Philosophy, the author suggests, cannot be limited to mere science either by its origin or essence. The starting point of philosophical cognition is self-awareness – the inner world of the cognizing person – and its connections with signs and symbols of the supernatural ideal world and the processes of idealization and identification. It originally appears as an “ancient art of rhetorical competition” or an ancient mind game, as a way of social healing in the form of parodies of the reality, gradually acquiring the form of reflective thinking which for centuries was viewed as the expression of the very essence of philosophical cognition. In the conditions of post-nonclassical rationality of the 21st century, it regains the shape of a sociocultural phenomenon that is inextricably linked to cultural symbols and senses, values and norms that both express the essence of global processes and phenomena and determine the very conditions of human existence. The outset for the formation and development of European philosophy is the act of internal self-observation initially derived from mythological views of the world manifested as a national cultural code through a man’s thinking, his religious beliefs and competitive game forms of conduct and activity in society. Viewing itself as an integral part of national, ethnic and universal culture, philosophy becomes the key factor of civilizational development. Intellectual traditions and their change in philosophy are per se an expression of how it interacts, in terms of values, norms, logic and sense, with all types of social consciousness, shaping them into religious, scientific and other knowledge.

The article discusses the problem of building the unified physical theory. Observing the continuity of philosophical tradition in the search for physical principles and analyzing modern approaches and hypotheses that claim to be the “final physical theory”, the authors come to the conclusion that there is a need to provide a more profound ontological justification of physical knowledge and formulate a new metaphysical paradigm. A fundamental physical theory can be built on this base, but this will not be the final “theory of everything”, because the phenomena of life and consciousness cannot be reduced to physical action, and they go beyond physical reality. The task of achieving simplicity and clarity of initial principles in unified description of complex variety of the phenomenal world is presented as a methodological criterion of verity of the theory. This simplicity of initial principles, which is followed by the variety of phenomena, is equivalent to action of simple substance, which creates complexity as internal dynamic structure of indivisible elements and structural diversity of external relations. So, the substantial effect is manifested either as simple physical interaction, or as more complex dynamic phenomena of life and consciousness. A philosophical justification is given for the methodological principle of genesis of physical concepts and the genetic program of building the physical “theory of everything”. This program can be successfully implemented if the metaphysical paradigm is changed and new fundamental entities are introduced. A hypothesis is presented regarding the substantial and informational nature of time. Some new definitions are given: substance is defined as a generator of primary information, the chronal continuum is defined as a fundamental substrate where the effect of substance is manifested, and information is defined as a measure of diversity generated by substance and manifested in the chronal continuum.

Considering the problem in the context of global processes, it is noted that a clear assessment of their impact on the development of the Republic of Belarus is almost impossible. There are both positive and negative trends. Some of these trends are connected with risks and challenges to national security in the military sphere, causing the need to make the Armed Forces function more effectively. Certain measures are identified among other activities to improve the functioning of the Armed Forces. These measures aim to strengthen the human resource capacity of the officer corps, develop certain personal qualities in officers, update the values of military service and philosophical concepts of the state ideology etc. These constituent parts are considered as the moral and spiritual component of the human resource capacity of the officer corps. The analysis upholds the practice of the work aimed to develop officers’ spiritual and moral component, taking into account the specifics of different levels of personnel capacity and specific features of social groups. The need to consider military school students as one of these groups is noted. The concept of a basic level of human resource capacity of the Armed Forces is introduced. The conclusion identifies main tasks to be fulfilled to improve the effectiveness of the activities to develop professionally relevant moral and spiritual components in military school students.

