The article deals with the issues of coexistence between the authorities and scientific intellectuals during the period of political, economic and social transformations of the late 1920s – early 1940s. Two time periods are considered – from 1924 to 1932 years and from 1933 to 1941 years. For each of them it describes, firstly, the state’s policy towards scientists, the consequences of the policy for the whole country and certain social group. Secondly, what aspirations, interests, orientations were characteristic of scientists, what they consisted of, how they correlated with state interests, as well as the interests of the whole people

The article considers features of the social contract between the artistic intelligentsia and the Soviet political elite during the cultural revolution in the USSR. In that period the social contract was still paternalistic in nature, but being based not only on violence, but also on consent, on the general idea of implementing the social and cultural revolution and on benefits of various kinds that the creators could get from the new government. Since the late 20s, the management by the sphere of culture and art began to be centralized and the state became the main subject of cultural policy. Strict ideological control over the cultural process was carried out as well as the persecution of aesthetic dissent.

At the same time, loyal cultural figures are rewarded through government orders and by being given high social status, high salaries, granting rights to publications, personal exhibitions and business trips abroad, awards and prizes, solutions for household and family concerns, etc. The principle of “socialist realism” was declared as the dominant creative principle. The Soviet party and state leadership enjoyed exceptional opportunities to influence the formation and change of the public consciousness of the Soviet people through cultural production.

The article substantiates the need for a social contract between the state and the student youth in the changed conditions (from 1917 to the end of the 20s), the goals and conditions of each of the parties, examples of forced acceptance and the consequences of refusal. It gives the classification of Soviet students as well as the characteristic of polar student worlds, which manifests itself both in motivation for higher education and in relationships within differentiated groups.

The author demonstrates extreme conditions of study in universities of the first years of Soviet power and the possibility of immersion in the process of spiritual production. The fact that the social group of students belongs to the intelligentsia is considered and the changes that occurred after the transformation of the higher education system, which resulted in the emergence of a new group of working socialist intelligentsia are characterized.

The purpose of the article is to conceptualize the social justice notion based on the approach of J. Rawls (1921–2002) in the context of a social contract. A distinctive feature of such concept is the elevation of justice to the primary virtue in social cooperation. In that, J. Rawls opposes the utilitarian model, which elevates efficiency as a key value. The justice of society, according to Rawls, is characterized by such basic features as a measure of consent (each agent in the initial state has a certain idea of a fair structure, so ideas about the structure of society may be different, but everyone has a request for justice); coordination (harmonization of the individuals plans with social goals); efficiency (achieving set social goals while maintaining the principles of justice); sustainability (maintaining the stability of social cooperation schemes); maximin (the least successful actors receive the maximum possible amount of benefits). At the same time, social justice is only one of the components of the social contract.

The ideas of anarcho-communism by P.A. Kropotkin represent a rich heritage of Russian intellectual thought, relevant and significant for a new understanding of the theory of the social contract.

A potential of the anarcho-communism ideas is revealed by the author’s approach: she applies a combination of analysis of a number of Kropotkin’s theoretical positions, the recognition of the uniqueness and exclusivity of the “moral and intellectual qualities” of his personality, the relationship of individual life history and the history of society in the conditions of revolutionary changes.

With regard to the significance of the anarcho-communism ideas for the theory of the social contract, answers are given to the tasks of the study – how Kropotkin correlates society and the state, defines the internal determinants for consent in society, which signs (traits) for the characteristics of the social contract are important for the social diagnosis of its effectiveness. Kropotkin’s ideological legacy is an example of an intellectual response to the concrete historical challenges of a crumbling world, which was expressed in the creation of an ideology of anarcho-communism, combining both utopianism and a powerful predictive model of society’s way of life. His ideas of anti-statism, federalism, and the rule of law are in tune with the established modern era of the expansion of human rights, and are important due to the widespread social practices of civil society. Some ideas of Russian thinkers should be taken into account when developing parameters and indicators for the social contract as a necessary and reproducible construct.

The article considers projects in the field of education proposed and implemented by three women philanthropists at the end of the 19th – beginning of the 20th century. Countess V.N. Bobrinskaya (1864–1940) on her Butyrki estate in the Tula province organized a Sunday school for local peasant children and a reading school for their parents. In addition, she headed the Commission for Foreign and Russian Excursions, organizing trips that gave rural teachers the opportunity to work on improving their educational and cultural level. Princess M.K. Tenisheva (1858–1928) opened Tradesmen’s School in Bezhitsa, Smolensk province, for mastering the professions of carpenter, blacksmith and draftsman. She also managed to open a 6-year agricultural school for local peasant children on the Flenovo farmstead. Finally, Lidia Alekseevna Shanyavskaya (1842–1921) put a lot of effort into opening the Moscow People’s University in 1908. Thus, three remarkable women contributed to Russian enlightenment.

The article analyzes the impact of current social changes on the social status of the tour guide. It is substantiated that, despite the variety of functions of tour tour guiding, the role of a tour guide as a cultural mediator remains of key importance for modern society. It is argued that guides belong to the community of intellectuals and influence the formation and transmission of symbolic meanings, promoting intergroup dialogue and public consensus. The main social issues faced by tour guides in the context of growing commercialization and technologization of tourism services were identified based on interviews with tour guides in the Kaliningrad region. It is concluded that the main challenges to the status of guides today are the blurred boundaries of occupation, lack of social recognition of professional competencies and the difficulty of adapting excursion activities to the conditions of the digital economy. It is proved however that at their core, tour guides confirm their status of the intellectual community and have requests characteristic of it.

