This article analyzes students’ trust in artificial intelligence (AI)-based electronic assistants in higher education. The study is based on an online sociological survey of students using a non-probability stream sample covering nine federal districts of Russia (N=9,425). The article examines the prevalence of AI use for educational purposes and the specific features of students’ trust in the information they receive. It shows that most students already have experience interacting with AI, but the dominant strategy of use remains cautious trust combined with verification of the information obtained. The article raises the question of what lies behind this position. Particular attention is paid to the relationship between trust in university teachers and trust in AI. Regression analysis demonstrates a correlation between these forms of trust while controlling for socio-demographic and institutional parameters. The article shows how different types of trust are associated with students’ self-assessed academic performance, field of study, disappointment with their current education, confidence in their choice of profession, and educational and career plans. It discusses the extent to which trust in AI may serve as an indicator of transformations in the content and forms of learning, as well as a possible factor either strengthening or undermining established educational practices. The types of trust identified can give an understanding of the social experience of contemporary education. The conclusion raises questions about the long-term risks and effects associated with the growing role of AI in learning.
The article examines the case of PJSC Surgutneftegaz, which challenged the requirement to approve subsoil use on the land of a Khanty family. The article asks why this dispute arose despite the successful long-standing practice of agreements between oil companies and indigenous peoples of Yugra. Despite support from various authorities and the intervention of the governor, the company refused to compromise, which led the prosecutor’s office to file a lawsuit on behalf of the Khanty. The legal dispute centered on the categories defining the status of indigenous peoples. The debate unfolded around the concept of “the traditional way of life,” whose interpretation de facto belongs to officials and oil managers and is inaccessible to indigenous peoples themselves. The article problematizes the contradiction between the requirements of regulatory documents and the real lives of the Khanty. In the case of the Moldanov family, this gap provoked a heated dispute and raised the need to clarify the contemporary way of life of the Khanty within and outside the territories of traditional nature use. For the company, the dispute became a way of formalizing its compensation policy toward indigenous people engaged in economic activity outside the territories of traditional nature use, that is, former ancestral lands. The article shows how the accounting categories applied in such cases infringe upon the rights of semi-urban Khanty by requiring them to continue traditional activities and life in the forest. Legal prescriptions develop into rigid conditions in agreements with oil companies and force the Khanty to turn to premodern livelihoods regardless of their current functionality. The facts of the dispute with the Moldanov family illustrate this point. Field research in the Surgut District has shown that the Khanty are willing to sacrifice their lands—and their ancestral way of life—in exchange for a higher standard of living and access to roads and electricity. However, in the long term, land appropriation makes a self-sufficient Khanty life on their ancestral lands impossible; under such conditions, preserving the traditional way of life can no longer remain a goal and requirement of compensation policy.
Cooperation between Russia and China in the field of education has expanded significantly. In 2026, the number of Russian students studying in China reached 21,000. However, empirical evidence shows that students face many difficulties adapting to the new environment. Given the growing popularity of Chinese universities among Russian students, the present study aimed to identify the factors and mechanisms underlying international students’ adaptation to China. The empirical basis for the study is a survey conducted among Russian students studying in Chinese universities from March to May of 2026 using the WeChat platform. The students’ adaptation to China is addressed through a mixed-methods design, incorporating both quantitative and qualitative approaches. Quantitative analysis using PLS-SEM allowed us to test the interplay of uncertainty avoidance, perceived awareness of cultural differences, cultural capital, and pre-training and three adaptation domains: household, socio-cultural, and academic. Thematic analysis of qualitative narratives further elucidated the mechanisms underlying the statistical relationships. The results of the analysis demonstrate ambivalence to the Chinese environment, while the adaptation process is not linear, but represents a constant movement between the two poles. The findings have theoretical and practical significance and reveal that uncertainty avoidance and perceived cultural differences serve as a significant catalyst for adaptation.
Changing the rules for recruiting subnational leaders by abandoning direct elections is one of the instruments of power centralization in Russia. However, conflicts during contests for selecting municipal heads show that attempts to integrate the municipal level into the “power vertical” are not always successful. This article analyzes the procedure of conflict-ridden contests in order to trace the interaction of regional and municipal actors under the new procedures and to assess the role of rules in this interaction. Drawing on media materials and interviews conducted by the author, the article examines two conflict-ridden contests that ended in different outcomes. These cases show that actors, regardless of their status, are forced to follow the rules of the contest and cannot change them unilaterally. However, formal norms are significant not only as constraints, but also as resources in political struggles. The rules encourage regional and municipal elites to seek compromises, thereby allowing the idea of local self-government as an agent of both the state and the local community to be realized even in a centralized Russian state.
The edited volume Village as a Value: Ideologies and Practices of New Rurality, published in 2025, is devoted to the ways in which rural areas in contemporary Russia and the post-socialist space are being imagined, represented, and transformed. New rurality is understood as the commodification and commercialization of the rural way of life and its associated attributes: tradition, stability, environmental friendliness, safety, and authenticity. Based on an analysis of the cases discussed in the volume, the author arrives at three main conclusions. First, the village today is increasingly losing its attachment to a specific territory and is turning into an image through which urban residents rethink their past, present, and future. Second, this image may become a justification for external interventions when the village is represented as a space of backwardness and passivity that requires improvement. Third, new rurality manifests itself in the changing character of social relations, whose participants use various media of exchange to draw boundaries between different types of interaction.
