Nº 1 (2023)

The article briefly outlines the scientific ideas of N.I. Lapin, one of the prominent contributors to the revival of sociology in Russia in the 1960s. Over 60 years of his research activities, Lapin left a great scientific legacy in many branches of sociology, philosophy, and related sciences. This includes the sociology of organizations, the sociology of management, the sociology of innovation, the social problems of global simulation, the sociology of a crisis society and sociocultural transformation, regional social comparative studies, and the civilizational development of Russia. Many of them present a compelling author’s approach, which became the basis for the creation of several scientific areas in domestic science: the sociology of organizations, the sociology of management, the sociology of innovation, the social problems of global simulation, the sociology of a crisis society and sociocultural transformation, and regional social comparative studies. Lapin’s contribution to the institutionalization of sociology as a science within the system of social sciences in Russia is invaluable. His new theoretical approaches and solutions were at the heart of almost all the projects that he initiated and brought to life. The paper presents three projects carried out under Lapin’s scientific supervision. The first project — the earliest effort at the dawn of the revival of modern sociology in Russia — is about the social organization of an industrial enterprise and the labor of workers in automated and non-automated industries (1968-1973). The second project is about the study of the socio-cultural evolution of Russia and its regions (1990-2020). The third project, which Lapin worked on in his last years, is about the civilizational development of Russia. It summarizes his thoughts about the country’s history, development patterns, and its place on the civilizational map of the world.

Russian discourses on migration ignore the interests of the employer. The authors of this article seek to close this gap. They focus on the following topics: employers' motivations for recruiting foreign workers; the main types of economic activity and occupations of labor migrants; channels for finding a job and a worker; selection criteria for labor migrants; preferences for hiring and paying Russian and foreign workers; employers' attitudes towards planned innovations in migration law. It is shown that the main reason for recruiting of foreigners is a shortage of workers. Manual workers and specialists are the most sought-after categories of foreigners. It was revealed that the main requirement for a skilled worker is his skilled work experience and qualification, while for unskilled workers – knowledge of Russian language and work permit. Few employers are interested in the nationality, age and gender of the worker. The advantage of foreign workers is their willingness to work overtime and for less money, as well as labor discipline. The advantages of Russian workers are in their qualifications, ability to retrain, and ability to work as a team. The majority of employers indicated equal pay for Russians and foreigners. The survey showed employers' negative attitudes toward the restrictive procedure for hiring foreigners and the authorities' access to their personal data, including their geolocation. The anticipated strengthening of control over migrants and employers will only encourage them to go into the shadow sphere. The study is based on two employer surveys conducted in 2017 and 2022.

The current state of the Armenian Diaspora in Russia testifies to the presence in it of some divergent tendencies: on the one hand, this is the historically inherent desire of the Armenian Diaspora to thoroughly integrate into the social and economic life of Russia; and on the other hand, this is a certain orientations for repatriation to the homeland in the context of current western sanctions against Russia and a special military operation in Ukraine. In order to study the degree of integration of the Armenian Diaspora in to Russian society and identify a potential repatriation resource among the Armenian migrants, a comparative sociological survey was conducted in Russia and in Armenia. In the Russian Federation, the sociological survey among the Armenian migrants was conducted by the scientists of the Institute of Demographic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences in the most Armenian-populated communities in Moscow, and in the Stavropol and Krasnodar regions. In Armenia, the sociological survey among the migrant families was conducted by the scientists of the Institute of Philosophy, Sociology and Law of the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia in the several cities of the republic. The main results of comparative sociological surveys conducted within the framework of the joint academic project are presented in this article in the form of a predictive analysis of the current situation.

The study is devoted to the problem of assessing the relationship between financial and economic factors and the level of suicides in the Russian regions. We used panel data for 80 regions of Russia for the period 2005 (2010)-2020. We applied the Driscoll-Kraay standard error fixed effects method to solve cross-section dependence of data. The results showed that the volume of household debt on loans and the level of debt burden reduces the suicide rate in the regions. We found a U-shaped relationship between the overdue debt and the number of suicides in the general population, as well as in rural and urban populations.Consequently, the initial increase in overdue debt reduces the number of suicides, and its further increase leads to an increase in mortality. We also determined the extreme points of overdue debt for the entire population, as well as urban and rural. It has been established that the analyzed factors have a greater impact on the level of suicides among the rural population.

The appeal to the topic of social protest in this article was based on the real events that shook Kazakhstan in January 2022. Starting in 2020 a three-year research project to study the protest potential in Kazakhstan, we could not imagine that our work would be so relevant. Reflecting on the topic of the January events, many Kazakh experts pointed to the socio-economic factor as their forerunner. Is it so? Having access to long term series of sociological data and being able to conduct a comparative analysis of the ten-year data, we tried to illustrate how the social moods of Kazakhstanis changed, their readiness for active actions and motives to participate in mass protests. Analysis of the data showed that in 2021 there was a noticeable decline in positive assessments of the economic situation - in both the country and families. There were expectations of discontent manifestations: more than 40 of Kazakhstanis in 2021 spoke about the likelihood of protests both in the country and in their place of residence. Moreover, the older age groups expected protests of socio-economic nature, while the young - protests of political nature. We came to the conclusion that by 2022 there were obvious signs of increasing protest activity on the basis of socio-economic instability, which received an additional impetus during the period of coronavirus restrictions, in Kazakhstan. But they were not enough to activate the masses for the January 2022 riots.

The collaboration between the sociologist P.A. Sorokin (1889–1958) and the founder of “A Journal of Sociology and Social Psychology”, cultural anthropologist and sociologist R. Thurnwald (1869–1954) in 1927–1933 and in 1951–1954 is an important, but little known episode of Sorokin‘s creative biography. The published correspondence, journal reviews, and journal articles by Sorokin record changes in his sociology's methodology, reveal more fully his efforts to institutionalize general sociology, and touch on the personal and business motives behind these contacts.

Reflections reveal the significance, theoretical and ideological relevance of the monograph in the current conditions of civilizational development and Russia's geopolitical choice. The analysis proposed by the authors of the state and trends in the development of culture as a social phenomenon and as a sociological category is evaluated. The attention of readers is drawn to a brief but detailed analysis of the development of Russian sociology of culture since the 19th century, to the efforts of the authors to define the conceptual apparatus of this field of knowledge in comparison with the opinions and suggestions of fellow researchers. The author's interpretation of cultural transformations of the late 20th - early 21st centuries is considered, based on a generalization of data from many years of sociological research by the country's leading research centers, which are important both for enriching theoretical and methodological foundations for the study of culture and for use in the cultural policy of the state. This book displays debatable interpretations of culture, among which assessments of the ways and methods of modernizing domestic culture are of particular importance. On the basis of representative empirical studies, the authors identify general cultural trends, cultural preferences, and problems of artistic creativity. At the same time, the authors assess the negative processes that lead to the deformation of the cultural space: the influence of liberal ideology, postmodernism, commercialization, westernization, primitivization and pseudo-creativity.