality per se to be deciphered and transcribed by cognition. The literary work central to this article epitomizes the epistemological crisis of the age in which it was produced. This article's objective is two-fold. First, it will consider how, in his novel Der Garten der Erkenntnis (1895), Leopold von Andrian zu Werburg (1875-1951) paints the picture of a world whose con- stituents are portrayed as fleeting appearances in the isolated consciousness of young Prince Erwin, the novel's main (and, arguably, sole) character. In Andrian's novel, reality is transformed into a dream. In the midst of his dream Erwin journeys upon a negative Bildungsweg, each stage of which leads him closer to the abyss. Second, and more importantly, this analysis will elucidate the philosophical concepts that inform the novel's content and that are the pro- venance of Erwin's ultimate nihilistic despair. Deriving from Johann Gottlieb Fichte's subjective idealism, these notions concern the phenomenon of solipsism in its relation to the nature of the thinking identity of a subject. In developing

Bogdanov's tektology: Its nature, development and influence

A. Bogdanov [pseudonym of Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Malinovskii (18731928)] was an important interpreter of the social upheavals and the outburst of scientific discoveries which mark the turn of the century. The developments in science and technology, political and social practice, which were initiated in Bogdanov's time have, of course, proceeded apace in our century. Where the social cataclysms and the rapid pace of scientific and technological discoveries will finally lead few would be so foolhardy as to predict. This uncertainty is all the more reason for us to study the revolutions taking place in science and society at the turn of the century, in order to gain clear sense of our present bearings. Bogdanov, as a key interpreter of these changes, can teach us much. His splendid edifice of thought, which has great intrinsic worth, should also command our historical attention. His greatest work, the 3 volume treatise Tektology: The Universal Organizational Science [20], represents a synthesis and epitome of this many-faceted yet unified thought. This is the work which undoubtedly has most to say to us. There is no need to outline the basic concepts of tektology here, since they have adequately been covered elsewhere [32, 33]. The reader interested in and as yet unacquainted with Bogdanov's thought should consult Essays in Tektology 1 [19], Bogdanov's own condensation and revision of his monumental Tektologia. 2 I shall limit myself in this paper to a discussion of (1) the nature of tektology, (2) the growth and development of Bogdanov's tektological thought and (3) its impact, suppression and influence. My purpose here is to establish a place for tektology among the modern generalizing sciences and to encourage its study and further development.

The Cost of Establishment: Some Reflections on Church Building in Manchester

The problem of the balance between the Establishment and Dissent in the nineteenth century has not attracted much attention among historians, crucial as it was to much of church life and politics too. The mushroom growth of Dissent between 1790 and 1850 was plainly related to the social cataclysms of that period, though the precise nature of the relation is still far from clear; and by the time of the census of 1851 Dissent had attained a rough numerical parity with the Establishment. After 1850 the Church establishment was never (in spite of some gloomy prognostications) in real danger. Indeed, in two important respects the situation changed in her favour.