Issue materials

The article is devoted to the analysis of legal and economic aspects of counteracting corruption in Poland; it monitors the transformation of how corruption has been interpreted in criminal and socio-economic senses from the times of Polish People’s Republic to the present day. The role of anti-corruption institutions, including the Central Anti-Corruption Bureau (CBA), the Police, the Internal Security Agency, the Border Guard, the Military Gendarmerie and the Counterintelligence Service is also shown, with the efficiency of CBA activities being highlighted. The article pays attention to the variety of economic corruption forms and scrutinizes the methods of how corruption could be counteracted and prevented; the role of public organizations in this process should not be neglected. The concept of economic corruption is interpreted in the broad context of criminal legislation in Poland, and a detailed analysis of several court decisions on such corruption cases is presented. Having estimated the scale of corruption in Poland, the author concludes about significant progress in counteracting corruption from the time of Polish People’s Republic to the present, although infrastructure, public administration computerisation, the use of European Union funds, the defence sector, health, energy, environmental protection and services are still at a high risk of being corrupted.

Keywords: anti-corruption; Poland; Central Anti-Corruption Bureau; law; economics; prevention of corruption. 

The development paradigm of Russian parliamentarism, 2008 and 2020 amendments to the Constitution of the Russian Federation are directed towards expanding the power of the Russian parliament and the accountability of the executive branch to the supreme legislative body. In this regard, a logical question arises about strengthening the independence and autonomy (primarily from the executive branch) of the members of the Russian parliament (MP). However, instead of a logical increase in the independence of parliamentarians, recently Russia has introduced internal quasilabor standards of parliament, which, on the contrary, puts MP under party control. In addition, the existing anti-corruption standards for controlling the openness of the income, expenses and property obligations of MP also have serious shortcomings in terms of the severity of sanctions – up to the early termination of MP. The problem of legal reasons and the procedure for terminating the powers of a deputy of a representative authority is considered by the author comprehensively, taking into account the specifics of the status of a deputy. It should be noted that for the young Russian parliamentarism, the study of this procedure through the prism of the constitutional legal status of a deputy is of fundamental importance. The article analyzes the judicial practice of the reasons for the termination of the deputy’s powers, statistics on the application of anti-corruption legislation to deputies of representative authorities in 30 regions of the Federation from all Federal Districts of Russia. The author also explores new grounds for terminating the deputy’s powers, including regarding the practice of attending parliament, and concludes that a number of the current legislation used by the law enforcer (parliamentary majority, courts, prosecutor’s bodies) contradicts the tasks of legal regulation of the duties of MP, and doctrinally are not consistent with the model of a free mandate adopted in Russia in 1993. Thus, the domestic legislator needs to decide whether he/she continues to follow the model of a free mandate enshrined in the current Russian Constitution, or whether it is time to return (as it was in the Soviet period) to a model of an imperative mandate. If the legislator decides to use the model of a free mandate, then the new liability measures that are introduced into the legislation should be reviewed. If the legislator finally abandons the free mandate, which corresponds to a certain trend in world practice, then it is necessary to make appropriate point adjustments to the Russian Constitution, and provide for a procedure for recalling a deputy at the federal level; especially today in the context of growing digitalization, such a procedure can be done without damage conduct using electronic voting.

Keywords: parliament; member of parliament; MPs status; State Duma; Council of Federation; legislative body; deprivation of authority; party; faction. 

 Modern universities often become a subject of discussion in the public sphere, during which the relevance of university programs, the financing of science and higher education, and a number of other issues are discussed. These discussions again and again prompt political theorists to reflect on the “idea of a university”. These ideas are associated with values, expectations and beliefs, and are most often expressed in the form of normative representations based either on pragmatism that define the university as a functional element of the state system, or on utilitarianism that required from the university to satisfy the economic demands of society, or on idealism that forces position the university as an “ivory tower”. The presented positions somewhat exaggerate the value of some of the university’s abilities to the detriment of others and distort not only the optics of research, but also the social beliefs that influences the development of state systems and universities. Based on the institutional approach, the authors of this article propose a theoretical position that allows to grasp the current pragmatics of the university community, the market and the state regarding the development of universities and their contribution to the organization of the societal order. According to this position, the university should be considered as an intermediary institution that has public subjectivity; acts as an organizational form of the university community and agent of societal relations; carries out a communicative exchange with the external environment (represented by societies, states, markets); creates conditions for the interaction of various agents of societal relations, including on their own space via a formalized rational public discussion; finally, it produces knowledge that influences the organization of the societal order. All of this taken together allows us to consider the university a mediator. This position of the university allows it to successfully fulfill its mediating role, both within the university corporation and outside it, balance between different social expectations and remain in one of the most stable and adaptive organizational forms that constitute the societal order. 

Keywords: university; the idea of a university; étatisme; managerialism; mediation; intermediaryinstitution; societal order. 

