The article outlines the complicated path of formation of the Belarusian language. On a number of examples, in general terms, it is noted that the Belarusian language for many centuries has been the most important means of transmitting socio­historical experience, the formation of national culture, traditions, identification of people and the formation of national statehood. Based on the historical experience, the authors emphasize the importance of preserving and developing the Belarusian language in the context of globalization of the world community – as an important task for every Belarusian.

Internationalization of higher education is a modern phenomenon that differs from all previous international cooperation in educational sphere. Its uniqueness largely depends to the change of epochs, from imperialism to multipolar world of the end of 20th century. Mentioned changing requires the new theoretical rationales of the internationalization of higher education, free from the rudiments of previous theories that have been functioned in categories of external influence, and internal unification (cultural, lingual, political etc.). The new theory should reflect integrational trends in global cooperation, that effects on institutional changes in higher education

The given article analyses key ethical risks that appears within the process of transition from capitalism to biocapitalism as a new type of socio-­economic relations. Special attention is dedicated to exploration of the biotech sciences role in the formation of new political, economic and social reality, establishing specific interpretation of social interconnections, revealing the hidden character of biopower. In conclusion, it is given a description of possible variants to prevent the most significant dangers: labour, medical, ecological, psychological, ethnic and cultural as well as those that appear in front of scientific communities. This puts it all into perspective of the following investigations.

The priority role of culture in formation of the ideal of the future is proved, the technology of this process is revealed. Culture is considered as an environment for the preservation and transformation of spiritual heritage. Major changes involve cultural change, which, as a rule, are the result of rethinking and updating fundamental life meanings and basic values. In modern conditions, there is a spontaneous search for possible solutions to pressing problems, the erosion of life meanings, including such fundamental concepts as citizenship, national, professional and religious identity. Such an uncertain situation cannot remain indefinitely. Culture, having adsorbed possible development options, makes its choice of the ideal of the future. Today, most post­Soviet countries have no vision of the future, and living without a concept of the future is meaningless.

Concepts are analyzed that could explain the problems of building a common vision of the ideal of the future, points of growth of new values that are formed in the depths of the old culture. It presents benchmarks and goals that the majority of the population would like to achieve. The response to new risks is the adequate development of national culture, which naturally is in dialogue with world culture, the formation of new meanings and values in life. Since the future of humanity is multivariate and not unambiguous. The humanities are not keeping pace with too rapid change. Moreover, in addition to benefits, modern technologies bring new problems to a person, opening up wide opportunities for information violence, manipulation of public consciousness.

The purpose of the article is to reveal the priority of culture in the formation of the ideal of the future. It seems that it is culture that is the sphere of the supra-biological programs of human life, where the ideal of the future is formed.

This paper analyzes the evolution of the institutional matrix of the GDL and establishes two stages in it. The first (pre­federative) is characterized by institutional diffusion, from the Kingdom of Poland in the first place, whereas the second is linked with the formation of the Commonwealth of Poland and Lithuania. It is shown that, as the formed federation united societies with distinct types of dominating institutions, institutional transplantation occurred from the more economically developed country to the other. Such integration leads not only to positive implications but also to the mutation of the transplanted institutions (strengthening of serfdom during the transition to the more progressive folwark agriculture). Transfer of the Western European system of fideicommissum inheritance turned out to be an institutional pitfall since the indivisible manors – ordynacii – presented a case of a state within a state, with their owners relying on the redistributive institutions at the microlevel (within their estates) and pursuing the market institutions at the macrolevel (within the country as a whole) in order to cement their economic position.

Peculiarities of the political sphere conditioned the transformation of the socio­cultural subsystem of the GDL’s institutional matrix. Roman Catholicism expanded rapidly, undermining the religious tolerance that the Grand Duchy had hitherto been known for. The elements of subsidiary ideology, coming from Poland, were understood as giving exceptional rights only to the szlachta stratum; acquisition of the golden liberties was equated with conversion to Catholicism and the use of the Polish language.

