The EAEU Demography and Human Capital: Trends and Losses in the Context of a Pandemic

DOI: https://doi.org/10.33917/es-6.180.2021.20-29

Demographic dynamics becomes crucially important for successful scenario of the future for both Eurasian integration and each EAEU member state. The “pandemic crisis” caused an increase in excess mortality, reduced social well-being and created serious legal and managerial conflicts. Within the EAEU new barriers to mobility and migration have emerged and social tension has increased. In the existing realities the current supranational solutions are insufficient, they are poorly focused on achieving the demographic security of the EAEU member states. Coordinated actions are needed to significantly improve the demographic situation in the EAEU.

On Catastrophic Increase in Mortality and Measures to Save the People in Russia

DOI: https://doi.org/ 10.33917/es-5.179.2021.6-15

How is it that in Russia, unlike in other countries, during the coronavirus pandemic the total mortality increased by a record amount and the income and consumption of the population decreased to the greatest extent? The point is that the crisis, caused by the coronavirus pandemic, is completely different from previous ones. It highlights the dilemma: should we use forces and means to prevent an economic recession with lower costs for anti-crisis measures, or focus on saving people’s lives while minimizing additional mortality and maintaining real incomes of the population? Each country, depending on objectives, prevailing conditions and opportunities, chooses its “golden mean”. In many cases such choice is not fully conscious, since it’s not possible to forecast with any certainty even over the near term. Decisions have to be taken up along the way, based on the situation and assessing the probability of certain events, including in view of the other countries’  experience in combating the pandemic.

Social Choice Dilemma in Concluding Concession Agreements

DOI: https://doi.org/ 10.33917/es-5.179.2021.16-27

Result of the government’s many years of efforts to liberalize the market of social services is a huge number of organizations that are privately owned — 45,9%, but which have minimal impact on the infrastructure development. The reason is that private business alienates long-term and capital-intensive projects, and the overwhelming part of the social infrastructure (for sports facilities it constitutes 95.2%) remains in the state and municipal ownership. The state mistakenly classifies concession projects as investment projects that are paid back only through fee-based exploitation. Thus, social policy is being deprived of a promising mechanism — transformation of concession agreements into the basis for socialization of private investments, infrastructure and services. The identified problems of social disorientation in specifying criteria for evaluating the proposals of participants in concession tenders form the basis for asocial conditions of concession agreements, which makes social services inaccessible to the general population. Commercialization of the activities of social facilities is admissible (although in a limited sense), but at the same time, services at state tariffs or free of charge should prevail. There is a need for systematic scientific and methodological work on cross-cutting incorporation of this approach into the current regulatory framework and guidelines in order to create a network of basic social infrastructure for all segments of the population.

On Catastrophic Increase in Mortality and Measures to Save the People in Russia

DOI: https://doi.org/ 10.33917/es-5.179.2021.6-15 

How is it that in Russia, unlike in other countries, during the coronavirus pandemic the total mortality increased by a record amount and the income and consumption of the population decreased to the greatest extent? The point is that the crisis, caused by the coronavirus pandemic, is completely different from previous ones. It highlights the dilemma: should we use forces and means to prevent an economic recession with lower costs for anti-crisis measures, or focus on saving people’s lives while minimizing additional mortality and maintaining real incomes of the population? Each country, depending on objectives, prevailing conditions and opportunities, chooses its “golden mean”. In many cases such choice is not fully conscious, since it’s not possible to forecast with any certainty even over the near term. Decisions have to be taken up along the way, based on the situation and assessing the probability of certain events, including in view of the other countries’  experience in combating the pandemic.

Strategy of Socio-Demographic Development of Russia and the Main Guidelines for Social Doctrine of the Russian Federation in 2025–2030

DOI: https://doi.org/10.33917/es-4.178.2021.14-21

The article analyzes the current situation and long-term strategy in the sphere of fertility and mortality in Russia. Methodology for elaborating the social doctrine of the Russian Federation in 2025–2030 is addressed

On Catastrophic Increase in Mortality and Measures to Save the People in Russia

DOI: https://doi.org/10.33917/es-4.178.2021.6-13

How is it that in Russia, unlike in other countries, during the coronavirus pandemic the total mortality increased by a record amount and the income and consumption of the population decreased to the greatest extent? The point is that the crisis, caused by the coronavirus pandemic, is completely different from previous ones. It highlights the dilemma: should we use forces and means to prevent an economic recession with lower costs for anti-crisis measures, or focus on saving people’s lives while minimizing additional mortality and maintaining real incomes of the population? Each country, depending on objectives, prevailing conditions and opportunities, chooses its “golden mean”. In many cases such choice is not fully conscious, since it’s not possible to forecast with any certainty even over the near term. Decisions have to be taken up along the way, based on the situation and assessing the probability of certain events, including in view of the other countries’  experience in combating the pandemic.

