In the context of escalating geopolitical tensions, increasing information confrontation, an important factor in the preservation of the Russian state is systematic activity for the social integration of the younger generation, the development of adequate civic attitudes and values. According to the author of the article, today there is a change in the model of implementation of the state youth policy, the focus of which is increasingly shifting to the education system, including Russian universities. In this regard, an important research task is the analysis of models of youth policy and educational activities in Russian universities. The purpose of the article is a brief overview of the historical models of student education in our country, as well as an analysis of the attitudes of the top management of Russian universities regarding the organization of youth policy and educational activities at the university.

 The article is based on a series of in-depth interviews conducted with the leadership of Russian universities in July–September 2022. It offers criteria for analyzing the effectiveness of educational work with students, presents a typology of models of such work in Russian universities in different historical periods, highlights the main dysfunctions of youth policy implementation in Russian universities at the present stage. In conclusion, the author proposed several key principles to improve the effectiveness of youth policy and educational activities at the university as an important mechanism for the social integration of the younger generation.

In the Russian Federation the relevance of researching policy towards Russian-speaking young compatriots living abroad is growing. Firstly, Russian-speaking compatriots are the demographic potential of Russia, and nowadays institutional mechanisms have been developed and implemented to facilitate the voluntary resettlement of compatriots living abroad to the Russian Federation. Secondly, in the conditions of geopolitical instability Russian compatriots are a source of “soft power” preserving the unity of the Russian world. This study discusses the potential of education as a source of state policy aimed at coordinating work with young compatriots in the CIS countries. The purpose of this work is to identify the main problems and strategies of using education as a “soft power” resource in relation to Russian compatriots living in the CIS countries. The research methodology is based on “soft power” theories and political communication theories. The research method is a discourse analysis of the newsletters of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation (Russian MFA) for 2012-2022. During this period 1949 documents were published, the sample is solid but not every document contained information on the studied problem. During discourse analysis the following tools of public administration were evaluated: communication and institutional resources of education as the basis of Russia’s “soft power” in the CIS countries aimed at preservation of communication with Russian-speaking compatriots. The discourse analysis revealed the transformation of the main policy strategies in relation to Russian-speaking compatriots justified both by geopolitical challenges and the final formulation of the ideological concept of Russia. Russian language and culture preservation and the development of public diplomacy were the main strategies in 2012-2014. Since 2014 efforts to preserve historical memory have been intensified, and by 2020 a discourse aimed at justifying the preservation of traditional values is being formed. The transfer of education combines these stages as a key strategy that promotes the voluntary resettlement of compatriots to the Russian Federation or the preservation and reproduction of traditional culture on the territory of other states.

The purpose of this article is to determine the potential for constructive social change that can reach the communities of technology enthusiasts in Russian universities, and to identify possible directions for such changes. University communities of technology enthusiasts and the sites where they work are chosen as the object of research: fab labs, CMITs, circles. The basic conceptual framework of the research is the theory of fields, which asserts that society is a system of embedded social fields. Social changes in this theory are referred to as the transformation of existing social fields or the emergence of new ones. The term “practice of the future” is first introduced, and understood as a group of people united by common interests in advanced technological and social solutions sharing common activities and knowledge (sharing), but not included in a sustainable social field. The hypothesis of the present study is that communities of practice of the future have the capacity for social change and the directions of such changes can be identified through the analysis of strategies that are consistently applied in these communities. The semi-structured in-depth interviews of leaders and participants of university student technological centers are used as the material for the study. The article concludes that the two most obvious social fields in which communities of technology enthusiasts of Russian universities are capable of producing changes are the field of technological entrepreneurship and the field of educational innovation. In the first of these fields, the strategies of technology enthusiasts (initiative, project orientation, diversity and meritocracy) give advantages over players who do not employ these strategies. In the second field (educational innovation) these strategies can give the direction of changes, bringing together enthusiasts of relevant educational technologies. Social changes of the techno-optimistic type generated by the university communities of technology enthusiasts is not yet directed to a specific social field. However, examples of large-scale country-wide projects show that such a field is beginning to form. It is quite possible that modern university communities of technology enthusiasts are able to generate a social field no less powerful than their predecessors – the movement of technological kruzhoks – at the begining of the 20th century.

