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The text is a part of the project for the historical reconstruction of the Soviet regional sociology of religion in the late Soviet Middle Volga region. The process of the development of the discipline is studied primarily from the point of view of the interaction of the state-party apparatus and various groups of the scientific community. This approach is dominant in the study of the revival of sociology in the USSR. The weak side of the issue is its historiography that remains the problem at the regional level. The research is based mainly on the set of sociological data, on documents discovered by the author in historical archives, on the works of domestic and foreign researchers, and author's expert interview. The author's point of view is that, first of all, the development of the regional sociology of religion was influenced by the state-party order created by the need for scientific support of the Soviet atheistic campaigns. There was also a significant public demand for the services of the sociology of religion. The flip side of the CPSU's enthusiasm for sociology turned out to be ideological diktat over scientific activity. The ideological and corporate interests of various groups engaged in the ideological service of party politics hindered the institutionalization in the region of both sociological science in general and the sociology of religion as its particular discipline. The article describes various barriers to the institutionalization of regional sociological science at the union, regional and intra-university levels. Political fluctuations have negatively affected the development of discipline. Since the early 1970s in most republics and regions of the Middle Volga region, it is going through a stagnation period. ; В статье рассматриваются внешние факторы развития региональной социологии религии на материале позднесоветского Среднего Поволжья. Процесс развития дисциплины изучается в первую очередь под углом зрения взаимодействия власти и различных групп научного сообщества. Данный подход ...

In our modern world electoral sociology, which is under constant scrutiny by the general public, as well as members of the media, in many ways shapes the image of sociology as a scientific discipline. Today sociology is often represented by media reports about the results of public opinion polls on the subject of politics and electoral affairs. Meanwhile a certain other trend is apparent: the high expectations imposed on electoral studies, as well as on their verifiability and efficiency, encourage the further development of sociological research and sociology in general. Scientific studies on electoral processes are defined by the convergence of various schools and paradigms of research, which implies an overlapping of different approaches and methods. This article presents the stages of electoral sociology's development, from "straw polls" to contemporary theories of electoral behavior (the straw poll stage, electoral sociology in the 1930's and 1940's, ecological analysis in electoral sociology, the behavioral approach, the sociological theory on electoral behavior, the socio-psychological theory of electoral behavior, the theory of instrumental rationality), which in modern electoral sociology are known as "post-Gallup" theories. The author reveals the main characteristics of each stage of modern electoral sociology's development, while highlighting its achievements and value, and giving a comprehensive analysis of modern theories of electoral behavior, with regards to issues located on the line between political sociology and sociology of law. Among these issues special consideration is given to elections as a political phenomenon, the political culture and political attitudes of the electorate, features of voting systems, political mechanisms and electoral technologies.

The sociological study of volunteerism typically uses a definition which includes all possible types of free, unpaid activities which benefit other people. Such an approach transforms the very phenomenon of volunteerism into an analytical tool for studying various fields of economic and social life: degrees of development of civil society, employment structure, features of a certain economic mode. Regardless, the use of such a definition when researching volunteer movements presents certain problems. Multiple critics point out that such an approach towards understanding volunteerism, on one hand, leads to various types of volunteer activity being excluded from the scope of research, namely those which do not fully comply with the aforementioned criteria of free choice and gratuitousness; on the other hand, it waters down the concept of volunteerism, by merging it with other forms of civil action, such as political activism. Furthermore, most studies exhibit a tendency towards highlighting volunteerism as a special type of action, which possesses persistent intrinsic characteristics regardless of the field in which it is being undertaken. Such an approach results in a complete lack of care for certain essential features of various types of those productive activities which volunteers can partake in. It's also worth noting that research doesn't tend to include practices of volunteerism when the main focus of analysis shifts towards studying the socio-demographic characteristics of participants, as well as issues concerning their motivation. Based on analyzing Russian and foreign sources, the article presents an overview of the issues associated with defining the boundaries of the field in question, while discussing the main difficulties when it comes to constructing a general theory of volunteerism, and analyzing the separation of various forms of civil activity which is typically present in foreign literature: volunteerism, grassroots political involvement, civil activism. The article brings forth arguments for limiting the subject of research and for analytical separation between various forms of civil activity.

This article analyzes multi-shift schooling and its effect on the quality of education in the city of Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia. Highlighted are the features, advantages and shortcomings of multi-shift schooling, achievements of middle-school pupils, satisfaction of parents and pupils with the quality and accessibility of education. Also evaluated are opinions on multi-shift schooling. After the downfall of socialism and a transition towards a free market, multiple migratory flows from provinces to the country's capital city have led to a specific increase of the population, and as a result of government policy to admit all 6-year old children into schools, as well as an increased strain on account of transitioning from a 10-year education system to a new 12-year one, schools have encountered a lack of funds, as well as a shortage of teachers and equipment. In an attempt to solve these issues, some schools have increased the amount of pupils attending one class to 45 or more, while also instituting a third shift, which has become common practice among many of Ulaanbaatar's middle-schools. Within the framework of a 2016 research project, the Mongolian State University's department of sociology and social work has conducted research and evaluated the multi-shift schooling system, while utilizing various research methods (survey, interview, observation, content analysis). Under the guise of a study called "Multiple shifts in Ulaanbaatar's secondary schools and the quality of education", conducted in 2016-2017, scientific approaches were used such as structural functionalism, phenomenology and exchange theory in order to analyze qualitative and quantitative data. A multi-shift schooling system, especially one with three shifts, creates some serious problems. Based on our research, the main parties concerned (teachers, parents and pupils) for the most part see it as detrimental to the quality of education, and as a liability when it comes to pupils' opportunity to enroll into the highest tier universities, given that those who go to schools working three shifts receive 20% less learning hours compared to schools working two shifts. Three shifts were introduced mainly in schools attended by children from vulnerable social groups. Such a practice creates social discrimination and violates children's rights to an equal and quality education. 17.9% of respondents who took part in our study receive an income of less than 185,000 tugriks a month (which is less than 80 USD), while 5.4% have no income at all. A three shift system of schooling has a negative effect on health and safety in the school environment, with an increase in the disease rate among children and the number of absences.

