The method of multi-criteria assessment of economic development based on an econometric model with the identification of production, market and institutional factors in relation to the parameters of economic growth and development risks is developed. The methodology is applied to the study of actual data on the economic development of post-Soviet Russia, which allowed us to obtain objective assessments of the activities of individual governments on a large set of criteria: oil-dependent, oil-dependent and diversifying, progressive, regressive and passive, conservative and destructive, managed and unmanaged development, etc.both in terms of growth and development risks, as well as individual development factors. The article describes the parameters of economic development during periods of shock therapy, radical reforms, post-devaluation recovery, building a "vertical of power" and "nationalization of the elite". It is concluded that the last periods only preserved the institutionally degraded society, but did not ensure its development. The period 2004-2008 is the only one when a positive purposeful impact of the government on development risk was revealed, namely, it was organized to reduce the fluctuation of economic growth during the period of rising oil prices. There were no positive targeted effects of governments on economic growth.

The article examines the features of the economic development of Russia since 1887 by growth and risk parameters. The development risk was measured using the standard deviation of the annual growth rates of real GDP. Progressive, regressive, conservative, and aggressive development is proposed to determine according to the changes in growth and risk. The authors have analyzed the process of development under individual governments, as well as in general for the imperial, socialist, and post-Soviet periods, with the emphasis in the last two Stalinist and post-Stalinist, liberal and patriotic periods, respectively. Progressive changes in economic development are revealed: Stolypin reforms, industrialization and the “vertical of power”; regressive: civil war, Khrushchev reforms, perestroika, liberalization, and modernization; conservative: Kosygin reforms and “nationalization of the elite”. Except for opportunistic growth and risk surges 1911-1913 and 1998-2000, no aggressive developmental periods with identifiable institutional causes were found. The repetitive development cycle of the socialist and post-Soviet periods is shown. The conclusion is made about the greater authenticity of the Russian culture of the socialist development model and the least of the liberal ones, as well as the need to develop post-industrial development institutions that are authentic to the Russian culture for their application after the predicted institutional crisis.

It was pointed out that there is a need to move from expert to methodological culture in higher professional education. The essence of this way of education is not knowledge about entities, but patterns and tools for knowledge management. The importance of the development of a methodological culture for creating growth areas inside and outside the existing education system and for a fundamental change in the management system of universities is emphasized. The basic models of universities are investigated by the structural method based on the matrix of values of the key cultures of the world. The search for mechanisms of transition to higher methodological education in Russian culture has been carried out. One of the mechanisms of such transformations is the transition to the authentic Russian culture when students select professors and inversed process when professors select students and universities’ leadership by the locals.

Currently lean production techniques and tools penetrate into the industrial enterprises: System 5S, Continuous Flow, Gemba (“the actual place”), Kanban (“Pulling System), KPI, Key indicators, etc. The article is aimed to analyse the experience of implementing lean production instruments on the example of large industrial enterprises. The main goal of lean production is reduction of wastes which do not add value to the product. Implementation of the lean production technologies has costs of introduction that means need of assessment of cost efficiency of projects on implementation of lean production technologies. At the same time, it is important to develop instriments for making decision on expediency of introduction of lean production tools at preliminary stages. Two main tools are offered in this article. The first is an indicator of cost efficiency of introduction of lean production instruments. This indicator shows that the project will be effective if gain of the outputs exceeds the costs of introduction. The second one is a method of calculation of the maximum costs of introduction of lean production tools when the project is effective. The developed instruments were approved on the example of introduction of lean production instruments in Kalashnikov Concern and JSC Elecond which are two large scaled machine-building enterprises. The results of approbation demonstrate the practical importance of the carried-out research.