The article is a rejoinder to the boisterous reaction of the CPRF elite to the author’s works that had been published earlier and contained criticism of the CPRF leaders. The author notes that the text published and disseminated by the CPRF press service cannot be perceived as a discussion material because it omits discussion of the principal issue: the political results of activities the CPRF carried on from its inception onwards, i.e. for 15 years. Persons who concocted this text also skirt topics that the author suggests to discuss for a long time. Collision of regress in Russia and forms of struggle under conditions of growing regress are among these topics. Instead of restoring the Soviet positive notions in the public conscience and developing ideas without which the country cannot survive the CPRF elite propagates extremely dangerous politically and ideologically topics, i.e. «sustainable growth concept» and «limits to revolution». Thereby the CPRF elite reveal the ultra-comprador nature of their ideology.

In the second part of the article the author tallies up results of multiple-path analysis of China’s economic development in the 20th century. In fact, ratio of per capita GDP in China and the USA by the end of the century remained what it was in the beginning of the century. All six-to-sevenfold growth of the indicator in China occurred during the last 30 years. The author examines economic dynamics of the Russian empire in the long-term historical hindsight (from the 18th to the early 20th century). Original calculations and estimates add a greater precision to our views of rates of development and scales of Russia’s economic growth in 1883−1913. Even in these best years of «Russia we lost» the absolute and even relative gap between values of per capita GDP in Russia and the USA did not decrease but kept to increase. Similar calculations made for the present day reality attest the end of recovery economic growth in Russia which undergoes reforms. By the end of 2006, i.e. 17 years after beginning of economic downturn in the USSR and the profound crisis of transition period value of per capita GDP in Russia again attained the maximum Soviet level of goods and services output.

The author considers a new hypothetical trend in the contemporary economic science, i.e. «the human life economics». He emphasizes that within the context of this notion the human life (the HL) is to be considered, in a greater extent, as an economic concept than as a self-sustained and self-sufficient value. The HL may be a subject of taxation and an item of purchase and sale. Due to that many problems of contemporary economic growth including those of rate of growth acceleration, control of migrant numbers, modification of the international currency system etc. may be solved. The author comes to the conclusion that by lapse of time the specific weight of components directly connected with skills of a person will decrease while the specific weight of parameters characterizing a person’s adaptability to the environment (psychological stability, ability to cooperate with a team, supremacy of corporate interests over personal interests, commitment to leaders etc.) will rise. Consequently, the humankind may come up with the universal dissemination of the new behavioral pattern based upon principles of Neo-Darwinism. Finally, the author answers the question: to what extent content of the article complies with the present day realities and to what extent it is a product of his own imagination.

In the final part of her article the author focuses оn shifts that occur in the social psychology. These shifts are results of triumph of a specific version of the consumer society which has established in Russia. Triumph of this modification is combined with the most rough and ruthless ideology of inequality. It should be emphasized that, from the author’s viewpoint, precisely these deformations of the public conscience constitute the main principle of the paradox described in previous parts of the article. The Russian public is unwilling to break a movement which, according to the opinion which is gaining increasing currency, leads to deadlock. In conclusion the author comes back to the current situation in France. She demonstrates that despite a very strong historical commitment of the French to the ideal of equality the French public conscience is absolutely unwilling to appreciate significance of social and political processes that go on in Russia nowadays and to put these processes in the proper global context.

In the second part of his article the author analyses social, cultural and ideological prerequisites of the Russian philosophy of mythology emergence. This discipline emerged and developed in the second half of the 18th century and in the early 19th century in the works of the first Russian historians and myth creators. It was aimed at search and elaboration of basic methodological and worldview orientations for concrete scientific cognition of the Slavic mythology. Period of empirical and theoretical prerequisites accumulation of the philosophy of mythology in Russia grew up into process of its immediate emergence and went on until appearance of the «mythological school» in the Russian folklore studies (the 1840s and 1850s). This school developed well beyond limits of specific theoretical generalizations related exclusively to the Slavic mythology and achieved the level of conceptual abstracts of the general theory of myth. Results and achievements of the Russian philosophy of mythology have not lost their significance down to recent times.

