Promoting Greater Cooperation Between Russia and OECD Donors

Russia is unique amongst the BRICS group for being a ‘re-emerging’ donor. The USSR was one of the largest donor countries in the world. After a relatively brief period as a net aid recipient during the 1990s, Russia has once again become a significant provider of development assistance. A number of new opportunities now exist to promote greater cooperation in this field between Russia and traditional donors. It is unlikely that any future global development cooperation agenda can be defined without strong Russian participation. It is therefore crucial for established donor countries to develop a clear understanding of Russian priorities such as health and education, as well as identify areas for further collaboration.UK Department for International Developmen

Diary of a Servant of the Landlords Golubtsovs (1872-1875): Information Potential of Archive Documents

Анализируются информационные возможности опубликованного архивного документа — дневника Матвея Андреева, слуги помещиков Голубцовых. Рассматриваются возможности реконструкции повседневной жизни в провинциальной усадьбе.There is an analysis of the information potential of the published archive document — diary of Matvey Andreev, who was a servant of landlords Golubtsov. There is also considered the possibility to reconstruct the everyday life in a country estate

The Russian Federation’s International Development Assistance Programme: A State of the Debate Report

Russia is unique among emerging donors for being a ‘re-emerging’ donor: the Soviet Union was one of the largest donor countries in the world, and Russia’s period as an aid recipient was relatively brief. Russian development cooperation is driven by key security and economic priorities, as well as resulting from commitments made to multilateral organisations. Russian official development assistance, according to official government sources, increased fivefold in the period 2004–11. Given a series of Russian presidencies in major international institutions, starting with the G20 in 2013, Russia is both interested in and well positioned to take new international initiatives through which it can promote its national priorities in the global agenda. This report discusses Russia’s growing role as a ‘re-emerging’ development cooperation partner, its increasing leadership in multilateral initiatives and the changing domestic policy landscape in Russia. It is unlikely that the global development cooperation agenda can be defined without strong participation by Russia, both as an individual actor and as a member of the G8, G20 and BRICS. It is therefore crucial for established donor countries to develop a clear understanding of Russian priorities.UK Department for International Developmen

Introduction of open E-learning system as a factor of regional development

The article analyses the economic and socio-cultural premises for introducing the open e-learning in the Ural region, as well as the potential economic effect of this type of educational activity. The article strives to prove a regular pattern of the universities’ transition to e-learning, also in connection with the changes of the educational paradigm and the nature of the educational system management. The hypothesis of the paper is connected with bringing the economic dimension to a humanitarian concept of e-learning, which becomes more and more widespread. The methodology of the article is based on the recognition of the fact that the macroeconomic processes in the information society and the processes occurring in a particular industry — higher education — are of isomorphic nature. On the basis of the analysis of global experience and basic theoretical approaches to e-learning, including the Lifelong Learning concept, the authors make a conclusion of the progressive growth of interest in different countries and regions. The e-learning is treated primarily as a tool to improve quality and efficiency of the educational process. The accuracy of understanding functions and peculiarities of e-learning allows one to determine a positive economic effect of its application for the university, the region, and the employers. The article shows organisational mechanisms and financial model of implementing e-learning in the Ural Federal University. The description is made of the cost options for open-type e-learning course development, investment parameters for their establishment, as well as costs of implementing educational programmes with the application of e-learning. The analysis of the activities of Ural Federal University on implementing e-learning gives the opportunity to further imagine the effect from the introduction of e-learning in other universities in the region. The results of the research may be applied in the institutions of secondary and higher education in the decision concerning the volume and form of the e-learning system

Everyday Life of a Provincial Estate: A diary of a servant of the Ural Landowners Golubtsov

