A call for a “New Enlightenment” sounds in the last report of the Club of Rome named “Come On!” It claimed that “New Enlightenment” should not be the continuation of rationalism and Eurocentrism of “Voltaire’s Enlightenment”. The article discusses two issues. Firstly, what challenges the “New Enlightenment” should answer on. Ecological and socioecological challenges are at the top of the agenda. The last one comes from large-scale socio-technical and anthropotechnical experiments with unpredictable consequences. The so-called epoch of “reassembly of the social” is expressed in the deculturation and dehumanisation of social reality. It has adverse consequences for humanity, including the lifeworld destruction and human existence. An alternative to these trends may be hermeneutics, phenomenology and understanding sociology. Second discussed question is science willingness for the “New Enlightenment”. The dominant scientific discourses continue the traditions of “Voltaire’s Enlightenment” and do not respond to time challenges.

The article analyses the characteristic features of “incoming” academic mobility as a component of the “soft power” policy of modern Russia. The author pays attention to the fact that in recent years the attraction of foreign applicants and students to domestic universities has become more systematic and differentiated. However, the author thinks that in such policy does not pay due attention to the development of social studies and humanities, which allow preparing specialists of “strategic” features (political scientists, sociologists, PR, analysts, ideologists, journalists). They, after a reasonably short time, will sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly affect the political and economic situation in their countries. It is especially important if we take into account the emerging trend in the early XXI century of virtualisation and humanisation of social and public life. Accordingly, the article discusses the main effects that Russia can get from the training of international students in humanities and social studies. The author also presents recommendations on working with international students in the framework of academic mobility and attracting foreign applicants to the humanitarian and social studies educational programs of Russian universities.

The relevance of this topic is due to the aggravated geopolitical confrontation in the contemporary world, as well as an increasingly noticeable emphasis on “soft power” and “smart power”. The purpose of this article is to briefly analyse the Soviet experience of using higher education as a tool of “soft power”. In this article, we divided this experience into two main stages. The first was the formation of Communist ideology as only one in the world and the beginning of its expansion (1920–1940s of the XX century.). The second one — was the stage of the bipolar world, when the USSR dealt with international students who came from the countries of “victorious socialism”. At the first stage, the education of international students could not be considered as a full-fledged tool of “soft power”, since it was more about the propaganda treatment of international students than a more subtle impact . Interaction with international students in Soviet universities at the second stage (during the cold war) had another serious flaw. Since it was about the representatives of the countries of “victorious socialism”, the ideological work was carried out on the residual principle, and the primary stress state placed on the training of technical personnel. Thus, it can be concluded that, taking into account the Soviet experience and the vagueness of spheres of influence in the contemporary world, it is advisable to rely on the involvement of international students in the Humanities, who after returning home are more likely to occupy senior positions in the state apparatus and/or become leaders of public opinion.

The article examines the evolution at the present stage of theoretical and normative ideas about the role of civil society and political parties in their relationship with the state and their influence on social processes and the economy. Most concepts, offering theoretical reflexion on this issue, appeared in the West, and due to Western influence was borrowed by Russia and other countries, where the discourse of civil society and political parties itself was Europeanized. However, the formal adherence to European intellectual fashion in the most ambitious BRICS countries has now led to the formation of its own analytical and regulatory views on the subject, only externally resembling Western primary sources. At the same time, the use of rethought European views in modernising the own discourse of civil society and political parties allows to give this discourse a respectable image and to be effectively used by the state both for domestic political purposes and in conceptual foreign policy disputes with Europe itself.

The article discusses the main trends in the development of the global education market, provides qualitative and quantitative characteristics of this process in two countries — Russia and China. The author gives the comparative analysis of the efforts of the Russian and Chinese leadership on one of the relevant parameters of the internationalisation of education — attracting international students. Modern education becomes more global, while the student’s mobility increases. That is why there are more and more opportunities to continue training outside the territorial borders of their state. While English-speaking exporting countries have firmly taken their niche in this market, Russia and China have recently become involved in this process. Work with international students today has become an integral tool to strengthen the image of the country abroad. Since the days of the Soviet Union, Russia has accumulated rich experience working with this category of students, but the realities of our time require more activity in this direction. China has recently joined the struggle for overseas talents, but it can already show visible results. The author stated that both Russia and China make significant efforts to bring the universities of their countries to leading positions in world university rankings, to make universities recognisable and popular among international students. Besides, the author emphasised the leading role of the state in determining the strategy for attracting international students to their universities. However, there are many differences in the strategies of the Russian and Chinese authorities that directly affect the dynamics of the internationalisation of education. First of all, this is the difference in the ultimate goals pursued by Russia and China in the struggle for international students. The empirical base of the study was made up of statistical indicators of the ministries of education of the Russian Federation and China as well as data of international organisations.