The consequences of these policies were the following: Polonization and mass conversion to Catholicism among the propertied classes; widespread resentment among the worse­off, morphing into popular uprisings in the XVII century; alignment of property, confession, and language groups in the society, which moved the social inequality issue into the ethnic dimension and contributed to interethnic strife in the lands of the former GDL in the centuries to come.

The absence of efficient governmental management of institutional transplantation caused an institutional crisis, which, with the political elites being disunited, was the reason for the entire social system to disintegrate.

The foundations of many future policy directions, either domestic or foreign, were laid during the period, when Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia struggled for restoration of their national independence. As the factors that had the greatest impact on the formation of these states’ main foreign policy priorities, the article analyzes, firstly, the structure of movements for their national independence (on the basis of which the political elites of the Baltic states were formed), and, secondly, the role of external influence in the formation of their ideology of foreign policy. The author traces the transformation of the main political powers that formed the national independence movements of the three republics into system political parties of the Baltic states, reveals the gradual consolidation of the leadership of right­wing political forces in the field of national ideology and foreign policy, as well as the special activity of the diaspora in establishing international relations of the independence movements of Lithuanian, Latvia and Estonia and in the formation of ideas and concepts that determined the main goals of future foreign policy of the three states. In addition, the article highlights the stages of the independence movements’ of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia international relations development in 1989–1991.

The Institute of Нistory of the National Academy of Sciences ofBelarusis the leading research institution of historical profile in the Republic. The history of the Institute testifies to the formation and development of Belarusian historiography. The article reveals the scientific and organizational activities of the staff of the Institute of Нistory of theAcademyofSciencesof the BSSR in the pre­war period. The influence of the socio­political situation on the change in the organizational structure and personnel of the Institute is shown: historians of the “old school” gave way to representatives of the new Marxist paradigm. The conclusion is made about the establishment of methodological monopolism in Soviet historical science. The author analyzed the process of formation and change of the main directions of historical research in the development of the concept of the history ofBelarusin 1929–1941. It is noted that in scientific research, priority was given to the problems of the history of the revolutionary movement, class struggle, and Soviet construction.

The paper explores the correlation between the universal categories of modus and modality in scientific discourse. It is claimed that the two categories demonstrate different ontological nature and, consequently, should be treated separately. In this light the domain of modality needs to be reduced to the expression of truth value, while the functional potential of modus will include all the other ways in which the speaker assesses his/her utterance. Hence, it’s more expedient to characterize modality as a functional-semantic category, with modus assuming communicative-pragmatic dimensions. It has been revealed that in scientific discourse there is absolute domination of modus, which can be attributed to the unique nature of communication in this field. The category of modality, in its turn, has a limited application and is mostly restricted to combinations with different modi. Further investigation has found out that English and Belarusian scientific discourses share their major modus-modality characteristics but differ in terms of modi their authors prefer to modalize and concrete language means used for the purpose.

The purpose of the study is to give a preliminary idea of the non­linear music expressing the post­non­classical concept of the world. Novelty: for the first time: 1) the novelty of the composer’s thinking of the representatives of the Second Musical vanguard is explained from the standpoint of non­linearity and self­organization; 2) the author’s definition of nonlinear musical reality is given, where three forms of representation are distinguished: local, total, and biand polyfurcation; synergistic methodological tools, including terminology, are applied to musical subjectivity, which allowed us to define a new essence and new quality of musical and artistic compositions. The most important side of nonlinear music is the improvisational beginning, where the integrity of the whole is achieved through the inevitable emergence of a certain uniformity of material and the coherence of the elements on the basis of the self­organizing force of creative and performing will. By the example of J. Cage’s “Etudes Australes”, a structural feature is considered, which consists in its openness, atemporality and “dispersion” of sound tissue in timeless space, that is, the structure of etudes is dissipative) non­linear) in essence. Models of non­linear music systems encompass genre forms that define actionism – happening, performance, as well as collage and intertextuality techniques. Together, they demonstrate compositions with a “completely relaxed form” (I. Dobritsyna).