The following article is dedicated to revision of the main aspects of Decembrist’s secret societies history. Its author argues that usual to many scholars as well as readers ideas about secret societies are based on the conception created by the Southern society leader Pavel Pestel during interrogation. It had little resemblance to reality. This conception presented Decembrist movement as an endless ideological debate, complicated by bloody regicide projects. Pestel’s conception suited him well to hide the real preparations to the seizure of power, leaded by him. It also suited well the new emperor, permitting him to hide from Europe the army’s corruption and to justify hard sentences to the accused. The article points out, that the classical Decembrist studies had reached a deadlock, and needs complete rethinking.

The US Minister of defense speech in the US Congress in which he introduced Russia into «the axis of evil» was one of the reasons that caused the Russian President’s hard-hitting report at the security conference in Munich. V.V.Putin in rather strong terms described US and NATO policy as well as the Pentagon head’s statement on necessity to increase military expenditures, particularly due to the uncertainty of situation in Russia. Revitalization of US and NATO policy on the Russian direction creates considerable problems for Russia because NATO approaches the Russian frontiers immediately and even enters territory of the post-Soviet space. In fact, the US-Russia relations problem is the problem of Russia’s weakness. The US is in haste to take advantage of this weakness. That’s why the authors strongly criticize some Russian circles' reaction to the existing situation. These pundits repeat «no need to dramatize» mantra while the authors provide well-founded arguments in favor of opinion that the intended deployment of NATO missile bases in Poland and radar stations in Czech Republic is pointed precisely against Russia. Thus 20 year epoch of illusions connected with ‘Russia's entrance into the West' has come to the end. Russia needs to have the sovereign state and the sovereign super-project.

The cold war may have begun, in a formal sense in the late 1940s but its multiformity (including pop-cultural contest), unexpectedness, intensity and longevity only make sense if we understand that it had far older sources. To ignore the prehistory of the cold war politics is to miss some of the most important aspects of the story. The author quite explicit about this: it is a typical error to see the origins of the cold war largely from the perspective of the confrontation between ideologies, between Leninist communism and the Western liberal values dates to 1917. The author of the article strongly believes that the new approach to the history of international relations in the XXth century demands to analyse the problem from a different angle — mainly paying attention to the «wars of position» in which both the pre-revolutionary Russian political elite and bolshevism in power in their perpetual search of security ever since the beginning of WWI, through the Revolution, the Civil War of 1917−1920, and the intermediate period between the world wars saw themselves as engaging against the more powerful and hostile West. In the first part of the article the author focuses on the U.S. diplomacy’s efforts to implement a policy designed to prevent the consolidation of the Soviet influence in Europe and Asia. In fact it was the «protocontainment» project supported by conservative politicians and «Russian experts» like Bullitt, Kelley, Henderson, Berle, Kennan.

In 1793 a great uprising in the West of France threatened the very life of Revolution. Country people in adjacent sections of Poitou, Anjou, and Brittany joined to attach the forces of the Republic. These events, known as a War of the Vendée or the Vendee counterrevolution, never stopped inspiring histories in great volume and variety. Many terms engendered by French Revolution are omnipresent today in any European language. Nevertheless theirs specific contents were shifted creating more wide signification. Thus, «the Right» and «the Left» are synonymous to Conservative and Democrat; the Thermidor represents the «end of the Revolution» etc. The Civil War in the Vendee (1793–1796) and its aftermath (up to 1832) were the origin of the fundamental division in subsequent French politics, the division between the «Patriot» East and the «Counterrevolutionary» West, strongly perceived up to the late XX-th century. As a result «the Vendee» played exclusively a symbolic role, allegorizing a Counterrevolution in general, devoid of real historical substance. The tradition of imaginary instead of reality created the most favourable conditions for successful international adoption of a new term. Thus, the widespread perception in Russia was that the Revolution of 1789 was an uncompleted October 1917. As it was no place to peasant counterrevolution in Leninist doctrine the «Russian Vendee» (as well as a French prototype) were lacking in historians interest

