The article is based upon the authors presentation at the All-Russian Conference with international participation “The Concept of the Russian Civilization” held at the School of Public Administration of Lomonosov Moscow State University on January 22–23, 2024. In addition to the basic propositions of the presentation the article contains certain ideas and methodological hypothesis regarding the framework for defining the limits of the Eurasian geopolitical space taking into consideration the on-going global and regional transformations. The successful integration of the geo-economic macro-region “Larger Eurasia” as a part of the economic regionalization in the contemporary political environment of competition of values means considering a wider array of factors beyond geo-economics: history, including the history of economic development, culture as well as the social aspects. The author promotes the position in favor of the integration of the mechanisms that are based upon the Eurasian theory and advanced mechanisms that form the economic and governing basis for the formation of the geoeconomic macro-regions. The trend for the formation of geoeconomic macro-regions was slowed down by the West but non dismantled completely. Those factors are directly involved in the issue of Eurasian frontier and the mechanism of its geo-economic demarcation. Special attention in the article is paid to the issue of the Western border (frontier) of Eurasia. The issue is addressed basing on the authors hypothesis about the existence of “Dnieper proto-fault” that integrates civilizational (socio-cultural) and spatial geo-economic aspects. The fundamental transformations’ potential including the force which lies in this proto-fault has already manifested itself during the Special military operation that Russia has started in February 2022.The effective analysis is needed not only for the interdisciplinary approach but flexible and creative adaptation of the philosophical heritage of founders of the Eurasian theory updating it to the newly emerged reality and relevant to the special, geography-based political and economic architecture.

The article discusses the main ideas and theories of non-Western countries researchers that reveal the concept of “civilization state”. As a methodological basis for the study of ideas developed within the framework of a non-Western tradition, the author uses the provisions of decolonial theory, allowing to overcome the clear and implicit dominance of attitudes and epistemological foundations inherent in European-American social science. The article draws attention to the critical perception of decolonial optics, which insists on the need to revise the epistemological foundations of Western thinking and the world order as a whole. The author analyzes the features of distribution and development of “civilization state” concept in a number of non-Western countries in the first quarter of the 21st century; the article presents a brief overview of emergence and evolution of the “civilization” concept, the diversity of semantic and conceptual variations of this concept is shown, the features of this process in the conditions of decolonization of knowledge were identified, an analysis of modern ideas and justification of the “civilization state” concept in China, India, Turkey, Egypt and in a number of African countries was carried out. The author draws conclusions that the concept of “civilization state”, being the Western origin concept, nevertheless, is perceived and develops within the framework of overcoming the West-centric theories of social development. In the conclusion the main advantages, threats and risks are presented that are associated with the adoption of the “civilization state” concept. Among the advantages are such as cultural and value consolidation of society; political mobilization; the basis for sovereignty and an independent policy; preservation and development of civilizational identity; the uniqueness of the civilization country as a source of further development. Challenges and risks include the following: the ambiguity of the new world order; contradictions between the concept of civilization and the concept of the national state; civilizational populism; ideas of isolationism; the risks of becoming the failed civilizational state. The article also recognizes the need for consolidated research work for the further theoretical development of the “civilization state” concept.

Human capital management mechanisms are rapidly developing due to the dynamic nature of socio-economic changes and the emergence of innovative technological solutions. The transition to a new stage in the development of civilization means a change in people’s attitude to creating a material basis and ensuring existence. Most of the functions of people will eventually move into the phase of creative creation and management of these relationships, rather than direct participation in them. These trends are intensifying with the development and widespread dissemination of artificial intelligence, to which people begin to transfer an increasing number of functions to ensure the material basis for their own existence and development. The nature of labor is changing, and, consequently, the requirements for human capital are changing. Studying the nature of human capital as a self-increasing value and identifying the internal laws of innovative development make it possible to build a human resource management system in the context of sustainability by identifying the core of this system, the internal impulse and the mechanism of its dynamic development. Which is of particular importance for leveling risks and preventing the negative consequences of new challenges of our time. The transformation of modern society can be considered from this point of view as a transition period to a new view at human and his/her relationship with the environment, including human’s attitude to himself and his/her own environment (both personal and business), to nature, to the state and the world order.

