Arctic: A Rreimagined Strategic Resource Base for Russia

Russia’s Arctic ambitions are gaining attention as global warming provides Russia with an opportunity to access the untapped energy reservoirs lying in the seabed of the Arctic. Russia’s new Arctic strategy aims to utilize the Arctic as a ‘strategic resource base’ to fulfill its socio-economic needs. Moreover, the interrelated projects of Yamal LNG and the opening of the Northern Sea Route as a global shipping route show the Russian interplay of geo-economics and geopolitics. Similarly, the Russian strategies of the Northern Fleet’s revival, Sino-Russian cooperation, regional diplomacy, informational campaigns, and international law show Russia’s efforts to highlight its ambitions in the region. This paper argues that the melting ice in the Arctic coupled with evolving regional dynamics will enhance the Kremlin’s position in the region.

Selective approaches to regulation of long-term migration in the Russian Federation

The number of foreign citizens that a country can admit without negative consequences for its economy in general and its labor market in particular, as well as for the socio-political situation, is limited and individual for each country. In this regard, states legislations in addition to the existing conditions set quotas. The purpose of the quota is to quantitatively limit the influx of foreign nationals into a country based on its socio-economic needs and capabilities in a given period. The quota is spent in order of priority without any differentiation and is a restrictive rather than a selection mechanism for ensuring a state’s migration policy. Most often, the selection approach is mentioned in the legislations regulating labor and, in the first place, skilled migration. Only in the context of this subspecies of migration, it is possible to talk of the inequality of candidates based on the different levels of their professional competence and capacity for adaptation to the host country social environment. In the context of skilled labor migration, the role of education, work experience and the ability to communicate freely in the host state language increase significantly. This type of migration is voluntary and aims at mutual satisfaction of the needs of a state in strengthening its economy with highly professional labor force and the needs of foreign citizens in getting the best conditions for realizing their potential. The laws of the market economy shape it. A state possessing the «demand» must, in order to best ensure its own socio-economic needs, build an effective system of evaluation of the «supply» by foreign citizens.

Disenchanting Socialist Internationalism: Polish Workers in Czechoslovakia and East Germany, 1962−91

This article seeks to paint a more nuanced picture of the role plaid by socialist internationalism in East Germany and Czechoslovakia regarding the employment of foreign labour, focusing on Poles. The long-term cooperation with Warsaw provides a suitable perspective on how to interpret particular periods and milestones of the schemes as a whole. The article partly dissociates from contemporary writing on the subject, which perceives socialist internationalism either as an instrument of propaganda, masking ruthless exploitation, or as a genuine value that inspired and permeated foreign labour recruitment. Based on documents from archives of all three countries in focus, it is argued that the schemes were clearly driven by the economic needs from the very beginning. Except for limited-scale cooperation with countries of the Global South, socialist internationalism came largely to the fore during the 1970s as a substitutional objective, when the economic goals of the foreign labour recruitment proved unreachable, and policymakers were at pains to reshape the meaning of the schemes (running already in full gear). However, with growing and unmanageable economic difficulties, the idealist rhetoric of internationalism plaid an ever more important role in framing the labour force cooperation until the end of communist regimes.

Preschool Education in Poland. Briefly on the Milestones in the History of Preschool Education; More on Activities Supporting the Education of Preschoolers to Be Wise Citizens of the Modern World

It has been over 180 years since the first pre-school education institution was established in 1839. Over the years, the theory and practice of preschool education have been created, taking into account Polish social and economic needs, marking good and bad times in preschool education.

Psycho-Emotional and Economic Resilience: A Case Study of the Widows of the Christian Male Victims of Suicide Attacks on Roman Catholic and Christ Churches in Youhanabad, Lahore

Aim of this study was to examine the psycho-emotional and economic resilience of the widows of the Christians male victims of the suicide attacks on Roman Catholic and Christ churches in Youhanabad Lahore. A qualitative case study was conducted of the widows of to understand how they recovered from the loss. The study exuded that how the widows recovered from the loss of their husband’s with the help of their in-laws. Second, how widows met their economic needs by doing menial jobs, and with the help of aid provided by in-laws. Third, the help provided by the Churches. Living in a society with a Muslim concentration also affects the widows into Forced religion conversion. Furthermore, due to lesser check and balance on male orphans, they also get involved in various criminals’ activities to support their families. The conclusion was the factors helped the widows overcome the psycho-emotional loss and recover economically.

