A consumer society and consumption ideal had been developing in the USSR since the 1970s. The special features of thisprocess were illustrated by the famous triad: "a car, an apartment and a country-house". However, this model of Sovietconsumer ideal was obviously not universal. The villagers had no need to build a summer cottage or reserve a place in anaccommodation waiting list. The Soviet rural consumer ideal, which include a wide range of material, social and culturalrequirements, is underexplored in historical science. The objective of the research was to examine interdependence ofurbanization processes and the formation of the Soviet consumer society. In addition, the author`s task was to determine themain elements of Soviet rural consumer ideal. The study proved that the migration from rural to urban area was caused notonly by objective differences between city and countryside infrastructure and provision of amenities. First and foremost,kolkhozniks’ consumption ideal was concerned primarily with living and working in the city because of the subjectiveperceptions of the stigma attached to plough-tail and rural way of life, urban high wages, a jests about littleness of mind,primitive habits of peasants. The results of the study show that the attitude of Russian villagers to the urban lifestyle weresignificantly transformed in the 1990s: socio-cultural components of consumer ideal were replaced by purely economic needs,which could be realized only by living in a city

The article discusses the development of a multicultural environment as a factor of improving the well-being context and competitiveness of the higher education system. The authors believe that the scale of what is happening today in the world at different levels leads to a substantial change in national structure of Russia. An extensive review of the Russian and international literature on multiculturalism is presented in the article. The concepts of interculturalism, polyculturalism and multiculturalism were reviewed. The authors also argue that the formation of the elite and the content of the state national policy are interrelated. We believe that it is the level of higher education institutions, the results of their research and technology development activities, determines not only their place in the international rankings, but also the dynamics of economic and innovative development of individual territories and entire countries. In the process of forming new paradigm to develop the role of higher education system, there are many factors which effect on this process especially in some countries like Russia and Belarus.  Keywords: intercultural environment, higher education system, international relations, institutionalization, human capital, polyculturalism, national policy

A number of British and American works of the 2000-2010s are devoted to the transformation of socialist ideas and crisis of collectivist values in the Soviet society after the Second World War. The objective of this article is to define the main trends of modern Anglophone historiography in studies of the dichotomy of consumerist ideals and socialist values in late Soviet society . The result of this study is an arrangement of general research approaches and an identifying of new thematic perspectives in Anglophone Russian Studies concerned with the Soviet period. Researchers consider the period from 1945 to 1990 as a comprehensive and logically complete period of Russian history. The internal unity of this period consists in the evolution of the Soviet way of life and socialist values. This process was incremental and hardly reflected by contemporaries (both within the Soviet state, and abroad). British and American works of the 2000-2010s filled a significant gap in world Russian Studies: the elements of capitalist culture, which coexisted in parallel with generally accepted Soviet way of life, were identified. A special contribution of modern Anglophone researches to Russian Studies is the analysis of socio-cultural processes, which were the evidence of the deformation of socialist norms and values. For instance, the occurrence of the sense of social injustice, greater recognition that a respected profession and a profitable occupation were divergent, is not sufficiently developed in Russian historical science.

Siberian transport corridors, especially river systems, provide transit freight traffic from Asia to Europe from the 18th century. Even in the 19th century, a unique geographical position of Russia contributed to the organization of different projects concerning transcontinental logistic corridor linking the Siberian rivers and their canals. The article presents a comparative analysis of the conditions for ensuring transit traffic along the Siberian rivers in the late 19th century. The example is the construction of the Ob-Yenisei Canal in the current economic situation in Russia. The author attempts to answer the question whether the reasons that put river transport in the "high-risk group" are systemic, historical, or they are the consequence of wrong management at the end of the 20th century. The purpose of the article is to determine the level of solutions or solvability of the problems that hindered the development of water transport in the late 19th-early 20th century. In addition, the authors are trying to evaluate the competitiveness of river transport in the modern conditions of increasing pressures on Siberian transport infrastructure. The paper identified three clusters of the systemic problems of Siberian water transport-design-technological, organizational and natural-geographic. The results have shown that the solution of technological and management issues, as well as lower costs of operation of water transport did not lead to an increase in the volume of traffic freights along the Siberian rivers. Economic, natural and geographical factors became the most important for the solution of technical problems.

Abstract. Social constructionism can be seen as a source of the postmodern movement, and has been influential in the field of cultural studies. The article is devoted to the analysis of the influence of social constructionism in modern Anglophone historiography and historical epistemology (2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012)(2013)(2014)(2015). The research results show the meaning and place of social and cultural constructivism in contemporary AngloAmerican theoretical historical reflection. Nowadays constructivism is the theoretical framework for many quantitative researches in history. The authors have discussed constructivism and post-constructivism as "umbrella-approaches" and not as "fully-fledged theories" in modern Anglophone historiography. The presence of theoretical foundations of social constructivism in contemporary Anglophone historiography, its role and level of influence can be accurately described as a "critical inoculation constructivism". To this day the theories of social constructivism perform many reflective and critical functions in cultural history and contemporary Anglo-American historiography. The ideas and postulates of social constructivism continue to play a prominent role in the "democratization" of modern socio-humanitarian knowledge, rethinking ethnicity, gender, socio-cultural identity. The theories of social constructivism are actively used in such historical projects and research directions as gender history, feminism history, sport history, the history of popular culture, media communications, and many others.