Articles

Social networks are an environment that refl ects the social practices of youth. From the situational activity of each network group, large clusters are formed which accumulate attitudes of the corresponding layer of young people. This study focuses on regional groups of the social network VKontakte in the city of Tomsk. Data collection and visualization create a methodology for mapping this information space (“community detection”) that is relevant in network analysis. The presence of two socially diff erentiating strategies of behavior among the youth of Tomsk were substantiated by the study. They feature diff erent everyday practices, values, reference groups and information sources, and self-stigmatization systems. “Low” sociocultural practices correspond to a social group that can be described as a “group without a future,” with a negative identity. The practices of another social group, aimed at obtaining higher education and building a career, diff er radically from those of the former. Its representatives are guided by foreign sources, organizations and models. Signifi cant attention in the study is given over to issues of methodology, the mapping process and the interpretation of research results.

This article is devoted to the analysis of the directions and possibilities of using Internet technologies in the implementation of the state youth policy of Russia. The author notes that information technologies and network forms of communication form fundamentally new models of socialization and, as a result, expand the range of possible forms of political participation of young people. In this regard, it is important that youth policy is implemented taking into account current socio-political and cultural trends, as well as the opportunities off ered by modern information and communication technologies. Special attention is paid to the use of Internet technologies to solve information and communication problems of youth policy, as well as to ensure the process of civil and Patriotic education of young people.

This article is devoted to the study of the impact of socio-demographic factors such as gender, age and level of education on the process of forming an image of an ideal president. Examining part of a study of the ideal presidential image conducted by the Political Sociology and Psychology Program in Moscow State University’s Political Science Department, the author identifi es and analyzes the universal and unique personal and professional characteristics in the mass consciousness of Russian citizens from diff erent social categories. The results of the study lead to certain conclusions concerning the integrity and organicity of the ideal president’s image. In the opinion of young people, the political and professional qualities that a head of state should possess were largely infl uenced by relatively new, “rational-secular” values that were introduced into the political system of the state during the period of recovery after the collapse of the USSR. Moreover, despite the quite successful “resocialization” that representatives of the older generation went through, that generation’s view on the image of the exemplary head of state still appears more conservative in comparison with the “eff ective manager” that the younger generation of citizens imagines of the president.

This article presents a conceptual analysis of the phenomenon of the citizen in the subject fi eld of political science. The authors distinguish three aspects of analysis: historical-political, socio-political and political-psychological. It is noted that the contradiction that exists today in Russia between the concept of “citizen” and the phenomenon of “citizen” is due to the historical context of their development. A citizen is presented as the socio-political role of a person in the state and society which determines his formal political, legal and social status and is prescribed to him by cultural traditions and the political system. The political and legal status of a citizen is described through the category of citizenship. The image of the ideal citizen is infl uenced by the political regime and moral principles. Civil society is considered an environment for the formation and self-realization of a citizen. The political and psychological characteristics of a citizen as a subject of socio-political relations are determined by a developed civic consciousness, a formed civic identity and a wide repertoire of forms of civic activity.

An extensive body of research has been assembled by modern social science on the interaction of state power and big business, yet despite this the relevance of a thorough theoretical review of these relations has not diminished in recent decades. This article analyzes a number of paradigms that defi ne value criteria, worldviews and theoretical and methodological standards aff ecting both scholarly research in this area and the development of state policy and actual politics. These are rational-critical, corporatist and neo-corporatist paradigms, that of the “new state management,” and such critical theories as neo-Marxism and the theory of political networks. When analyzing these paradigms, the author pays special attention to the operationalization of key concepts and the defi nition of basic interpretations, models and concepts of corporate-state interaction. The study of theoretical-methodological approaches contributes to the systematization of the results of research in the study of applied mechanisms of interaction between government and big business. The author concludes that the paradigms cited to a certain extent only coexist and actualize depending on the situation in the world economy, the political relations of individual states or their alliances, cultural characteristics and other factors.

This article is devoted to the study of the political aspect of Russia’s foreign policy goals in the Middle East. The author draws attention to the global megatrends that, taking on regional specifi city, signifi cantly aff ect the regional system of international relations and, as a consequence, the formulation of Russia’s foreign policy goals in the Middle East. The article identifi es such manifestly significant megatrends as the globalization/regionalization of world politics; the changing role of the West in the international arena; high demographic dynamics; and the increasing importance of the religious factor in public life and public consciousness. Based on an analysis of the infl uence of the these trends on the Middle East region, the author sets out and substantiates a thesis of what can be considered the main political goals of Russia in the Mddle East, to wit: promotion of infl uence in the region by participating in the settlement of Middle East confl icts; assistance in the creation of a regional security system; and the creation of a favorable environment for the realization of economic interests in the region.

