European Researcher. Series A

456-461

Authors: Marianna M. Shakhnovich

The article shows, that in 1920- 1930s simultaneously with the anti-religious propaganda, the history of world religions and religious movements, anthropological and sociological studies of religion, the history of religious freethinking and atheism were carried out. The systematic work on the study of the religious beliefs and practices in everyday life has been designed and created on the basis of large scale field research in accordance with the achievements of modern theoretical works. There were two groups inside the academic community with opposite views on the nature and sense of religious studies: one group, explored the opportunity to make the research without clerical censorship, wanted to study religion as a cultural phenomenon, using different methodological approaches including Marxism, and understood the expression “critique of religion” in the philosophical sense as a historical and sociological analysis. The majority of them did not deny the Marxist idea of the gradual disappearance of religion in secularized world. Another group ‒ of left political radicals ‒ sought only to expose religion, looking for evidence of possible exposure. Among the works on the history of religion, published in the Soviet period, it is necessary to distinguish between the works done with the exclusive purpose for propaganda, from the works in which the free investigation and academic research might be found inside the ideologically and politically correct chains of that time.

468-477

Authors: Milena I. Tsvetkova

This research defends the thesis that digital books reduce the characteristics of the communication medium “book” and are transforming into “non-books”. Two aspects are traced: the foredoom to failure of the commercial (paid) digital book and the end of the digital book in the “book” category. Symptoms for the failure of the commercial digital book are the drop of growth in the market of e-books, the transformation of the book from goods into service, being free of charge, parental and teacher’s resistance. Key factors in this resistance are compromising knowledge and teaching and violating readers’ rights. The reason for the failure of the digital book in the “book”category is determined – the factor of manipulating the content as well as the formats. The conclusion is that investment policies should be directed at publishing of printed books, the designed innovations should be orientated towards the physical issue and to be introduces in the paper and the printing.