The author focuses his attention on «Diaries, 1973−1983» by Aleksandr Shmeman, a prominent religious (Orthodox) thinker of the mid-20th century. More exactly, the author focuses on Shmeman’s opinion about of the United States. Shmeman who was born out of Russia and spent most of his life in the US from cradle to grave felt himself to be a «particle of the Russian people» (his ancestors along maternal line were Russians). Father Aleksandr steadfastly watched the daily life of US, the country of his residence. He watched stratagems of US domestic and foreign policies of the 1970s and 1980s and provided refined comparative characterizations of the Russians and Americans. He offered his own interpretation of some aspects of US presidents' activities and argued about the American democracy which he compared with the European democracy. He expressed his opinions of the American literature, arts and paid attention to great variety of individual manifestations of the American life. One cannot but admit that Shmeman’s thoughts continue to take part in the present day controversies for these thoughts suggest specific variants of answers to questions the contemporary life puts before use.

The paradoxical expression «superfluous people» introduced into the literature by I.S.Turgenev was widely used by the Russian literary critics and in the Russian culture history became the generally accepted, even stereotyped term. In this article this notion is used to show-up the extraordinary personality and amazing destiny of G.I.Sokolski, an outstanding representative of the mid-19th century medical science and professor of the Moscow University. The authors for the first time involved in their analysis such sources as letters written by Sokolski and other persons who played decisive roles in his destiny. These letters are kept the Russian State Archive of Literature and Arts (RGALI), manuscripts department of the Russian State Library and in department of written sources of the State Historical Museum. The authors also draw in numerous materials of memoir literature that characterize not only the very hero of their narrative but also the university and urban environment.

The author considers processes of the pivotal for Russia’s historical destiny events of 1917 as seen by eyes of contemporaries, masters of the Russian satire and humor compared, predominantly at the level of subtext, with events of the 1990s. The latter presents phenomena that are in many ways recognizable and comparable in their external manifestations, even though they have absolutely different roots. The author intends this article in the first instance for those who in learning of the past and present are disposed to broad historical comparisons in identifying «chromosome set» in fabric of events and phenomena of the Russian history. The essence of this «chromosome set» consists in certain algorithm of reiterated and unique, inimitable features in behavior of the historical process subjects. The author thinks that if a researcher moves along this approach he/she may, with some degree of conditionality and metaphoric usage, speak of presence of the Russian historical process «genetic code» which reaches the mental level. In the particular case examined by the author this code implies that feverish pulse which the Russian history acquires when modernization shifts prove to be intertwined with pre-modernization and counter-modernization phenomena. In result of such combination both revolutionary leaps and systemic reforms begin with the inflated hopes and loud overoptimistic declarations and then turn about to be a social and, moreover, civilizational back rush.

The article deals with the burning issue of organizational weapon and prospects of its employment for purposes of final destruction of Russia. The issue has raised a wide public interest and thus deserves a detailed analysis. Experience of the USSR destruction gives the evidence of the fact that the strategy of pinpoint aimed actions designed to paralyze all mobilization activities of the ‘victim' poses the greatest danger. Any enemy will look for peculiar points of system and attack them. Unfortunately, the Russian society is maturing not sufficiently promptly and is still unable to draw comprehensive conclusions from lessons the history delivered. «How to kill an elephant with a needle» collision described by A. Zinoviev is steadily acquiring a new poignancy for us. The organizational weapon starts with words, relies on them. Words allow reconstructing a lot. The pejorative headings the most influential world media use at address of Russia and its leaders prove to be a bodeful warning. These statements commit people who use them to very much. It is unlikely that these statements will remain to be a fake threat. Systemic measures will certainly follow and confirm words. War with employment of informational sabotage acts, intellectual challenges and mega-operations in the sphere of ideal is waged with due consideration of pragmatism and crass materialism intrinsic to the Russian elite and population. Employment of organizational weapon presents a complex and multi-dimensional plan of actions which provides for the absolute denial of the authorities' access to instruments of severe problems solution. The author considers problematic sectors connected with certain types of actions undertaken by the enemy mounting an attack.

