This article aims to track back a history of the concept “postnational” in German intellectual culture of the second half of the 20th century. The concept has been widely used in international debates on globalization in the wake of the 21st century, where German intellectuals took up leading positions. Such a reference to German intellectual tradition is to be explained by a unique FRG postwar experience where this concept has been forged and used in various sociopolitical and sociocultural contexts, well before the end of the cold war. I will be undertaking a reconstruction of the basic historical contexts, which make this concept open for interpretations, based on the historical semantics and conceptual history methodology. Contextual reconstruction is crucial, due to the nature concepts which makes them dependable on the context and doesn’t let them be interpreted by their internal meaning. The variety of contexts is to be limited by the basic academic texts, where concept «postnational» plays a key role. This genealogy is aimed to indicate intellectual continuity and evolution of this concept up to its wide use in international academic debates on globalization and cosmopolitism. This would also help to better understand a wide range of meanings ascribed to it.

The article investigates one of the basic Soviet myths – “Unbreakable friendship of the Soviet people”. The forms of expression of this ideological construction are described. The image of “the elder brother”, which was understood as the Russian people, is investigated. The article reveals the foundations of the inviolability of friendship of the Soviet peoples, which is interpreted as one of the main achievements of Soviet power.

The studied ideological structure was difficult to combine with the reality of the Soviet era. Cultural, confessional and locally civilizational differences of different segments of Soviet society persisted and resisted the integrating influence of the state. All the peoples of the USSR experienced modernization, but, contrary to the hopes of politicians and ideologists, the processes of rapprochement did not provide a merger. The Soviet ideology could not provide integration, and under a layer of the state promotion, processes of differentiation and national formation were developed. The crisis of Soviet society sharply marked the cultural and geopolitical orientations of different peoples of the USSR. The era of Perestroika, the collapse of the USSR and the post-Soviet reality revealed the fictitious nature of the myth of the “unbreakable friendship of the Soviet people.” Today, “unbreakable friendship” is a material for the study of complex dialectics of ideological attitudes of an ideocratic society and objective socio-cultural processes developing in this society.

In the article the Russian textbooks for primary education, compiled and published by Russian refugees and minorities outside Russia in Germany, Estonia and Poland in the 1920s – 1930s were analyzed. The proposed solutions to define émigré teachers their places in the educational context of the host countries have been considered. We reconstruct the wide spectrum of such educational projects from the textbook as a protected place for émigré heritage culture, taken from the homeland, to the textbook, in varying degrees trying to establish a dialogue with the majority population surrounding Russian-speaking minority. The results could be used in the historical reconstructions of the culture of Russian emigration of the first wave and at the same time can be taken into account in the study of cultural transmission within various other emigrant and minority communities.

The article is devoted to the analysis of human body culture (physical culture) as a phenomenon strong influenced by the social and cultural context of “Homo Corporis” being. This general methodological position is revealed on the material of a concrete epoch – the period of the formation of Soviet society, characterized by its axiology of the human body and some relevant practices based on it. The analysis is based on the publications of the 1920s – 1930s, related to the development of the body (physical) culture, on the art items, art production of that time, which captures the ideal of the “new man” – strong, healthy, cheerful. The axiology of the human body in early soviet time was based on relevant conceptual and ideological substantiation, scientific and methodological investigations which were the regulators for body practices in the fields of education, socialization, leisure mass sports, etc. The key ideas that determined notably big interest of the Soviet authorities in the development of body culture were such as the strengthening of the instrumental capabilities of the body (to increase the productivity of labor, the army’s combat capability); using its potential to struggle with bad habits (mass sports as a kind of healthy leisure), to include passive women in active life, to organize new integrative multicultural space. The body culture practices were estimated as one of the accessible, “light” form for the person entering into the space of culture per se (through “correct” moral and aesthetic qualities arising). The representation of mass, people sport was considered as one of the markers to clarify the opposition to the “old” society with its bourgeois sport, the product of inhumane capitalism. This investigation is a next small step for the development of a comparative-cultural analysis of the diversity of models of body (physical) culture as an important part of modern social studies and cultural researches.

The article presents materials stored in the archive of the famous researcher, restorer and organizer of ceramic production Alexei Vasilyevich Filippov (1882–1957). They talk about the failed exhibition of artistic architectural ceramics, which was planned to be held in Moscow in 1935 at the State Historical Museum. Documents from the archive of A.V. Filippov and the Department of written sources of State Historical Museum are published for the first time. They allow us to trace the fate of a unique exhibition project and demonstrate the degree of knowledge of architectural ceramics in Russia in the 1930s. The approaches to exhibiting and the composition of the collections of architectural ceramics of the country’s largest museums are characterized.

