Suchergebnisse

The article analyzes the features of the social well-being of the residents of the Russian province, examines the relevant factors that influence its level and direction. The author points out that the socio-cultural features of the periphery are essential for people's subjective perception of the success of their lives. The article concludes that the social well-being of residents of the Russian province is largely determined by the age of the respondents. Middle-aged and older Russians are much less likely to perceive their social status as high, rarely have high self-esteem, and see opportunities for self-realization in the future. The social well-being of residents of the Russian province is also significantly influenced by the level of education, readiness for continuous self-development and education throughout life, subjective assessment of their own material well-being, as well as the degree of social integration of a person and support from the immediate environment and the local community. Based on the analysis, the author concludes that the social policy of the Russian state and society is not very effective, and that it is necessary to develop social institutions that focus on the formation of "self-care" competencies for Russian residents throughout their lives.

The article examines the financial behavior of Russian customers of Sberbank of Russia. As an information base of the study, we use aggregated open data on the behavior of the Bank's customers in all regions of Russia.The author characterizes the key trends of financial behavior of Russians, pointing to the growth of the tendency to saving.The article describes two models of financial behavior of the Bank's customers. In the first, citizens are focused on the widespread use of credit funds, regardless of their own income. The second involves a more rational attitude to finance and is determined by the size of the average wage. The article concludes about the low financial literacy of Russians, which is manifested in the use of such inefficient financial instruments as bank deposit for savings and investments. The author points out that only a small part of Russians have formulated a financial strategy, a comprehensive plan of personal investments using a wide range of tools such as individual investment account, mutual funds, stock and bond markets.At the end of the article, some aspects of regional specifics of financial behavior are considered. Subjects of the Russian Federation are analyzed through the prism of the volume of bank deposits, expenses on plastic bank cards, the volume and number of mortgage and consumer loans.

This research focuses on the features and transformations of power groups and their role in the political life of the societies of the Baltic countries. This article aims to analyse structural and functional changes in the composition of the Baltic political elites after these countries gained independence in the 1990s. The main objective of this research is to reveal the general and the specific in the transformations of Latvian, Lithuanian, and Estonian elites. Changes in the structure of power groups are considered on a sub-regional scale in view of the current Russian-Baltic political interaction. The common and distinctive features in the transformations of Latvian, Lithuanian, and Estonian elites are identified. Quantitative methods of analysis are used to detect trends in the selection of channels and mechanisms of elite recruitment. The study of power groups concentrated on both large-scale socio-political transformations and individual practices. A comprehensive examination of elite transformation in small states such as the Baltics requires the consideration of both domestic and foreign policy aspects. The thesis is put forward that despite some differences between the Baltic States their political elites have undergone very similar transformations since the 1990s. At the time, Baltic elites asserted continuity with pre-war Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia and detachment from the Soviet past. The 1990s elite struggle for power led to sharp ethnic, linguistic and political divides in Baltic societies. These rifts limit competition between power groups and reduce the ability of political systems to renew themselves. Having reached the 'back to the West' goal, Baltic elites replaced it with the idea of 'Russian threat'. Bridging internal divides, which may weaken the power of the elites, was postponed as a result.

The article analyzes the features of the current stage of development of volunteerism in the Russian Federation. As the information base of the research data from online communities of the social network vkontakte are used. The total number of analyzed groups is 2894, the number of participants is 1446008 people. To extract data about online communities and participants, a script was written in the programming language Python3, which allowed to gather relevant information using the vkontakte API.Based on the analysis, the author's typology of volunteer communities is proposed in the article, including franchise groups, online service communities and direct action groups. The author analyzes the distribution of communities on the subject of their activities. The dominant positions in terms of the number of participants and the number of groups are occupied by communities based on the search for missing people. The least represented in the space of the social network vkontakte community of volunteers — animal advocates.Based on the socio-demographic analysis of community members, the author draws conclusions about the features of their distribution in terms of age and sex. In particular, young people between the ages of 14 and 30 take the dominant position among group members. This is largely due to the underdevelopment of the mechanisms for including middle-aged and older people in volunteer activities. As for the gender of the participants, the main contingent of the communities are women, while their relationship with men changes with age.The article presents an analysis of the participants' value orientations. Conclusions are drawn about the domination of individual values and interests, which are based on the desire for self-development and personal growth. On the basis of this, a conclusion is drawn on the need to develop new social technologies for involving Russian citizens in the volunteer activity.The article explores some dysfunctions in the development of volunteerism in the Russian Federation: the lack of mechanisms for involving middle-aged and older citizens, the imitative nature of many volunteer projects. Based on this, conclusions are drawn about the need to adjust the social, educational, youth policy in the field of volunteer development in Russia.