In the second part of the article the author explores the hidden political struggle in the U.S. establishment for the alternative scenario to the Roosevelt’s Russian strategy on the eve of the WWII and until mid-1944. The U.S. ambassador in Japan Joseph Clark Grew ought to be mentioned as an influential senior member of the State department’s staff who proposed to use the «Japanese card» in order to out-game the Soviet Union and make it much more dependent on the U.S. good will and American power as the world stabilizer. His views were shared by W. Bullitt who among others proposed a bunch of measures to halt Soviet «expansionism». Ex-ambassador to the Soviet Union was the most inventive and persistent protagonist for U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union which could increase enormously the strains under which Soviet policy had to operate. The idea of Pan-Europe including strong, militarized Germany was the keystone of his anticommunist containment project. The Cold War bacillus was originated also from the distrust among the Allies which arose together with the decision of Washington and London to develop secretly the atomic weapon for use against the axis powers and (as an effective means of preventive diplomacy) the Soviet Union. Thus the Cold War roots in the pre 2nd world war history helps to explain why this new long-term conflict emerged so quickly after the Great Alliance had won victory over its adversaries. It helps also to explain why the Kennan’s postulate from his «Long telegram» (1946) sounds like a final sentence: the USA «must continue to regard the Soviet Union as a rival, not a partner, in the political arena».

How Germany unification had started and what was the policy of the Soviet Union? These questions are being raised again and again by historians, journalists and common people. The author, who was at that time the Soviet ambassador and the USSR representative at the Viena negotiations on European security and reduction of the conventional armed forces in Europe, gives the answers on these questions based on his diaries of that time and new Soviet and Western declassified documents. The essay, based on facts, discovers illusions, which existed in this autumn of 1989 both in Soviet and Western leadership, that the German unification was not the reality in the near future. And only after the fall of the Berlin Wall both Moscow and Western capitals began to understand that Germany unification had bursted literally into the agenda of World politics. The author describes in details how these approaching problems of Germany unification were discussed in the Kremlin. This late recovery of sight, duality of Gorbachev politics, the absence of the strategic line, and the set that the history will decide all these problems in 50−100 years has become the tragedy of the Soviet foreign policy.

Bulgarian Communists Georgi Dimitrov was a Soviet citizen from 1934 to 1945. At I.V.Stalin's wish in 1935 Dimitrov took the position of the Communist International Executive Committee Secretary General. In his work Dimitrov constantly followed instructions given by the Soviet chiefs, first and foremost by Stalin. Dimitrov described in his Diary meetings and conversations with Stalin and other Soviet political figures. Entries attest Dimitrov’s unconditional loyalty to the Kremlin leader and adoration Dimitrov felt toward Stalin. Diary also testifies Dimitrov’s conviction in rightness of and commitment to the cause which he devoted his life to, in the messianic role of the Bolshevik party and the Soviet state. The article is based on materials of Dimitrov’s Diary and other archive documents.

The review is devoted to creative works of Alexander Aizenstat, a contemporary artist from Jerusalem. Every visitor of his exhibition will see a spontaneous narrative, a meta-story of a nation’s destine, of spiritual life secrets as well as of what is close not just to the artist’s milieu but what is in consonance with the destiny of the Motherland, the country the artist is connected to by his biography, by his creative work and by his religious activities. However there is no need to indulge in interpretation, second-guessing, play of imagination and to transform associations into a well-thought-out scheme. As it is the case with any authentic creative work Aizenstat’s pictures demand an explanation but at the same time they are elusive for description with the subsequent interpretation of images' meaning. Let what is expressed by the language of painting be the property of the pictorial arts. Any translation, any verbalization will not help to a spectator because Aizenstat’s works, despite their intimate connection with the Jewish tradition, do not put a claim to be just an encyclopedia of symbols. The author of the review writes about religious and moral panhuman intentions of the artist whose creative work is formed by belonging to the supreme spiritual intentions of the traditional culture.

