The issue of interrelation between culture, na ture, and sustainable development is getting even more acute at the beginning of the third millennium. The un derestimation of the natural component in culture forma tion and of the increasing influence of culture on nature in its development, entering the unsustainable phase, has become obvious up to this point. Since a socionatural sys tem is a complex human-sized system, any further deve lopment of the system will be under the powerful infl uence of anthropogenic activities. At the same time, there will be an immeasurable increase in the role of culture, which should be considered as a set of values determining the mo tivation of this activity; a combination of knowledge and information that guide people; a policy built on the com petencies relevant to the complexity of the systems and pro cesses that are included in the management. Under this ap proach, the culture becomes a powerful driving force for all those processes. The orientation of sustainable development on people, which requires a new communication system and new ethics, is determined by searching of the mechanisms of unity, con nection, and interaction between countries and cultures. The conception of the “Agenda 21 for Culture”; the under standing of culture as the fourth pillar of sustainable deve lopment, along with economy, ecology, and social parti cipation; the theoretical development of the role of culture in sustainable development, using the multidisciplinary ap proach, require the creation of new practices of the transdis ciplinary and cross-cultural measuring of the role of culture in sustainable development, as well as the active inclusion of domestic research and development in those processes.

When implementing the policy of inclusion and/or integration, there is a number of contradictions related to “self” (“I”) and “the other”, which are the key aspect of this policy. The article shows that when you try to integrate the social “other” in the framework of the poli cy of inclusion, i.e. with preservation of the features of “the other”, these conflicts naturally arise, because the defini tion of any identity (including the collective “I”) is inse parable from the differentiation from others, which was de scribed by Hegel. Therefore, it is not without reason that the most productive approach to the interpretation of eth nic identity as defining of the own collective “I” is the con struction and reproduction of boundaries with “the others” (F. Barth). In addition, I. Neumann’s discussion on the use of constructing “the other” in the international relations shows that not only the national “I” is constituted by dis tinguishing from others, but also “the other” is constitu ted with respect to the identity of “I”. In this regard, the ar ticle attempts to substantiate the thesis that the universal aspect of the mutual constitution of “I” and “the other”, as individuals (including ethnic identity), is the definition of human existence as a boundary, or openness to “the oth er”. Moreover, the locality of implementation of the uni versal aspect of this mutual constitution gives rise to both the contradictions in relations of “I” and “the other” as an individual, and the incompatible approaches to determin ing the nature of “I” and “the other” (e. g., the construc tivism and primordialism in ethnic studies or the construc tionism and essentialism in studies of disability).

The article presents an analysis of the various migration processes in the modern globalizing world, and of the causes of them as well. There are compared positive and negative manifestations of the migration and its im pact on various spheres of the life and activity of the states involved in it. The author pays special attention to the la bor migration at the macro level and outlines the prob lems that influence on the participant countries. The arti cle presents the statistical data on the migratory processes at the international and national levels, which confi rm the positive dynamics of international migration and the mi gratory increase in urban areas. One of the major migration problems is that the cross-cul tural communication can result in conflicts. Representa tives of different cultures are afraid of losing their origina lity, therefore the process of localization becomes inevita ble. The project of global world and the threat of cultural unification have caused demonstrative manifestations of cultural heterogeneity among the humankind in different parts of the world. Thus, the cultural diversity of the mo dern world does not decrease under the influence of the inte gration processes - it even becomes more complex and con flicting - and the density of cultural boundaries increases.

The article aims to show the groundlessness of such a point of view as that the creation of new words is a “not serious” process, peculiar only to children for the rea son of poverty of their vocabulary. The creation of words is typical for adults as well. A common basis for the word cre ation in different ages is a uniform mechanism carried out through the acts of objectification - disobjectification - co creation. The diary records made by parents are of great im portance for the study of children’s language - the language of conventional subculture of childhood. The article shows that the surge of interest in this form of fixing of the samp les of occasionalism refers to the 1920s, which corresponds to the flourishing of local lore study. The author draws an analogy between the culture of relations “world of child hood - world of adults” and “capital - province”, proving that the world of childhood is not less rich and culturally sa turated than the world of adults. However, this uniqueness is being increasingly suppressed by the mass media, which have a strong influence on the child. In many cases, it leads to a wrong choice of the verbal model according to which the word is constructed. In general, the child’s language is logical, consistent, and economical. Its nomination does not need clarifications, while in the adult language, the expla nation of concept contains terms that require, in their turn, additional interpretations. The children’s word formation is associated with the children’s folklore, because the former serves as a basis and a tool for the latter.

