The research is focused on the image of the Soviet Union and that of its successor — the Russian Federation — in the minds of the Russian student youth. The concept of collective memory, being interdisciplinary and highly debatable, has been used in the given paper in its broad socio-cultural sense meaning the attitudes of interconnected social groups regarding the past and the present. The participants of the poll were 100 students from the leading Moscow universities. They had been born after the Soviet Union collapse, so, the majority of them have a very obscure idea of the Soviet reality, simultaneously feeling nostalgia for the Soviet political past. The results of the research show that the image of the Soviet Union drastically differs from that of Russia in the young people’s minds being positive and negative, respectively.

This article is based on the findings of the Political Ideas of Russian Society project realized by the Laboratory for Political Studies since 2008. The Laboratory has already conducted about 1000 in-depth interviews with respondents of various age cohorts and various social–economic statuses. All respondents demonstrated the Great Power pathos formed by two basic components — Russia is a great power and/or nostalgia of the lost Soviet might — serves the leitmotiv of authoritarian sentiments.

This article examines collective attitudes of American and Russian students toward national historical events that elicit pride or shame. The authors use the results of a quantitative questionnaire and analysis of in-depth interviews among students of leading American and Russian universities to identify the temporal localization, the content structure, and the prevalence of either hard or soft power in students' attitudes of pride or shame. The authors argue that perceptions of the past have been a core component of national identity and may have an impact on citizens' political behavior in the present. The authors also stress that major differences in young people's understanding of the past may influence future US-Russia relations.

Multipotent mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) maintain cellular homeostasis and regulate tissue renewal and repair both by differentiating into mesodermal lineage, e.g., adipocytes, or managing the functions of differentiated cells. Insulin is a key physiological inducer of MSC differentiation into adipocytes, and disturbances in MSC insulin sensitivity could negatively affect adipose tissue renewal. During aging, regulation and renewal of adipose tissue cells may be disrupted due to the altered insulin signaling and differentiation potential of senescent MSCs, promoting the development of serious metabolic diseases, including metabolic syndrome and obesity. However, the potential mechanisms mediating the dysfunction of adipose-derived senescent MSC remains unclear. We explored whether aging could affect the adipogenic potential of human adipose tissue-derived MSCs regulated by insulin. Age-associated senescent MSCs (isolated from donors older than 65 years) and MSCs in replicative senescence (long-term culture) were treated by insulin to induce adipogenic differentiation, and the efficiency of the process was compared to MSCs from young donors. Insulin-dependent signaling pathways were explored in these cells. We also analyzed the involvement of extracellular vesicles secreted by MSCs (MSC-EVs) into the regulation of adipogenic differentiation and insulin signaling of control and senescent cells. Also the microRNA profiles of MSC-EVs from aged and young donors were compared using targeted PCR arrays. Both replicatively and chronologically senescent MSCs showed a noticeably decreased adipogenic potential. This was associated with insulin resistance of MSCs from aged donors caused by the increase in the basal level of activation of crucial insulin-dependent intracellular effectors ERK1/2 and Akt. To assess the impact of the paracrine cross-talk of MSCs, we analyzed microRNAs profile differences in MSC-EVs and revealed that senescent MSCs produced EVs with increased content of miRNAs targeting components of insulin-dependent signaling cascade PTEN, MAPK1, GAREM1 and some other targets. We also confirmed these data by differentiation of control MSCs in the presence of EVs from senescent cells and vice versa. Thus, aging attenuated the adipogenic potential of MSCs due to autocrine or paracrine-dependent induction of insulin resistance associated with the specific changes in MSC-EV cargo.

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