The author refers to the theory of catastrophes. The task for the present day Russia is to understand what is going on in order to remain a real active entity of the world policy and to avoid the role of the big play victim. To that it is necessary to assess risks, to grasp the real arrangement of forces. Nowadays the quality of analytical studies is to be absolutely different from what it used to be. An irresponsible approach of the elite to preconditions of the evolving crisis may bring about the most fatal consequences. In this respect Russia is the least protected country. Willingness to conceal the real logic of catastrophe is bringing about the irreversible slipping down, to the Perestroika-2. Analysis and comprehensive examination of all factors of the regress mechanism comprise the principal content of the article. But the author pays the particular attention to the factor he describes as the lack of the entity’s properties which is characterized by inadequacy of actions taken under circumstances of emergencies. Such inadequacy is related to decay of ability to define objectives and targets and break-down of the conceptual core. The elite involved in the condition of identity collapse may take the whole country away with it. Reconstruction of the entity’s properties is the paramount and urgent task which the power is to solve in the immediate future.

The early 1980s were among the most volatile years in Soviet — US relations. They might be equated with the early 1960s, the era of the Berlin and Cuban missile crises. The international tensions were greatly intensifying, and once again the world could have come on the brink of war. This occurred not because war was desired and prepared for by the leaders of both superpowers, but because, not knowing and understanding one another, they suspected the worst of each other’s intentions. The author who was at that years the director of the Middle East department in the USSR Foreign Ministry and the Head of the Soviet delegation on the Stockholm Conference on European Disarmament thereupon, undertakes a systematic and holistic analysis of that situation.

The Russian Catholicism emerged in the first half of the 19th century as a result of Jesuit missionaries’ activities, predominantly French, among the Russian aristocrats who were convinced in importance of changes and Russia’s necessity to join the European cultural tradition based on the Catholicism. Preaching in Russia was a component of the policy Holy See pursued in the 19th century. In the mid 19th century the religious discussion intensified against background of the confrontation between Russia and France over future of Poland and influence in the Balkans. During the Crimean war propaganda of the both opponents had the religious tinge. Catholic and Orthodox writers accused each other in the schism of the Church and were unwilling to take steps aimed at rapprochement, even though they admitted the necessity of reconciliation.

The article reproduces a series of the little known literary and epigraphic sources. On the basis of these the author reconstructs peculiarities of the earliest stage of the Russian Church organization. Taking Lucas Jeedyata’s activities and writings as an example the author analyzes the set of actions aimed at establishment in Ancient Russia of the church organization independent of Byzantine Empire’s church. Lucas is considered to be a fellow-champion of Metropolitan Ilarion. Together they provided the substantiation for the sovereign ideology of independent state authority and the Church independent of Greeks. The author comes to the conclusion that there were certain contradictory tendencies in relations between the Priesthood and the Temporal Power that resulted in abrupt vacillations of Yaroslav the Wise that ended up with the autocephaly closing down.

The author examines the revolutionary activities of Kondrati Ryleev, one of the Decembrists’ movement leaders and finds out that in the process of anti-government coup preparation Ryleev took advantage of his duty position of the senior manager of the Russian-American Company, the biggest Russian joint stock company of the time. For the first time in historiography the author specifies the Decemberists’ plans to bring the Czar’s family out of Russia and demonstrates that these plans were connected with a maritime expedition to Russian America which was scheduled for August, 1826, and was organized at the Russian-American Company’s expense.