The article analyzes the current state and prospects for the development of cultural diplomacy of the BRICS group, which includes the Federal Republic of Brazil, the Russian Federation, the Republic of India, the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of South Africa. The authors study the history of the term “cultural diplomacy” emergence and its evolution in the second half of the XX – early XXI centuries, separately focusing on the modern understanding of this phenomenon as an instrument of “soft power”. In addition, the place and role of BRICS as a unique interstate dialogue format of countries representing Latin American, Eurasian,

Indian, Chinese and African civilizations, each of which has its own unique path of historical, political and cultural development, is considered. It is argued that intercultural communication within the framework of BRICS has been actively developing since the mid-2010s as a result of signing a number of intergovernmental agreements. At the moment, several interaction tracks in this area have been formed at once. Special attention is paid to the implementation of an innovative project within the framework of cultural diplomacy — the BRICS International Youth Model at the School of Public Administration of Lomonosov Moscow State University. The authors conclude that the cultural dialogue of the BRICS member countries is actively developing today, however, the association still faces many tasks, the main of which is the formation of a consolidated policy in the field of cultural diplomacy, the interpenetration of cultures and their perception by both political elites and civil society of five states. In this regard, the holding of youth events with the participation of representatives of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa is really important.

Trade in timber and forest products is a strategic part of the Russian-Chinese trade and contributes to the economic development of Russia and China. The article discusses historical changes in the customs-tariff and non-tariff regulation of imports of timber and forest products in China. It is shown that the customs and tariff regulation of imports of timber and forest products can be divided into four stages, which are closely related to China’s economic development policy. Among them are the stage of high tariffs (1949–1978); the period of widespread use of the system of licenses and quotas for the import of timber products (1978–1988); phase of the ban on imports of forest products (1989–1998); stage of liberalization of trade in forest products, characterized by a decrease in import duties (1999 – present). An increase in the share of imports of timber is shown: in 2010 China imported about 41% of the required forest resources, in 2021 timber imports amounted to more than half of the required volume. In recent years, China has passed dozens of Forest Resources Laws, which partially solved the problems that arose in the development of the forest industry, and contributed to the effective management of the timber industry. It is shown that forest certification is an effective tool for state regulation of forest management.

The discussion of the growing problems in the field of science is actively conducted in the discourse of scientific integrity — scientific honesty / scientific fairness. This is a term of political, public discourse that does not have a clear scientific definition and content. The article shows the “umbrella” nature of the term “scientific integrity”, which made it possible, in the conditions of a sharp increase in politicization, commercialization and ideologization of science, to unite scientific discussion and direct scientific policy to promote “responsible” research, “appropriate” scientific practices. In this regard, along with the concept of scientific integrity (SI), the concept of research integrity (RI) is beginning to be actively used. A distinction is made between these concepts. The article analyzes the formation and development of the discourse and policy of scientific honesty, mainly in the USA — “attacks” on science, the emergence of a policy of scientific honesty and its implementation in the activities of federal scientific agencies, other efforts to overcome the “crisis of scientific honesty”; the breakdown of the scientific integrity policy under President Trump and the Biden administration’s efforts to bring it back and strengthen it. The rapid development and institutionalization of the discourse and policy of scientific integrity is shown: the creation of a sufficiently powerful infrastructure of research integrity both at the national and international levels, national and international organizations and conferences on research integrity, guiding documents, codes and

scientific publications. The crisis of scientific honesty in the article is considered not just as an internal problem of science, but as a more fundamental problem — as a manifestation of the disturbed institutional balance in the relationship between science and government, the market and society, the acute conflict of loyalties of a scientist that has emerged on this basis, the manifestation of which is the problem of scientific honesty and its severity. The discourse of scientific (especially research) honesty turns out to be too narrow for the analysis of the existing problems here and the problems arising in this regard. Based on expert surveys, the discrepancy between the official discourse and the policy of scientific honesty (including RI) and the concerns of scientists, especially in academic research structures, with their vision of deeper systemic reasons for the crisis of scientific honesty and injustice and the unjustifiability of the “distribution” of responsibility for this crisis with a disproportionate shift towards science and scientists is shown. Such discrepancies, together with limited opportunities for institutionalizing the policy of scientific honesty in university research communities with classical academic standards of responsibility and their “epistemic practices” that do not need external control, gradually blur the credibility of the discourse and the legitimacy of the policy of scientific honesty and reveal its “conventionality” and historical limitations.

