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The formation of the country’s image is one of the components of the national identity policy construction. The purpose of this study is to identify the substantive characteristics of the policy of the three Caspian states - Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Azerbaijan - within the formation of both the image of their countries and the macro-region. The concept of the ‘discursive power’ is applied; the empirical methods used are an online survey, focus group and expert interviews. The author characterizes the main groups of factors influencing the construction of the image in the countries under consideration, identifies the types of image policies, main strategies, and technologies. We focused on the problems and prospects of forming the image of the Caspian macro-region. According to the surveys of citizens conducted in Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan, the structural characteristics of the macro-region image are as follows: the ecosystem of the Caspian Sea and the common Soviet past. The main challenges to promoting the image of the macro-region are the lacuna of agencies in terms of institutions, general strategies and technologies, the uneven inclusion of the countries of the macro-region in the global and regional information space, the nature of center-regional relations in the countries of the region, the existing competition of macroregional projects. In the modern world order, the Caspian macro-region can be considered as a potential ‘center of power’, possessing enormous material and spiritual resources for development. The construction of its image, its promotion as one of the humanitarian components of the developing cooperation of the Caspian Five countries in the conditions of deglobalization and the creation of mega-regional projects that establish new standards and norms of interaction.

The increase in the political subjectivity of non-state actors, primarily megacities, has long been articulated, but still has not received sufficient understanding. The ongoing processes of urbanization and globalization, on the one hand, and the processes of deurbanization and deglobalization, clearly manifested during the pandemic, give rise to many complex tasks of political management that require new approaches both in practice and in the theory of politics. The editorial board presents the current issue of the journal devoted to analysing the problems of the city and the countryside from a political perspective, stating political urban and rural studies as a subdiscipline of political science taking its first steps.

One of the main intangible resources, along with regional and local identity, is human capital. Multiplying human capital is one of the main functions of the education system, including higher education. The theoretical framework of the study is defined by the concept of responsible development (I.S. Semenenko), the theories of “triple helix”, “preceding events” (path dependence) of P. David and “track of dependence”. The empirical base is represented by the results of a sociological study, held among students of Krasnodar universities in June 2022. As part of comprehensive analysis, documents of regional authorities and administration, and data from federal and regional statistics were used. The Krasnodar Krai was initially formed and integrated as an agricultural region; thus, the system of higher education focused largely on training specialists for agriculture and related industries. Structural transformations that began in the 1990s changed the region’s vector of development. The rapid progress of the resort and recreational industry, and enterprises of the tertiary sector influenced both intra-regional and inter-regional migration. The universities of the Krasnodar Krai are attractive to educational migrants from other regions of the country - from both the neighbouring Southern Russia regions and the north-eastern regions. At the same time, from the point of view of global competitiveness, the region has systemic problems in the development of human capital, innovation, and space. The authors focus on the educational trajectories of students, the reasons for their choice of Krasnodar as education destination, satisfaction with the quality of educational services, the degree and forms of social activities, as well as further life and professional plans. The authors identified three contradictions in the current state of the region’s higher education system, without the resolution of which it will be impossible to convert human capital into a real factor of regional development. These are the contradictions between the significantly growing population of the region and the reduction in the number of students, between the needs of the labour market of the “knowledge economy” and the structure of specialists’ training, and between the governmental trend for the development of rural areas and the lack of motivation among university graduates to work in rural municipalities. The article formulates several proposals for resolving these contradictions.

The article brings forward the results of the study continuing a series of scientific elaborations of the construct of the internal picture of disability. The purpose of this series is to improve rehabilitation approaches by means of rising the adherence to rehabilitation within the psychological paradigm and the rehabilitation context as a whole. This paper summarizes the results of the study of personal, adaptive reactions of patients to a situation of disabling diseases on account of socioeconomic and physiological consequences of the disease. Patients with the main disabling pathologies (n = 510), forming a leading position in the structure of disability of the Russian Federation, took part in the study. Statistical processing of the complex of psychological parameters made it possible to assess the structure of psychological processing of a situation of disabling diseases in patients in the context of a rehabilitation willingness to cope with the arising effects of the disease. The study reveals the specificity of rehabilitation activities, which is characterized by varying degrees of inclusion of psychological resources depending on the degree of frustration. Minor frustration is mainly characterized by a psychological fixation on the disease; its further growth potentiates the patient to a greater variability of adaptive behavior with the shift of responding from the focus of negative effects of the disease to personal self-determination, reflection of personal values and senses. A high degree of frustration blocks the rehabilitation activity; it is shown in a “chaotic” character of reactions with a retreat from a reflective component into predominance of non-adaptive “emotional” strategies. The study reveals major rehabilitation “markers” which characterize personal rehabilitation potential and rehabilitation prognosis for the effective formation of the individual program of rehabilitation of patients. The authors offer the model of the system of psychological rehabilitation in the context of the concept of the internal picture of disability and reveal its organizational, procedural, and methodological aspects. They also state objectives, principles, conditions, criteria of an effective rehabilitation outcome, sequence of rehabilitation activities, and existing problems in the effective implementation of rehabilitation of patients at various stages of The article brings forward the results of the study continuing a series of scientific elaborations of the construct of the internal picture of disability. The purpose of this series is to improve rehabilitation approaches by means of rising the adherence to rehabilitation within the psychological paradigm and the rehabilitation context as a whole. This paper summarizes the results of the study of personal, adaptive reactions of patients to a situation of disabling diseases on account of socioeconomic and physiological consequences of the disease. Patients with the main disabling pathologies (n = 510), forming a leading position in the structure of disability of the Russian Federation, took part in the study. Statistical processing of the complex of psychological parameters made it possible to assess the structure of psychological processing of a situation of disabling diseases in patients in the context of a rehabilitation willingness to cope with the arising effects of the disease. The study reveals the specificity of rehabilitation activities, which is characterized by varying degrees of inclusion of psychological resources depending on the degree of frustration. Minor frustration is mainly characterized by a psychological fixation on the disease; its further growth potentiates the patient to a greater variability of adaptive behavior with the shift of responding from the focus of negative effects of the disease to personal self-determination, reflection of personal values and senses. A high degree of frustration blocks the rehabilitation activity; it is shown in a “chaotic” character of reactions with a retreat from a reflective component into predominance of non-adaptive “emotional” strategies. The study reveals major rehabilitation “markers” which characterize personal rehabilitation potential and rehabilitation prognosis for the effective formation of the individual program of rehabilitation of patients. The authors offer the model of the system of psychological rehabilitation in the context of the concept of the internal picture of disability and reveal its organizational, procedural, and methodological aspects. They also state objectives, principles, conditions, criteria of an effective rehabilitation outcome, sequence of rehabilitation activities, and existing problems in the effective implementation of rehabilitation of patients at various stages of the disease (before disablement, being registered as a disabled person, and after disablement), including possible practices for improving efficiency of psychological rehabilitation of patients.