Culture or Ethnicity (being usually heterogeneous) are the subject of a practical action, such as classification and categorization of Others or through Others, or existing cognitive systems (the denoted and perceived principles of the social world). These scientific problems can be attributed to the national-cultural prerequisites for the realization of intercultural communication and the phenomenon of hybridization. The dynamically developing process of transformation of contemporary states (from national to polycultural-national) is a subject of interdisciplinary discussions. The existence of ethno-social problems, misunderstanding, alienation, intolerance (racism, xenophobia, etc.), conflicts and violence (nazism, fascism, national-socialism, totalitarianism) testifies to the destruction of past strategies of formation of the conceptions of national identity, cultural integrity and intercultural communication. It is necessary to invent some new theoretical basis to the multi-ethno-cultural practices appearing in the multicultural globalization environment.

The article analyzes the essence of the so-called “Linguistic Turn” in philosophy. The “Linguistic Turn” is considered in the context of the original model of evolutionary development. This model of development is based on the conception of inverse relations (internal contradictions), their development and resolution. During the progressive development of humanity, a series of revolutionary leaps (aromorphoses) takes place, one of them is being observed at the present time. Within those leaps, the accumulated systemic contradictions (inversions) are eliminated, but the prerequisites for new contradictions are created. The article demonstrates that the current stage of humanity development has been depicted and anticipated in the “Linguistic Turn”.

The article is devoted to the human values transformation driven by the convergent technologies. Those technologies can open the door to change the human consciousness on organic or neurobiological plane and can stimulate the development of ways to overcome the boundaries of human capabilities and of methods of purposeful modification of the biological human nature. The problem of new military technologies application is particularly underlined and analyzed in the article.

The article throws light on the problem of conceptualization of the intercultural dialogue as a subject of modeling in the social-humanitarian knowledge. The author shows the possibilities to substantiate methodologically the importance of intercultural dialogue for the future of civilization, analyzes the factors affecting the processes of cultures interaction, actualizing the scientific research of new models aimed to reduce the tension and to create favorable conditions for development.

The article deals with the transformations of social institution of library in the information society. High emphasis is placed here on social and humanitarian changes. Formal and informal aspects of social relations as well as the role and status of a librarian are identified. The article considers the compliance between formal legal regulations and informal socio-cultural norms, between actual practices and formal and informal norms. It examines explicit and implicit functions of a library, the conflict between traditional structures and new institutional norms. Roles of a librarian and a reader in the process are revealed.

The article presents a review of development of the copyright system and brings up the issue of public domain. The role of state is considered to be in dissemination, conservation and augmentation of cultural values, knowledge and information. Currently, the attempts to protect intellectual property and interests of the industry in Russia jeopardize the public access to the objects of public cultural heritage. The author suggests 10 steps necessary to develop the public domain in the field of culture and science and to transform the current copyright standards.

The article is devoted to consideration of the ways of musical realization of the archetypal images in the operas “Das Donauweibchen”, “Dneprovskaya Rusalka” and “The Magic Flute”. The analysis lays an emphasis on the following aspects: the dramaturgy, orchestration, general compositional principles, ideological and semantic constants of the operas, their intonation sphere, and peculiarities of the characters’ musical and verbal portraits. The comparison of the main heroes’ characteristics in the operas by F. Kauer, S. I. Davydov and W. A. Mozart allows to draw a conclusion that the developed intertextual connections between these works are caused by the studied images’ archetypicalness.

The article analyzes the dependence of the musical composition by M. Ravel’s ideological and imaginative interpretation on the contemporary context. For the first time ever, a substantial interpretation of the “Fandango” ballet is given in two different perspectives - theatrical-scenic and ritual. The author makes an attempt to reveal the complex of semantic meanings of musical, dance-plastic and scenographic texts of the ballet. As a result of intersection of the above mentioned semantic meanings, the whole artistic meaning comes to light.