The purpose of this paper is to explore perceptions of theoretical foundations of nonviolence theory by modern students and their willingness to apply ideas of nonviolence to everyday life. The study problem lies in the fact that, in general, the scantily explored phenomenon of nonviolence is mostly studied in the context of philosophical and ethical understanding, ideology, and politics. While the values of nonviolence individual understanding, their local application in everyday life is still remain unexplored. Research design: focus group methodology. In this study, the focus group method was used as the main one for data collection, as it gives participants the opportunity to explore the topic in a focused discussion. Also, a phenomenological or «lived experience» approach was used since it would allow an exploration and understanding of the opinions of student. The focus group topic template included two parts, in the first part the participants discuss and interpret the ideas about the theoretical foundations of the concept of nonviolence, in the second part the focus group members share their own experiences and discussed the possibility of implementing the ideas of the nonviolence concepts in everyday life. The focus group discussions were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim with the permission of the participants. When notes were summarized and analyzed, which allowed researchers to identify five key topics to draw conclusions about the place and role of violence and nonviolence in students’ daily lives. The article shows that the focus group participants mostly share the conceptual ideas of the nonviolence theories, but allow situations in which the use of force is necessary. The conclusions from this article can be used in further research aimed at studying the forms and strategies of conflict resolution in the daily life of youth. 

The article presents an analysis of the resource capacity of academic community of Ural Federal District universities based on qualitative research data. The main method was conducting 40 semi-structured interviews with Ural universities academic staff. The study used a quota sample, in which informants were differentiated into groups by age (under and over 40) and by the field of scientific knowledge in which they work. The study included an analysis of statistical data reflecting the main indicators of the development of the RPC of the universities of Ural Federal District in the period 2014–2023. As sources of statistical data, databases of monitoring the effectiveness of higher education organizations, data of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation, and «Indicators of Education» statistical collection were used. The main results covered five resource blocks of the RPC: socio-demographic, research, pedagogical, the resource of interaction of the RPS and research teams, moral and symbolic. In aggregate and interrelation, 11 types of RPS resources were disclosed. It was concluded that the results of a comprehensive study of the resourcing of the RPC can serve as a basis for management decisions on staffing strategies of universities in new conditions. The strengths and resource deficits of the RPC were shown. The study allowed us to draw conclusions about those resources that have a cross-cutting character (temporal, moral and ideological) and are necessary as predictors of the actualization of other resources (research, publication, pedagogical).

This article proposes an approach to the analysis of the role of universities in the socioeconomic ecosystem of their host city, which makes it possible to pinpoint the specifics of the university city phenomenon in modern Russia. The study uses the theory of functional specialization of complexly organized spatial systems as its underlying methodology. To address specific research questions, methods of comparative, evolutionary and economic-statistical analysis are used. As a result of the study, the authors establish the specifics of the spatial distribution of universities in Europe, the USA and the Russian Federation; and substantiated the choice of Tomsk, Novosibirsk and Yekaterinburg as the relevant research sample for the Russian Federation. The article proposes the methodology for assessing the role of universities in the socio-economic space of the city comprising: a set of calculated economic and statistical indicators; analysis of the established practice for deciding if to represent a particular city as a scientific and educational center in strategic management directives; and integral interpretation of the results obtained. The analysis of the leading scientific and educational centers in Russia stated above indicates that in no city the share of the university sector in the overall number of the city’s employees, or its population, reaches 20%–the key threshold for establishing the predominance of universities in the functional the structure of a city. At the same time, the economic dominance of Tomsk universities in their city (the total income of Tomsk universities exceeds the city’s budget, which is unique for Russia) became the basis for positioning the city as the “student capital city” of the country. Yekaterinburg and Novosibirsk, which exceed Tomsk in absolute terms, such as number of universities and total number of students studying in the city, lag Tomsk in the sphere of symbolic representation. The article concludes that, due to the specifics of its genesis and evolution, the phenomenon of a university city in Russia receives a new significance, reflecting the diversity of relationships between a large city and a complex, hierarchical system of universities operating in the socio-economic space of a common territory.