The role of A.V. Filippov in creating a new museum space, considering the museum not only as a machine for cultural and national identification, but also as an instrument and part of experimental technological progress in the ceramic industry. Filippov believed that museum expositions should play an important role in it.

The article is dedicated to the search for “Soviet” markers in children’s illustration. The author conducts the search for the reasons of demand of the Soviet editions at the modern consumer by researching private book collection of children’s illustrated books of 1960–1980th years and collection of reprints of modern publishing houses. The author provides the visual analysis of features of the image of the Soviet children in the state-approved books. “Soviet” is considered as a symbol of the ideology of a specific authoritative discourse, which clearly defines the content and form of a certain proportion of children’s books of this period, and as a time frame for the creation of a whole corpus of highly artistic publications on topics far removed from revolutionary pathetics and communist ideas. The author states, using the model of A.Yurchak, that the modes of “sub-reachability” and “for his own” are the ways of creative self-realization of the artists-illustrators of the Soviet period. The duality and internal contradictions of the regime of “sub-reachability” are the main reasons for the rise of the phenomenon of the Soviet children’s illustration in the perception of modern generations.

The cultural study of social movements cannot be limited to the analysis of their symbolic products – ideology, images and other cultural texts. The performative turn implies an appeal to the processual side of cultural phenomena, in the case of social movements having a pronounced physical character. The “visibility” of social movements is determined by the presence of participants ‘ bodies in urban space. The experience of the physical (co)presence of many people, the emotional basis of bodily behavior become the most important subject of socio-cultural research. The repertoire of bodily manifestations in street actions ranges from simple physical presence to carnival-type actions using many iconic means. Spontaneous activity is directed by emotions that is expressed in bodily behavior of participants, in particular – in gestures. “Natural” emotionally conditioned gestures, however, can acquire the function of signs, going from the iconic designation of emotions to symbols of varying degrees of abstraction. This process can be traced to the image of the raised fist – one of the most common visual symbols in social movements. Thus, the study of gesture in the context of social movements needs a combination of performative and semiotic approaches, which are not opposed, but productively used as additional ones.

The French philosopher and historian G. Didi-Huberman (b. 1953) is one of the most famous modern image theorists working in the field of visual studies. His works are devoted to the nature of the visual image and the features of its perception. He turns to the legacy of Abi Warburg (1866– 1929), problematizing, among other things, the Atlas of “Mnemosyne” as a space for the formation of cultural memory. During years 2010–2014 G. Didi-Huberman curated a series of exhibitions on the contemporary contexts of the Warburg Atlas. The article explores, based on texts and exhibition projects, the G. Didi-Huberman theory of the image through the prism of the idea of the atlas as a special discursive space that preserves cultural memory.

The article is devoted to the theoretical aspects of the concept of intermediality and the possibilities of its application in the context of Soviet studies. Based on already developed approaches, intermediality is understood as a reference within one medium to the medial characteristics of another. However, such a definition is not enough in the context of Soviet culture. Using the example of the radio voice and its functioning in artistic media products, the author shows that in Soviet culture intermedial configurations are deeply connected to the ideological and anthropological constructs. The medial characteristics of radio (disembodied voice, abstract material mediator, collective listening, structuring attention and others) transmit the current cultural order and can be found in other media, in particular in the films. Thus, a radio voice can be considered not only as an audio phenomenon, but also as the particular discursive mode manifested through materiality of the medium (technical and physical), visual practice of listening to this voice, contexts of listening and textual representation of the voice that “comment on” visual canons. The author suggests using the concept of intermedial regimes for the analysis of such cultural forms.

The article discusses modern research strategies of socio-cultural analysis of information and communication processes and technologies in a mediatized society. The attention of scholars is attracted by the place and role of global media digital platforms in political, economic and social management. In particular, research interest is aimed at studying the forms and methods of the impact of media platforms on social communications, the public and private spheres of society. The search for scholars is closely connected with the problems of updating concepts, conceptual apparatus and problem fields in socio-cultural studies. This contributes to the introduction of the key concept of “platform society” into research circulation, stimulates the formation of the concepts of the same name and the interdisciplinary direction of platform studies in socio-cultural studies. In the theoretical development of the latest concepts of a “platform society”, several problem nodes can be distinguished. Among them: the content of the concept of “platform society”, the idea of “platform” management of media content and social communication, the role of digital platforms in the formation of a “new sociality”.