After the Treaty of Riga was signed in March 1921, the BSSR leaders had to address the issues of recovering the economy, returning property from abroad and searching for internal and external financial resources. While the issue of re-evacuation was more or less under control through the Polish-Russian-Ukrainian Commission for Re-evacuation established in May 1921, the issue of reimbursement for damages caused by Polish troops and occupation authorities simply hung in the air. The process of determining the exact figure of the damages only started in early 1922. It was initiated by the RSFSR People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs. At that very time, on 21 January 1922, the BSSR Council of People’s Commissariats adopted a resolution to establish the Ad Hoc Commission for the Evaluation of Damages Caused by the Polish Army and Occupation Authorities to the State, Private Persons and Institutions in the Territory of the BSSR. The Commission operated in the conditions of underfunding and low competence of technical personnel and was limited in time and capacity. The total damages to the Republic amounted to 9,034,208,319 Soviet roubles or 52,029,281 pre-war roubles 34 kopecks.

The article investigates the position of pre-convocation povet sejmiks in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania regarding the selection of the king in 1733. The aim of the article is to establish the position of pre-convocation sejmiks in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania on major political issues and first of all on the candidature of the future monarch. It became possible to address this issue after a new collection of instructions to delegates from pre-convocation sejmiks of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was found in the archive kept by the Kossowskie of Glogow in the Polish State Archives in Lodz. Of 24 instructions to delegates of the 1733 convocation sejm, we know 18. It was found on their basis that the Szlachta at the 13 pre-convocation sejmiks in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania spoke in favor of electing a “piast” as the future king. That actually meant supporting the candidacy of Stanislaw Leszczynski who was the leading “piast” candidate. The majority of pre-convocation povet sejmiks in 1733 supported him. At the remaining 5 pre-convocation sejmiks, the Szlachta did not support the election of a “piast” as the future king. Among these were Novogrudok and Minsk sejmiks. Later they will become centers of opposition to Stanislaw Leszczynski. This shows that Leszczynski’s opponents already formed the majority at pre-convocation sejmiks in these povets. Many pre-convocation sejmiks addressed the issue of abolishing the real estate tax imposed on the Szlachta of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The Szlachta of Lida, Troki, Grodno, Kovno, Zhmud, Minsk and, partially, of Mstislav requested to abolish this tax in thеir instructions; the Szhlachta of Brest even sent their ambassadors to the Primate, Teodor Potocki specifically on this question. Also the instructions to the delegates included particularistic requests from various noblemen of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth: the Radzivils, Teodor Liubomirski and Jakub Sobieski.

The article explores the Hunnish influence on the ethnical and political processes in Europe between the 4th and 6th centuries A. D. It was the Huns whose active actions significantly changed the interaction between the Romans and barbarians. The barbarian peoples turned from aggressive raids to the intensive colonization of the Roman territories and creation of their own states. As a result, the Western Roman Empire was destroyed. And during the processes of the Great Resettlement of the Peoples caused by the Huns, the barbarians had either formed new centers of ethnical and political development by the end the 6th century or laid the base for a new ethnical and political map of Europe. The disintegration of the Hunnish nomadic state took place in the middle of the 5th century A. D. As a result of the interethnic interaction, the Huns had merged with other peoples or dissolved in the Byzantine population by the end of the 6th century A. D. The Avars came to Europe in the second part of the 6th century A. D. and established there a new nomadic state by the end of the century. The Hunnish success and activity were rooted in their ethnical stereotype of behaviour. This stereotype continued to be ethnically and politically relevant for the peoples closely connected with the Huns including nomads.

The article explores compound particles. Based on the study of grammatical phenomena, it presents a quantitative and qualitative analysis which reflects specific features of the grammatical phenomenon in question in Holy Scripture. The Greek primary sources which served as a basis for the Luther Bible were used in analyzing compound participles. The analysis of compound participles in the Luther Bible allows making a conclusion that, as the quantitative data suggest, compound participles are a rather productive form. The most productive model in this Scripture is the one with a noun as its first component; it makes up 63 percent of the total number of compound participles found in the text. The second largest group of compound participles found in the text is the one where the first component is a numeral. This groups accounts for 24 percent of the total number of compound participles in the analyzed text. The groups of compound participles having an adverb or pronoun as its first component are quite rare in terms of the number of participle units belonging to them: 6 percent and 5 percent respectively. The smallest group of compound participles in the Luther Bible includes compound participles with the first component expressed by an adjective (2 percent). The analysis made it possible to conclude that the Luther Bible was the first record of certain compound participles.

