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  With the support of  The French Institute in Saint-Petersburg.  Free entrance, registration.   CRITIQUE ET INSTITUTIONS   A discussion with Oleg Kharkhordin, Victor Kaplun, Artemiy Magun.  

On December 20, 1768, as Russian plans to launch a naval expedition into the eastern Mediterranean began to materialize, Catherine II wrote to her envoy in London, describing how her tendency to build “Spanish castles” had been awakened. While, in some ways, idealistic, Catherine’s Greek project produced several tangible successes in the early 1770s. Following the victory at Chesma, in the summer of 1770, the Russian navy established firm control over the Aegean Sea for the remainder of the war.

Yves Cabannes: University College London, Development Planning Unit, Emeritus. Participatory budgeting (PB) has been a major innovation in participatory governance worldwide, with more than 3,000 experiences listed across 40 countries. PB has also diversified over its 30 years, with many contemporary experiments (referred to as PBs) only tangentially related to the original project to “radically democratize democracy”.

Could a machine read my mind? Could it read my mind better I can? Could it find out what I really think, what I truly feel, and may not be aware of? It does not matter whether the machine scans my brain or analyses of my data, whether it is neuroscience or, as we say, Big Data. The point is: can a machine be an instrument of introspection?

On November 23d, 2015 as part of the Res Publica Center’s regular seminar Carlo Taviani (German Historical Institute in Rome) delivered a lecture.

The Great Bridge in Novgorod, a structure connecting the Sofia and Marketplace sides of medieval Novgorod, was a key object in the city life. According to the "Charter on Bridges," an integral part of Russian law, its upkeep and maintenance were shared among all city dwellers. But the bridge was not simply a transportation artery linking the two areas that stretched along both banks of the Volkhov. It was an important public space in Novgorod. Here, residents of the Sofia and Marketplace sides would meet, though such meetings did not always proceed peacefully.

December 7-9, the European University at St. Petersburg and the European University Institute at Florence held an international conference

 

Quentin Skinner is a Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge University. He is usually taken to be the head of one of two schools of conceptual historians (Anglo-American, or Cambridge school, another one being the Begriffsgeschichte approach associated with Reinhart Koselleck). Prof Skinner has published a lot on early modern European thought, starting with by new classic Foundations of Modern Political Thought (2 vols.

May 25,  5.00 - 8.00 pm Quentin Skinner, Cambridge University, Thomas Hobbes and the English Republic Dominique Colas, Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris, An Icon of the Republic:Statues of Rampart-Crowned Women in Paris. May, 261.00 - 7.00 pm

Leading researchers in history of classical republics and republican political theory were participate in the conference, presenting papers on theory of classical republicanism. Also, a number of papers was devoted to the experience of medieval and renaissance republics - Venice  and Florence, as well as Novgorod and Pskov.