The article attempts to analyze Russia’s objectives of implementing the principles of the right of peoples to self-determination and territorial integrity of states. The aim of the study is to identify the target settings for implementing the principles of the right of peoples to self-determination and the territorial integrity of states by the Russian Federation. The paper uses such methods as press analysis, comparative, systematic, document analysis and the normative method. The main results of the work are the following statements. The analysis of the policy of the Russian Federation on the application of the principles of the right of peoples to self-determination and the territorial integrity of states on the examples of Transnistria, Kosovo and Crimea allowed us to identify the targets of applying these principles by Russia, affecting the prevalence of one or another principle. These targets are related to the national interests of the Russian Federation, but at the same time have their own specifics. These targets include: the need to preserve its territorial integrity; the need to ensure security near state borders in order to protect the principle of territorial integrity of states; the need to protect the population from ethno-national conflicts within the country; the need to protect the cultural diversity of the country. The identified targets, in case of their conceptualization and official publication at the state level, will make the position of the Russian Federation in relation to implementing the principles of the right of peoples to self-determination and the territorial integrity of states more predictable, which will contribute to strengthening Russia’s status in the international arena as a guarantor of international law and security.

The article analyses the activity of the Soviet party figure A.A. Andreev in the field of housing cooperation. The aims is to identify his contribution to the formation and development of the new cooperative movement. The article is based on the archival materials, periodicals and memoirs, which are being introduced into science for the first time. In order to reach the aim, the author applied a systematic approach to the analysis of the sources, historical-typological, historical-genetic, historical-psychological methods. In February 1924 A.A. Andreev, who had held the post of the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Union of Railway Workers before that time, became the Secretary of the Central Committee responsible for the development of the housing cooperation in the USSR. During his work in the Secretariat of the Central Committee he made a number of statements both on the pages of newspapers and from the tribunes of Party forums, in which he formulated a program of developing the Soviet housing cooperation. It implied the collective participation of party, economic, trade union and Komsomol structures in overcoming the housing crisis. At the same time, A.A. Andreev’s personal position was extremely vague and compromising. This did not contribute to strengthening the new form of housing construction in the system of the Soviet national economy and put it in a dependent position on the above-mentioned structures. The subject under consideration is a particular manifestation of a specific type of the Soviet economic manager. Further refinement and specification of the typology is possible if we study the entire multifaceted activity of A.A. Andreev in the highest Party and administrative positions, as well as its comparison with the work of other Soviet leaders.

The world community considers achievement of gender equality as the most important condition for developing the society. The Russian Federation has joined a number of international conventions and agreements that enshrine the principle of gender equality which is designated as one of the goals of sustainable development of all humankind in one of the latest documents — “Sustainable Development Goals”. At the end of the last century and at the beginning of this century, the Russian Federation actively used international recommendations and experience: various links of the national machinery for gender equality were created in the legislative and executive institutions, new approaches to the formation of social policy were developed. However, significant changes have taken place in recent years. The article, based on state strategic documents, shows that the state has shifted from the goals of gender equality to the improvement of women status. Based on an analysis of statistical data, expert opinions and research by a number of scientists, the author convincingly proves that gender imbalance in the sphere of politics and public administration remains; various types of discrimination against women in the labor market and in the economy as a whole have not been overcome; women (especially mothers) face family — work conflict; in healthcare, the influence of gender factors on the health of men and women and the organization of medical care is poorly taken into account. It is noted that the difficulty of solving the problem lies in the fact that gender inequality is complex and simultaneously affects different areas of social policy. That is why it is recommended taking more effective measures to truly achieve gender equality.