Facing the dynamic development of diversified contacts between Russia and the Arab world amidst the steadily increasing political and economic interest of Arab countries2 in the Eurasian geopolitical space, an adequate assessment of the causes and the strength potential of such growth has acquired particular importance. This enables us to hedge both political and business risks by predicting scenarios for the future development, and, which is even more important, to address effectively challenges and problems. The successful implementation of the Foreign Policy Concept of the Russian Federation approved on March 31, 2023 in the medium and long terms depends on the survivability of the new paradigm of relations between Russia and the Arab countries, regardless of the anti-Russia Western sanctions. This fully correlates with Russian efforts to promote integration processes in Eurasia, primarily under the within the framework of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization as well as outside Eurasia with the involvement of big Eurasian states (India, China) and the non-Eurasian “rising powers” (Brazil, South Africa, etc.) on the BRICS platform. The comprehensive analysis of the factors which have been stimulating the interest of the Arab countries in Eurasia, complementing the already existing sporadic domestic and foreign studies, is intended to form a list of arguments in favor of proving the hypothesis of the strategic, rather than purely tactical nature of the intentions of Arab elites to cooperate with Russia and other Eurasian states. Such arguments imply among other things the common perception by Russia and the Arabs of the current historical transition from the unipolar to a multipolar world.

The proposed article presents the author’s view on how the civilizational approach to the analysis of economic processes developed and what it consisted of in various predominantly Russian-language literary sources of the 19th century. The author recognizes that the volume of sources containing evidence of such an approach is immense, so he focuses on those that he considers the most important and indicative for assessing the contribution of Russian science to the development of such a methodology of economic analysis, as well as the modern concept of human economy, to which some of the author’s earlier works were devoted. In the author’s opinion, the civilization approach already at the early stages of economic research helped to bring out non-material, cultural-psychological and moral aspects of economic behavior and formation of economic institutions. Most studies of the impact of civilizational development on the economy demonstrate a certain one-directionality, that is, they are built in the logic of a hierarchical world order: civilized nations are at the top of the pyramid of development, and uncivilized, barbaric nations are located somewhere at its base. The civilizational approach allows us to abandon the “economism”, which has become a template, based on the exclusive recognition of the primacy of material factors of social development. In addition, in the author’s opinion, there is an opportunity to raise the question of the correctness of the multipolarity concept, which can no longer describe in detail the formation of a new world order. The civilizational approach gives a chance to assess the processes of globalization and fragmentation in a new way, not as antagonistic processes, but as mutually conditioned. In general, the future development of a multi-civilizational world order and its conflict-free nature will be largely determined by the willingness of representatives of primarily Western civilization to recognize the need to gradually abandon the paradigm of universality of social development conditions in favor of manners identity paradigm, uniqueness of economic structure and behavior, and the importance of identity for economic development.

The author offers a brief overview of the field of identity studies in political research with a focus on the significance of civilizational identity as a key concept relevant for evaluating the dynamics of political identity and the priorities of political agenda setting in a radically transforming world. The paper outlines a conceptual framework for understanding civilizational identity and assesses its role in forming the discursive power of the state and in promoting a development policy agenda. This agenda is activated by identity politics promoted by the state and other political actors to construct and uphold an array of politically significant identities which are important for social cohesion and for implementing national development goals. Correlating tradition and innovation in the social sphere is an important priority for consistent development policies. Russia has longstanding traditions of promoting a civilizational discourse reflecting her place in the Christian world and in the dialogue of cultures and civilizations, with a focus on the pivotal role of the state in social development. The research methodology is based on approaches developed in the field of identity studies. These include both the assessment of identity transformations as changing notions of the self in relation to politics in a fluid social and political environment and the implications these perceptions of societal realities have for current social policies and for promoting political change.

