The authors offer analysis of the situation related to a possibility of the dollar’s devaluation and provide a detailed examination of «natural-objective» and subjective-active factors that have impact on the process. The authors also deal with games played by other centers of economic power and try to overcome their dependence from the USA. Various scenarios of «the dollar’s crash» and consequences such event may have for Russia are examined. The authors analyze the current conditions of the American economy and factors that impede and cushion a crash. At the same time it is emphasized that at the present time there are no conceptual models, no theories, no theoretical paradigms that allow a strategic forecasting. Theoretical framework for such efforts does not exist. Moreover, there is an obvious lack of reliable data for such forecasting. The authors' own position is that no serious war or attack against the dollar or the USA economic supremacy will happen because weakening of the dollar and the USA will inevitably bring about a global crisis. No country or party will profit from such crisis. If it erupts, it will pose a particular danger for Russia.

For many decades Rumania successfully employed methods of maneuvering in its foreign policy and, due to this success, gained the maximum advantages from discord between the world centers of power. Preconditions of the «peculiar line» emerged in the late 1950s and manifested themselves in Rumania’s departure from the position common for the WTO countries and in attempt to get rid of the petty, narrow-minded supervision of the USSR. Ideologically the «peculiar line» was based upon the theses that the «superpowers» performed negative role and the national interests had priority over the class ones. The «peculiar line» policy consisted of gaining specific economic and political advantages and benefits by means of traditional maneuvering between the centers of power involved in confrontation. Bucharest succeeded in achieving principal aims of this policy though many political dividends were left unutilized.

On the verge of the 19th and 20th centuries a modernization project was in progress in Russia. This project was aimed at Russia’s approximation to the Western industrial nations. Thus the project caused the rapid development of the most modern industries. The trade unions, workers' organizations modeled along the lines of similar organizations that existed in the West were in making. However, since forms of industrialism different from the European forms continued to develop the industrial plants' committees (workers' organizations based upon the peculiar domestic traditions) began to appear. Tension between modernist and traditionalist trends in the revolutionary movement found their manifestation in the rivalry between trade unions and industrial plants' committees. The struggle among the political parties also added fuel to the rivalry: originally trade unions followed the moderate Socialists while the industrial plants' committees underwent Bolshevization. Finally the trade unions' bureaucracy imposed itself on the industrial plants' committees and that meant the workers' self-government system was subjugated by the State and integrated within it.

The author deals with a questionable direction in the contemporary historical science, i.e., theory of the lost alternatives and virtual role-games. The author investigates epistemologic problems (problems of the humanitarian disciplines' method) as well as the specific content of the alternative studies. The attention is focused on the problem of the modern historical science’s ethos (its moral standards). What is the social responsibility of a historian, how far are we to go in our search of the truth, what is the ethics of an interpretator who reconstructs a non-existent historical reality — the author offers his answers to these and other questions.

Sergei Witte has been described variously as statesman, industrializer, bureaucrat, careerist. Yet, like so many other Russians in the late 19th century, Witte was a dreamer. He lived in the European Age of Empire - a time before the chaos of twentieth-century war and revolution, when instead global expanses, new technologies, powerful national states, and evolving cultures seemingly made all things possible. This article examines three intertwined dreams that entranced Witte in these years. The first was a dream of a powerful Russian Empire, its vast Eurasian space subjugated by transcontinental railroad, global commerce, and Russian civilization. The second, especially apparent when he remembered the reign of Emperor Alexander III, was a dream of a Russian autocracy whose monarchical authority was legitimate because it guaranteed imperial power, social order, and popular welfare. The third, necessary if the first two were to be sustained, imagined the unity of an imperial nation, created by a powerful commercial-industrial economy out of the disparate ethnic communities that constituted the Russian Empire. The article speculates that these dreams motivated much of Witte's action in end-of-the-century Russia.

The publisher resolutely reject some researchers' allegations about rapprochement of the Eurasianism and the Nazis. The Eurasianism which emerged among the Russian emigrants of the first wave was created not by politicians but by the prominent, outstanding representatives of the Russian culture and was absolutely incompatible with the Nazism. The political ideas of the Eurasian movement cannot be understood if they are considered not within their proper culture-centered and religious context. The letters which are published here demonstrate beyond any doubt that all attempts of Meller-Zakomelski who took pains to attract Eurasians to the Nazis' side failed because they were definitely rejected by N.S.Trubezkoi, one of the Eurasianism’s founding father.