Articles

This article is based on the definition of politics as a specific type of activity by actors (officials, professional politicians, and the ruling political elite) concerning power, its acquisition, and retention through methods and technologies legitimized by society through accessible expression of will on the one hand, and as a system of interactions between the state (power) and society (its organizations, institutions and individuals) — on the other. In this work, public policy is understood as a political course, legally and legitimately implemented by institutions of state power, which defines the target objectives alongside with the value foundations of specific areas of activity administration. At the same time, the character and features of the functioning of a particular state and society, as well as the content of the policies being implemented, are determined primarily by their civilizational foundations.
Based on an analysis of the current situation related to the functioning of contemporary states, the authors have made a conclusion that these states have lost their original pro-social nature and orientation toward public good achievement. This work argues that the prolonged transformation of the substantive and functional characteristics of state systems and institutions has led to the formation of the state’s own self-sufficient hierarchies, goals, values and interests, which often not only ignore and contradict public interests, values and goals but also have a distinctly antisocial character. Political elite capturing public policy leads to a deep crisis in the state-society interactions system and negative consequences for social development. The article places particular emphasis on the state’s use of modern digital technologies and algorithms, which predominantly act as new tools for manipulating public consciousness, covertly appropriating power, and legitimizing such appropriation, leading to a form of “comfortable totalitarianism.”

The article is devoted to identifying the features of Russia as a state of civilization, its inherent system of political and spiritual ideas and values. The emphasis is on the contemporary sound of this concept, its role in upholding the national sovereignty of Russia, its correlation with the general historical imperatives of social development. On the eve of the 270th anniversary of Moscow University, attention is also drawn to the ongoing development of the problems of civilizational characteristics of Russia by political scientists of Moscow State University, who have always sharply opposed the view of Russia as a meaningless geographical space that can be filled with any economic, political, mental form, for whom today the main thing is to rely on domestic traditions, consistently uphold national interests, and create nationally oriented schools in science and education.

The article follows the history of the studies of the concept of ‘Russian Khranitel’stvo’ held at Moscow State University, representing it as an original trend of conservative thought in Russia. Definition is proposed for the notion ‘Khranitel’stvo’, and specific way of the genesis of ‘Russian Khranitel’stvo’ in the 11th–18th centuries is demonstrated. The supposition is made that ‘khranitel’stvo’ is broader than political conservatism, since it includes the idea of patriotism, protection of traditional spiritual values, and national historical experience, national culture, language, faith, and ‘Russian Khranitel’stvo’ is a patriotic, nationally conservative, close to traditionalism current of Russian socio-political thought. It is shown that in the 11th–17th centuries, the interests of the state and Orthodoxy, the protection of the Land and the Church, in other words, the political and religious notions were inextricably linked, and the main quality of the ruler was piety. In the 18th century, not only the piety of the sovereign was put at the forefront, but also the welfare of the whole society and the greatness of the state. They become the objects of “protection”.

The article argues that in conditions of global instability, a national understanding of world realities and the further formation of the Russian international theory (RIT) is not a luxury, but a necessity for the survival and development of the country. At the same time, a special role belongs to applied research, combining the rigor of empirical research and close relation to the ideology of national interests and values. According to the authors, such a combination, defining the boundaries of the national-ideological and general scientific, can protect the RIT from both scientific utopias and ideological isolationism.
In the first section, the authors present their understanding of the ideological and value assumptions about “Russian,” from which one should proceed in the formation of scientific knowledge within the framework of RIT. The second section is devoted to Russian research questions of a contextual and external nature and their specification based on the material of modern world processes. The third section examines the specifics of answering empirical questions by selecting special theories and formulating hypotheses to test them. The conclusion stresses the importance of RIT and the development of applied knowledge for the practical policy of modern Russia.

The article examines certain aspects of the transformation of attitudes toward censorship in the USA during their emergence and creation. The emergence of new types and forms of censorship is traced after the adoption of the First Amendment to the US Constitution, which prohibited the US Congress from introducing legislative censorship. Censorship of the ‘mob’, party affiliation of newspapers, and the Sedition Act are considered as new forms of censorship that arose in the fight against colonial forms of suppression of freedom of speech and the press by representatives of the royal power, as well as in the context of the abolition of censorship enshrined in the First Amendment to the US Constitution.

The presented research based on a comparison of the content of video games and school history textbooks is devoted to the study of the semantic content of images of the Early Cold War in the current policy of memory in the United States. The empirical basis of the study is the Call of Duty game series and US history textbooks from three American publishers leading in the educational literature segment. These textbooks were used in high and middle grades in American schools throughout the 2000s–20s. The keys methods are discourse analysis and case studies. As the result of the research, the US memory policy allows for the existence within the memorial narrative of school textbooks of three variants of the early Cold War, created within the framework of the traditionalist, revisionist and post-revisionist approaches. Most often, these are presented simultaneously in textbooks. But traditionalist and post-revisionist approaches prevail in the narrative due to their complementarity for the US and relevance to the task of forming memorial conformity in order to ensure the sustainability of national-state identity and legitimize existing models of socio-economic and political structure. Within the Call of Duty game series, developers used almost exclusively traditionalist approach. Among a formal variety of positioning models the revisionist concept is largely marginalized, as well as the post-revisionist concept (that also assumes the moral superiority of the US in the confrontation with the USSR), that probably contributes to choose the traditionalist approach. Also, the choice of the traditionalist approach involves forming memorial conformism on a complementary basis.

The work is devoted to understanding the ecological and climatic component of modern Ukrainian politics. The analysis focuses on the national model of the country’s climate management. The main task is to understand the nature of its connection with the new international environmental and climate policies of Europe and the world. The focus of the work is on considering the case of Ukraine’s adaptation to the new international climate regime of the EU. Structural-functional, ecological-political, globalist, and other methodological approaches have been applied. Ukraine is considered as a post-socialist transition country going through climate transit. What are the reasons for the failure of Ukraine’s transition to a sustainable development model, and how does this affect the prospects for its energy transit? How do the country’s climate ambitions correlate with the carbon intensity of its development, with the desire to achieve sovereignty in the energy sector? How is Ukraine going to ensure the conditions for joining the EU, with its environmental situation and ecological and climatic situation?
We will answer these and other questions in our work, touching, along the way, on the well-known case of the development of shale gas deposits in the country. In connection with the understanding of the problems of eco- and climate policy, the issue of the state of Ukrainian statehood will also be touched upon. At the end of the work, a forecast is given for the further implementation of the policy of the Ukrainian authorities in the area of interest to us. In summing up, we will find out what lessons should be learned from the Ukrainian situation in order to achieve progress in climate policy, as well as optimize the strategy of environmentally safe, sustainable development of Russia.