The historical and philosophical theory of cultural and historical types formulated in Danilevsky’s “Russia and Europe” is often interpreted as opposing the world history concept. This is contradicted by the fact that Danilevsky himself uses the world history concept as a working concept and, moreover, expresses his substantive judgements on this subject. In our opinion, this circumstance is not a contradiction on Danilevsky’s part. According to the approach outlined in the article, first of all “Russia and Europe” is a political treatise and the primary issue discussed in it (and the corresponding plan of consideration) is the problem of action and the subject of action. A cultural and historical type, fully developed, is formalized into a system of states or a state (with the former option being preferred by Danilevsky as providing more opportunities for development). Thus, they also act as subjects of action in themselves, but at the same time their system is also capable of acting as such (the system of international law, which in Danilevsky’s time is fundamentally limited, first as the system of international law of Christian nations and then, since the 1860s, of “civilized” ones). World history appears exclusively in terms of theoretical comprehension. It follows that it is impossible to act from world history — that is to speak on behalf of history. Danilevsky’s thesis itself appears to be complexly structured, disintegrating into two parts: the absence of such a historical subject as mankind and the impossibility to speak about “meaning in history” within the framework of positive scientific knowledge. It is noted that both parts of the thesis are autonomous and thus can be discussed separately, i.e. the refutation/rejection of one does not automatically mean the rejection of the other.

In modern socio-humanitarian disciplines, the concept of a “system of social sciences” is absent. This concept existed in Soviet times and meant, among other things, the existence of a single conceptual social science apparatus and methodology. It is generally recognized that the interdisciplinary approach that replaced this system, which was recognized in our country after the collapse of the Soviet Union, is based on the difference in concepts, subjects and objects of research of the sciences of the entire socio-humanitarian block. At the same time, Russian social science practically does not pay attention to the theoretical and methodological relationship between the interdisciplinary approach and the concept of globalization, developed in Western science mainly in the second half of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries and which came to our country in the post-Soviet period in many ways in a “ready-made” form. At the same time, those researchers who state such a relationship consider this circumstance as a virtue of an interdisciplinary approach. In the first part of this article, an attempt is made to analyze the impact of the concept of globalization, in particular, its characteristic denial of the values of national statehood, sovereignty, including cultural and historical, on the formation and general principles of an interdisciplinary approach. The second part examines modern concepts of Russia as a civilization, first of all, the concept of state-civilization, currently introduced in the “Concept of Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation” dated March 30, 2023 and “Fundamentals of state policy in the field of historical education” dated May 08, 2024, in the context of the advantages of the Soviet Union identified by the author the experience of the social sciences system. At the end of the article, proposals are made to combine some basic principles of Soviet social science with a modern civilizational approach in order to create a unified value framework for the disciplines of the socio-humanitarian block.

The article is a brief overview of the concepts that exist in sociological science from the moment of its inception to the present and related to civilizational issues. The peculiarities of this branch of knowledge, which arose during the Great Industrial Revolution, in the era of the formation of nation-states, led to the fact that for a long time sociologists did not use a civilizational approach, the idea of civilization prevailed as a certain stage in the development of society, opposing “barbarism”, in the age of Enlightenment (F. Guizot), and in the twentieth century (N. Elias). At the same time, it is possible to identify a certain attitude to civilizational issues in Marxism, and in an alternative approach to it, which the author calls technological (D. Bell, O. Tofler with J. Gelbraith adjacent to them), and in the concept of the “world-system” by I. Wallerstein, and in geoeconomics by F. Braudel. The article analyzes the contribution to the sociology of civilizations of the classics of the civilizational approach (N.Y. Danilevsky, O. Spengler, A. Toynbee, P. Sorokin). Special attention is paid to the “civilizational turn” in sociology in the 1970s, primarily related to the works of Sh. Eisenstadt and continued at the beginning of the XXI century by Aronson, as well as the concept of Russian civilization in the works of sociologists D. Nielsen and I. Yakovenko. The article raises theoretical questions about the civilizational approach from a sociological perspective, first of all, the scientific possibilities to identify specifically cultural and value cores of various civilizations, including Russian, to define Russian civilization in relation to the concepts of Eastern Christian civilization and Soviet civilization, as well as the degree of its universalism and autarkism.