In the course of multiple sociological researches performed in Russia, the social portrait of art public - the picture of artistic life and people’s attitude to art - has been recreated. The article attempts to complement this picture with a description of essential regularities of people’s behavior in relation to art. Upon the results of performed research, the author draws a conclusion that the content and structure of people’s leisure have experi enced significant changes in recent years. The leisure role of art, its portion in the people’s leisure structure, is also changing. An analysis of sociological surveys’ results al lowed to identify the dynamics of people’s leisure interest in culture and art, as well as some essential regularities of cultural and leisure behavior of the residents of large Rus sian cities. Thus, the research leads to the conclusion that art, in one form or another, is included in the leisure func tion of most people, but its percentage in the totality of their leisure preferences is quite small. Along with that, a retrospective analysis of more than 30 years’ sociological data revealed that people’s attitude to art and to its lei sure role fluctuates. The article demonstrates that people’s cultural and leisure behavior and art’s leisure role are de termined by macro-social changes, which cause transfor mations in people’s lifestyle and standards of living, deve lopment of new types of leisure and changes in the content of traditional ones. There are also assessed the related so cio-cultural risks for artistic culture.

The article is intended to identify the limits of human being, which are implicitly included in such works of the modern cinematography as “Transcendence” (2014) and “Chappie” (2015). These movies pay much attention to the problems of transhumanism. Referring to the philosoph ical ideas of the Modern Age, in the first place through those formulated by René Descartes, the article defines the phi losophical basis that leads in these movies to creation of the projects of human and technical synthesis. The author pays special attention to analysis of the relations of the “posthu man”, the synthesized creature, to the time and space, which plays an essential role in the modern movies referring to the themes of transhumanism. It is concluded, that the projects of human and technical synthesis, presented in the modern movies, originate from the Philosophy of Modern, particu larly from Cartesianism, where the mind is opposed to the body machine. According to the mass cinematography, a dis tinctive feature of the human mind synthesized with tech nics is to acquire some attributes of the European philoso phers’ idea of the Universal Mind overcoming the condition of space-time and having the ability of absolute knowledge, which finally leads to the depersonalization of human beings.

In the modern Russian language, there is a syno nymy of the two terms in the area of stereoscopic cinema: “stereo” and “3D”. The evolutionary analysis of the terms shows that the synonymy appeared because the Russian fi lm industry and cinematic science and engineering had been destructed in 1990s and 2000s, and imported technologies and equipment solely seized the modern domestic fi lm indus try. The pragmatic analysis of the terms reveals no signifi cant advantages of either of the terms. The semantic ana lysis of the terms enables to recommend the film industry to use preferably the term “stereo” for it is correctly oriented and has the highest possible accuracy, while leaving the term “3D” only for commercial and advertising use.

The article is devoted to the work of the French artist Dominique Papety, whose copies of Mount Athos paintings served as one of the sources of the “Byzantine project” of Prince G.G. Gagarin, who later became vice-president of the Imperial Academy of Art and who strived to revive the “national” ecclesiasti cal art in Russia. The analysis of Papety’s works and of his views on art shows that in his religious works the art ist was inspired by the art of the remote past - in par ticular, that of Byzantium, while in his secular paintings he followed the painters of late Renaissance - Rapha el’s third manner, Titian, Michelangelo, Paolo Veronese, Bellini, Francia. Special attention is paid to the art ist’s travel to Mount Athos, undertaken by him in 1847 under the impression of the Athos manuscript with in structions for icon-painters that had been published two years earlier by A.N. Didron, an archaeologist. The cop ies of the frescoes by Panselinos, a Greek painter of the 12th century (according to Mt Athos monks), that were made by Papety at Mount Athos, show the impact of academic education on the French artist, who per fectly mastered the “plasticity” of form in pain ting. This feature of Papety’s copies allows the author of this ar ticle to conclude that, for Gagarin, they must have be come a visible demonstration of the fruitfulness of com bining the “Greek Christian thought” with the “Greek pagan form”. The idea of this combination was subse quently used by Gagarin to revive the “national style” in church paintings.

