The institutional transformation of municipal libraries involves their evolution into multifunctional cultural and recreational centers. A fundamental communication tool in this context is the digital environment, which includes social media platforms. Key indicators of operational quality become the accessibility of information resources, the development of remote service offerings, and the level of engagement of the target audience. Our empirical research focused on the municipal public libraries of the Chelyabinsk region. It included an audit of digital presence on social networks, messaging apps, and video hosting services; an analysis of activity and communication effectiveness in the official «VKontakte» communities. The research methods consisted of content analysis of social media groups and an analysis of their quantitative metrics (using the «LiveDune» service). The analysis results revealed the dominance of library groups on «VKontakte». Despite the high proportion of verified groups, their branding level remains critically low. The functionality of services is assessed as underdeveloped: only one-third of the communities have a service gallery. The most requested services include book renewals, while remote reference and bibliographic services are organized less frequently. There is significant variability in the number of followers and posts. It has been established that a high posting frequency does not guarantee an increase in views; the key factor is the content's substance. The effectiveness of media support is determined through audience engagement metrics. Engagement metrics (ER, ERViews) show considerable variation in values. The content is predominantly informational, with interactive formats used infrequently. Some library systems demonstrate high results due to quality content, while many are limited to one-way information dissemination. To enhance effectiveness, it is recommended to expand the range of remote services, develop a content strategy, implement brand identity, increase the share of interactive content, and utilize analytical services to adjust the strategy.
Based on unpublished archival materials, the article offers a reconstruction of two stories connected by the unity of action (evacuation of two large enterprises from the RSFSR and Dnieper region), the unity of time (late summer – winter of 1941), and the unity of place (the village of Kislotnyi in the territory of the city of Molotov, determined as the evacuation destination of both Kryukov and Kalinin carriage works). The first story refers to the evacuation of a large engineering plant from combat zone of the Southwestern Front. The second story provides a description of the events that unfolded in a heated freight car of a special train transporting workers and equipment of the Kalinin carriage works to the same village of Kislotnyi, where the Kryukov works was rout into operation again thanks to the efforts of several dozen engineers and workers that had arrived together with the incomplete equipment. During the Great Patriotic War, it began producing high-explosive aerial bombs. In addition to those two stories, the article contains two research approaches. The first one is the institutional approach, which is crucial for the reconstruction of evacuation efforts. The second one is the anthropological approach, which aided the authors in characterizing the interpersonal tensions developed among the 36 people who were forced to stay in a confined space of a heated freight car with triple bunks for a month. The narrative focus is the conflict between the train master and female party activists amidst the collective trauma shared by all participants. The intention of our research is to present the tragic side of wartime evacuation in 1941–42 and later years in two private stories.
The article examines the characteristics of post-Soviet political absenteeism in the 1990s as a historically conditioned sociocultural phenomenon in contemporary societies: its genesis, content, and sociological interpretations in domestic and foreign (primarily French) literature. To analyze domestic absenteeism, the article draws on panel studies conducted by the author as part of a research team in Perm from 1993 to 2006. The article presents approaches to studying absenteeism in Europe and Russia and substantiates the thesis that different scientific schools share common views on its social characteristics. The prevailing opinion is that political absenteeism is a side effect of social, economic, and cultural polarization in modern societies. It reflects social protest, preoccupation with everyday problems, and a mismatch between democratic procedures and the artistic demands of contemporary youth. The author argues against the thesis that the origins and content of post-Soviet absenteeism are identical to those in Western Europe, presenting the following arguments: different historical institutional conditions of its genesis (from the Soviet electoral system); the dominance of absenteeism from above over absenteeism from below; disappointment in democratic procedures. Russian absenteeism is seen as both a form of social self-determination for the emerging bourgeois classes and an instrument of social stratification in Russian society. The 'new Russians' thus created a protective barrier between themselves and the rest of the population by refusing to participate in egalitarian political procedures. Absenteeism from above implies the dominance of private practices in the presentation and protection of personal and corporate interests in the face of authority, the deformation and narrowing of the public political space, and the erosion of political language. Like any cultural phenomenon that originated in an elite community, political absenteeism spreads to lower strata and becomes part of youth subcultures. The absenteeism of the 1990s belongs to history; its evolution requires further study.
In Soviet Russia, collecting was institutionalized as an intellectual and leisure hobby in 1922. It was free of the material practices and meanings that linked it with the bourgeoisie and pursued a purely pragmatic goal of state budget replenishment. The utopian idealism filled this hobby with special values and meanings, turning it into an instrument of socialization. In fact, it had an obvious economic component as a source of state budget replenishment and an investment tool. The evolution of the institute of Soviet popular collecting started in the 1920s and continued through the mid-1930s, from the establishment of the All-Russian Philatelic Society in 1922 to its abolition in 1934. The article introduces a reconstruction of the economic meanings and practices behind the Soviet philately as it sought to get rid of all material value connotations. The author applied the approach formulated by K. Mannheim in his Ideology and Utopia to periodicals and archival materials from the State Archives of the Russian Federation. Even children’s stories about philately revealed certain economic markers that contradicted the official ideological guidelines popularized by the Soviet Collector magazine (1922-1932). The institutional language of the magazine reflected its status as an ideological agent. The derogatory meanings and practices of bourgeois philately implicitly permeated Soviet collecting, starting from its institutionalization and extrapolating these practices and narratives into the future.
In this article the author analyzes the activities of teachers of the Chuvash State Institute of Culture and Arts in developing students’ ethnocultural competence. The research material is the results of the author’s observation of the process of professional training of managers of social and cultural activities. The observation was carried out according to such criteria as knowledge of material and spiritual-moral values of the ethnic community, traditions and rituals, nutrition, music, sports, ways of life support, geography of settlement; skills of correct behavior in situations of interethnic communication in accordance with the cultural characteristics of the interlocutor, including the choice of relevant means of verbal and non-verbal communication; personal qualities expressed in interest in certain cultural manifestations, the desire to join them. The development of the content of activities for the formation of students' ethnocultural competence is based on scientific and methodological research in the field of technology for training future leaders of amateur choreographic groups for stage interpretation of folk dance, technology for the formation and development of students' ethnic self-awareness, linguacultural and ethnopsychological features of the Chuvash mentality, technology for introducing students to folk art culture. To achieve positive results, it is necessary to integrate educational, research, cultural and educational activities, interaction with subjects of sociocultural activities, and innovative activities.
