The article analyzes in detail the medical, as well as socio-economic and social problems in Russia caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The novelty and little-studied process of the course of a new disease, its consequences for the human body, caused many problems associated with the liberalization of medicine and healthcare as the most important social institution. Although huge human resources were allocated and large material resources were spent to combat the pandemic, it was not possible to quickly localize its spread. Despite the fact that a sufficient number of optimistic forecasts were made, including by medical professionals, and even specific dates for the end of the pandemic were periodically called, it has clearly taken on a protracted nature. At the same time, unfortunately, the experience of fighting various infectious diseases, including smallpox and cholera, accumulated by domestic medicine, especially during the Soviet period, was not taken into account. Not enough attention was paid to the analysis of the experience of fighting this disease in its “homeland” — China.

Among the economic problems caused by the pandemic are significant sectoral shifts and imbalances in the structure of the economy, a drop in GDP, an increase in inflation, a decrease in real incomes and a redistribution of expenditures among the population, as well as serious changes in the labor market. The social problems caused by the pandemic include the deterioration of the socio-demographic situation and the serious aggravation of traditional and the emergence of new forms of social inequality — health inequality, digital inequality, age and regional inequality.

The coronavirus pandemic, which has engulfed almost the entire world, has seriously affected the economy, as well as social and behavioral practices, has caused fears, anxiety, even panic, and deterioration of the social well-being of large segments of society.

The article analyzes three probabilistic forecasts of the development of events after the pandemic. According to the first of them, the whole world, including our country, will return to the former, neoliberal course after the end of the pandemic. Then new actors of the world order will come to the forefront of history, and the most powerful socio-economic crisis will take a protracted character, which will entail numerous human sacrifices. The second involves the establishment of a new state dictatorship — a digital type, with total control of bureaucratic institutions over all spheres of personal and public life, including the spread of the influence of medicine on them. The third one justifies the use of the experience of fighting the pandemic and the crisis to review and eliminate the dysfunctional components of the social system, change the attitude to personal and social values, which, ultimately, will help change society for the better.

The article deals with the pioneering approaches of P.A. Sorokin to the study of non-linear transformations of social and cultural realities in the form of fluctuations. They have complex causality of both deterministic and non-deterministic character, which the scientist formulates through principles: immanent generation of consequences, self-definition by the system of its own destiny and self-determination. On the basis of these methodological innovations, he “rediscovered” the progress as an exclusively bottom-up development and argued that the pragmatically oriented development of Truth and Beauty while diminishing the production of Good leads to non-linear deformations of the institutions of democracy, law, and the family. Today Sorokin’s ideas are being actualized because non-linear approaches to the interpretation of the global complexity are in demand. The theories of becoming (P. Sztompka), rhizomic development (J. Deleuze and F. Guattari), hybridization (J. Urry), metamorphization of the world (U. Beck) and traumatic development (P. Sztompka, J. Alexander, J.T. Toshchenko) are analyzed in detail. It is concluded that in the foreseeable future the humanity will have to live with the dominance of the non-linear realities. Accordingly, we need new scientific instruments for their governance, based on interdisciplinarity, which should have a humanistic core – that corresponds to the content and spirit of P. Sorokin’s theory.

Humanity has always perceived uncertainty as an extremely negative characteristic of the environment. With a certain degree of convention, the entire development of civilization can be viewed as a struggle against uncertainty. And by the 2020s, people had acquired a powerful weapon for this struggle — information and communication technologies. They have created unprecedented opportunities to monitor and predict the development of a huge number of objects (or/and subjects).

However, as is always the case in the development of society, clear success is coupled with serious problems generated by it. Minimizing uncertainty turns into total control over people. A new type of totalitarianism is emerging. In many of its features, it is similar to its predecessor of the twentieth century, but it also has its own characteristics. Whereas the “old” totalitarianism was built around the protection and implementation of ideological values, the new totalitarianism is based on managerial imperatives and the desire to avoid uncertainty. If within the framework of the “old” totalitarianism the subject of control was only the state with its specially designed structures, in the new totalitarianism people are controlled not only by state bodies, but also by corporations.