This paper provides an overview of different approaches to forecasting the future of the three Baltic States. The author's theoretical approach to studying Baltic elites is used to forecast changes in the action models of the Baltic elites. The article stresses the scarcity of internal political processes in the Baltics. However, a significant number of scenarios focusing on military aspects in the Baltics have recently been published. The author distinguishes between inertia, confrontation, and cooperation scenarios and examines their prerequisites and possible consequences. The scenarios are developed based on an analysis of geographic, economic, and political factors. The decisive factor is a state-controlled foreign policy, which is affected by the international situation as well as relations between the state and the external resources exploited by political elites. The paper contributes to the general debate about the factors of political development and the role of political elites in it. The author pr ovides additional material for analysing possible developments in the domestic policies of the Baltic States in view of external factors.

The paper deals with the range of problems regarding the relation between decisions of political elite in small states and their striving for occupying a certain niche in external (foreign) political environment. The typology of such niches is proposed. The article deals with economic, military, political, and ideological dimensions of political elites' decisions in the Baltic states. The article makes the case of the following hypothesis: the exploitation of the "Russian threat" concept by political elites of the Baltic states is aimed at occupying a special niche within the Euro-Atlantic community. The narrow corridor for political maneuver imposed by strategic imperatives of NATO induces political elites of the Baltic states to attract attention of powerful states, which brings resources, finances and more prominent status. Inciting confrontation with Russia serves as a means for internal political consolidation, proving loyalty towards NATO, and contributes to individual careers of politicians with the EU institutions. The choice of 'conflict model' entails side-effects: slowdown of social and economic development in the long run. The following research inference is made: by means of conflict model which is being realized within external political niche ("gate-keeper" and "missionary" types) political elite of the Baltic states gain additional resources in the middle-term perspective. However, in the long term this political course generally reduces opportunities for political and economic development of small states. In theoretical and methodological dimension the research results confirm productivity of three-level analysis approach towards activity of political elite. The most general level of analysis deals with empire units of international relations which structure the environment for small states' elites actions. At the middle level it is possible scrutinize different varieties of external (foreign) political niches available to a certain small state. The third level of analysis deals with investigation of concrete economic, military, political and ideological decisions of political elite within a certain external (foreign) political niche.

The article focuses on multiple cases of the politicization of history by the Baltic political elites. Three states of development of politics of memory in the Baltic States are identified. Problems of political exploitation of the past are scrutinized in the context of political life and international relations. It is concluded that the narratives of the past where nazi and Soviet legacies are equated are actively promoted on the pan-European level. Elites of the Baltic States play a salient role in this process and enhance ties with the elites of the Eastern Europe, expert and political communities of the Western Europe and USA. The dominant trends in the development of the historical politics in the Baltic countries are the administrative and legislative instruments for approval of the preferred narratives of the past, as well as an active political work at the international level aimed at the inclusion of the Baltic narratives of the past into the European politics of memory. Historical politics of the Baltic States shows the Baltic countries as the victims of "two totalitarianisms" ("Nazi and Soviet occupation"), and this point of view is widely used as a foreign policy tool. The politicization of the "anti-totalitarianism" issue is now a popular foreign policy tool that not only serves the interests of the Baltic and Eastern European politicians, but also finds ideological supporters in Western Europe and the United States.