The goal of this study is to reveal the country-specific features of approaches to working with international students, as well as to determine their key strategies. In the modern world, education is becoming a new platform for competition between states, because its function is not only to provide knowledge but also to form the consciousness and outlook of a young person. Accordingly, states seek through educational institutions to promote around the world their national development models, value systems and cultural elements. The ultimate goal of such a policy is the creation of a pool of staunch supporters around the world who after return to their homeland will relay the “gained knowledge” upon the society. However, are states only driven by this goal? Of course not — a lot of countries are focused on attracting foreign students to include the most talented and gifted of them in the national “personnel reserve”. The danger of the latter approach lies in the formation of constant dependence on “external brains”.

The article analyses the content of Internet messages of the Crimean and Ukrainian segment of the network about events in Ukraine and the Crimea for the period from 2017 to 2019. The authors’ research interest is due to the degree of conflict and the ambiguity of the informational assessment of events on the Crimean and Ukrainian topics that took place during this period, and, as a result, the formation of conflicting information flows of the Ukrainian and the Crimean segments of the Internet network. In the course of the study, we used a system-efficient approach that studies the Internet space as a product of the social environment; comparative analysis, which we used to compare the content of Internet messages of online communities of Ukraine and the Crimea; method of content analysis, which made possible assessment of the social and political mood of the audience of Ukrainian and the Crimean Internet users. The authors present the results of a cybermetric analysis of messages from online communities of social networks Facebook and VKontakte. The tone of information flows on UkrainianCrimean themes remains negative, which is a consequence of the complex and contradictory relations between Ukraine and Russia in the realm of politics. We revealed the interest in social, cultural and linguistic discourses in the information flows of the Ukrainian and the Crimean segments of VKontakte and Facebook networks, which may act as a factor in combining Internet audiences with different political positions. However, it requires a separate in-depth cybermetric analysis.

Climate change and the development of digital technologies have prompted a rethinking of the dominated model of economic growth. In 2011 American publicist and economist Jeremy Rifkin has published the book “The third industrial revolution”, in which the author describes a new scientific picture of the world, which implies a transition from an “ownership economy” to a “sharing economy”. In 2016 the president of the World Economic Forum in Davos Klaus Schwab put forward the idea of a “fourth industrial revolution”, which, in his opinion, opens up new opportunities for collective innovation and the creation of shared value systems by connecting the physical, digital and biological worlds. The purpose of the article is to generalize the features of modern world technological transformations and determine the degree of Russia’s involvement in the development of the main directions of science and technology of the 21st century. The methods of analysis used include synthesis, abstraction, generalization and an integrated approach to cognition. The author considered the trajectories of modern technological transformations and discussed the role of the USSR in the design of techno-centric foundations of the sustainable development model. Also, the author analyzed the main provisions of state programs of Russia in the medium-term development of information, bio- and nanotechnologies.

In order to reflect the essential, debatable and problematic aspects of the newly emerging vectors of socially oriented development of market economy in the countries and regions of the post-Soviet space, the article presents a generalized analytical material on the results of reports, speeches and debates at the VII International scientific-practical conference “Тhe Phenomenon of Market Economy: From its Origins to the Present Day”. It focuses on the methodological research positions of dialectical and systemic approach and takes into account the various points of view of prominent modern domestic and foreign scientists and economists on the evolutionary and transformational aspects of the market economy in the past and present. In the context of modification by the authorities of the fundamental beliefs of the alternative paradigms of economic science and political economy, we considered the peculiarities of the dialectic of the reproduction mechanism of the market economy and gave the evaluative characteristics of this current global economic phenomena and processes, which are now often referred to as “fake”. We also showed the newly emerged prerequisites and tendencies of increasing political risk in the conditions of the international competition of subjects of the market system of management. The authors paid particular attention to the understanding of the theory and practice of publicprivate entrepreneurship, positive and negative aspects of the policy of import substitution. Finally, we substantiated the scientific and practical proposals and the vision of the original solutions in the field of such urgent problems of the modern market economy development in Russia and the post-Soviet space as ensuring the all-inclusive digitalisation of business processes and overcoming the consequences of the increased economic sanctions.