Marina Larionova, a specialist in the history of Russia, a candidate of historical sciences, presents her Everyday Life of a Provincial Estate (Yekaterinburg, 2013). The book was written with reference to a rare historical source, a diary of a servant of the Ural Landowners Golubtsov that is kept in the State Archive of Sverdlovsk Region (GASO, f. 67, op. 1, d. 69). The diary is anonymous, and the authorship was established as a result of an inquiry into its origin; Matvey Andreev, a descendant of a family of serfs was finally given credit as the author, and, according to the diary, he was a petty bourgeois of Kungur, an uyezd town, by the time the diary was started. For 3 years and 5 months (1872-1875), he wrote an account of daily life in the estate and in the manor house located in Aleksandrovskoye Settlement of Vladimir Platonovich Golubtsov, a Perm landowner. The diary describes the everyday life of a Ural petty manorial estate located in Krasnoufimsk Uyezd, Perm Governorate, the day-to-day routine of the owner and the dwellers of the manor, the relationships between them and the ones characteristic of the life of an uyezd community, the emotional experience of the people mentioned in the diary, and other details shedding light on the previously unknown events in the history of the Urals. In her talk with Lyudmila Dashkevich and Yevgeny Neklyudov, professors of history, research fellows of the Institute for History and Archaeology (Russian Academy of Sciences, Ural Branch), and with Irina Shalina, professor of philology, the author discusses the academic significance and informational potential of the source in question. The comparison drawn of the document with some previously known similar sources gives evidence proving its uniqueness conditioned by its comprehensive character, the author's viewpoint and the quality of the publication. Thus, it does not only comply with the text and has few editorial corrections, it also contains a variety of academic historical, cultural and biographic commentaries. The diary both describes the problems a 19 th -century manor could face on a daily basis and dwells on some general issues connected with the relationships between social classes, the historical psychology of servants, the perseverance of serf consciousness after the abolition of serfdom, the patriarchal character of life, and the modernization of the region's economy. © 2015 Ural Federal University. All rights reserved

I Intend to Rewrite and Supplement All Published Genealogical Books...: A Letter of V. V. Rummel to V. V. Golubtsov

The article offers a source analysis of the only surviving letter written by the famous genealogist, author of the two-volume Genealogical collection of Russian noble families, Witold Vladislavovich Rummel to his co-author on this collection, the Perm landowner, amateur local historian and genealogist Vladimir Vladimirovich Golubtsov, dated July 29, 1884 and sent from Simansky Log, his St. Petersburg estate, to the Urals. It is stored in the personal provenance fond of the Perm landowners Golubtsovs in the State Archive of Sverdlovsk Region. Written in the early days of the two well-known genealogists acquaintance, it contains information on ways the two specialists exchanged specific genealogical information, complementing each other's data on the history of well- and little-known genealogic trees, mostly in some way related to the Golubtsov family. The letter allows to gain an impression of Rummel's literary taste and to partially reconstruct the structure of Witold's library: it lists 18 books used by the genealogist, when compiling genealogical lists, and thus demonstrates Rummel's sources. Finally, Rummel shared his plans for the publication of the collection and invited Vladimir Vladimirovich to send him any new data to complement the published materials on the noble families. It was after this letter that the Perm researcher seriously thought about the possibility of publishing his work and offered Rummel to act as his collaborator and companion and to finance the publication. Thus, this document marks a beginning of joint work on preparation and publication of the Genealogical collection of Russian noble families, the book still considered quite authoritative in studying genealogy of noble families, as it provided the scientific methodology and greatly expanded the possibilities of genealogical research

Everyday Life of Fine Lady in Province (by Material of Letters of 1840-1850-ies of Ye. A. Solomirskaya, Ural Factory Owner’s Wife)

On the basis of archival materials - letters of a metropolitan fine lady, wife of co-owner of Sysertsky plants (Perm province) Yekaterina Aleksandrovna Solomirskaya, written in the middle of the 19th century from the province (Sysertsky plant or Yekaterinburg) to her father in Moscow, the Moscow postal director A. Ya. Bulgakov, - daily life of a noblewoman, who grew up and shined in society, and subsequently trapped in the Ural province, is reconstructed. The process of adaptation of metropolitan lady to provincial life, the change of her value orientations, lifestyle, everyday matters, circle of friends and interests is discussed. The relevance of the work is due to the turn of world humanitarian knowledge to the anthropological paradigm of research, the desire to rethink approaches to the reconstruction of the past, close attention to the life and work of certain members of the upper class as carriers of cultural values of Russian society, as well as the unexplored daily life of the provincial nobility. Analysis of the Ural archival materials in these aspects refutes the well-established opinion that the nobles did not live in the Urals