A Forgotten Page of the University Science History. Historical-Economic Studies at IFTI - INEI in the 1950s-1960s: Israel D. Brin

The article, which was written within a project of studying the history of creation and existence of the “invisible college” of historical and economic studies at IFEI — INEI in the 1950s–1960s, reconstructs the intellectual biography of one of its participants — Israel D. Brin. The Irkutsk period of the scientist's work is characterized by his referring to historical-economic analysis: establishing a link between the problems of state capitalism and the problems of the NEP and considering the specific institutional forms that state capitalism took during the period of the NEP in the USSR in the 1920s. The works of the political economist reflected the transformation of the economic history of the NEP into a holistic and complex scientific issue. In addition to historians, political economists got involved in the solution of this problem. Their referring to the past was caused not only by historical interest, but also by urgent problems of the present. The New Economic Policy was interesting from the point of view of the implementation of its principles as well as the use of the institutional forms of state capitalism, tested during the implementation of this policy, in the practice of the people's democracies of Europe and Asia, which were in the process of transition from capitalism to socialism after the Second World War.

A Study of the Scientist’s Image in the Context of S. Moscovici’s Theory of Social Representations

The article describes the scientific and social aspects of the functioning of the scientific school created by S. Mosсoviсi, revealing various forms of this association: a research team, a scientific direction, an invisible college. The authors focus on the possibility of studying social representations through the inclusion of new analytical methods in the diagnostic toolkit, in particular, iconographic documents and images of a social object, which indicates the current stage of the functioning of S. Mosсoviсis scientific school. The formation of social representations not only through verbal associations but also through drawings is explored by the authors through the example of how adolescents develop their social representations of a scientist. The purpose of this study is to highlight the categorical features of the image of a scientist in modern Russian adolescents, identified using the DAST drawing technique. The hypothesis of the research is the assumption that the system of social representations of a scientist among Russian adolescents contains both stable indicators of a persons belonging to the professional scientific community and variable contextual elements of the scientists image, whereas the degree of expression and the ratio of stable and contextual elements reflect the characteristics of the scientists image in domestic respondents. The Draw-A-Scientist Test (DAST) technique was used as the main diagnostic tool aimed at identifying adolescent representations of a scientist based on iconographic associations.The obtained drawings were analyzed by the expert evaluation method, involving the procedures of correlation and factor analysis. The results of the study show that Russian adolescents generally have a stereotypical representation of a scientist associated with the use of general indicators of external appearance, which determine the professional affiliation of the character depicted. Differences were found in the frequency of using stable and contextual iconographic elements of drawings. It has been shown that it is possible to use the drawing technique as a diagnostic tool for identifying social representations of a scientist based on an analysis of the meaning of an object through its iconographic fixation.

Post-Soviet Russian Scholarship on Self-Determination

Chapter 5 covers the post-Soviet Russian scholarship on self-determination and shows how it forms a separate epistemic community, with peculiar features and doctrinal positions having existed already prior to Russia’s annexation of Crimea, and the willingness to adjust these positions to official assessments of the Russian government, if necessary. Even before the annexation of Crimea, the discourse on self-determination in Russian scholarship showed some distinctive features, of which most can be explained by a lasting legacy of the former Soviet doctrine of international law, in particular the position that the right to self-determination may in principle also confer a right of secession. In sum, these features stayed however more or less inside the canon of the ‘invisible college of international lawyers’, as Oscar Schachter once famously called it. Only with ‘Crimea’, the company arguably parted again, and once Russia’s actions on the peninsula made it impossible for Russian scholarship to stay within the consensus view without criticizing the Russian government, former consensus was partly replaced by historical-irredentist claims, creative re-readings of self-determination, and attempts in revitalizing the concept of consolidation of historical titles. Moreover, the assessment of ‘Crimea’ in Russian international law scholarship clearly shows that the views expressed in the academic debate by and large correlated with the official positions purported by the Russian government (although criticism was not completely absent, and in particular scholars from the younger generation in Russia were not all ready to accept the official interpretation of the events).

Building the Invisible College

This chapter shows how historians learned technical skills, focusing on the changing self-learning ecosystem. The chapter considers the two key problems facing self-learners: what to learn and how to learn it, arguing that many resources focused too narrowly on specific how-to instructions, making it difficult to build up a contextual understanding of the problems technology could help historians solve. Despite the shortcomings, beginning with statistics textbooks (1970s), through software reviews (1990s), and dynamic programming environments (2000s), as well as a myriad of workshops, summer schools, and unconferences, this chapter highlights the thriving and dynamic community supporting colleagues through self-learning. This dynamism was in contrast to a relatively poor provision offered by universities, leaving many to turn to the “invisible college” for support.

INTERNATIONAL LAWYERS AS A PROFESSIONAL COMMUNITY

Even though international lawyers represent a variety of countries with diff erent cultures and legal traditions, with diff erent levels of economic development and political goals, they constitute a unique professional community ("a kind of invisible college dedicated to a common intellectual enterprise", according to O. Schachter) speaking one language — the language of international law. In international relations, in the absence of a higher (supranational) authority, lawyers sometimes become the only ones who "civilize" the protection of national interests, according to M. Koskenniemi; it causes specifi c ethical professional problems, which are considered on the example of the work of a lawyer in foreign policy departments, in international organizations and in international courts. The article substantiates the idea that international lawyers, due to the huge creative potential of their profession, are, in fact, the "architects" of international law and the system in which it exists.