2016.2

The article describes the events in Libya from 1943, when Libya was liberated from the control of Italy and divided into three occupation zones, to the first decade of the XXI century, the verge of “Arab Spring”, which triggered a civil war in that country. It especially focuses on the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya regime, which was overthrown together with its founder in 2011. The author shows that behind this regime, allegedly based on direct democracy, was not only the autocracy of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, but also political confrontation between representatives of different tribal clans, which escalated in 1991–1998, during the period of international embargo against Libyan Arab Jamahiriya. The article also analyzes the main trends of Libyan foreign policy and internal conflicts that lead to the fall of Libyan Arab Jamahiriya and the shocking death of Gaddafi.

The article is dedicated to the history of the foundation of the Historical branch in the Institute of Asian and African Studies in 1956 and depicts the activities of certain historical departments. It reflects the main periods and actual trends in the development of the historical studies on Asia and Africa, revealing unity and diversity in the historical development of various parts of Asia and Africa regions.

In the article, based on a series of computations and models, it is shown that despite the progress achieved in the world during the last three to four decades in technologies, innovations, and international economic links, paradoxically, there occurred a substantial slowdown in global economic growth and total factor productivity and human development index dynamics — primarily in DCs, but in EMs as well. Although some part of this phenomenon is due to underestimation of quality in growth dynamics, “new normal” of retardation in growth is real. It stems from massive distortions in the global economy and its main constituents brought about by its excessive financialization, substantial increase in indebtedness, huge rise in levels of inequality of incomes and assets. Although it is clear that some reallocation of incomes from super-rich to less well-to-do, especially in EMs, that could be undertaken by means of heavier taxation of the former, can boost development of human capital, promote acceleration in world economic growth and convergence in the global economy, the political mechanism of this Keynesian world-wide reform is very hard to enact.

Contemporary Chinese poetry demonstrates a tendency towards converging word and image. Many authors use this convergence of visual and verbal as a means of renewing their poetics. It reflects not only orientation towards a creative dialogue with the art of previous periods, but also emergence of new expressive means that implicate language experiments (incl. words as asemantic images). Examples of this approach include formal experiments of poet-cum-artist Yan Li, calligraphic explorations of Ouyang Jianghe, and works of several poetry groups and circles, among others — the ‘marvelous enlightenment’ calligraphy school (miao wu). This use of hybrid formats for information presentation captures new ways of visual-verbal interaction in rethinking of the literati tradition. At the same time, it constitutes a part of our need for surviving in a global text field, where misunderstanding of the text language in constant crossing of linguistic borders is increasingly becoming an important part of our practice.

Laboratory of Experimental Phonetics is a teaching and research unit, part of the Institute of Asian and African Studies of Lomonosov Moscow State University. Laboratory works closely with all philological departments of the Institute, its experts are studying sounding system of language, speech prosody, intonation, psycholinguistics. Laboratory of Experimental Phonetics was established in autumn 1962 as an interdepartmental research center: students, undergraduates, graduate students, teachers, researchers of the Institute of Philology faculties work and study there.