Professor Tatiana Medvedeva is a Professor in the Department of World Economy and Law at Siberian State University of Transport, Novosibirsk, Russia. At her university, she is a former Director of the Scientific and Practical Center for Business and Management. She uses group facilitation methods in teaching and consulting with managers of Russian enterprises. She has also worked as Vice-director of the Institute for Prospective Transport Technologies. On two occasions she was a visiting scholar at Georgetown University and George Washington University in Washington, DC. She received a diploma in economic cybernetics from Novosibirsk State University, a kandidatskaya degree (Ph.D) and a doctorate degree (Dr.Sc.) in economics from Moscow State University. Most of her scientific writings concern the economics of transitions and change management, including the changes in values, beliefs, and institutions now occurring in the post-communist countries. She has published papers in several systems and cybernetics journals and made presentations at conferences in East and West Europe, Russia, and the USA.

In Russia, difficulties with implementing market reforms have increased interest in understanding the unique Russian philosophical heritage with the goal of understanding what Russia is, what Russian culture and civilization are, and what the similarities and differences are between Russia and the West. Such thinking necessarily requires us to attempt "to look at the root" of the problem: to see the similarities and differences in the Russian and Western intellectual traditions; to try to determine not the geographical, but the intellectual place of Russia between the East and the West. Such attempts are particularly valuable when they lead to finding ways of integrating Western and Eastern intellectual traditions, partly in order to solve global problems. Such integration is needed at this time in history. The Russian style of scientific thinking, due to its history and culture, includes elements of Eastern and Western intellectual traditions. The Russian intellectual experience may provide the basis for a synthesis of Western and Eastern knowledge.

This Plenary Keynote Address presents cultural foundations of the Russian approach to cybernetics from three perspectives. First, it describes the peculiarities of the Russian style of scientific thinking in comparison with Western and Eastern approaches. Second, it suggests that cybernetics as "the most Eastern of the Western sciences" may benefit from Russian ideas such as the noosphere, the necessity to develop man's nature, Russian cosmism, active evolution, tektology, etc. Third, it compares Vladimir E. Lepskiy's and Stuart A. Umpleby's theories of cybernetics looking at them through the prism of Russian and American intellectual traditions.