End of organised atheism. The genealogy of the law on freedom of conscience and its conceptual effects in Russia

In the current climate of the perceived alliance between the Russian Orthodox Church and the state, atheist activists in Moscow share a sense of juridical marginality that they seek to mitigate through claims to equal rights between believers and atheists under the Russian law on freedom of conscience. In their demands for their constitutional rights, including the right to political critique, atheist activists come across as figures of dissent at risk of the state's persecution. Their experiences constitute a remarkable (and unexamined in anthropology) reversal of political and ideological primacy of state-sponsored atheism during the Soviet days. To illuminate the legal context of the atheists’ current predicament, the article traces an alternative genealogy of the Russian law on freedom of conscience from the inception of the Soviet state through the law's post-Soviet reforms. The article shows that the legal reforms have paved the way for practical changes to the privileged legal status of organized atheism and brought about implicit conceptual effects that sideline the Soviet meaning of freedom of conscience as freedom from religion and obscure historical references to conscience as an atheist tenet of Soviet ethics

PILOT STUDY RESULTS OF THE INFLUENCE OF CITICOLINE AND PIRIBEDIL ON COGNITIVE FUNCTION IN PATIENTS WITH ISCHEMIC HEART DISEASE AFTER CORONARY ARTERY BYPASS SURGERY

Aim. To reveal cognitive deficit after coronary artery bypass, the influence of citicoline, piribedil on the state of higher cerebral functions in the early and late periods after surgery.Material and methods. The study included 94 patients with ischemic heart disease. All patients were divided into 3 groups. Patients of the first group (n=30) were prescribed citicoline as a cerebral neuroprotective drug. Patients of the second group (n=32) had piribedil in addition to standard therapy. Patients of the control group (n=32) had only a standard treatment without any neuroprotective drugs. All patients underwent coronary artery bypass surgery. The cognitive function was assessed before, 10 days after and six months after coronary artery bypass.Results. Patients of group 1 and 2 had achieved pre-surgical levels of cognitive tests results 6 months after coronary artery bypass. The control group had achieved initial levels only in three tests: visual memory (immediate simulation; p=0.008), categorical association (p=0.002), clock drawing test (Wilcoxon test; p=0,005), while other indices were reduced in comparison with the initial ones.Conclusion. The obtained results allow considering the studied drugs as a protectors of cognitive function after surgery. Randomized controlled double-blind studies on large samples are needed to confirm these results.</p