The author studies medieval Russian concepts that concern the world of angels and demons — nature, origin, abilities of the immaterial spirits and their influence upon the world of men. The relevant notions of medieval authors are researched in their evolution from the Middle Ages to the Early Modern Time. The author reconstructs significant ideas of ancient Russian literature in the context of works of early-Christian authors that were popular in Russia and traces the evolution of those ideas in the «transitional» XVII century. Can a demon kill, create or alter material things? What are the limits of demonic power in the earthy world? Can an angel err, sin or not obey the will of God? What are the limits of his freedom? Medieval scribes and authors of the XVII century found different answers to the questions that were of principal importance for the culture. Modifications that penetrated in traditional concepts in the XVII century appear to be very interesting and often unforeseen. The study of these themes helps deeper understanding of the originality of the epoch that lies between the Middle Ages and the Modern Time.

This part of the article is devoted to investigation of circumstances and reasons of G.I.Sokoloski's unexpected discharge from the university, his life as a popular Moscow private practitioner and the dull final of his life which ended up in a quarter of century long desolation. Unraveling barely visible tangle of university plot in accordance with the detective stories' laws the authors come to the conclusion that not debacle of universities during «the Nicholas reaction», not the banishment of ‘the spirit of materialism and freethinking' from universities but the restless mind, innovative and creative ambitions, a peevish, ‘thorny' characters, that is the very personality of Sokolski made him an inconvenient, unwanted figure for the higher authorities and predetermined his premature resignation. According to the authors, Skoloski belonged to a peculiar psychological type of natural scientists that were in a permanent discordance with the surrounding ambient. These were the out-of-season people. Such persons belong to the Future but are unwanted by the Present.

The author analyzes the peculiar way of political behavior which requires detaching ideals and motivations connected with them from a social system. Stability and soundness of a society depend on presence of ideals in this society. A system can be destroyed by employment of its inherent properties. It is very much like destruction of a bridge by a detachment marching in step. The author detects the cause of the USSR state collapse disaster precisely in initiation of the war against ideals of socialism and the ideal in general. In particular, this process activated certain syndrome which had been generated by the Western intellectuals' encounter with the Nazi ideology. During WW2 the pathology of the Nazi ideals system could be stopped only by the opposite wave of the Soviet society’s ideal. The regrettable format of our reality is explained by erosion of the Soviet ideals and lack of any other intelligible ideal.

What were the mysteries of German unification and how the policy was working out in Moscow and Washington in the end of 1989 when it had become clear that unification was inevitable? The author, who was at that time the Soviet ambassador and the USSR representative at the Viena negotiations on European security and reduction of the conventional armed forces in Europe, gives the answers on these questions based on his diaries of that time and new Soviet and Western declassified documents. The essay based on facts discovers such a picture. By that time the USA and FRG had taken the firm position that the unification was inevitable and as soon as possible. Moreover, the United Germany had to be in NATO. But a disorder prevailed in the Kremlin where different positions were advanced. Gorbachev had chosen the policy of “nothing to do”, obviously not making up his mind to take responsibility on himself and hoping that everything would be settled by history if not in 100 years but in no case during his life. And so he had taken a two –faced position. Depending on his interlocutors he told one that we had not to loose GDR in any case, and to the other that any country had the right to choose its own way.