This article considers the legitimacy of political regimes in the Baltic States by analysing three major parameters: confidence in political institutions, level of corruption, and the development of their party systems. The author identifies the major crisis trends in the legitimacy of the political regimes of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. The article stresses the problem of legitimacy reproduction resulting from the limited representation of the national party systems. Special attention is paid to compensatory mechanisms used by political elites to "artificially" reproduce legitimacy. It makes sense to analyse the deficit of legitimacy in the Baltic States not only in the context of threats to democratic institutions but also considering weaknesses of public institutions and insufficient resources to ensure stateness. This requires developing a hypothesis about smaller states "importing" legitimacy from larger states and intergovernmental organisations, in whose zone of influence they are included. In other words, the EU and NATO can provide smaller states not only with economic and military resources but also legitimation "resources" using their prestige to support the belief of local residents that there is no alternative to the current political system of social organisation. Legitimacy deficit increases the risks of a rift between political elites in the Baltic States, which can become a prologue to a deep political crisis. In these conditions, compensatory mechanisms cannot be considered as targeted exclusively at broad social strata. They are also aimed at political elites, whose consolidation or "encapsulation" is achieved by exaggerating external threats and resorting to repressive measures in an attempt to develop an ethnonational consensus. These methods are used to ensure self-preservation of the Baltic States political regimes within the current ideological and institutional configuration.

The publication is devoted to topical issues of development of winter sports for physically challenged persons in the independent Ukraine. The relevance of research topic is pointed, problems of historiography are analyzed. Comprehensive analysis of scientific, methodological literature gives grounds to assert that, despite the rapid development of sports, including winter kinds, the problem of winter sports for invalid people is not highlighted enough. However, at the disposal of researchers sources, including data online publications, official websites of sports organizations of invalid people of Ukraine and foreign countries, the periodical press materials, statistical data can significantly broaden and deepen research on the historical and social, ideological and philosophical humanitarian aspects of participation of disabled people in winter sports. The article focuses on the history and development of the Paralympics, Deaflympics, as well as Special Olympics in the world and in Ukraine. This article highlights the significance of winter games in international sports, particularly the article analyzes prerequisite origin of all kinds of winter competitions, features of various international sports among the physically challenged people (Paralympics Winter Games, Deaflympics, Special Olympics). The organization features of winter sports competitions are highlighted in detail, the analysis of athletic programs is also given. Revealed that in the world there is a clearly increasing trend in the temp of development of quantitative and qualitative indicators of athletic programs: expanding the geography of the competition, the number of country-participants , athletes, nosology of participating athletes, the number of sports are have trend to be increasing. It is noted that the trend of rapid development of sports for invalid people is typical for modern Ukraine and it is clear because of the increasing statistics of the quantity and quality of sports for disabled people in our country. Based on a detailed analysis of Ukrainian participation of disabled athletes in the Winter Paralympics, Deaflympics and Special Olympics it is concluded that Invasport in Ukraine, with a much more modest history than in the leading countries of motion, dynamically evolving, as evidenced by the high achievements of Ukrainian athletes. With the intensification of democratic processes, humanization of Ukrainian society, winter sports for disabled people occupies an important place in the social adaptation of physically challenged people. ; У статті здійснено аналіз участі інвалідів у зимових видах спорту в умовах незалежної України. Подано аналіз кількості учасників, видів змагань, а також кількості отриманих винагород на зимових Параолімпійських і Дефолімпійських іграх. Приділено увагу розвитку зимових Спеціальних Олімпійських ігор. Зроблено висновок про те, що участь інвалідів у спортивних змаганнях є основним шляхом подолання проблем не тільки в українському суспільстві, а й в усьому світі.

This author analyses the 2013 Lithuanian presidency of the EU in the context of the Ukrainian crisis and evaluates the contribution of Latvia and Estonia (the former Soviet republics set to preside over the EU in 2015 and 2018) to the shift in the power balance in the post-Soviet space. Through assessing the actions of small countries in promoting the Eastern Partnership programme with an emphasis on the anti-Russian agenda, the author concludes that they will inflict harm on the EU in a long-term perspective. These former Soviet republics no longer rely on mere diplomacy, but resort to a whole new problematic narrative, where Russia is described as an "aggressive and unpredictable neighbour" that poses the "threat from the East." Being more mobile, small countries are able to concentrate power and resources in one or several key areas. This makes it possible for these countries to take advantage of international politics (even if the consequences of such steps are miscalculated) and "feed" on it through — so metimes consciously — creating "conflict nodes" in the relations between major players. This is especially true in the case of states that do not bear responsibility for global stability.