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.