The idea to dissolve the Comintern started to ripen since spring of 1941 but after German attack on the USSR it was forgotten for a while. The Soviet leadership revived to the idea in May, 1943, when it took pains to strengthen cooperation within anti-Hitlerite coalition and to provide for consolidation of all anti-Nazi forces in their struggle against Nazi Germany. Functions of the dissolved Comintern were vested in International information Department of the All-Union Communist Party Central Committee. Until his departure to Bulgaria in autumn, 1945, the Department was headed by G. Dimitrov who presided over the body actually at first and later on officially. Prior to his leave for Bulgaria Dimitrov renounced his Soviet citizenship. While in charge of the most important state and Party positions in Bulgaria Dimitrov often visited the USSR for medical treatment and kept the permanent contact with Stalin whose instructions Dimitrov took as guidance.

The diary of Prince V.M.Golitsyn, a Moscow liberal public figure contains diversified information on life of Moscow and Russia in pre-revolutionary years. This valuable source also allows making an opinion on the personality of Golitsyn. In spite of his aristocratic ancestry Golitsyn’s views made him closer to bourgeois circles than to the gentry. From the diary a researcher may derive new data on the progressists' party which emerged before WWI and on progressism as a social-cultural phenomenon. Golitsyn’s reflections covered a wide range of problems that excited him and his contemporaries. These included social, political, moral problems. Taken together, observations and opinions of Golitsyn create a multi-dimensional picture of the Russian reality of the early 1900s with all its inherent principal antagonisms.

In the final part of his article the author seeks for studying the evolution of canonical Christian ideas, common for medieval Russian literature, in some famous sources of the 17th century. Two autobiographical Lives of the first ideologists of the Old Belief schism, archpriest Avvakum and coenobite Epiphany, written in Pustozersk earthen prison, prove to present two different models of relations between man and God. While Avvakum followed the traditional hagiographical patterns in descriptions of miracles that had happened to him, Epiphany created a story, filled with bright ideas that appear to be both typical and new for the Old Russian literature. The phenomenon originally reflects the process of evolution that kept altering medieval Russian culture throughout the «transitional» century.

Using oral versions of the Armenian folk epic ‘David of Sassoun' the author explores the first part of the epic which contains the narrative on birth from the rock of two ancestors of the Sassoun tribe heroes. Details given in these oral versions allow diving deep into mythological sources of this episode. These sources can be traced back to the most ancient periods of the Armenian nation formation and, at same time, have much in common with mythology of neighboring peoples and even of ancient Slavs. The author demonstrates that legends that emerged around the Armenian St. Grigor Narekats’i, are not just permeated with these mythological images but, in their turn, brought to bear mutual influence on the further development of the epic itself.

Inaptitude to carry on strategic interaction at all levels of decision-making is one of the most painful and sad signs of the contemporary world. The principal topics of the presentation are possible exits from the current situation of ideological deadlock and decline of values, the urgent need to overcome the mental dumbness, breakthrough to authenticity which is the most important under-stratum of political dialogue. Lack of strategy in the contemporary political culture is result not of some recurrent crisis of ideas but of the actual reduction of the ideal which has been pushed out to periphery of cultural and public life. However a strategic purpose can emerge only in the context of ideal. To what extent this strategic purpose is realistic and attainable is a separate issue. Ultimately the point is about challenge of authenticity, about very prospects of authenticity presence in the political thinking of the 21st century. Nowadays the answer to the question whether the 21st century will be the epoch of complete triumph of imitations, fakes and substitutes or consideration of real problems of the genuine meaning of processes, substantive component of the world politics will prevail depends on those people who are engaging in the complex discussion on the most important problems of strategic interaction.

Having drawn a distinction between values connected with the highest (ideal) registers of decision motivation and interests determined by utility the author points out that the rational (interest-based) approach in the theory of decision-making strengthened in the 20th century. It is precisely the approach which seems to be one of the most important reasons of failures in the foreign as well as domestic policy of many countries. All motivations of decisions are tinted by values. Therefore in the process of strategic decision making it is necessary carry out not just their rational expert evaluation focused on interests and utility but also certain examination of values hidden behind decisions.