The author examines the institutional features of the civil service in the model of the “Neo-Weberian state” regarding improving the quality of management of a modern military system. The civil service is considered as an institution for the development of human capital, an element of civil-military synergy that guarantees the stability of management and the legitimacy of political power, including defining the goals of military policy. The study analyses the main features of representation and the realisation of the interests of actors within the framework of the civil service institute to ensure high quality of cognitive management and comprehensive national security. The author analysed the institutional features of the “Neo-Weberian state” civil service model — elitism and integrativeness, and the types of relations they form — autonomy and cognitiveness, on the example of the activities of the European Defense Agency. Analysis of the institutional features of the civil service in the “Neo-Weberian state” model in the mechanism of management of a modern military system serves to determine the motives and forms for the realisation of the interests of actors in military policy, including setting political goals of war, conducting intelligence activities and organising military-civilian cooperation.

The article considers the problem of improving the state support system for manufacturing industries in Russia. We show that the enormous damage caused to the industry during privatisation and market reforms led to devastating consequences, compensated in recent years by a system of state support. However, it concerned only the financial and credit measures. Based on the theory of complex systems, we made a reasonable conclusion that modern industrial enterprises, of course, belong to complex rather than simple systems. At the same time, both general ideas about the economy and the system of state measures to support the industry in Russia are built based on neoclassical approaches to the object of influence as a kind of simple system. We critically analysed the import substitution policy opponents’ arguments in Russia and showed that they are aimed at “simplifying the economy”, i. e. towards the reduction of complex systems to simple ones. Based on the analysis of the database of measures to support the state industry information system (GISP), we concluded that financial and credit measures dominate over organisational and economic ones, which emphasises the prevailing wrong approach of the managing subject to the management object (manufacturing industry) as simple systems.

One of the most important aspects of the formation of the institutional environment for the insurance market in domestic conditions is the insurance behaviour of the population, in which a person seeks to reduce financial risks by transferring them to the insurer. Trying to protect themselves from financial problems arising as a result of accidents, consequences of crimes and other events that can cause damage to property, life and health, a person acquires insurance products that guarantee him monetary compensation in the event of an insured event. Currently, the insurance industry is developed in many countries. The situation in the Russian market so far indicates a low activity of citizens in the use of insurance services. One of the most common reasons for the underdeveloped insurance behaviour of compatriots, in our opinion, is the low level of knowledge and culture in the field of insurance, which directly reflects the weakness of the penetration of the institute of insurance in the socio-economic practice of the Russian households in comparison with international trends.

The scientific team is the sum of its members, a system of joint research activities, relationships and relationships. However, it is essential to have an outstanding scientist in the team who would be able to bring up a worthy shift and introduce it into the complex and distinctive world of scientific, technical and fundamental research. In this process, the decisive role is assigned to the scientific leader. The article substantiates the increasing relevance of the leadership problem in the scientific and technical sectors and basic research at present. The authors consider the features of the formation and manifestation of leadership, as well as the contradictions in the development of the leadership institution, which give rise to these features. We paid considerable attention to the analysis of obstacles in the process of leadership formation and the directions helping to overcome them in the scientific and technical sectors and basic research.

The purpose of this article is to examine Bulgarian-Russian relations. The author provided a detailed analysis of some economic areas of bilateral cooperation, taking into account transformations in the international system, European sanctions, and scientific prerequisites for further development. The material presents a brief analysis of the course of the recent mutual meetings of the heads of state, as well as their representatives. The author also considers the prerequisites for the formation of diplomatic relations between Russia and Bulgaria. The author expresses the opinion that there exists a positive vector of development of political dialogue with regards to the analysis of the leading parties in Bulgaria and cultural similarity of countries. The author paid particular attention to trade and economic cooperation, using official statistics of the Federal Customs Service of Russia are given (based on the report on foreign trade between Russia and Bulgaria in 2018: trade, exports, imports, structure, goods, dynamic). Russia ranked sixth in the number of foreign tourists visiting Bulgaria. Therefore, the sphere of tourism in bilateral relations needs more detailed review. The decline for 2018 can only be attributed to the World Cup in Russia, intense competition from other areas, as well as the fluctuation of the exchange rate of ruble. The author considered business forums such as, for example, “Bulgarian Business Day in Russia: Bulgaria — a bridge to the European Union” and cooperation in the field of education and science, with Financial University as the leading partner of the Bulgarian universities. The author discussed some issues of regional cooperation within the framework of the Organization of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC) as the platform for dialogue between the countries. The material is dedicated to the celebration of 140 years of diplomatic relations between Russia and Bulgaria.

