The author deals with the nearest prospects of humankind that has lost its historical future. Humankind is suffocating in the gripe of crisis. It is the crisis of the world political class, the elite monster. In connection with that the author is concerned with chances that fall to the lot of Russia. So far the vector of Russia’s development was the movement to the West. However this way is exhausted for the Western civilization has rejected values of Modern and opted for anti-Communist project. The elite has built the civilization of lust to prolong the age of capitalist heaven. But the end will be soon put to this condition and the whole humankind will be subject to reduction. The response of Russia may be contained in promotion of the advanced ideology of counter-elite, the cognitariat that will be able to take upon itself specific and complex mission of control and management in the interests of laboring people.

The middle and the second half of last century of Second Millennium were noted for unprecedented acuteness of comprehensive confrontation of two extremely hostile to each other social systems. This phenomenon, called «cold» war, also has a big impact on people’s fates now, in Third Millennium. Important thing is that it didn’t led to a «hot» war. Nevertheless it has repeatedly drive the ideologically parted society into a border of «hot» war by the impermissibility of using military expenses on the development needs. «Cold» war can be compared with «hot» World Wars I and II by the influence on people’s fates, heavy human casualties and the damage to the environment. The background of such a way of society life since World War II should be founded in quite impartial events, in actual of world war, especially its final stage, and in its conclusions.

Gennady Kostyrchenko, a prominent historian, challenges the authenticity of the official biography of Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov who was in charge of the KGB for many years and by the end of his life became a head of the USSR and the CPSU for a short period. Having scrupulously examined numerous historical evidence and documents, including documents from the state archive collections the author demonstrates in detail how this prominent political leader «corrected» his own personal data for the sake of a successful career and concealed his true social background that could be dangerous at those times. Andropov carried out this first special operation on creation of his own legend so neatly and fundamentally that it is still impossible to reveal his real past to the very end. It remains just to speculate about his real parents, his ethnic origin, and place of his birth.

The article revisits the image of Sheikh-Mansour one of the most enigmatic figures of the Chechen history, who by the close of the 18-th century, to quote John Baddeley, «dropped, as it were, from the clouds full grown, a warrior, preacher and prophet» to lead the resistance movement against Russia. The mere fact that Mansour gave an armed response to the advent of the Russians serves for many scholars an irresistible temptation to cast him both as a precursor of the 19-th century Caucasus War and a typological predecessor of the renowned Imam Shamyl. The author of this essay argues against what seems to him a far-fetched comparison between the two mountaineers' leaders belonging to different epochs and having different kinds of perception of their political, ideological, and military missions.

The author deals with study of ancient Russia miniature pictures contained in the Facial chronicle code of Ivan the Terrible. This is the unique memorial of the Russian Middle Ages. In 2004 «Acteon» publishers made the first facsimile publication of the Facial code. Dozens volumes and 16 thousand miniature pictures that illustrate the world and the Russian history were presented and became available in many Russian and foreign libraries. Now access to the first (and subsequent) volumes of the Facial Chronicle Code (in e-version) is possible only by virtue of Internet. It should seem that the publication guaranties knowledge. But it is not so: the sign nature of miniatures is to be in reconstructed for understanding their content. The issue concerns the experience reconstruction of the unknown language specific to the Russian culture. This language has determined the way of text and artistic image «reading». One of the main problems of the article is the study of an ancient Russian artist’s horizon of freedom. Whether this artist was not free in his creative work or he was a creator of his own artistic world?

The author deals with two strategies of rhetoric narrative in the Russian saints' hagiographies written by Medieval scribe Epiphany the Wise at the turn of the 14th and 15th centuries. The heritage of this Moscow Rus author is considered in the broad context of the literature culture of Medieval and early Modern Russia. Rhetoric poetics has never disappeared. Taking its origins in the antique times it kept to be alive during the Middle Age, in the 18th century, in the epoch when classicism burst into blossom, and in the 20th century literature. The rhetoric poetics is connected with extra-literature purposes and tasks as strongly as no other formation of literary culture is and serves to substantiation and propaganda and clear-cut ideological principles and values.

The article and publication of some unknown documents from a private correspondence of American diplomats describe the substance of the polemics in modern Russian historiography of the genesis of the WWII. The author claims that the archival sources of special origin — personal diaries, letters of professional American diplomats to their colleagues, their highly confidential in governments' offices, newspapermen and family friends provide an upright overview of events in dramatic history of Europe in 1938−1939 which proves that the «traditional» school of historical research is more close in general to the correct interpretations of the international relations in the 1930s including the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.