The article substantiates the possibility of studying place names from the viewpoint of sigmatics, an aspect of the content plane of a sign. The irreducibility of place names to one clearly specified place in semiotic classification is displayed: the researcher can define their symbolic, indexical, and iconic characteristics. Exploring toponyms as icons in application to names of various types of objects can put the study on the explanatory track. The stages of studying various aspects of place names (syntactics, semantics, and pragmatics) generally repeat the stages of studying common names. Syntactics is a simple, “tangible,” and therefore the most studied aspect of a place name. The semantics of a place name appears to be conditional (stem semantics is explored) due to a unique component found in the structure of a toponym. This component prevents the place name from expressing a concept. Turning to anthropocentrism in science gave rise to a new trend in modern place names studies. The trend is focused on pragmatics. In the post-Soviet region, it is based on the need to explore ethnic and cultural meanings behind place name elements. The author proposes that, when detecting the role of the human factor, sigmatic properties should also be taken into account: properties of the perceived objects and their importance for people as reference points in spatial cognition. As a result, four categorization frames are distinguished which reflect both key senses reflected in place names, and the constructive character of creating the system of names.

Butoh is an avant-garde dance style that originated in Japan in the early 1960s in the performances by Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno. Butoh offered radically new principles of choreography and relationship between the dancer and his own body, and innovative techniques of working with image and stage space. Among the main principles of Butoh, the following can be distinguished: the accentuation on the movement of the body, not on accurate choreography, the principles of “Empty Body” and body archeology, a borderline physical and mental condition of the actor and his body, the performer’s radical subjectivity, an appeal to the creative powers of the subconscious, and the rejection of traditional concepts of harmony and beauty. Butoh started to be performed in Belarus in the early 2000s and now is a natural part of the stage practice of Belarusian dance groups and physical theatres, e.g.: Vyacheslav Inozemtsev’s InZhest, a physical theatre, and independent choreographer Irina Anufrieva. The main aspects of Butoh that are focused by Belarusian theater directors and dancers are: meaningfulness, spontaneity and improvisation of movement, understanding movement as a means of revealing subconscious impulses, close interaction between bodily movements and images, revelation of bodily memory in choreography, the principle of spatial drama, overcoming the understanding of dance as an illustration of music, emotion, and image. Butoh breaks canons and traditions of dramatic art and reveals a huge potential for the development of new theatrical and choreographic forms.

The motives of bidding farewell to winter and calling for spring in Shrovetide rites in Belarusian Polesie are analyzed using ethnolinguistic methods. Shrovetide is considered as a springtime new year holiday – a rite of passage (as defined by Arnold van Gennep). The bidding farewell to winter and calling for spring are distinguished as phases of passage. The article also uses research results by Albert Baiburin who updates van Gennep's rite phases: the “old world” that existed before the rite is desemiotized; then a new semiosphere is created – a “new world” is gathered together of detached parts; the world created anew is explored and is ritually divided in the end of the rite. The symbolic “old world,” i.e. the old season, in Shrovetide rites is winter, with spring being a new one. Bidding farewell to winter and calling for spring Shrovetide rites in Polesie region are considered in their interrelationship. Such aspects of bidding farewell to winter in Polesie as burning a dummy and rags and demonstrating a specially made doll are analyzed. A focus is made on such specific features of calling for spring during Shrovetide as singing spring songs by the bonfire of the dummy or rags, and (locally, in Žytkavičy and Stolin Districts) calling for spring with a piece of cheese in one's hands.

The problem of the terminological definition of “philosophical lyrics” is studied in the context of such categories of the literature poetics as genre, style and artistic technique. In modern literary studies which consider the philosophical aspects of Belarusian literature, there is no unequivocal definition for the concept of “philosophical lyrics;” it is often replaced by other concepts: intelligent lyrics, poetry of thoughts, meditative lyricism, philosophical and meditative lyro-epos, scientific poetry, metaphysical poetry, spiritual and irrational poetry, poetry of comprehension, and contemplating lyrics. There are three main approaches to the study of philosophical lyrics: receptive, typological, and historical. The analytical review of the main approaches to the consideration of the artistic structure of philosophical lyrics makes it possible to speak about its universal and syncretic character. Based on the analysis of research strategies used by Belarusian and Russian literary scientists, distinct characteristics of philosophical lyrics have been identified.