The article considers philosophical views of the Romanticism regarding the Russian ecclesiastical architecture of the 19th century. Resting upon some paradigmatic architectural research, the author demonstrates principal features of the ecclesiastical architecture evolution in particular, to which it is sometimes impossible to apply common for the architecture of the 19th century in general rules and regularities. Among other things, the following thesis is proposed: the Romanticism is not the first stage of the Eclecticism but a natural continuation of the Classicism. Moreover, in the ecclesiastical architecture, unlike in the secular one, the ideas of Romanticism were relevant in quite different historical periods.

The article raises the question of ambiguity of the term “museum” in the European culture in the Modern Age. The analyzed material shows that the comprehension of museum in the 18th century was significantly affected by the interpretation which dates back to the ancient prototype - the Musaeum of Alexandria.

Studying of the interpretation of the West European art by the pensioners of the Academy of Arts is an analysis of the interpretation’s components: the choice of art directions, styles and schools; the preference of their personal attitude; the assessment of a specific piece of art; the terminology as an indicator of their either professional or amateur position. The choice of art directions depended on the system of art views existing in the Academy of Arts in the second half of the 18th century. The Academy focused the attention of its students on the art of Antiquity, Renaissance and Classicism. Nevertheless, the pensioners spoke well on the works of Baroque. They used to prefer the art of old masters to the modern art. The specialization of a pensioner illustrated their assessment of the masterpieces. The professional terminology helped to make the description and assessment. The advent of treatises on the art in Russia made possible using the terminology.

The article discusses some controversial issues of coexistence of the Arctic locus and the global civilization. Main investigations on this topic are analyzed in the article. The author indicates some features of the Yakut traditional culture, reveals the specific types of traditions which allow discovering the “cultural core” of the indigenous peoples of the North at the present stage of the region’s development. Special attention is focused on the role of human in the strategic culture and cultural modernization of Yakutia.

The article demonstrates relevance of the synthetic ideas of the Italian architect, sculptor and artist Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) in the modern performance art, which has become a landmark in the 20th century in terms of the Actionism manifestation. The chosen subjects (the absurdist situation and the actual event), as well as the methods for their dramatic composition and the applied means of their expression, characterize the performance of the 20th century, which gives us a reason to examine the position of Bernini and the position of one of the most actual genres in the modern world more closely.

On the basis of A. N. Vertinsky’s creative work - a precedent phenomenon of the “Silver Age” Epoch - the article analyzes key features of this cultural ontology, both exceptionally culturological and philosophical ones (perception of death, ratio of elite and mass, ethic and esthetic problems, etc.). Having analyzed the synchronous and diachronous cultural dynamics, the authors build an original conception of cultural ontologies allowing to draw some practically significant conclusions. Also, in the context of the research, the problems of disposition “the Ego - the Other” are investigated, as well as the questions of inter-stratum cultural syncretism and intertextual interactions.

Cultural theory of education is a relatively new branch of science, and the formation of its theoretical and methodological basis is not yet completed. The article examines several theses that can be found as basic axioms in the majority of scientific works on this direction. Revealing their hidden contradictions, the author proves the illegitimacy of such an approach. There is an extensive problem field requiring deep investigation behind each of the theses. Only after the investigation, it will be possible to estimate the complexity and comprehensiveness of the impact of these trends and phenomena of education on the cultural development in the long-term outlook.

The article reviews some tendencies of the modern theatre development as well as some problems concerning the education of actors and stage directors together. There are a lot of students who have already studied in other theatrical institutions for a year or more (and sometimes even have graduated) studying in the acting and directing department. For those students, the coming back to the school basis runs risks to become boring, which will inevitably affect the entire group. In this regard, there are a number of exercises proposed; the exercises are mainly organized in game form, placing emphasis on the presence of acting personality in the game, and stimulate the personality in every possible way.