This article discusses the protest activity of Russian youth in social media as one of the aspects of the concept of “digital citizenship”. The relevance of the study is due to the expanding influence of digital communications, the possibilities of initiating, disseminating, coordinating and mobilising protest actions in social media. The author outlines the main approaches to the study of the “ageing” of the mood of protest in the digital environment. Based on sociological research, the areas of interest of young users of digital communication are determined, and civic activity of young people is compared online and offline. In the course of the study, the intensity of protest messages on the Internet and social media was established, and the topics of protest content in the digital environment were determined. The study allowed us to identify the most common patterns of behaviour as the reaction of young Internet users to calls for protest actions. The author conducts a role differentiation of the protest audience by gender and age groups, in the direction of training and time spent on the network, as well as ways to receive online news. The research data obtained are correlated with current trends in civic activity in modern societies. Finally, the author indicated the underlying factors contributing to the growth of protest moods.

The article analyses the verbal component of the advertising discourse of financial companies. The overview of existing linguistic research in the field of advertising discourse allows the authors to conclude that typologies of verbal means are based on postulates of cognitive linguistic (modelling semantic domains), stylistics (rhetoric devices and figures of speech), pragmatics (the theory of speech acts). However, the verbal component of advertising discourse is not well researched yet. We undertake an attempt to systemize verbal means of manipulation in advertising discourse based on the dichotomy “speech strategy/tactics” and corresponding language resources. Therefore, singled out a corpus of texts from financial companies’ sites and analysed how proposition in an utterance correlates with the verbal means. Further, we formulated statistical conclusions about the percentage of different manipulative tactics used on the site of a financial company. Finally, the authors concluded that despite the development of verbal expression in advertising, imperative mood, citation and ‘bombastic lexis’ for positioning a company as a leader on the market are still more frequent than other more linguistically creative verbal means.

Today, China is perhaps one of the leading Russian partners in the international arena. However, there is still no general opinion in Russia about what kind of partner it is. Some call him a good friend, a pillar of Moscow, almost a Savior against the background of the Russian-Western conflict. Others position China as an aggressive predator interested in maximising Russia’s weakness, either for further plunder or further absorption — even territorial. Still, others urge not to rush from extreme to extreme. China is not Russia’s friend. Our interests are too different — not contradictory, but different. On the other hand, it is precise because of the absence of such contradictions that China is not an enemy. We have practically nothing to share — we do not threaten each other. So, China is more of an opportunity. Cooperation with Beijing (to which we are so pushed by Washington) will strengthen Russian foreign policy, balance its Western direction. However, all the positive aspects of such cooperation will be only manifested if Moscow does not forget its national interests. And, he would not sacrifice them for a ghostly friendship — or a ghostly conflict.

Native speakers of English accept and use noun + noun compound nouns so readily and naturally, that they fail to notice the grammatical incongruity of using one noun to describe another. Learners of English whose native languages have a stricter grammatical basis than English find these constructions not merely difficult to use — but puzzling, and apparently ‘wrong’. This paper aims to correct this position by providing extensive illustrations from everyday English speech to describe how commonplace, such constructions are (and how, in many cases, there is no alternative to using them) — alongside a methodological guide to forming and using compound nouns, with particular reference to their use in the banking, financial and insurance industries in which many learners hope to make their careers. Teaching this topic is currently poorly supported in standard teaching materials — even excellent, and widely-used EFL textbooks make no mention at all of this very commonly-used structure. Compound nouns stand in dire need of an academic pedigree to support them. The paper reviews the two primary kinds of compound nouns found in English (Attributive, and Contextual), with working examples illustrating their varying usages.

The use of questionnaire surveys, being one of the research methods in psychology and pedagogy, is also widely implemented as a form of control of learners’ knowledge. However, it can also perform other functions. In this article, the author considers the use of the questionnaire survey as a useful tool in the educational process. It can be a methodical approach in teaching English, a means of increasing the motivation of students to study the subject and improving the educational level, an incentive to self-analysis, understanding and evaluation of various phenomena occurring in society. The author concluded that by having an indirect impact on the personality, the survey could contribute to the achievement of the practical goal of teaching a foreign language, training and education of students.