The article defines the authorial myth about the city as an artistic truth which is created by the author according to his own laws, and a new reality which is modeled according to the laws of mythological consciousness and urban mythology (represented by folk legends about wonderful moments in the history of the city, its life, its inhabitants and its space, where the city is perceived as a holistic, living cultural body). According to Jan Barszczewski’s artistic interpretation, the city is an ambivalent image; its symbolic ambiguity is disclosed by the author through the use of the biblical concepts of the city of Paradise, the city of Hell and the city of Purgatory. It is revealed that archetypal moments of the biblical history as well as Belarusians’ pagan ideas are transformed in the authorial myth; their use contributes to the understanding of the imperfections of the current situation in the world and to the perception of hope for a renewal which is conceived by the writer not as creating something new, but as returning to the original harmony. On the one hand, the renewal in Jan Barszczewski’s urban myth is connected with the idea of a utopian return of the Golden Age and is intertwined with the belief in the man of nature and in a subsistence economy; on the other hand, the renewal is manifested in the author’s inconsistent hopes for the city as a center of education, high culture and spirituality. It is emphasized that the key motif in Jan Barszczewski’s urban mythology is the loss of the historical memory, which is a sign of degradation and naturally precedes the end of the history of the city; it is part of eschatological myths, but the eschatological in the urban myths is made less tragic through the motifs of cyclic recurrence and renewal. The article defines eschatology in urban mythology and utopia in the authorial myth of the city as an expression of the idea of cyclic recurrence. The distinctive features of the writer’s worldview are identified.

The legal (constitutional) history of Belarus is analyzed. Different points of view on the development and formation of the Belarusian statehood are addressed. Works by domestic, Russian, Polish and Lithuanian authors expressing their views on the history of the Belarusian people were used. The attention is focused on the influence of the Statutes of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania on the development of the Belarusian sovereign law. It is noted that there are at least two Belarusian approaches to the assessment of the Belarusian statehood. The first approach is a Soviet inheritance; according to it, the Belarusian statehood started January 1, 1919 following the proclamation of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Byelorussia in Smolensk. According to the second approach, the Belarusian statehood dates back to many centuries ago and begins no later than the time of the Principality of Polotsk. New opportunities for the development of Belarus as an independent state emerged in the late 1980s. That period was marked by the beginning of transformation in the relations between the USSR and its Union Republics and the growing activity of citizens and public associations; at that background, there started the process of reforming the political, economic and legal systems. Law needed to be substantially updated at that time. The article highlights the most important laws passed at that period by the supreme body of state power in Belarus. These laws finalized the legal enshrinement of the independence. These include fundamental legal acts such as the Declaration on State Sovereignty of Belarus, the Law on Basic Principles of Democracy in the Republic of Belarus and the new Constitution of Belarus adopted in 1994 following over three years of preparation. All this allows making a complete picture of the development of the constitutional process in Belarusian lands. It is inseparable from the historical process of the development of the Belarusian people and its statehood.

The article investigates the factor of political will through the prism of criminological concepts of corruption. The article discusses in general terms the obstacles to the formation and implementation of such political will in Ukraine. The author argues in favour of the statement that the ineffectiveness of the existing formation of the mechanism of penal counteraction against corruption in Ukraine is due to the fact that bringing it into effect for every single corruption crime depends on the presence, absence or neutrality of the factor of the country leadership’s political will, with the properties of institutionalized corruption in Ukraine being the obstacles to the development and implementation of such a will. The increased danger of corruption crimes in Ukraine is explained on the basis of generalization of their properties. The ways of improving the mechanism of penal counteraction against corruption in Ukraine are suggested.