The article raises the question of the heuristic potential of the theory of socioeconomic formations. The author tries to challenge the opinion shared by many researchers that this theory was an exclusively ideological product aimed at justifying the political regime that prevailed in the USSR. Behind dogmatic template-like judgments the lively discussions aimed at elucidating the universal laws of social development were hidden. The results of these discussions do not lose their relevance today as many scientists are discussing again the prospects of a post-capitalist society. The theory of socioeconomic formations is aimed at finding relevant criteria for highlighting the historical stages of social development within the framework of a materialistic understanding of history. As such a criterion, the prevailing forms of ownership, historical types of technology, and the specifics of relations of production are proposed. At the same time, the article substantiates that each of these criteria had produced many problems. Thus, the traditional Eurocentric scheme for changing the prevailing forms of ownership was poorly coordinated with the social processes taking place in the East. The technical and technological criterion turned out to be extremely difficult in terms of identifying the qualitative stages of scientific and technological development. The emphasis on the specifics relations of production led to poorly consistent conclusions that there was a fundamental difference between Soviet socialism and Western industrial capitalism. The article attempts to discard obsolete dogmatic and ideological constructions from the theory of social formations. At the same time, it proposes using such a criterion for highlighting social formations as the prevailing sources of consumer values (natural processes, controlled natural processes, labor, and creativity). This criterion allows to connect qualitatively a quantitative technical and technological criterion with political and legal phenomena, such as prevailing forms of ownership, systems of relations of power, exploitation and exclusion, etc., into a single causal scheme. An attempt was made to redefine social formations (pre-class, class-class, class, personalist), based on the corresponding prevailing sources of consumer values. The conclusion is made that the historical forms of socialism and capitalism are different modifications of the class socioeconomic formation (based on labor as the predominant source of consumer values). The emergence of a personalistic socioeconomic formation based on creativity as the main source of consumer values is an extremely controversial process. This formation will have its internal logic and contradictions; therefore, the categories characterizing it should not be confused with the categories of a class socioeconomic formation that is gradually fading into the past.

Keywords: theory of socioeconomic formations; socioeconomic formations; capitalism; socialism; communism; Marxism; post-capitalism; mode of production.

In general, the following article attempts to showcase how literature reflects and interprets philosophical concepts using a rich arsenal of inherent expressive means. The personality and ideas of Martin Heidegger, one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century, often became the subject of literary reflection. The focus of this article is the second phase of the philosopher’s life – from 1933, when he assumed the post of rector of the University of Freiburg, and until his death. The poets and writers involved here (E. Jelinek, E. Jandl, A. Kluge, B. Kenjeev, G. Grass, P. Celan, T. Bernhard, W. Abish) create a multidimensional and complex image of Heidegger in their works. The biographical and imaginative twists and turns of the legendary philosopher come to life under the magnifying glass of writer’s reflection, for which the boundary between reality and fiction remains suspended. This allows us to understand the nature and motives of the philosopher better than any documentary evidence or even the direct speech. The language of literature – derisive, caustic, grotesque – creates necessary counterbalance to philosophy, which, according to laws of genre, gravitates to mortal seriousness and thereby loses its critical attitude towards itself. Such a combination of literary imagination and metaphysical speculation turns out to be productive both for philosophy, which tests its ethical relevance in the poetic dimension, and for literature, which turns into a space of authentic existential questions. The fiction not only reveals inconsistencies in Heidegger’s train of thought but offers its own unconventional arguments to cope with those inconsistencies.

Keywords: Heidegger; literary character; fiction; philosophy; narrative; intertext.

The article deals with the historical and cultural context of the Soviet phenomenon. With the unprecedented frequency of the use of the term “the Soviet”, the phenomenon designated by it remains a “white spot” for social science. The author proceeds from the assumption that the possibility of its theoretical study is due not so much to the choice of methodological tools (this is an important matter, but still a derivative), but to a change in the perspective in which we put this phenomenon in front of us as a subject of study. We do not talk about changes in point of view or approach, not about changes in worldview or methodological plan, but about entering the field of meta-methodology, where various factors are intricately combined – cultural, historical, institutional, political, ethical, etc. At the same time, the focus of the study is shifted from the cognizable object to the cognitive capabilities of the subject, transferred from “what?” to “how?”. This area or infrastructure of theoretical research is a set of theoretical and social apriori, implicitly directing the way of thinking, its course and the way of interpreting the results. In the course of the study of the historical and cultural context of the Soviet phenomenon, the following results are obtained: The Soviet is presented as a special type of culture that combines the dimensions of locality and worldliness and as the Soviet continue to grow it degenerates into a project of world civilization. The birth of the Soviet is considered as one of the possible outcomes of modernization, the conditions of which prevailed during the historical turning point from “tradition” to “modernity”, and the specific combination of heterogeneous cultural strata in the space of Russian City during the industrialization. The Soviet is the existence of potestarity, an attribute inherent in the community matrix. The pursuit of power as a super-value constitutes the entelechy of the Soviet. The development of the Soviet culminates in the emergence of the cultural code, which determines the reproduction of the Soviet regardless of economic, social and political conditions, and the mass dissemination of revolutionary dialectical discourse. The architect of the Soviet is Stalin. Nevertheless, in the world of the Soviet Stalin is not a historical person, not a way of ruling, but a basic myth that defined and defines the boundaries and ways of transformation of the Russian society, even in the XXI century. The novelty of the proposed concept of the Soviet is associated with the justification of the leading role of cultural factors of its constitution and development in comparison with economic, social and political ones. 

Keywords: Soviet as a type of culture; communal matrix; revolutionary dialectical discourse; anti-capitalist attitude; power as entelechy of the Soviet; cultural code of the Soviet; corporate beginning in life of society and state.