The article is devoted to condition of the global economy and to difficult relations of the USA and Europe at the world stage. To ensure influx of the world money saved from the crisis into the USA and strengthen the USA capabilities to increase its foreign debt in a rather indolent way it is necessary to escalate crises, make them universal and increasingly acute. However crises cannot intensify indefinitely. That means a threat of a global war. Such gloomy forecasts seem to dominate in the world economy and do not contribute to its positive dynamics at all. The Russian government has developed the anti-crisis plan and anti-crisis investment program. According to this program banks will get main part of money for additional capitalization, for rescue of the banking system. The remaining anti-crisis investments are actually smeared over the key social and productive branches of economy. It means that the government is going to step on the rake the US Fed and European Central Bank have stepped on already.

The author analyzes perspectives of the Russian-Chinese strategic alliance formation in the Arctic, assesses merits and deficiencies of such alliance. The reason for analysis were the Western sanctions against Russia since these measures may call into question implementation of joint Arctic projects and impair the general political situation in the region.

The author deals with the debate that unfolded in the early 20th century between the Modernists and the Positivists about notions of philistinism, platitude, and cynicism. It seems that these notions are uncontroversial: everybody is sure that the meaning of the terms is clear and definite. However this certainty is just an illusion. So a great discussion about understanding of these notions evolved in the early 20th century. And this debate demonstrated that the Russian society was deeply divided into two worlds: ideas of Individuality’s rights, ideas of Renaissance through supra-personal foundations of culture were proclaimed and affirmed in one world while another world adored the Humankind and worshiped it. What is higher, a Person or the Humankind? The future of Russia, to a considerable extent, depended on a decision of the question. The future of the 20th century, terrible and bloody, can be seen in these controversies.

The authors describe the popular feelings of the 1930s in connection with the history of «Krokodil» magazine reformation. The criminal case filed against three Soviet satirists (N.R.Erdman, V.Z.Mass and Emil Krotki who were accused of writing and disseminating «anti-Soviet» fables and subsequently sentenced) is analyzed. The authors also examine criminal cases brought against M.D.Volpin, M.A.Gloushkov, A.S.Bukhov and Ya.M.Bel'ski.

The article explores pro-German feelings' influence on Swedish public opinion which was typical for one part of the country’s military, political and academic elite in the first years of World War I. The author shows that in spite of some temporal advances Swedish pro-Germanists didn’t succeed any significant changes in Sweden’s political life in 1914−1915. As a result pro-German feelings went gradually out to the end of 1915, and pro-German people in Sweden became a marginal minority without any effective political leverages over Swedish society and policy.

In many ways the USSR won the war against Nazi Germany (the war became the first global war of engines) due to the fact that the country had a powerful aircraft industry that was in the process of dynamic development. That is why it is so important to reconstruct the process of organizational consolidation and scientific and technological modernization of the aircraft industry in the tense international situation of the late 1930s and the industry’s subsequent functioning in the extreme circumstances of the wartime. That should be done with all known historical facts taken into account and with no prejudice and no bias. The author has tried to do exactly that. In his attempt the author undertook, perhaps, for the first time, a study of a controversial role I.V.Stalin played in management of the Russian aircraft industry on the eve of the Great Patriotic War and during the war. Readers are free to judge whether the author succeeded or failed in solution of this very complicated task.

Personal recollections, notes made by comrades in the partisan underground, documentary materials on lives and struggle of people on the territory which was occupied by the German and Rumanian invaders form the core of the essay. For nearly 3 years of harsh occupational regime a big underground and partisan organization that existed in vicinity of Balta town, Odessa region, delivered blows to enemy’s rear area. Unknown hitherto facts about heroic and sometimes tragic events of that time, about defeats and victories of partisans and underground fighters are narrated.

The author deals with the first Russian semi-popular magazine ‘Monthly essays serving to utility and entertainment' (1755−1764). The literary section was one of the most solid parts of the magazine. The magazine reflected events of the epoch’s literary life: literary polemic debates, personal relations of men of letters, European ‘polite literature' works' penetration into Russia etc.