It is thought that strategic dialogue between states in the contemporary epoch takes place and evolves within the context of international law norms. However in reality it is most often not the case. States that have greater economic and military power impose their will on weaker states. Sometimes more powerful states impose their terms on weaker states by military force. Meanwhile in some cases such dictatorial behavior of strong states stumbles across seemingly illogical and irrational resistance of weaker states. This phenomenon is caused by existence of historical trauma syndrome in victim countries. Under ‘historical trauma syndrome' the author means various forms of moral trauma and social psychological frustrations of a society (a nation) caused by so called ‘defeat syndrome'. The author considers psychological mechanisms leading a nation or a major social group to frustration and historical trauma, describes a nation’s compensatory reactions to situation of defeat and principal risks a winner takes due to pressure on the loser.

In the third part of this article the author explores the negotiations on Malta between Gorbachev and Bush. Not many people remember that meeting to day. But it’s a pity. As on Yalta 45 years before, two leaders of the USSR and the USA had decided on Malta in December 1989 the fate of Germany and of the Eastern Europe, but only in a quite opposite direction. Gorbachev had recognized there the right of any state for a freedom of choice, including the right to reconsider the previous one. The Soviet Union would not use the force, though just a few days before he declared that we had not to lose GDR in no circumstances. This unexpected admission Gorbachev in Malta was taken in Washington as a signal that the road to NATO for unified Germany was opened now without any conditions. More over, the road was opened as well to collapse of Warsaw Pact and to flight of Eastern European countries to the open arms of the West. And the USSR policy was taken as policy of idleness -only to bark, but to do nothing.

Since the late 1990s, after the demonstrative bombardment of Yugoslavia the world business elite straightforwardly and without reserve started to talk about necessity to impose the ‘global management' gradually inuring the public to recognition of this notion as a generally accepted one which expresses some objective and unavoidable process aimed at principles of the higher ethics and efficiency securing. This being said, it is absolutely obvious that in reality the question is about establishment of extra-legal private authority of corporate elites. This new power will provide for the maximum concentration of the capital in their hands and will secure the total control of main financial and information flows in the world. Insofar as the still lingering sovereignty remains to be the main obstacle on this path and it is impossible to eliminate the sovereignty outright the elites place their stake on whatever facilitates decomposition and erosion of the sovereignty, in particular, on regionalization, ethnic fragmentation and parochialism. European Union presents the ideal model in this respect and the new ‘world architecture' is created in accordance with this model. The policy pursued by EU leaders revealed quite obviously the true aim of this formation. This aim is to dismount national state formations per se and their replacement with a network of regions and ethnic regions that are to be the support structures of the ‘European construction' controlled from a single center. In practice integrations turns out to be the national disintegration, the continental area dismemberment and cut-off. Nowadays this process is described with a new term, glocalization. This term expresses the objective alliance between adherents of the global approach and champions of local interests. What are specific mechanisms, ways and means of this strategy implementation, whose interests this strategy serves — these are the principal issues considered in the article.

The author undertakes a systemic holistic analysis of opinions and theoretical notions of the Russian Social Democracy. The author focuses on the key propositions of the world and Russian labor movement’s doctrine elaborated by Mensheviks after 1917, investigates reasons of divisions amongst Social Democratic leaders who took different views on the most important issues of international and domestic life. Divergence of opinion amongst Menshevik leaders on prospects of possible forms of struggle against the Bolshevik experiment worsened further and further. At the same time the author examines also the fundamental aspects of Weltanschauung that dovetailed Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. In spite of obvious community of some political slogans, antagonists interpreted the meaning of social revolution, role of proletariat dictatorship, essence of democracy as people’s power differently. The author pays a peculiar attention to specific directives and political statements the Social Democrats addressed to the international labor movement on the eve of the war between the USSR and Hitler’s Germany and to views of some representatives of the movement after the WWII.

V.V.Shulgin (1878−1976) was a well-known political and public figure of pre-revolutionary Russia and the Russian emigration. Even though his books are reprinted again in Russia, much in destiny of the man is a secret for historians. In particular, that refers to materials of the judicial scrutiny file that are stored in the Russian Federation Federal Security Service Central archive. The fragment published here refers to Shulgin’s public and political activities in pre-revolutionary period and during the Civil war in Russia.