The article is considered the problem of the university teachers’ social well-being, that is connected with significant and continuous changes in the social context of the development of the high education institution. Two issues are raised: about the complicated situation (context) and negative determinants impact on the teachers social well-being, and, accordingly, about the relevant criteria for measuring the social well-being in the studied professional group under the current conditions. It is explained that the complex social context and the observed changes in the teachers social well-being are determined by the ratio of objective and subjective factors: the increase in the number of risks and the rapid development of society affect not only the teachers’ status, but also how they aware themselves in these conditions. To confirm the thesis about a possible decrease in social well-being against the background of everincreasing social threats, the results of a sociological survey conducted at the Novosibirsk State Technical University using the questionnaire method (n = 327) are presented. According to these results, most teachers get satisfaction from their work and, above all, work with students, but the frequent changes in the concepts of higher education and emergence of external threats negatively affect the state of social well-being. Although slightly more than half “probably wouldn’t change” their profession for any other, not everyone can fully adapt to the new and constantly changing higher education system requirements. The positive socio-psychological climate in the subdivisions acts as a protective barrier against external threats. In general, the results obtained give reason to think about the need to monitor the state of social well-being of teachers in the process of modernizing the higher education system and create appropriate conditions for successful scientific and educational activities. 

The aim of the article is to identify ways and conditions for internationalization development in Russia. The author shows from the neo-institutional approach point of view that Western internationalization strategies are implemented under conditions of the formed university identity as an entrepreneurial one with strong institutional support. At the present moment, in Russia new university’s identity is still the forming, such a system of education at the institutional level is absent. It was also noted, that internationalization in the West was initially used as a tool to improve the quality of education that perspectively contributed to higher school competitiveness under conditions of mass-market orientation. While in Russia university’s competitiveness is a condition for successful internationalization. At the present formal changes in the education system, informal limitations create a conflict for the university identities. The university is still not perceived as a sovereign economic entity. The market capacity factor is poorly taken into account. The entrepreneurial component of higher education institution does not act as its competitive advantage at this stage, and in the global dimension its significant lag is observed. Important conditions for the successful development of internationalization are: a differentiated approach to universities in the implementation of internationalization strategies, the relative autonomy of the university, the elimination of the gap between the goals of internationalization and state mechanisms aimed at their implementation, as well as the conditions for developing internal internationalization, the interested joint activity of all subjects of the scientific and educational process and the private sector of the economy, the elimination of the gap among the developed mechanisms for increasing the competitiveness of the university through the commercialization of projects and the underdevelopment of public private partnership (PPP) forms in the higher education system, improving approaches to organizing the scientific and educational activities of the university. 

From September 1, 2023, in accordance with the order of the Ministry of Education and Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation dated July 19, 2022 No. 662, the number of hours for studying the history of Russia in higher education institutions for students of non-historical specialties will increase. Students of all Russian universities will start studying the updated course of Russian history, expanded in its geographical and chronological framework and covering the events taking place in the country and the world, concerning every citizen of Russia. For teachers, the changes made to the federal state educational standards are detailed in the new concept of teaching the course “History of Russia” approved on February 2, 2023. The concept, representing a social order addressed to education, contains an important ideological message, the development of citizenship and patriotism among students, but does not disclose specific tools to achieve the goals.

 The article analyzes the psychological, pedagogical and methodological aspects of the most difficult complex problem that will affect the history teacher at the university as the executor of the decisions made. An approach to methodological solutions is determined through clarifying the essence of the phenomena of patriotism, identity, historical consciousness, self-awareness and the psychological mechanisms of their formation in education. The tasks of the teacher as the organizer of the learning situation in learning based on the knowledge of the individual characteristics of students and ways to optimize their personal development on the basis of history are revealed. The article sets the methodological guidelines for moral education in the course of teaching history, due to the requirements of the reform of higher education and modern social challenges. This is all the more important because universities have the right to determine them independently. 

The article highlights the features of three paradigms of education: competency-based, digital and modernization. The purpose of the study is to analyze the influence of factors of educational paradigms on the motivation of students to study history at a university. The empirical base of the study includes materials from an Internet survey of first- and second-year students of universities in Samara region (N=389) conducted in 2022. Depending on the attitude of students to the study of history at the university, three groups of respondents were identified: “supporters”, “moderate supporters” and “indifferent to the study of history at the university”. The grouping of students made it possible to analyze the differentiated influence of the factors of three types of educational paradigms on the motivation of students. The modernization paradigm has the greatest positive potential in shaping the motivation of students to study history. It, to a greater extent than other paradigms, takes into account the specifics of history as a humanitarian discipline. Within the framework of three paradigms, factors that have a negative impact on the motivation of students to study history are identified. Among them, insufficient development of independent work skills is of great importance. The practical significance of the study is to use the information obtained to improve the methods of teaching history at the university, as well as other social and humanitarian disciplines, taking into account the factors of student motivation.