This article uses archival materials stored under a seal of secrecy during the Soviet period to examine factors that contributied to the rapprochement of Turkey and Bolshevik Russia after the First World War. The author points out that the Entente conducted military operations against Bolshevik Russia and Turkey, and that Russia’s security would have been seriously threatened if the Entente proved victorious in Asia Minor. The existence of independent states in the South Caucasus separated Russia and Turkey, which were fi ghting against the Entente. A victory of the Entente countries would strengthen their infl uence in both the South Caucasus and the North Caucasus, where serious anti-Soviet uprisings continued, and lead to the establishment of control over the Caspian Sea and passage through Central Asia. An invasion of Central Asia meant control over Eurasia, which was considered the center of the world. The Entente countries, having turned Poland into an enemy of Bolshevik Russia, tried to “strangle the Soviet government in its cradle,” regarding its existence as an obstacle to the realization of political, economic, fi nancial and other interests. As long as the Bosphorus and Dardanelles remained under the control of the Entente, which could freely enter the Black Sea, and Crimea was in the hands of White General Wrangel, Turkey could not be secure and Bolshevik Russia could not feel safe in Ukraine and the South Caucasus.

This article is devoted to the study of mutual perceptions of power in Russia and the other countries of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). The purpose of the study is to identify the key features of the image of the power of Russia among residents of the other EAEU countries and the power images of each of these other Union member states among residents of Russia. Toward this end the author highlights the formation of a problematic fi eld of perception of power in the Eurasian space and the adaptation of various theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of its image. The research methodology employed for the article includes focus interviews. To interpret the data, qualitative methods with quantitative elements are used, in particular methods for encoding and scaling answers to open questions. The results of the study make it possible to identify the features of mutual perception of power in the minds of citizens of Russia and countries participating in Eurasian integration, to track the impact of individual political and psychological factors on the formation of images of power, and to record their diff erences among residents of each country separately.

This article sets out to solve the scholarly problem of determining the place of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in current international relations and their role and relations with states. The author analyzes the concept of civil society, the starting point in the study of modern NGOs over the past 30 years, and considers by turns (1) the problems of defi ning the concepts of NGOs and civil society; and (2) the formation of these concepts in connection with the transformation of the system of international relations in the early 1990s and the policy of the Western countries in the post-Soviet space. He goes on to conclude that that civil society in the modern Western liberal reading should be considered as a historical phenomenon without any claim to universal signifi cance. The article addresses the current foreign policy practice of the United States and the European Union in working with NGOs, noting that Western states and private foundations are losing their monopoly position in the fi eld of NGOs as other states master this tool and create their own infrastructure for working with it on the domestic and foreign political circuit. The further development of the NGO sphere, the author concludes, will be aff ected by the processes of increasing interstate competition and regionalization.

This article addresses problems of modern political demography both in a broad context and through examples of specifi c regions. The authors show how the infl uence of political decisions taken by individual countries and leading to demographic changes have provoked cascades of destructive eff ects with catastrophic long-term consequences for entire countries and regions. An example from documents of the U.S. Department of State illustrates how, under two diff erent administrations — fi rst Obama and then Trump — the attitude in the American establishment changed towards the migration problem in the United States itself. The mechanism of destabilization of the Maghreb zone, as a result of which conditions were created for a mass outmigration, is also developed. In addition, the authors off er a study of the collapse of multiculturalism using the example of the ill-considered policy of European countries in accepting migrants, which led to diffi culties in integrating them into an environment with a diff erent ethno-religious composition and sociocultural characteristics. Further, the authors draw a cautionary conclusion as to the risk of a systematic and strategic catastrophe in the long term for the whole of European society if current policies and approaches in the fi eld of demography and specifi cally migration are maintained. Finally, the article identifi es the most striking factors of migration-as-weapon, the study of which received a powerful impetus after the 2015 migration crisis in Europe. The mechanism of initiating an international crisis through the controlled direction of masses migrating to a number of EU countries to achieve short-term strategic and geopolitical goals is addressed by the authors. The success achieved using major tides of people in the form of a military-political special operation on the international level against a number of state and supranational actors, as well as the scale of the consequences, have made it possible to asses the forced and controlled exfi ltration of signifi cant masses of people as a new non-classical weapon of mass destruction. The article adds a further conclusion, asserting that the lack of control in the fi eld of migration poses serious risks to Russia’s national security.