The most important feature of the new totalitarianism is that modern technology begins to consistently destroy the lacunae of human freedom in all spheres of social life, and above all in the economy. The planned economy of the twentieth century could not completely subordinate the people’s economic behavior to a single center. The lacunae of freedom were used by a lot of people, who managed to produce and trade independently from the state.

Today, humanity faces a difficult choice — either to continue to get rid of uncertainty, making society even more totalitarian, or to realize the positive aspects of uncertainty and begin to fight against the new totalitarianism.

The article focuses on selected aspects regarding the consequences of the COVID 19-Pandemic for the german labour market.

Current article is an overview of the XV International Scientific Conference “Sorokin Readings”, that took place on March 4, 2021 at the Faculty of Sociology, Lomonosov Moscow State University.

The article deals with the features of sociological analysis of religion in Russia during the imperial period of its history. The national sociological tradition of study of religion as a socio-cultural phenomenon and a social institution, which was developed during this period, had its own unique and peculiar appearance and was just begun to revive again in post-Soviet Russia, is sharply different from the tradition that took place in the West. In this context, the appeal to the works of classics of Russian religious, socio-political thought, unfortunately undeservedly forgotten, is a very promising area of modern sociological research.

When studying this problem, the author emphasizes the study of the works of representatives of three ideological areas of Russian religious and socio-political thought: conservatism, liberalism and socialism, as well as the peculiarities of the historical development of Russian society and the state and those events that had a significant impact on the formation and development of scientific understanding of religion in Russia. Among such features, the author, in particular, refers to the formation of an “antisystem” (systemic integrity of people who are negative about their homeland, hate their own nation, its values and culture, history, traditional religious, political and social systems) among the Russian intelligentsia, bureaucracy and part of the elite of Russian society, under a certain influence of Westernism, as a consequence of the spiritual schism of the 18th century, which occurred in the educated strata and elite of Russian society.

The author of the article analyzing the views of A.I. Herzen, P.L. Lavrov, M.A. Bakunin, P.A. Kropotkin, G.V. Plekhanov, V.I. Lenin, emphasizes the understanding of religious issues by representatives, primarily the socialist camp, who dreamed of carrying out a socialist revolution in Russia and who were extremely negative about religion, religious institutions and the traditional life of society. He notes the fact that the authors mentioned above were more concerned with introducing various ideological stamps into science, as well as using political technologies to discredit in a destructive way for society and the State, this traditionally important sphere of life for any society and an influential social institution. Against this background, a peculiar exception to the rules was the balanced, scientifically based approach to sociological analysis of religion in society developed by P.A. Sorokin, with an emphasis on the study of the integrating role of religion in social stratification.

The article analyzes theoretical and methodological problems and current methodological approaches to the study of the value structure of Russian society and its impact on political identity in the past and nowadays. It is concluded that modern Russian political science includes at least two global and fundamentally different approaches to the analysis of historical, social, political, economic and spiritual processes, that determine the difference in the research results — liberal and conservative. The limited possibilities of the liberal approach to the analysis of the historical and civilizational originality of Russia, as well as the conceptual understanding of the concepts of “tradition”, “basic values”, and “identity” are shown. A traditionalist-conservative approach, which prefers conservative value principles’ conditioned choice of methodological research tools, is proposed as the most promising for the study of this topic. This provides the possibility of overcoming the one-sidedness and narrowness of liberal interpretation of the phenomena and processes of Russian history, as well as the possibility of presentation a broader panorama of the intellectual development of Russian civilization. Within the framework of the traditionalist-conservative methodological approach, the main sources for studying the processes of external, formal evolution of basic traditional values are various works of Russian thinkers, writers, poets, religious- and statesmen, created at different historical periods, but have become the prior elements of nationwide and statewide consciousness and have greatly influenced the formation of the political identity of the peoples of Russia. As the main methodological tool, the political-textual analysis of sources is used, which allows us to propose a definition of basic traditional values and draw a conclusion about the existence of such values throughout the centuries-old national history, despite the change of political regimes, socio-political and economic structures, the correction of spiritual orientations. Depending on the concrete historical conditions’ changing, certain basic values could evolve, be supplemented with new content and appear in new forms, but they remained essentially unchanged and continued to preserve their qualities as a factor in the formation of Russian political identity. On the basis of the traditionalist-conservative approach, it is proposed to distinguish a separate specific group of values — spiritual and political values.