Primary care-based interventions to address the financial needs of patients experiencing poverty: a scoping review of the literature

Background It is broadly accepted that poverty is associated with poor health, and the health impact of poverty has been explored in numerous high-income country settings. There is a large and growing body of evidence of the role that primary care practitioners can play in identifying poverty as a health determinant, and in interventions to address it. Purpose of study This study maps the published peer-reviewed and grey literature on primary care setting interventions to address poverty in high-income countries in order to identify key concepts and gaps in the research. This scoping review seeks to map the tools in use to identify and address patients’ economic needs; describe the key types of primary care-based interventions; and examine barriers and facilitators to successful implementation. Methods Using a scoping review methodology, we searched five databases, the grey literature and the reference lists of relevant studies to identify studies on interventions to address the economic needs-related social determinants of health that occur in primary health care delivery settings, in high-income countries. Findings were synthesized narratively, and examined using thematic analysis, according to iteratively identified themes. Results Two hundred and fourteen papers were included in the review and fell into two broad categories of description and evaluation: screening tools, and economic needs-specific interventions. Primary care-based interventions that aim to address patients’ financial needs operate at all levels, from passive sociodemographic data collection upon patient registration, through referral to external services, to direct intervention in addressing patients’ income needs. Conclusion Tools and processes to identify and address patients’ economic social needs range from those tailored to individual health practices, or addressing one specific dimension of need, to wide-ranging protocols. Primary care-based interventions to address income needs operate at all levels, from passive sociodemographic data collection, through referral to external services, to direct intervention. Measuring success has proven challenging. The decision to undertake this work requires courage on the part of health care providers because it can be difficult, time-consuming and complex. However, it is often appreciated by patients, even when the scope of action available to health care providers is quite narrow.

The cities we need: Towards an urbanism guided by human needs satisfaction

This article proposes moving beyond the tyranny of economic imperatives towards a human needs-based framework to assess cities and envision their development. Existing calls for such a transition lack a foundation able to capture the various dimensions of human life in cities, which can be provided by the concept of human needs. We ask whether cities deliver satisfiers that make them good places to cater for the full range of human needs in a similar way to how they cater for economic needs. The article develops a framework that allows us to address that question. We show how the main debates in human needs theory are illustrated by urban phenomena, and search for a human needs model which is able to advance those debates and tackle the problem specifically in cities. Then we highlight the specifically urban aspects of needs satisfaction processes and construct a table of indicators to assess how cities fare in that respect, ensuring global comparability as to whether, as well as local contextualisation as to how, needs are satisfied.

METHODOLOGY FOR STUDYING THE TRANSFORMATION OF ECONOMIC FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE IN THE CONTEXT OF GLOBALIZATION

It is shown that modern socio-economic transformations of planetary scale are significantly changing the place and role of the state in the local, national and global dimensions, which increases the importance of discussing the problems of transformation of its functions in the context of globalization. It is argued that globalization processes create a contradiction between the interests of transnational and international structures and the political and economic interests of nation states. This is due to the fact that, on the one hand, part of the socioeconomic processes within countries come from the influence of the nation state and, on the other, private international structures are beginning to largely determine the course of events in a particular state. It is shown that the empirical generalization of economic functions of the state has a superficial character, a logical-historical methodology substantiated, the application of which allows to conclude that the market as a mechanism for reconciling the private interests of economic entities and the state as the embodiment of general economic interests are complementary structures. A logical-historical methodology is developed, which, in contrast to the empirical approach, contains other formulations and classification grouping of economic functions of the state, defining the main ones as follows: expression and representation of general economic interests, ensuring economic needs of society as a whole and protection of public economic interests. All other functions are derivative. Within the logical-historical methodology, it is substantiated that the main directions of transformation of the main economic functions of the state are: weakening of the monopoly component of its function in representation of public economic interests and growth of value in this process of state-public institutions; increasing the level of socialization and humanization of economic needs and ways to meet them; internationalization of mechanisms for protection of economic interests of states. It is noted that these areas of transformation of the main economic functions of the state should be given due attention by scientists, experts and developers of socioeconomic policy.

The Invention of Coins

Early forms of money included agricultural commodities and metals, such as silver bullion and barley in Mesopotamia or gold, silver, and bronze in Egypt. The fungibility of metals made them particularly useful. Aristotle provides one view of how barter gave way to coined money, but this question remains contentious. The first coins appeared in Lydia near the end of the seventh century BC, but the spread of this monetary revolution owed much to the neighboring Greeks. Mints in many Greek poleis issued coins that not only served economic needs, but also functioned as state-sponsored advertising, art, and propaganda. The Romans and others followed suit, while independent coinage traditions emerged in China and India.