Articles

This article investigates the shaping of popular sovereignty (“narodovlastie”) in Russia of the 15–17th centuries. The author presents popular sovereignty as one of the historical political traditions of Russia that ran parallel with autocracy (“samoderzhavie”). The formation of popular sovereignty is explained by a complex of historical and archival data, providing a sense of the interaction of two levels of Russian governance: centralized princely and tsarist power and institutions at the local levels (the veche and zemstvo assemblies). The interaction of two of these levels, the article demonstrates, led to the genesis of Russian statehood. On the one hand, political autonomy and institutions of multilevel representation based on traditional veche structures were developing; on the other hand, a trend toward centralization and the strengthening of statehood had also been emerging since the end of the 15th century — a trend determined by the policy of Muscovite sovereigns (“the gathering of the lands”). The author demonstrates that traditions of autocratic governance and local-estates representation mutually supplemented each other for a long period. The internal political system was thus shaped under the influence of two ideas: a strong monarchy (autocracy) and popular sovereignty (zemstvo self-government). In search of socio-political support within veche (zemstvo) traditions, Muscovite rulers actively co-operated with local zemstvo self-government, especially when this co-operation served the policy of “the gathering of the lands.”

This article deals with the conceptology of the notion of “tradition,” and the problem of its interpretations in the 20th century and in current scholarship. The author addresses the incorrectness and limited applicability of sociological and historical concepts based on a rigid dichotomy of “tradition-modernity (contemporaneity). ”The confrontation between the two approaches to the phenomenon of tradition, “Weberian” (evolutionary) and “post-Weberian” (dialectical), is described. The article posits a dialectical view of tradition as a guarantor of the fixity of historical changes and social stability — an interpretation of tradition not as an ethno-cultural phenomenon, but as a broader social mechanism responsible for the transfer of social experience and ideals along a chain of generations. In the context of a traditionalistic view, the author offers the concept of a “greater society” based on a contract of generations. The role of tradition in national history is seen as a connection of Russianness with its Byzantine heritage.

This article examines the phenomenon of modern federalism in its geopolitical dimension, underlining the importance of the task of creating a classification system for modern federal states. The author outlines and justifies 10 political and legal criteria of classification, with 32 differentiating characteristics. Each of 24 currently existing federal states receives a unique set of 10 features, presented in the form of a numerical combination. This approach allows us to determine the frequency of combinations of characteristics as well as to identify groups of similar federal states. Such a classification system is universal and allows us to classify not only currently existing federal states but also previous ones.

This article offers an analysis of the reasons, character and historical lessons of the 1917 revolution in Russia. A century after the fact, these issues not only remain relevant, but are in fact at the center of current theoretical and political discussions. Despite the multiplicity of conspiratorial interpretations of the Russian revolution, the defining factor in understanding its meaning remains the identification of its objective conditions, systemic contradictions, the logic of the political process in the country, and the nature of the ideas held by the leading political forces of ways to reconcile the nation’s pressing political and social transfigurations. This was the reason for the revolution’s abrupt and dramatic course. Despite all the ambiguity of the historical consequences of the Russian revolution, it became a truly epoch-making event that has had a tremendous impact on the destiny not only of Russia, but of the entire world.

A round table titled “Russian Society and State Authority after the Parliamentary Elections” was held at the end of October 2016 at Lomonosov Moscow State University; the event was jointly organized by the university’s Sociology and Psychology Program (Political Science Department), the Russian Political Science Society and the Center for Socio-Political Projects and Communications. At the round table leading experts from the fields of political science, sociology, psychology, history and journalism discussed the results of the latest Russian election campaign (for the State Duma’s VII convocation, 2016-2021); their influence on the development of the political process before Russia’s presidential election in 2018; and emerging trends in the public consciousness of the political elites and the citizenry of modern Russia.

This collective article examines the distinctive features of election campaigns in contemporary Russia using analytical research drawn from the Russian legislative elections of 2016 (the State Duma’s VII convocation); the authors also formulate practical recommendations for politicians participating in future electoral cycles. The necessity of creating effective tools for campaigning lead the authors to pay particular attention to developments in modern political science and to promising technologies that are currently not sufficiently used in Russia — particularly social networks, the problem-targeted approach, SWOT analysis and PEST analysis. The group’s research was presented at a political science department competition on the resolution of political cases held on May 16, 2016 by the department of political science at Lomonosov Moscow State Unversity.

Siam (Thailand) is one of the few countries that retained its independence during the colonial period. This is largely due to the efforts of Siamese King Chulalongkorn (Rama V, 1868–1910), who took serious diplomatic steps to neutralize the expansionist designs of France and Britain. In particular, he fostered the formation of a trusting relationship with the Tsarevich Grand Duke Nicholas, who became the Russian Emperor Nicholas II. During their two meetings — in Siam in 1891 and in 1897 in Russia — the two rulers stressed their “spiritual kinship.” Because of this, European countries were forced to negotiate with King Chulalongkorn as a monarch equal in status to European rulers, and the Russian government can be credited with assisting Siam in defending its independence.

This article investigates the structural bases of historical memory as a purposeful production of political mythologization. On the basis of a theoretical review of the concepts of collective and historical memory, the authors develop a methodology for describing the structural components and dynamics of a state’s historical politics that make it possible to identify the key myths used in building a political identity for the community and constructing a sociopolitical reality for the mythologem. The article demonstrates that the democratic institutions of modern states rely on the symbolic potential of political myth in the implementation of the discourse of legitimation based on the resource of history and collective memories inscribed in the mythscape of the national community. The authors further elaborate the experience of applying mythmaking in the structure of the symbolic policy of the state.

This article focuses on issues related to the study of the characteristics of the application of contemporary mass Internet communication technologies in order to create a virtual social and political reality. In the critical analysis of classical concepts of the Internet as a free space communication. It showcased the technology used in the processes of virtualization concepts of mass socio-political reality. As a result of research work concluded that the virtualization process of modern political management particularly vivid expression obtained in the Internet space in which was formed a powerful arsenal of tools and technology substitution of real objects, processes and phenomena of their distorted virtual models. Functional and semantic load in terms of coverage of virtualization and modern political space has been steadily transferred to the virtual space, which by virtue of its originally-designed publicity direct impact on the formation of mass political values, meanings, world views and understanding of the political reality. This formed the political representation in the majority of cases are significantly biased towards real political reality, however, they act as true for society.

This article presents an applied model for assessing political stability in the regions of the Russian Federation that was periodically used in practice during the period 2011–2016. The model assumes that a dangerous (critical) violation of the regional equilibrium, which is identifiable with stability, is observed in cases when regional structures of executive power (represented by the head of the region and his administration) lose control over five key resources: administrative, legal, economic, social, information and interpersonal. On the basis of the model under examination, the author offers some recommendations for improving regional policy in modern Russia and optimizing the administrative techniques used by state authority.