“Modernity continues to be what structures our historical self-understanding…”

Received 30 August 2017. Published online 29 September 2017

Carlo Invernizzi Accetti (2015). Relativism and Religion: Why Democratic Societies Do Not Need Moral Absolutes. Columbia University Press

Received 9 March 2017. Published online 15 April 2017

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)

Low temperature microwave emission from molecular clusters

We investigate the experimental detection of the electromagnetic radiation generated in the fast magnetization reversal in Mn12-acetate at low temperatures. In our experiments we used large single crystals and assemblies of several small single crystals of Mn12-acetate placed inside a cylindrical stainless steel waveguide in which an InSb hot electron device was also placed to detect the radiation. All this was set inside a SQUID magnetometer that allowed to change the magnetic field and measure the magnetic moment and the temperature of the sample as the InSb detected simultaneously the radiation emitted from the molecular magnets. Our data show a sequential process in which the fast inversion of the magnetic moment first occurs, then the radiation is detected by the InSb device, and finally the temperature of the sample increases during 15 ms to subsequently recover its original value in several hundreds of milliseconds.Comment: changed conten

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