The article examines social determinants, which affect health under the context of the spread of a new coronavirus infection. The author points out that the study of the impact of various factors on the health of society and individual has been quite widely represented in scientific research discourse. There are also different classifications of them. However, in the current situation of a pandemic, this question is again actual because of the differences in the levels of morbidity and mortality among the population around the world. In this regard, based on the analysis of the main social determinants of health, the author defines the factors, which play a determining role in the spread of the new coronavirus infection. They are the following: the features of the organization and functioning of national health systems; the possibility of protecting and preventing health; the degree of social trust; the level of social solidarity; the degree of digital socialization, including the level of digital literacy; the level of health literacy of the population, national and cultural characteristics, which affect a compliance, the perception of preventive measures, in particular, vaccination. According to the author, these factors include both objective and subjective characteristics. But, no less that under the conditions of such a phenomenon, how can one characterize the situation, the current system of a pandemic of a new coronavirus infection, the health of an individual and society turns into a phenomenon of social construction, the mechanism of which is based on factors of external influence.

The article is focused on attitudes of healthcare workers towards their health. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, followed by a substantial increase in media coverage of public health-related issues, has dramatically altered many people’s normal routines and caused a shift in our collective perception of normal. In this context, examining the attitudes of health care workers toward their health becomes particularly topical as this group possesses first-hand knowledge about the pandemic and various medical subjects. We consider medical professionals as specially-trained people who possess evidence-based knowledge about our body, mental, and physical health. Since it is a challenging job that involves being in close contact with people who are sick or recovering from illness, the risks of which have been exacerbated by the pandemic, this group has privileged access to professional medical services. We conducted a quantitative sociological survey among medical professionals who work for the Moscow Health Care System. This research allows us to analyze patterns of health care utilization and health behavior among health care workers and the correlation between their attitudes and perceptions of the problem and the actual patterns of their behavior. This paper aims to answer the following question: how do the level of medical knowledge and privileged access to a wide range of health care services and resources affect the attitudes toward one’s own health that are common among the so-called expert groups?

The article presents the results of an empirical study. The aim of the study is to identify the real factors of the emigration of Russian doctors abroad in the period from 2013 to 2019. The theoretical part of the study was built within the framework of a sociological approach. The theory of “attraction and pushing” by Everett Lee was taken as a basis. In the course of the study, 10 in-depth interviews were conducted with Russian doctors who at the time of the study were permanently living and working abroad. The uniqueness of the results of this study lies in the fact that the empirical object of the study is not doctors who want to go abroad, but doctors who have already moved and at the time of the study are permanently residing abroad. In each interview, questions were asked on the following topics: reasons for moving from Russia, how was the decision-making process to move, how the respondent chose a country for a new place of residence, what were the costs of moving, the respondent’s attitude to the Russian healthcare system, the question of returning to Russia.

The article is divided into two parts. The first part provides a detailed analysis of the research results with quotes from respondents. The second part describes 4 groups of identified factors of emigration of Russian doctors: pull factors abroad in general, pull factors in the healthcare system abroad, push factors in Russia as a whole, push factors in the healthcare system in Russia. According to the results of the study, it was revealed that the push factors of the emigration of Russian doctors abroad over the attractive ones. Extremely low return migration attitudes have been identified. Also, no significant impact of socio-political and natural-climatic factors of pushing out on the process of emigration of Russian doctors was revealed.

The article is dedicated to the political, sociological and historical analysis of lobbying development in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. This article opens a series of two articles on the genesis of the institution of lobbying in Russia. Numerous discussions on lobbying in Russia over the past three decades boil down to arguments that the country is not ready to institutionalize interaction between interest groups and the government. There is a widespread opinion that this institution is not rooted in Russian political culture and political traditions. However, analysis of interest groups and their interactions with the government in different periods of Russian history allows us to conclude that this is not a new phenomenon. Analysis of how of lobbying was formed, first under the monarchy, then in Soviet times contributes to a better understanding of the way mechanisms of interest representation evolved over time. It also helps to understand how these mechanisms gave birth to informal lobbying practices that were evolving in the 1990s and why lobbying activities continue to take place in the shadows and under unclear rules of the game.

