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.