Increasing the competitiveness of the disabled in the labor market is an important task not only in terms of ensuring social justice, equality of opportunity and reducing discrimination, but also in terms of stimulating economic growth in Russia through the channel of demographic dividend. With the continuing population aging, Russia will again have to experience the decline in the share of the working-age population in the medium term. The increase in employment of the disabled is one of the ways to raise the demographic dividend in Russia, including partially offsetting its negative impact during periods of a declining share of the working-age population. Employment among people with disabilities in Russia remains low and lags behind the OECD average. The purpose of this paper is to assess the possible impact of an increase in employment of the disabled in Russia on the size of the country’s demographic dividend in 2018–2022 using official Rosstat data. The article shows that increasing the number of working people with disabilities is an important reserve for boosting the demographic dividend in Russia.

In accordance with Federal Law “On state control (supervision) and municipal control in the Russian Federation”, state control (supervision) and municipal control should be aimed at minimizing state-controlled risks of harm or damage to values protected by law. An important indicator of minimizing these risks and the harm (damage) they cause can be the assessment by citizens of the level of protection of significant values that are protected by law, such as life, health of citizens and their relatives, property, personal data, environment, historical monuments, culture, and more. This article examines the dynamics of citizens’ assessments of the level of protection of values protected by law from 10 state-controlled types of such risks (criminal actions, unsafe food and catering services, substandard non-food goods and services, etc.). The empirical data for this study are based on the results of representative the all-Russian sociological surveys conducted annually by the RANEPA from 2018 to 2023, evaluating the effectiveness of state regulatory enforcement activity. The survey results demonstrate positive trends in citizens’ assessments: the overall level of protection of values protected by law from various risks increased from 30.0% in 2018 to 39.3% in 2023. However, the most challenging situation arises in the field of financial services and personal data, where the level of protection from these risks has decreased during the observation period. The research findings indicate that citizens’ assessments of the level of protection of values protected by law depend to a great extent on the following factors: the level of trust in control and supervisory bodies, personal experience of encountering risks associated with threats to these values, and whether the respondents have sought assistance from control and supervisory bodies to protect these values and the outcome of such requests. The data from the sociological surveys conducted in 2022–2023 demonstrate that the fact of seeking assistance from control and supervisory bodies increases the overall level of citizens’ assessments of the protection of values protected by law, and improving the effectiveness of these requests is an important reserve for enhancing these assessments.

The aim of the article is to characterize the essential content of the «Russian threat» in the military-doctrinal documents of unfriendly nuclear states. The basis of the methodology is PEST-analysis with the rationale for adding a military aspect to it. A qualitative analysis of the content of military-doctrinal documents is based on a frequency-ranked linguistic analysis, which is preceded by lemmatization. In addition to the traditional tabular presentation, cloud data provision has been applied. Based on the target settings, documents of three unfriendly nuclear states were selected for analysis: Great Britain, the USA and France. On the basis of the proposed methodology, the military doctrinal document of Great Britain was analyzed. All the highlighted aspects are present in the studied document. The biggest one is the political aspect. The leadership of this state assigns a significant place to the social context of threats from Russia and emphasizes the importance of the information factor in UK politics, especially disinformation. In the military-doctrinal document of the United States, it was possible to isolate all the indicated aspects. The largest in volume is the political aspect. In the resulting lemmatized series of the document under study, it is worth highlighting the phrase from the most frequently occurring words that characterizes «Russia as a nuclear threat». The resulting phrase allows us to conclude that the American military-political leadership considers Russia as a nuclear threat. Russia is not excluded by the Americans from the list of potentially threatening the American nation with weapons based on cyber-, bio-, chemical- and missile means. Analyzing the French document, we note that it contains all aspects, with the exception of the economic one which means that, according to the views of the French leadership, Russia does not pose a significant economic threat to France. The largest in volume is the political aspect. The analysis carried out allows us to conclude that the French side does not exclude the nuclear threat from Russia. The final conclusions on the article are made based on the developed methodology.