Organizational and Digital Network Means of Terminal Destruction of Social Development

DOI: https://doi.org/10.33917/es-3.177.2021.58-69

At the moment, there is a change in the universal attractors of the historical process; in this regard, a new management model is required, corresponding to the new “program requirements” of the attractor “from the future”. The former political and economic regulators have fulfilled their role, but the patterns of thinking developed over the centuries do not allow for any other means of “reset” than destruction. The article analyzes who, why, and by what means attempts to preserve the existing world order. As a tool of destruction, the actors of globalization have chosen ultra-effective digital network methods of cross-border impact — a hidden organizational weapon that allows, without destroying the infrastructure facilities necessary to meet vital needs, to block the development of society through the deformation of the motivational and need base of a person.

In order to identify the hidden impact of organizational weapons, the authors propose to use a methodological “polarizing filter” — a normative ranking that allows us to determine the direction of various social phenomena as the results of “horizontal” or “vertical” regulation, leading to the limit of destruction or development.

On the Question of Monitoring the National Project “Demography” and Assessment of the Demographic Security of the Russian Federation

DOI: https://doi.org/10.33917/es-2.176.2021.45-51

The last five years in the Russian Federation have again been marked by serious concern in the context of the development of demographic processes. Today, leading demographers are talking about a second wave of depopulation. Despite all the efforts made by the government, it is not possible in the foreseeable future to eradicate the negative impact of the retrospective state of the landscape, established by historical changes, which affected, first of all, the age-sex structure of the population (regressive type for women).

Paradoxes of Social Policy in Developing Social Infrastructure

DOI: https://doi.org/10.33917/es-2.176.2021.38-44

The state’s responsibility for development of social infrastructure has not been questioned by modern Russian and foreign economists for many years. An indicator of implementing the national goals of the Russian Federation development for the period up to 2030 is not only an increase in life expectancy up to 78 years, but also a half reduction in the poverty level compared to indicator of 2017 [1], which points out the need not only to ensure additional income for the elderly, but also to reduce their costs. In the context of limited budgetary opportunities, the state’s social policy is focused on developing commercial sector of social services and the sector of socially oriented NPOs that are not interested in development of capital-intensive infrastructure component at social tariffs. Private stationary facilities are targeted at wealthy people and are inaccessible to most elderly people who have to turn to the gray services market. Excessive commercialization has embraced even state-owned infrastructures, created or reconstructed through the mechanism of public-private partnership. This results in limited availability of public good and competition for access to it.

Introduction to the New Global Studies (Eco-Studies)

DOI: 10.33917/es-1.175.2021.84-91

The world is an integral (holistic) “system of systems” (SoS), a set of self-sufficient, but interconnected (energy-materially, information-genetically and mental-conceptually), structural-functional formations (SFF), which are in a permanent state of stable development.

Separate subsystems of the world system are the space and terrestrial oecumene, geotories (closed socio-natural systems) and civilizations, biosphere and technosphere, the world of reason (noosphere) and the cognitive world of a man. Metasystem as a whole (SoS) — is fractal (with SFF similar in space and time) dynamic system, in which “what’s above, the same is below”, “what happened is what will happen.” Global studies is a complex of scientific knowledge, established generally accepted information and individual speculative assumptions, views and intuitive sensations about the world system as a whole and its individual parts, laws of their dynamic functioning and development, as well as a targeted vision system (foresight) of the present, the past and the future of SoS on the whole.

Fractality of the world system allows us to use, for its general management, conseptions inherent in one of its constituent parts (“want to know the Universe — cognize a human himself”, and vice versa). Cosmology, natural history, social science and   human studies are determined by the same structural and functional concepts, in particular, the cyclical nature of both separate SFF and SoS as a whole. Therefore, the present article examines basic principles of a new metasystem-based world studies on the example of eco-studies (ecological, economic and energy conceptions on development of the planetary house-ecos in which we live: from the Greek oikos – house, place of residence, oikumen). At the same time, based on ideas about cyclical nature of the development of terrestrial oecumene and Eurasian civilization, an attempt is made to present the structure of a new project “Targeted vision of the new world” for the second half of the 21st century and for the coming 36-year period, “Christmas Eve” is the culmination of the 144-year “imperial” cycle