The article considers the powerful socio-cul tural changes in Russia of the end of the 19th - begin ning of the 20th century, using the example of Tsaritsyn - a provincial town, named “Russian Chicago”, which was a marker of the Russian modernization. The disproportion of the town’s development was represented by the rela tively slow formation of its public institutions, taken place but in 1910s. The author studies the genesis of the fi rst and only musical society of Tsaritsyn in the context of the dia lectic of its relationship with other educational organiza tions and its impact on the formation of the cultural land scape of the region. The narrow circle of amateurs was transformed into the organization that united the repre sentatives of the intellectual and cultural elite of the re gion, and whose activity resulted in the “innovative” for Tsaritsyn forms of musical and educational activities and specifi c deliverables. The complex relationship between the local branch of the Imperial Russian Musical Society and the Society for Promotion of Out-of-School Education led to the building of the House of Sciences and Arts in Tsaritsyn. The arti cle describes its opening ceremony, which became a kind of “parade” of the educational and creative potential of the region. Some unexplored before particularities of the House’s “utilization” by different institutions are high lighted, the dramatic events preceding the conversion of the House into the object of the community with the func tions of hospital are described. The disproportion in the development of social and cultu ral sphere, lack of the necessary human potential for for mation of several public organizations, and the estrange ment of the authorities led to the fact that just a small group of altruists, who provided ideological and finan cial assistance in various projects, supported the social movement in Tsaritsyn. The most important thing is that the House of Sciences and Arts still exists in the city of such a difficult historical fate, representing a monument to the selfless activity.

As all the authors of the second wave of Rus sian emigration, the writer Sergey Maksimov is almost unknown in his native land. The article is devoted to his sad and dramatic fate. It analyzes Maksimov’s artistic heritage - not too vast, but noteworthy. He dealt with all types of literature: epics, novels, short stories, poems, plays, and sketches. The article aims to introduce this writer’s name to the cultural and scientific circulation of our country. The main theme in Maximov’s works was the fate of a tal ented artist in the situation of growing totalitarianism - in the USSR during the period of Stalin’s government, to be more exact. The main book of the author - “Denis Bush uev” - is devoted to this theme. The same is true for his story “In Twilight” and some short stories about Stalin’s repressions. Basing on his own experience, the writer also described in details the life of Stalin’s prisoners: in prison and after that. Literary figures of the Russian emigration sometimes notice S.S. Maksimov’s works and usually highly assess them. He is recognized as a successor of the traditions of the Russian clas sical literature - L.N. Tolstoy’s, F.M. Dostoyevsky’s, S.A. Yes enin’s, first of all.

The Russian tours of Hector Berlioz are still a poorly studied area in the history of music and French-Russian musical relations of the 19th century. That is why the new documents shedding light on this topic are of great value. This article presents two previously un known letters, held in the Russian National Library, from Hector Berlioz to Alexei Lvov - the Director of the Im perial Chapel and an amateur musician. Those letters refer to the period of the French Maestro’s second vi sit to Russia in the beginning of 1868. Originally inten ded for A.F. Lvov personally, they were brought out and published in the journal “Literary Addition to the Nou velliste” (1868). Since then they have not been inclu ded in the collection of Berlioz’s correspondence neither in French nor in Russian. The analysis of the letters (in French and in Russian translation) reveals new details of Berlioz’s Moscow concert in 1867 (about his presen tation of the Russian anthem “God Save the Tsar” com posed by Lvov) and provides Berlioz’s opinion on some of Lvov’s works, including his “Stabat Mater”. At the mo ment, those letters are the latest evidences of the two mu sicians’ longtime correspondence, reflecting their friendly and professional relationship. For H. Berlioz the friendly assistance from the Director of the Imperial Chapel be came the key to his success among the Saint Petersburg aristocracy, and for A.F. Lvov the professional support and the positive assessment of his work by the French Maestro promoted his status as a musician in Russia.