Institutional trust is an important indicator of power legitimacy and the institutional political system stability. The article assesses the level of political institutional trust in Russian society, determines its structure and mechanisms of formation in the current geopolitical situation. Institutional trust is understood as a special kind of attitude of a citizen to political institutional structures, which manifests his/her confidence that the actions of the institution meet his/her positive expectations. The institutions of public administration, legislative, security, law enforcement, as well as the institutions of articulation and aggregation of interests are singled out. Based on the methodological principles of phenomenology and cognitive approach, it is proved that for the formation of political institutional trust it is necessary, on the one hand, for the society to have a well-functioning mechanism of political socialisation, which ensures the perception of political institutions as capable of solving problems significant for the individual and society, and, on the other hand, for the citizen to find confirmation of the established ideas about institutions in the current information space. It is shown that in critical situations, when the information space is filled with messages that destroy the usual picture of the world and provoke the growth of anxiety in society, it is necessary to make additional efforts to maintain trust in political institutions. With the beginning of the special military operation, despite the growth of anxiety in society, there was no decline in trust in political institutions, on the contrary, its level increased. The article analyses the measures that ensured the growth of Russians’ trust in political institutions: legitimisation of the special military operation goals, introduction of legislative, administrative and other restrictions on the activities of opposition that discredit the armed forces, and formation of positive images of the main political institutions. In addition, the authorities have taken a number of measures aimed at curbing deprivation sentiments that can generate discontent and undermine institutional trust. It is noted that the balance achieved between citizens’ expectations and their perceptions of the willingness of political institutions to fulfil those expectations continues to be severely tested. Any surge in anxiety can lead to unpredictable consequences.

The scientific relevance of the article is connected with the fact that the problem of identifying the causes of the Soviet Union collapse occupies an important place in modern humanities. One of the aspects of the problem is the issue of the prevalence of external or internal factors in this process. The aim of the article is to determine the specific weight of the external factor in the collapse of the USSR at the end of 1991. The source basis is a set of documents related to the last foreign visit of the President of the Union Mikhail Gorbachev in late October 1991 to Spain and France. The materials of meetings and conversations with the leaders of the United States, Spain and France allow us to understand the position of these countries in relation to the centrifugal processes in the Soviet Union and determine their policy in this area. To achieve the aim, the article uses historical-typological, historical- comparative, historical-system methods, as well as methods of factor and cause-effect analysis with consistent reliance on the principles of objectivity and historicism. The study shows that the policy of the leaders of Western countries was aimed at implementing two possible options for further development: the preservation of the union center or the destruction of the republics Union. There was no unified position of the West in this direction: the US administration in October 1991 did not take any definite position, while Western European leaders supported the scenario of preserving the Union. The implementation in practice of the events scenario, which did not fully correspond to the policy of Western countries leaders, characterizes their influence (and therefore the influence of an external factor) on the destruction of the USSR. The external factor did not play a decisive role in the development of this process.

The relevance of this study is defined by the need to determine the prospects for introducing digital technological solutions into the public administration system. The aim of the article is to determine the specifics of digital platforms implementation for decision- making in public administration. To achieve this aim, a set of methods was used that made it possible to identify the features of digital platforms implementation that facilitate management decision-making. The study used statistical data from the Federal State Statistics Service, the Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation, information from official websites and digital platforms, reviews of analytical agencies and consulting companies, as well as the results of secondary research. The work shows the specifics of digital platforms functioning and identifies the advantages and disadvantages of the digital transformation of the public administration system. The features of state and municipal management based on digital technological solutions are revealed. The factors influencing the digital transformation processes are identified. An analysis of digital platforms functioning in the regions of the Russian Federation from the Central Federal District (Moscow Region), the Volga Federal District (Republic of Tatarstan) and the Northwestern Federal District (St. Petersburg) was carried out. The work notes the effect of introducing digital platforms in the regions of the Russian Federation. The results of the study can be used to determine the cumulative effects of introducing digital platforms into the public administration system in the long term. A comprehensive assessment will identify similarities between the problems of implementing digital transformation projects, as well as determine the most effective ways to solve problems arising as a result of the digitization of various categories of services and decision-making processes in public administration.