In the severe political and economic conditions that have developed in Ukraine, fears of the policies of irredentism of neighbouring states are becoming increasingly realistic. The problem of the separation of territories and in some cases of their transfer to neighbouring states arose in Ukraine in 2014 after the Russian rejoin of the Crimea and the beginning of the crisis in the eastern part of the country. Today, special attention attracts the situation in the Donbas region, and almost no one addresses the potential problem of the same kind happening in western regions. This article attempts to identify the main goals of Ukraine’s western neighbours (Hungary, Romania, and Poland) concerning Ukraine and the humanitarian instruments of influence they use to achieve these goals. The methodology of the study has determined the structure of the article, which includes a comparative analysis of the goals and methods of the cultural and linguistic influence these states have on the population of the neighbouring territory (i.e. national minorities). Cultural and linguistic influence in this context means the cultivation of national minority languages within a limited area of their residence through education, mass media, and the organisation of programs to promote the development of cultural relations. Based on the above methodology and statistical and analytical material, the author concludes that Hungary, Romania and Poland, using similar tools to influence their national minorities, pursue different goals. Both the methods of influence and the tasks of these states I discussed in detail. Besides, one of the main conclusions drawn from the results of my study is that Hungarian, Polish and Romanian irredentism is indeed a severe risk today and deserves special attention from Ukraine.

The article deals with various aspects related to the use of Big Data technologies in political processes. Digital technologies have an ambivalent impact on the social and political processes, creating the “grey zone” of opportunities and resources that are the subject of conflicts and competition among various political agents. This statement is equally true concerning election campaigns. Firstly, the author describes the concept of data-driven campaign, which is rapidly spreading due to the demand for flexible management mechanisms and the formation of the “attention economy”. The implementation of the concept includes processes of data mining and analysis, microtargeting — the article reveals the content of each stage on the example of recent cases. The essential advantage of using big data analysis in political processes is concluded not only in the scale of the data mining but also in the possibility to examine deep causal relationships and dependencies, which extends the range of opportunities to influence political agents behaviour. Secondly, it is possible to extrapolate mechanisms of data-driven campaign to the level of data-driven politics. The author formulates the major risks and threats associated with the use of Big Data in political processes: funnel of mistrust in political institutions and technologies, blurring political institutions and plebiscite democracy, the preservation and confidentiality of personal data, the consequences of algorithms cognitive restrictions. As a result, in the short term it will be relevant to provide institutional regulation of data using, as well as to support the development of human capital as the basic skills of personal data protection and the use of modern technologies.

In this article, the author considers the issues of formation and development of the human potential conception. The author carried out analytical work on the study of the prerequisites for the origin of this concept, as well as considered the evolution of approaches to the definition of human capital and human potential. A fundamental factor in the formation of human capital is the definition of areas of investment in the individuals’ development. To study this issue, the author conducted an interim analysis of the investment areas in the formation and development of human capital defined by foreign and domestic researchers and presented a graphical display of the expansion areas, depending on the stages of the theory of human capital development. Based on the review and comparison of the concepts of human potential and human capital, the author reveals the content of the human potential concept in a broad sense and a narrow sense, clarified the economic meaning of the human potential concept.

The article presents the study of leading political and economic challenges to the national security and the realisation of national interests of the Russian Federation. In the article, the author defines the term “challenge” in the framework of fulfilment of national interests of Russia. Firstly, the author demonstrated the main differences between the terms “challenge” and “threat”, because domestic researchers consider these concepts as of similar meaning. The author defines the challenges as prerequisites for threats, based on the lack of subjective intentions and objective capabilities of the subject to harm the national interests of the object. Further, the author identifies the causes and characteristics of economic and political challenges in conditions of ensuring national security. The author identified primary objective factors determining internal and external threats: Russia’s position in the international arena, geographical features, and a new model of economic development. The author considers the lack of a competent social policy, the lack of a timely reaction of regional authorities to social needs, and mineral export dependence as subjective factors determining internal and external challenges. Finally, the author determined the influence of challenges and threats on the social sphere of the state, where political and economic factors equally influence the implementation of social projects.