The article aims to bring the performance studies - one of modern directions of the humanities - to the attention of Russian researchers. Our world is the world of sound, movement, and gesture, as much as it is visual. The article deals with the performance studies as a distinct field of knowledge in the humanities and social sciences. This conception is still difficult to translate ade quately in Russian. The authors consider various transla tions of the English terms “performance” and “performance studies” into the Russian language. They also analyze va rious aspects of the “performativity” in culture, offer a brief glossary of the basic concepts, describe some analytical tools, and explore the culture of performance and its so cial functions. The article reviews recent literature in this area of anthropology, analyzes some of the works and se ries of monographs.

The article is devoted to a manuscript from E.E. Egorov’s collection of manuscript books, contain ing the polemical theological work “Truth’s Indication for Those Asking about the New Doctrine” by the monk Zinovy of the Otensky Monastery in Novgorod Veliky. The verified modern scientific dating of this manuscript (the 1560s), as well as its thorough handwriting and textual analysis, allow to conclude, that the first half of the book is the autograph of the writer, who died either in 1568 or in 1571/72. Basing on the comparison of the book with another assumed autographic copy of the “Truth’s Indi cation”, kept now in the National Library of Russia and dated to the 1560s as well, but written in the calligra phic handwriting, different from the two cursive hand writings of Egorov’s manuscript, it is concluded that the latter is an unfinished draft of the author, which contains the second abridged version of the «Truth’s Indication», written by Zinovy after the creation on his order of the “white” calligraphic copy of the work in primary exten sive edition - the manuscript of the NLR. This latter was not only the protograph for all copies of the first edition but also the original (antigraf) for the second - fi nal part of Egorov’s collection, written in a different handwriting and on different paper (of the late 1560s). In this com bination - of two codicologically independent parts - Egorov’s manuscript became the protograph for all copies of the second abridged edition of the “Truth’s Indica tion”. Possessing the handwriting sample of Zinovy Oten sky, the researchers now have the opportunity to disco ver some other autographs of this outstanding Novgorod writer and theologian.

The article studies some transcripts of the dis cussions concerning the concept of “realism”, which were held in the Moscow Branch of the Artists’ Union in the late 1960s. Soon after the death of Stalin, some alternative in terpretations of the concept “socialist realism” - the only of fi cial method of the Soviet art, accepted by the government in the 1930s, - appeared and provoked public debates. In the middle of 1960s, when the state cultural policy took a conservative turn, such discussions became rare. The al ienation of Europe and America put an end to the series of large-scale exhibitions of the Western art of the 20th cen tury and, consequently, limited information. Even though the methods of Stalin’s art continued to be criticized by of ficial regulations and by most of the artists, it is possible to notice the recurrence of the discourses of the late 1960s and the 1930s. Both of them rejected the Modernist aesthetics, considered art as a part of ideology, and pushed forward the “great national idea”. The article is based on the archives of the Moscow Branch of the Artists’ Union of the Russian So viet Federative Socialist Republic. It examines a range of is sues most commonly mentioned in the conversations about realism, such as admissibility of formal experiment in real ism, correlation between form and content in a piece of art, new ways to improve the “thematic paintings”, and necessi ty to reinterpret such traditional concepts as “partisanship” and “civic consciousness”.

The article examines the problems of the cultu ral memory embodied in the genre of war song. Analyzing the book by E. Polyudova “Soviet War Songs in the Con text of Russian Culture”, published in English, the author poses such questions as the perception of the culture of the Other, the translation of cultural texts in a different culture, the specific features of the song genre in the Russian musical culture, the transformation of cultural forms in the mass cul ture, and the problem of cultural memory in the postmodern epoch with its accent on playing and loss of the historic fee l ing. Even though some positions of the book by E. Polyudova might seem disputable and not elaborated enough, the publi cation as a whole receives high evaluation, from both points of view - the introduction of the theme of Russian war song to the Western academic discourse and the importance of this theme for the Russian audience, brought up in the in formation epoch and needing the value orientation based on the rich cultural heritage of our country.