The article deals with the presidential elections held in March 2018 through the prism of the main value divisions of the society, which were actively manifested in the period 2012–18.based on the monitoring data of the Institute of sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences and VTSIOM research, a scale of conservatism-liberalism is built, several groups are distinguished. The author shows greater stability (inertia) of the main ideological and value indicators over the past 20 years, and concludes that the formation of the current semi-mobilization political regime with a conservative value system is based not so much on fundamental changes in the value system, but on the prevailing political situation. This regime has already been and will continue to be subjected to political erosion, making room for the emergence of new political and social actors in the country.

The article devotes to the questions of formation of the Caucasian statehood during the Russian revolution and Civil war of 1917–1921. Desintegration of the Russian Empire has led to aggravation of a political and social and economic situation in the North Caucasus, at the same time, the various political forces moved forward the projects of association of all people of the Caucasus and creation of uniform state education. The author analyzes various models of statehood which tried to introduce both local, and all-Russian political forces in the North Caucasus and the reasons of a failure of similar attempts; explores the place and a role of national movements of the people of the Caucasus in the context of the national and state construction in post-revolutionary Russia.

The spring of 1918 in the Soviet Russia saw a universal military preparation of citizens, one of the main aims of which was the organization of physical education of workers and peasants. In order to achieve this aim, the theory of the Soviet system of physical education was elaborated and new administrative and controlling bodies were established to control the development of physical education and sport in the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Comprehension of the tipping point in history of Russia and the world which the contemporaries of events began with the WWI and had its peculiarity. Identification of this peculiarity in the light of discussions held nowadays allows appraising conclusions that were made by contemporaries of events and formed the basic ground of subsequent studies. Premonitions of the creative intelligentsia representatives are included in the range. The issues that originally were raised by the contemporaries but remain to be actual for the science include the issue of the level of Russia’ modernization, the issue of the place and significance of eschatology in the prewar and war years spiritual mood, the issue of the revolution and world war correlation and the issue of Bolshevism phenomenon in its relation to the war and some other questions.

The article continues the tradition of studying political control, technology and mechanisms of power, administrative methods and strategies used by the Stalinist regime in the 1920s – 1940s. The author focused on a certain aspect – "right opportunism", which is regarded as a state-political crime and a universal ideology that allowed to carry out information-cognitive "diversion", segregation of the society into "one's own" and "others". The genesis, the essence of this phenomenon in political discourse and historiography, as well as the activity of specialized structures to combat one of the manifestations of "right opportunism" – "wrecking" on the objects of the military industry. According to the results of the research, it is concluded that the "anti-damaging" campaign and the control-repressive measures applied in its methods can be viewed as a political-technological, operational and ideological-methodological foundation of the Stalinist dictatorship and the system of governance of the Soviet state.

The article deals with N.S.Leskov’s "The left-hander" short story. It is demonstrated that the Leskov’ story has in many respects the ambivalent semantics and that the author’s appraisal of the protagonist and Russia can be recognized neither as unconditionally positive nor as absolutely negative one. Peculiarity of Leskov’s perception of the Russians and the British adversarial relationship motive and Russia-England opposition is explained by Leskov’s polemics with the Russian national mythology. It is argued that the official theory of national character and Slavophilism served as ideological underlying messages and Leskov’s attitude to these messages were colored with irony. "The left-hander" was written as a warning against national complacency and arrogance that may find fertile soil in such ideological constructions.

The publication presents new documentary evidence from the papers of the Council on Foreign Relations and Allen Dulles’s personal papers at Princeton University which pictures Dulles in 1944–1946 as a sober and pragmatic foreign policy expert quite different from the popular image of a rabid Cold Warrior bent on destruction of the Soviet Union from the end of World War II onwards. In fact Allen Dulles of that time was still in favor of finding some modus vivendi with the USSR based on mutual recognition of spheres of influence. He distanced himself from the Cold War hawks and proposed some practical ways of post-war settlement. These documents demonstrate that Dulles’s views had undergone some evolution before he became one of the main organizers of covert war against the Soviet Union as a Director of Central Intelligence Agency in 1950-s.

The main direction of the economic programme for the next six years is the economic and techological breakthrough with simultaneous increase in the wellbeing of the population, increase in the birth rate and life expectancy, development of medical care, education and science and accelerated growth in the production and export sectors of the economy. However, the financial part of this programme will require the increase of taxes, rising the pension age, reduction of military spending, reduction of subsidies, import substitution. Implementation of the "Putin's Programme" needs careful and detail planning in order to remove its contradictions.