The article examines the genre specifics of the sacred-musical works of authorship; on the one hand, they belong, directly or indirectly, to the Orthodox Church, on the other hand, they are connected with the composer’s individual creative thinking, which makes them exceed the bounds of the church choir up to the concert sphere. Thus, a phenomenal feature of the sacred-musical works of authorship is their predominant tendency toward either liturgical or concert performance environment. The specifics of the sacred-musical works, in the context of one or another performance environment, are considered in terms of the four aspects: ontological, of the rites of divine service and the concert program realization, communicative, and compositional.

The article describes parallelism of the two arts, poetry and painting, in the emblematic books of the Baroque epoch. In the Baroque art, an emblem, as a visual metaphor, formed stylistic singularity of the culture of the 16th-17th centuries. The emblem represented the principle of simultaneity, a picture with a brief motto coexisting with a didactic or spiritual text. Not only was the emblem an ornamental “insertion”, a piece of encrusted graphics, but it also reflected the Baroque principle of a witty game. A book of emblems could act as a visual dictionary of signified objects. The significance of finished emblems was not limited to their pictographical meanings, they could also include some symbolic senses. Such verbal pictures illustrating abstract notions can be found in the “Emblemata” (1531) by Andreas Alciatus. The synthesis of the verbal and the visual, as an allegorical way of defining the world and the exegesis of Biblical texts, provided wide opportunities for the emblematic signification. The Picta Poesis Baroque book “Graphical Poetry. Alchemy” (1552) by Barthélemy Aneau contained an alchemy symbolism reflecting the character of the Renaissance worldview. Dutch artists of the 17th century developed the theme of evanescence and vanity in their emblematic still-life painting.

The article represents a review of the book “Brief Narration about What the Difference between Holy Mount Athos and the Solovetsky Monastery Is, and What the Difference between the Holy Mount’s Monasteries and the Solovetsky Cloister Is” - a monument of handwritten literature of the 17th century with Athos’ description. The edition, consecrated to the 1000th anniversary of the Old Russian Monasticism on Athos, was published with the assistance of the Russian Fund for Humanities and is provided with an erudite commentary of the doctor of philological sciences T. A. Isachenko.

On the basis of the V. G. Belinsky Yekaterinburg Public Voluntary Library’s records for the period from 1899 to 1914, the article defines the range of readers’ preferences of the Ural children and youth: which sorts of books and which authors were the most popular. The books of the French writer Jules Verne had the greatest success among the young readers. Reasons for this popularity of Jules Verne’s books are established in the article through the documents of management and record keeping, Russian book publishing development statistics, memoirs and other documents. History of Reading

The authors present the “Road to literature” project as a form of fiction literature promotion in a technical university. The project aims to widen the range of reading habits of the students of the Nizhny Novgorod State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering (NNGASU).

The article reviews the monuments to events and participants of the Great Patriotic War which were built in Moscow during the first ten years of functioning of the Moscow City Commission for Monumental and Decorative Art. The mechanics of new monuments’ adjustment and installation in Moscow is analyzed in the article. Applying to the war memorial conceptions by J. Mayo, G. Mosse, E. Linenthal, J. Winter and others, the author endeavors to show what such monuments can symbolize in modern Moscow, which history will be chosen by their initiators to be fixed in the collective consciousness, and vice versa, what the monuments will never expose.

The article analyzes the discussion about Daniel Goldhagen’s book “Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust”, which was one of the main discussions about the German historical consciousness and national identity in 1990s. The author considers the Goldhagen’s conception of “eliminationist anti-Semitism”, depicts the reception of Goldhagen’s book in the German media and in the community of professional historians. While for professional historians a critical position was common, most readers of the book perceived it positively. The author explains it by the fact that the Goldhagen’s book allowed to draw the line clearly between the totalitarian Nazi past and the democratic present of Germany and thus produced the effect of “catharsis” among the German public.

The article analyses the lineage of continuity and interaction and brings out the commonalities, trends and patterns in the development of the festival movement in Volgograd during the three decades by the example of contemporary art festivals. It highlights the main functions of festivals in the region as well.