The author of the article draws attention to the changes in work that have occurred in society over the last century. She shows that labor education includes several levels (family, industrial (non-family), social), either of which has its own characteristics and is accompanied by a separate system of training and mastering the skills of such activities and considers current approaches to labor education. The author’s definition of family labor education is given, designed to teach children to various types of work (routine, proactive, constructive), taking into account gender and age characteristics, inclinations, health conditions with the help of psychological and socio-pedagogical mechanisms, involving adults (parents and legal representatives of their children). Empirical data related to the particularity in family labor education for children of different sexes is shown.

The article deals with the analysis of the latest English-language publications on maternity research (search depth – three years, scientific base – Researchgate.net). As a result, the main research trends were formulated: the influence of motherhood on the career and level of income, the influence of motherhood on the psychosocial well-being of women, motherhood and digital technologies, single motherhood, motherhood and age characteristics, motherhood and assisted reproductive technologies. The author comes to the conclusion that studies of motherhood have an evolutionary orientation from biological reductionism to understanding the socio-psychological factors of its formation and functioning and are addressed to the mother’s personality.

Scientists quickly respond to social changes and phenomena that make adjustments to usual practices (pandemic, digitalization, new technologies, adopted laws, etc.). However, ideology and the desire to meet social and political demands (which can be explained by ignoring some issues and repeating analysis of others, as well as the declared principles of scientific journals) have an important influence on research approaches and the tone of discourse.

Women’s employment in Pakistan has its own characteristics, which are associated both with the level of development of the country and with the local mentality. Standard Western practices remain insensitive to the majority of working women and therefore produce incorrect results. The patriarchal structure of society also contributes to limiting the work of women in a number of professions, but currently there are trends towards changing that situation. As in other countries around the world, working women face phenomena of discrimination at work that are similar to the world’s concerns and specific to Pakistan. Separately, one can note the situation with the lack of jobs for educated female youth, which is partially mitigated by the conditions of marriage for which a diploma is an additional part of the dowry. However, the issue of Pakistani women’s employment needs to be carefully studied with the creation of specific research methods to avoid “blind spots” and social archetypes, so that it will subsequently be possible to both create jobs and level out factors that complicate women’s employment.

The article presents an analysis and description of the “good society” model as an actual social and normative construct. On its base, it is possible to achieve productive integration of the state and society. It is shown, that for a postmodern society, the model of a “good society” can be taken as a basis for the most effective and working scheme of social development, but it is necessary to specify the concepts that define it. In the scientific theoretical and methodological discussion, the model of a “good society” is described on the basis of value-normative guidelines in people’s everyday life. There are two main directions, liberal and communitarian, which describe the basis for the functioning of such model. It is shown that, applying it to Russian sociopolitical realities, the most effective analysis can be conducted using an integrated approach, as well as clarification of the main value-normative structural elements that make up the socially “good”.

Particular attention is paid to the concept of social justice in the public opinion of Russians. Understanding justice as the basis for people’s activities influences their desire to live in a good society.

The purpose of the work is to determine the reasons and social foundations for using the image of the Soviet Union in the narratives of political parties in modern Russia. The publications of the four largest and oldest parties were taken as the object of analysis. Based on the results of the study, it was found that despite the positioning of party ideologies as irreconcilable and conflicting, nothing of thr kind is in reality. There are different versions of the same narrative, the main elements of which are as follows: the Soviet Union is a continuation of the thousand-year tradition of Russian statehood; October 1917 is an important event in Russian history, but it is not given the status of “beginning of times”; there is an overt or covert conciliatory position; rejection of revolutionary social changes in favor of reformist solutions to societal issues; focusing on the subjective factors of the emergence and disappearance of the USSR. The reason for the convergence of narratives between the ruling and opposition political parties is seen in the similarity of the social positions of their leaders (representatives).

The article deals with the issues of the religion politicization in a secular society on the example of Orthodox radical activism. The growth of conservative political attitudes among active Orthodox citizens is analyzed as a reaction to the acceleration of the secularization process of Russian society, which creates a threat of marginalization of religious identity. The influence of Western European Christian fundamentalists on the Russian communities of Orthodox radicals is noted. There is a relationship between the spread of radical conservative ideas and values in modern Russian society and catastrophic socio-political changes after the collapse of the USSR, which were accompanied by serious transformations of the collective (national) identity. The article studies specifics of the new nationalreligious identity, formed by modern mass media with extensive borrowings from the legacy of Russian conservative philosophy of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Particular attention is paid to the “roots” of modern Orthodox activism, its close connection with Russian nationalism and international anti-globalism. The collision of the values of a secular society with its cult of freedom and anticlerical attitudes with a conservative-religious picture of the world, in which conspiracy theories and the rejection of liberal ideas play a significant role, is considered by the authors of the article as a result of the collapse of the former socio-political system, where atheism and communist ideology were the main semantic dominants in society.

The article considers information warfare (IW) as one of the social and informational confrontations against a consolidated anti-Russian front that is global in nature. The demand for the Internet and information technologies determines the uniqueness of their influence on public consciousness and people’s behavior in the social history of Russia. Following the qualitative and quantitative empirical data at the all-Russian level, the author reveals specifics in the forms and methods of anti-Russian propaganda and counteraction to them and mentions the multidimensionality of information attacks against different spheres of society. Behavioral characteristics of various subjects showing social responsibility are presented with the aim of large-scale information reflection of Western anti-Russian aggression.