The article focuses on the issues of managing Russia’s economic and financial relations in the conditions of a multipolar world formation. The toolkit of economic management in the field of finance is presented. Domestic and foreign scientific sources are analysed in a retrospective manner. Methods of state economic and financial regulation in the dynamics of their development over the period after the global economic crisis of 2008–2009 till now have been considered. As a result, features of the ongoing state financial policy since the beginning of the 2010s and its modernization in the early 2020s are identified; the economic and financial instruments used in practice are summarized and budgetary, tax and customs-tariff innovations to stimulate economic growth and integration processes in the national economic system of the country are presented. Furthermore, the need to monitor the current situation and promptly respond to its peculiarities when choosing priority means of regulation is justified. The key role of budget planning in the functioning of the financial sector of the state has been established; the expediency of coordination by all participants of economic relations of the actions taken in the process of tactical and strategic financial management has been confirmed. The need for the timely mobilization of all available resources and the coordinated application of budgetary, tax and customs-tariff instruments in times of crisis and increased macroeconomic instability has been proven. As recommendations possible vectors for developing state financial regulation in the economic space of Russia have been determined. Conclusions about the expediency of activating the financial policy of Russia in the new geopolitical reality, a larger-scale selective use of financial regulation methods to ensure the stable functioning of the country’s national economy are made.

The article presents an econometric analysis of the current set of government regulation tools in order to assess their socio-economic effect for the development of the Far East (preferential business regimes, measures of budgetary and tax support for priority industries). The study is based on a combination of quantitative methods (regression and correlation analysis, modeling, method of means, index method, difference-in-differences method, factor analysis) and qualitative methods (document analysis, case study, benchmarking, classification, and SWOT-analysis). As a result, an index of the Far East socio-economic development is proposed. Moreover, it is revealed that the federal regulation of the Far East development after 2014 produces a multiplier effect and, in general, has a positive impact. Some of the managerial tools (e.g. territories of advanced development) had no significant influence, which is explained by both miscalculations in regulation and a delayed effect. Forecasting showed that in the medium term, the most likely for the Russian Far East is the scenario of moderate growth. The research allowed formulating proposals to improve the efficiency of regulation. First, the sectoral tools should be integrated to provide comprehensive spatial regulation. Second, each tool should provide for the possibility of statistical evaluation. Third, it is necessary to justify the introduction of new instruments and monitor the achievement of the stated goals for them. Forth, monitoring should be carried out not only for the instruments in action, but also after their completion.

Along with many domestic organizations, organizations in the sphere of culture and art are interested in replenishing and updating the knowledge and skills of employees as well as their regular training. “The presence of employees who have passed advanced training and (or) professional retraining” is one of the effectiveness indicators for the federal state budgetary, autonomous institutions of culture and arts activities, and their managers’ performance. The choice of training programs for personnel engaged in the sphere of culture and art should be preceded by a diagnosis of the educational needs of employees, which allows organizing training according to their demand for the subject of educational programs, teaching methods, format and duration of classes. The questionnaire developed by us aims at diagnosing the educational needs of employees of organizations in the sphere of culture and art. It includes blocks of questions about the willingness of employees to participate in training programs, their needs for knowledge and competence development, priority teaching methods for them, their experience of participating in training events and preferred conditions for training. The conducted testing of the questionnaire showed that it is an informative, fast and convenient way to obtain information

about the educational needs of respondents; it can be easily adapted for use in any organizations in the sphere of culture and art. The results allowed us to outline the areas for improving existing personnel training programs. It expanded the subject of training programs for organizations in the sphere of culture and art’s employees, enhanced the training programs’ content to contain professional characteristics and seize the needs of potential listeners. It was also effective in conducting education process using active learning methods such as trainings, master classes and discussions. Lastly, the results ensured the practical orientation of educational programs and optimized the duration, time and format of training.