The special double issue of Neprikosnovennyj Zapas is dedicated to the topic of the historical makings of corporativity and the place of corporations in the modern world. The phenomenon of corporation is looked at from several angles. The issue presents articles by sociologists, economists, political scientists, historians, and even corporate practitioners, not to mention direct political opponents of modern transnational corporations. In this way, the editorial board tried to present a broad spectrum of analytical and political opinions, since those opinions had rarely been found under the same cover before.

The issue opens with a personal column of a sociologist, Aleksandr Kustarev. This is the first text in his NZ commentary project we chose to name "The imaginary of politics". Kustarev's article is dedicated to the analysis of corporativity as a way by which states, societies, businesses, and even hybrids of state and business corporations, which the author defines as corponations, might be organized.

The next section, "The phenomenon of corporation", depicts both the inner mechanisms of corporate functioning and the place of corporations in society, including modern Russian society. Jakov Pappe and Yana Galukhina analyze the history of Russian corporations that, according to the authors, have traveled a long way from completely oligarchic structures to fully legitimate participants in the world market. The articles by Irina Semenenko and Sergei Peregudov are devoted to the social aspects of corporate internal arrangements and activities.

The topic continues in an interview with a famous economist, Higher School of Economics Head of Research Yevgeny Yasin. Yasin builds up a scheme of the Russian government's relationships with Russian business (primarily corporations) and suggests two possible scenarios of the ways those relationships might develop.

In the next section, the NZ special issue returns the reader to the history of corporate formation. The phenomenon of corporation in the Middle Ages is discussed in an overview article by a well-known medievalist Adelaida Anatolievna Svanidze, while Yulia Arnautova examines corporations as a way of survival in the early Middle Ages. Yulia Arnautova also considers the very important matter of the historical roots of modern corporate culture.

The phenomenon of corporation is particular not only to modern globalist economy or medieval urban society. The tweniteth century had seen several attempts to build a corporate state, and the notion itself was introduced in Fascist Italy as early as the 1920s. In "NZ Tribune", there are two opinions from opposite ends of the political spectrum on whether the current Russian regime is trying to build a corporate state. Despite their political differences, Vladislav Inozemtsev and Boris Kagarlitsky give a positive answer to the question (albeit with varying degrees of reluctance). We hope that their articles will become a subject of serious discussions in future issues of NZ.

The matter of relationships between corporations and the state is further discussed by Natalia Zubarevich and Irina Bysygina in the section of the same name. The spectrum of analysis is broad, from the place of corporations in regional Russian politics to lobbying of corporate interests at the EU level. Timothy Carney, an American researcher from the Cato Institute, proposes his own concept of relationship between the state and big business. He tries to dethrone the myth about rivalry or even conflict existing between big business and the so-called big (i.e. strong and regulatory) government.

The following four sections are dedicated to a very important topic that (in the broadest sense of the word) can be called corporate ethics. Under "ethics" one might understand specific corporate rules of employee conduct (Lev Usykin's article), their relationship to each other and the corporation as a whole (Elena Krasnikova, Nadezhda Panferiva Recourses and limitations of corporate ethics in modern Russian companies), and a corporation's attitude to its hired personnel (Galina Gradoselskaya Myths of new Russian corporations). Another aspect of corporate ethics discussed is the way a corporation would behave outside its own borders, its charitable activities, and social and ecological programmes (articles by Inga Pagava, Olga Fedoseyeva, and Gleb Turin).

Corporate activities are increasingly criticized all over the world; especially that of transnational corporations that tend to monopolize the world market. An example of such anti-corporate and anti-globalist criticism is presented in the "Culture of politics" section by an article bordering on a manifesto written by Alex Kozlov, programmes director of the Ecological and Social Justice Foundation.

Corporations exist not only as Fascist or Frankist states or big transnational businesses. Any closed society that lives according to its own rules and that can lay claim to history and tradition of its own (and its own rituals, of course) is a corporation. A university, for example, is one of these phenomena. The phenomenon of the university as a corporation is discussed from different professional angles by Vitaly Kurennoy, Dmitry Kurakin, Aleksandr Filippov, and Aleksandr Sogomonov.

In the traditional NZ column "Sociological lyrics", well-known sociologist Aleksei Levinzon returns to the topic of the historical roots of corporations (he even treats Moscow prikazy as such) and poses a burning question: Who incorporates whom? Does the modern Russian state subsume the corporations or do the corporations subsume the state?

Aleksandr Tarasov follows him up in the section "Corporations and labour unions: Between struggle and solidarity" by tracing the history of post-Soviet labour unions, that, in his opinion, rejected the pursuit of corporate interests of hired personnel in order to be included into a much wider and much more powerful corporation that joined interests of state and big business. Ilya Budraytslis text "Corporate industry in Russia and the rebirth of labour unions" serves as an important supplement to that article.

The issue is concluded with our running sections: Yevgeny Saburov's column "Humanitarian economics", "Russian intellectual journals review", and "New books" (in the last section please note Aleksey Penzin's review of the recently published Russian translation of Lois Althusser's notable book For Marx).

Published 2007-01-06