The article is devoted to those people who under the hardest circumstances and at the risk of their own life saved people doomed to death. One of the cases related by the author occurred during the WWII, the other occurred after the war but both of them are about people who deserve the name of the righteous.

The subject matter of the author’s analysis is the article ‘It is impossible to allow warriors to turn into salesmen' by Victor Cherkesov published on October 9, 2007, and the nature of the Russian analytical community’s reactions to this article. The author notes not only topicality of Cherkesov’s article but also a great scope of problems Cherkesov deals with. Generally, such endeavors are uncommon for top officials. However the author indicates that acuteness of the problem has been reflected inadequately. The life of the present-day elite is imbued with blood of the primitive accumulation (that is larceny). Oligarchy which unites money and power is forming within this absolutely rotten process of this accumulation. Oligarchy may disrupt the existing state system. If the system comes down it will ruin everything. Therefore, the issue consists, first of all, in prevention of this nightmare. To prevent it ideology is required as sine qua non. It must be ideology in proper sense. Substitutes, pseudo-ideological sects, imitations of the CPSU will be inadequate. The principal danger on the way to genuine ideology is reliance on existing conceptual institutions that are submerged into the anti-systemic «cloaca» and are taking over qualities of this «cloaca».

Ethnic regions play a key role in implementation of Europe geopolitical restructuring. The essence of the process consists in dismounting state structures and their replacement with network organization structure. Intensification and mobilization of European ethnic and national minorities occur neither spontaneously nor in accordance with local needs. The process is coordinated and managed from centers that have to ensure unity of minorities' demands and synchronization of their advancement. Big corporate business hides behind these centers. Using anti-universal minorities' ambitions big business by virtue of respective mechanisms directs these ambitions into anti-state streambed and makes minorities its objective allies. Though Germany performs the principal role in realization of this strategy it will not reap fruits of such political creativity.

The author considers commemorative complex of the Caucasian war of the 18th-19th centuries as it emerged by 1914. Monuments, names of warships, toponymy, historical publications, medals, jubilee ceremonies, museum exhibitions are considered in the context of forging of historical memory about inclusion of North Caucasus and Trans-Caucasia into the Russian Empire. Military operations against mountaineers appeared at the periphery of the state and pubic interest because such activities didn’t exactly fit the military-memorial scheme which emerged by the early 20th century.

The article is devoted to one of the most acute in the current research of Decembrist movement issues, the issue of the Decembrists' ‘plan of actions' on the even of the rebellion of December 14, 1825. The authors pay the particular attention to the Northern society’s leaders, to S.P. Trubetskoi, the rebellion ‘dictator'. It is demonstrated that at the basis of S. P. Trubetskoi’s intentions lied the idea of joint action of the Northern and the Southern societies. His activities aimed at implementation of this intent are analyzed. The authors also analyze the reasons due to which this ‘plan of action' was left unrealized.

Heretofore the public education in Russia has been considered to be secular one. However such state of affairs is increasingly questioned. Clerics come to schools and universities. New textbooks are published (pertinent examples are «Islam. Spiritual and Moral Education of Schoolchildren» and «The Orthodox Biology»). Religious organizations are resolute in their claims to perform a peculiar role in moral instruction. All these trends cause intense discussions in the society. Separation is occurring: on one side of the barricade (or rather church fence) secular humanists are gathering, on the other side religious conservatives are rallying. Historian Il’ya Smirnov repeatedly published in ‘Russia XXI' his tongue-in-cheek critical reviews of textbooks where mystics and clerical-monarchical propaganda substitutes for strict scientific knowledge. However in this article the author does not take so resolute position and recognizes that on a wide range of issues believers articulate more humane, responsible and, strange as it may seem, more liberal judgments than their secular opponents. At the same time under the cloak of secular humanism we with increasing frequency find dogmas that have neither scientific nor moral substantiation.