Percolation for the stable marriage of Poisson and Lebesgue

Let $\Xi$ be the set of points (we call the elements of $\Xi$ centers) of Poisson process in $\R^d$, $d\geq 2$, with unit intensity. Consider the allocation of $\R^d$ to $\Xi$ which is stable in the sense of Gale-Shapley marriage problem and in which each center claims a region of volume $\alpha\leq 1$. We prove that there is no percolation in the set of claimed sites if $\alpha$ is small enough, and that, for high dimensions, there is percolation in the set of claimed sites if $\alpha<1$ is large enough.Comment: revised version (only minor correction since v2), 16 pages, 3 figure

Hate, Politics, Law: Critical Perspectives on Combating Hate (2018). Thomas Brudholm & Birgitte Schepelern Johansen, eds. Oxford University Press

Received 10 March 2019. Published online 1 April 2019.The work on this text was supported by the grant of the Russian Science Foundation (№ 17-18-01194)

Victoria Smolkin (2018). A Sacred Space Is Never Empty. A History of Soviet Atheism. Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press

Received 1 December 2018. Published online 15 December 2018.The work was supported by the Russian Science Foundation (RSF) grant number 17-18-01194

Religious Education in Russian Schools: Plans, Pains, Practices

Received 19 July 2019. Accepted 20 December 2019. Published online 6 January 2020.Since 2012 the compulsory course “Fundamentals of Religious Cultures and Secular Ethics” has been taught in all public schools of Russia. The introduction of the course compelled Russian scholars to engage in comparative research on the development of normative framework and teaching practice in religious education. Despite the importance of global trends and international debates, it is crucial to observe the local dynamics and discover how particular conceptualizations of religion, education goals, principles and teaching practices affect religious education and its development. In our research, we focus on the case of religious education in Sverdlovsk region with the view to discover how successful are the plans which originated in the efforts of the Russian Orthodox Church to gain entry to public schools, but were moderated by the resistance of educational and academic community. How effective are the practices? What unforeseen issues transpired in its implementation? Intending to highlight some major characteristics of the emerging model of religious education in Russian Federation we conducted a set of semi-structured interviews with the representatives of major groups involved in teaching (public authorities; established religious organizations; education officials; educators; parents whose children attend the course modules and, finally, academic community in Religious Studies) and on its basis we conclude that religious education at Russian schools today rests on a discrepancy between the alleged goals of the course “Fundamentals of Religious Cultures and Secular Ethics”, which emphasize multicultural education, and its implementation, which stems from practical constraints and local agendas.The work was supported by the grant of the Russian Science Foundation (No. 17-18-01194)

"Горизонты будущего": реалии и надежды высокорейтинговых университетов БРИКС (анализ миссий)

Educational systems are key actors in social modernization. In order to assess whether BRICS can become an alternative platform for new international collaboration, the authors investigate how the top universities in BRICS countries describe their national and interna-tional role. The authors focus on the mission statements which articulate the universities’ goals and aspirations

Bulk-sensitive Photoemission of Mn5Si3

We have carried out a bulk-sensitive high-resolution photoemission experiment on Mn5Si3. The measurements are performed for both core level and valence band states. The Mn core level spectra are deconvoluted into two components corresponding to different crystallographic sites. The asymmetry of each component is of noticeable magnitude. In contrast, the Si 2p spectrum shows a simple Lorentzian shape with low asymmetry. The peaks of the valence band spectrum correspond well to the peak positions predicted by the former band calculation.Comment: To be published in: Solid State Communication

Daria Dubovka (2020). V monastyr’ s mirom. V poiskakh svetskikh kornei sovremennoi dukhovnosti [To the Monastery in Peace: Searching for Secular Origins of Contemporary Spirituality]. EUSP Press

This research was supported by the grant of the Russian Science Foundation (№20-18-00240)

Time, Moment, Eternity: Hieroglyphs and Meditations in Yakov Druskin’s Philosophy

Received 2 April 2021. Accepted 14 May 2021. Published online 9 July 2021.In this article, the author explores the interest of the interwar intellectuals in “time, death, God”. This focus on temporality as an existential problem engendered some major philosophical projects, which aimed at complete revision of how philosophy should be done, including Henri Bergson, Edmund Husserl, Franz Rosenzweig. The main part outlines a philosophical project of Yakov Druskin who addressed the problem of temporality in a highly original manner. Druskin combined philosophical reflection on time in its existential meaning with the search for intellectual methods and linguistic techniques to transcend our ordinary reality. Among these methods, in Druskin’s works at least two major modes—meditation and “hieroglyphs”—can be identified. Both methods, however, aim at “transforming rather than informing” and at enabling us to linger in a “certain equilibrium with a minor error”.The work was supported by the Russian Science Foundation (grant project No. 19-18-00342)

Joan Wallach Scott (2018). Sex and Secularism. Princeton University Press

Received 15 September 2019. Published online 5 October 2019.The work on the text was supported by the grant of the Russian Science Foundation (No. 17-18-01194)

Moral Choice and the Concept of Evil in Military Narratives of Orthodox Christians

Received 9 December 2022. Accepted 19 December 2022. Published online 30 December 2022.The article contributes critically to the current discussion of militant piety in Russian Orthodox Christianity. It argues for a more historically informed use of the notion of militant piety, which can benefit from critical discourse analysis of personal narratives and the focus on lived experience and lived religion of Orthodox Christians who were involved in wars. The article analyses ego-documents collected in two recent volumes: the first showcases the stories of Orthodox clergy and believers in WWII; the second volume gives voice to army officers of late Soviet wars. Both volumes mold personal accounts into a larger narrative with the view to provide Orthodox believers with discursive means for reflection upon wars and to offer an exemplary Orthodox Christian attitude to war. In these narratives, beliefs and principles were understood by religious people not abstractly but in the context of their individual and collective experience. The first narrative reveals how the course of the Great Patriotic War changed the Orthodox Christians’ attitudes from initial self-sacrificial service in defense of the Motherland to waging the sacred war against the Antichrist forces of evil and later to ensuring the retribution for Nazi criminals who were interpretatively exempt from Christian commandment of love. The second narrative does not present a normative ideal of an Orthodox warrior but rather it sheds light on real “militant piety”, on practical religiosity of soldiers and officers, who built their relationship with God and religion in the context of their professional activity, regularly described as “work”. Christian doctrine of love and forgiveness in its abstract form would be inapplicable in this “work”. In personal accounts, however, Orthodox Christian ethics is adapted to the circumstances of the military service and is transformed into the lived religion based on the principles of self-sacrifice, loyalty, and duty.The research is supported by the grant of the Russian Science Foundation (project No. 20-18-00240). The author would like to thank Ekaterina Purgina for her generous help with preparing this text in English