This article provides a methodological study of the effectiveness and potential application of sociocultural analysis in the research of socio-political systems the functioning and the development.

The author turns to the theoretical foundations of the sociocultural approach, examines its specificity and integrative nature, and also analyzes the problem of compatibility of the sociocultural approach with the structural functionalism methodology. It is shown that such “methodological union” does not form a contradiction in the study of socio-political systems. On the contrary, this integration allows to include in the focus of research the dynamic features of both institutional and noninstitutional aspects of social life, which helps to fully reveal the possible influences from the subjective grounds on the nature of the evolutionary development of socio-political systems. The use of the sociocultural approach is also being justified by author by the fact that here the subjective determinants of the functioning of socio-political systems are not limited to the framework of political culture, since the specificity of a particular system is also influenced by the civilizational characteristics of the state, the genetic foundations of national cultures, and religion.

Also, the basic methodological principles of sociocultural analysis, which are most relevant for the study of various socio-political systems, are being stated and considered. Among them, special attention is paid to the principle of socio-cultural balance, indicating the permissible possibilities of evolution of each socio-political system and the need for a balance between cultural traditions and structural changes to ensure its sustainable development.

The article discusses theoretical approaches to understanding the quality of life of the population from a sociological point of view. The features of the concept of the perceived quality of life, structural-functional and socio-economic approaches to its assessment are revealed. The possibilities and limitations of these approaches for the study of the quality of life are highlighted. The effectiveness of the public administration system in modern society requires taking into account the opinion of the population about the quality of life. The foundations of the new approach to the analysis of social processes were laid by the scientific achievements of the 60s of the last century. The dominant paradigm was the economic goals and parameters of statistically measured national income, household income, wages and their differentiation. The information society, the changing nature of work and other features of the new stage of development created the prerequisites for a comprehensive consideration of social values, taking into account the population’s requests for adequate working and living conditions, moving away from dry, usually average criteria of life circumstances to the study of the citizens’ attitudes and feelings to socially acceptable standards of life. The environmental risks that threaten the future of civilization were identified and analyzed in the 70s of the XX century. The production contradiction, which raised the question of measuring the quality of life in a new way, was articulated. The economic component (economic growth) replaced with the welfare parameter. The sustainable development, including the indicators of well-being, the fight against poverty, and the environment were declared to be the goals of the society. The tasks of monitoring the solution of these problems are solved by sociological research, whose mathematical formalization can become a structural element of economic and mathematical modeling of social processes. Based on empirical data from a sociological study conducted in April and May 2019, the article analyzes the structure of socio-economic and perceived parameters of quality of life.

The research is aimed at studying the relationship of family mutual assistance. The aim of the work is to establish the nature of these relationships and the factors influencing their reproduction based on the study of family mutual assistance relations in families with student children. The methodological basis of the research is the development of the theory of reciprocity by B. Malinovsky and K. Polanyi, as well as the works of leading foreign and Russian scientists. The study was conducted using General scientific methods, such as system analysis, questionnaires, generalization and systematization, and comparisons. The empirical base is based on a survey of 500 students and 15 individual semi-structured interviews of students of the Ural state University of Economics and the Ural Federal University, collected in 2020.

As a result of the study, it was found that the relations of family assistance in families with student children are arranged in accordance with the principle of reciprocity, that is, they reflect the interdependence of family members, the symmetry of support acts, when the roles of the recipient of a gift or service and the donor alternate, and are also characterized by non-equivalence of received (transmitted) gifts and services. The main types of family support are for student children-financial support for parents, for parents-assistance for children in household management. Emotional and psychological support is provided by more than half of the students and their parents. The reproduction of family mutual aid relations is influenced by social, economic and emotional factors, among which the factors of kinship, attachment, family solidarity, as well as the objective possibility of providing support as the economic basis of the relationship of assistance are of high importance.