Critical discourse analysis was used as a methodological and theoretical framework for studying materials. As a result, we have identified three dichotomies in the criticism of European values: (1) religion vs secularism, (2) collectivism (sobornost') vs individualism, (3) collective morality vs liberal moral pluralism. Within the period of 2006-2012, the Orthodox discourse has been appropriated in domestic agenda

This article discusses the problem of the relationship between sociology and philosophy in 1920's Soviet Russia, the result of which was the birth of "Marxist sociology" and its approval in the 1930's. In the first part of the article, the problem becomes more acute in the question of whether there was any sociology in the USSR during those years. It is argued that the answer to it cannot be unconditional and unequivocal, because much depends on what was considered to be "sociology" at the time. In this regard, the thesis about the existence of "empirical sociology" in the 1920's is questioned. The article briefly highlights the original meaning of the concept of "sociology", the history of its existence in the Russian Empire. It analyzes how the trends of "philosophical nihilism" in the early years of Soviet government were reflected in its interpretation. The task is set not only to describe the historically and socio-culturally conditioned changes in the meaning of the term "sociology" in the 1920's, but also to determine the factors that influenced them from the perspective of sociology of knowledge. In this regard, the key yet negative role of Vladimir Lenin in the history of domestic social thought is considered.

A data-sociology approach is introduced by analyzing results obtained by the Russian voluntary networking community «Dissernet». As is the case with data-journalism, data-sociology is based on the publically accessible (open source) data and takes advantage of modern information processing technologies. The results obtained in the framework of this study help to reconstruct a socio-landscape and to reveal problematic areas where any sort of fraud is highly welcomed. As a matter of fact, the same areas are highly problematic for society as a whole. Data collected by the «Dissernet» allow practical conclusions to be drawn about the work of various professional groups of people, e.g. expert committies in science and higher education (Dissertation Committies), editorial boards of scientiic journals, as well as governmental bodies at regional and federal level.

The purpose of this article is to identify the reasons which limit the conceptualization of the concept of chiefdom, and to find analytical means to overcome it. The author notes that at the present time sociology has developed criteria which facilitate the understanding of chiefdom as a type of social organization and historical stage in the development of society. However, the process of developing an unambiguous interpretation of the concept of chiefdom has not yet been completed. The article suggests that this is a consequence of two main limitations. The first of these lies outside the field of science and is associated with the diversity of the morphology of chiefdoms, with them having accumulated signs of "higher" and "lower" forms of social organization, and with chiefdom being characterized by ambiguity of data. The second limitation is brought forth by science itself, which happened to attach different conceptual grids to various types of chiefdom and had been unable to solve the problem of polysemia of the concepts which underlie the methodological analysis of archaic societies. The author focuses on the problem of "semantic twins" of chiefdom, the existence of which is due to the established tradition of word usage. The problem of identifying such "twins" is solved based on analyzing the social institutions and structures of ancient societies, while relying on the results of archaeological and anthropological studies, texts of literary artifacts. As a result, the author argues that in many cases the barbaric "kingdom" of Western Europe, Asia and Africa, the Eastern European "principalities" and the "empires" of Central Asia and Central America should be called chiefdoms. It is concluded that managing conceptual space allows for expanding the subject field of analysis, enriching the analytical tools of research and as a result discovering new facets of chiefdom as a form of social organization.

The article provides a brief overview of the scientific, organizational and pedagogical activities of the outstanding Russian historian and sociologist N.I. Kareev (1850–1931). The main focus is his participation in the processes of the initial period of institutionalizing sociology in Russia: the publication of scientific papers and textbooks on sociology. He was the first person in Russia to give a systematic course in sociology to university students, was co-opted to the Council of the Psychoneurological Institute, in which the first department of sociology was established in Russia. During Soviet times N.I. Kareev taught sociology in Petrograd at Women's Courses. In 1918, by decision of the People's Commissariat of Education, he was included in the list of 30 Russian professors who taught sociology at universities of Petrograd and sociological courses for sociology teachers working at secondary schools. N.I. Kareev took an active part in the formation and functioning of the sociological section at the Historical Society of St. Petersburg University and the М.М. Kovalevsky Sociological Society. In 1919, N.I. Kareev actively participated in the formation of the departments of sociology, sociological and social studies at the Faculty of Social Sciences of Petrograd University. But later, his activity began to receive less and less approval from the new organizers of science and education in Russia.