Thus, non­linear music is a specific musical text, or “modern … opus perfectum et absolutum” (according to M. Katunyan), dominated by casual processuality and structural openness, focus and self­organization, the principle of uncertainty and discrete metaphysics, which corresponds to the post­non­classical concept of the world and mental the specifics of the modern era. Non­linearity characteristics include the multiplicity of semantic, lexical, and structural representations of the material (for example, form aleatorics) and loose text (for example, graphic music), the approximation of elements and means of expression (musical and extra­musical), “deterministic chaos” (according to J. Gleick) and emergence of changes in the process of formation of musical matter, self­structuring based on temporary and anthropogenic factors.

The article presents unique archival materials providing evidence that everyday magic practices, eschatological narratives and beliefs were common inBelarusduring the Second World War. The scientific commentary on the facts registered by Soviet scholars in folklore­ethnographic expeditions of 1945–1946 confirms that during the war archaic rituals and folk orthodox beliefs were actualized in folk culture. It is proved that the ritual “bread walking” and the distribution of “holy letters” belong to the forms of ritualistic amulets. They occupy a peripheral position in the system of occasional rituals of Belarusians. Their ideological content determines the synthesis of folk religious ideologies with elements of contact, initial and apotropic magic. At the stock level, the amulets are implemented as transmission practices. In addition, the work defines mythosemantics, ritual context and intertextual relations of the “bread walking” ritual.

On the example of works of the classic of Belarusian literature Maksim Bogdanovich, there is studied the role of literary canon in aesthetic self­identification of national literature. It is noted that the literary canon acts as a strategy of cultural identity, one of the effective forms, and important condition of formation of the cultural symbolic world of meanings funded by the general cultural values of humankind. It is stated that historical, cultural, artistic, ontological, existential values and meanings explicated in the poetic canon of Maksim Bogdanovich became an important part of spiritual dimension, cultural integration, harmonization of social relations. A distinctive feature of the poet’s appeal to the canonical art form is securing for it the role of a symbolic consolidating referential sign designed to form a “cultural consciousness”, to instill the sense of general aesthetized ethnocultural unity, to serve as a means of spiritual integration and national consolidation of society.

In the article the studies of space in the humanitarian disciplines are considered , their phasing, main vectors and consistent logic of development in the context of the cultural and civilizational experience of mankind are traced. The stable tendency of filling with culturally determined attributes spatial objects and phenomena is noted. It is shown how through the axiological diagnostics of space and its components in philosophy, culturology, humanitarian geography, and literary criticism, the ontological and spiritual world of a person is researched, the national character, typologies of features of mentality are revealed, worldview landmarks and the ways of thinking are concretized. The great heuristic potential of spatial images for the study of the structure, semantics, stylistics and poetics of literary works is emphasized.

This article is devoted to one of debatable issues– the possibility of classifying theRussian Federation, the subject of theRussian Federationand the municipality as subjects of entrepreneurial activity. Consideration of doctrinal positions, as well as the study of new forms of business activity allowed the author to draw the following conclusions. Actions performed by any public legal entity are solely aimed at ensuring public interests, which at first glance indicates that it is impossible to classify public legal entities as business entities. At the same time, the new forms of economic cooperation of the state, its subjects and municipalities with entrepreneurs that have appeared recently indicate that public formations can be a party to an entrepreneurial agreement. Such agreements are concluded by authorized bodies of public legal entities that represent public entities as property owners. Taking into account the nature of public legal education (this is a territorial structural and functional form of organization of a territorial public collective), the article concludes that the Russian Federation, its subjects and municipalities cannot directly carry out business activities, they carry out it indirectly through authorized bodies, and therefore, the state, its subjects and municipalities are indirect participants in business activities.

The article examines the theoretical and methodological aspects of managing the innovative development of the economy of theRepublicofBelarusas an open socio­economic system. To determine the problem field of the considered control object, the main characteristics of the equilibrium state of a small open economy and the constraints that establish the framework for its functioning and determine the degree of balance of the economic system are determined. From the standpoint of strategic management, the impact of innovation processes in a small open economy has been investigated, including the technological, economic, territorial and social factors that determine the degree of influence of innovation on the functioning and development of the socio­economic system.