Articles

The Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) is one of the most important international institutions ensuring the protection of Central Asia. One of the key areas of its work is countering the terrorist threat. The priority issues of the CSTO are suppressing the activities of terrorist and extremist organizations, countering terrorist recruitment and countering terrorist propaganda. The purpose of this article is to identify the features of the CSTO anti-terrorism strategy, primarily in the context of ensuring security in Central Asia, and especially under the threat of the movement of militants from defeated terrorist groupings in the Middle East to the Central Asian states. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of the regulatory and legal basis for the cooperation of the organization, including in the context of reconciliation of the legislation of the participating states in the fi eld of countering terrorism. In particular, the signifi cance of adopting a single list of terrorist organizations is underscored. The features of the functioning of key institutions ensuring the implementation of CSTO anti-terrorist policy, as well as permanent operations and anti-terrorist exercises are considered in detail. The author comes to the conclusion that the CSTO has established itself as an eff ective mechanism for countering terrorism. However, there remains a need to work out such activities as countering the fi nancing of terrorism and combating the propaganda of terrorist ideology.

Experts claim that more than 60 states are currently developing military cyber capabilities. At the same time, there are no internationally recognized frameworks that could regulate the information and communication technology (ICT) environment as a sphere of confrontation. The purpose of this article is to fi nd an answer to the question of whether it is possible to conduct meaningful and substantive Russian-American negotiations — given the current state of relations between the two countries — on the reduction of military cyber threats and to achieve positive agreements in this area. To answer this question the authors propose to use analogies from the existing bilateral agreements in the fi eld of strategic stability. They consider three aspects pertaining to any negotiation process: 1) the subject of potential negotiations and general ideas about it; 2) the objectives of the negotiations pursued by both parties; and 3) the presence of political will. They also search for an answer as to whether it is possible to use the existing frameworks for regulation and reduction of the nuclear threat, and, if so, to what extent and in what way. Despite the fact that there is an existing positive groundwork for overcoming bilateral differences in the sphere of strategic confrontation, in the current political atmosphere it is still premature to talk about an analogous treaty between Russia and the US on the reduction of the military cyber threat. Despite this, certain steps can be taken to bring the two countries closer to the conclusion of such an agreement — for example, the resolution of issues of the practical application of international law to incidents in the ICT environment.

The digitization of all spheres of state activity and the availability of network technologies led to the development of the information society. The traditional economy began to acquire new features and forms of economic activity and began to focus on innovative development and the implementation and use of information and communication technologies (ICT). The subject area of this study required an interdisciplinary approach and work with a variety of sources. Explicative methods, the scenario-building method, a functional institutional approach and commonly accepted methods of analysis and synthesis were important for the study. An acknowledgment of the importance of the role of the digital economy is the annual increase in its share of the GDP of the developed countries of the world as well as the development of appropriate programs and initiatives within the framework of state development strategies. The BRICS countries should use their technological capabilities to appropriately digitize their economies in order to neutralize the existing gap between themselves and the most highly developed countries. This study showed that the use of modern ICT is a global trend and greatly simplifi es and automates the procedures of international trade. The BRICS countries are in fairly strong positions according to various indicators and indices of readiness for the transition to the digital economy.

This article reconstructs the logic and direction of the sanctions against Russia of a number of countries in Europe and North America. The restrictive actions of these states are a joint coordinated strategy of containing the social and economic development of Russia. At the same time, the implementation of this strategy causes serious disagreements in the political elites and societies of Western countries, creating new lines of disengagement in the fi eld of security, the development of trade, and in cultural and humanitarian relations. Sanctions policy is represented diff erently in the countries in question. The American course is focused on long-term consolidation of restrictions with respect to Russia and is part of the domestic political process of rivalry among elite groups. The European choice in this case varies across a wide range of possible scenarios: from gradual normalization of relations to building more constructive cooperation based on economic interest and, possibly, creating a common security space, to a policy of increasing tensions with escalating threats and breaking existing economic ties.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the potential of the video game “People Power” as a means of training civil society activists for the deployment of political campaigns involving the use of the technology of nonviolent struggle. The article’s methodological research is based on the use of descriptive political analysis. The theoretical basis of the work is a synthesis of elements of the concepts of relative deprivation (T. R. Gurr), social identity (Henri Tajfel and John Turner) and the model of mass consciousness (D. V. Olshansky). The authors conclude from analysis of the use of the game that “People Power” has great potential as a means of training civil society activists for the deployment of nonviolent struggle campaigns. It serves simultaneously as an interactive textbook, an instrument for reformatting consciousness, a means of recruiting civil activists potentially capable of forming the core of protest, and the basis for the formation of a constantly functioning “brainstorming” center aimed at improving the technology of nonviolent struggle.

This article is devoted to the study of the problem of ubiquitous informatization and electronization, which has caused the formation of a peculiar virtual reality as an integral part of actual reality. The author analyzes the features of virtual reality and their infl uence on the political space. The term “post-reality” is used to designate the environment created by the features of the virtual space. The article views in detail such phenomena generated by post-reality as the post- truth created by the merging of politics with the virtual environment and the post-values that directly aff ect the political information agenda. In turn, post-values are divided into simulations of popularity and simulations of achievements because of which real personalities and actions, including those related to politics, are devalued. In turn, they are replaced by virtual analogues, which often do not register in actual reality. At the end of the article the author analyzes the reaction generated by the post-reality, off ering examples of this reaction in politics.

The question of the ratio of economic and political freedom is considered in this article through the analysis of the actual values of the Index of Economic Freedom (IEF) and the Democracy Index (DI) for 162 countries. Despite the rather high correlation of both indices, the study reveals a signifi cant degree of their variability: there are enough countries that do not quite fi t into the expected model “countries with a high IEF have a high DI, and countries with low IEF — a low DI.” In countries with equivalent IEF values, the values of the DI can vary 2-3 times; likewise, countries with the same DI can vary signifi cantly in IEF. In practice, it is clear that economic freedom does not always require political freedom (United Arab Emirates), and political freedom can be realized in conditions of limited economic freedom (India). A country’s ability to deviate from the expected global trend line is infl uenced by the size of the population and the size of the territory. Among countries that deviate signifi cantly from the trend, a signifi cant proportion are countries with small populations and small territories. As an alternative to the traditional method of analysis, the article proposes an approach that takes into account the size of the population of countries and is based on the recognition that the subject of political and economic freedoms is not a country, but an individual. This approach shows that only 11 % of the population lives in “ free” countries, and the relationship between economic and political freedoms is less obvious than one would expect in theory.

Public diplomacy (PD), as a communication policy between societies of different states, is a relatively new tool in the foreign policies of Russia and Armenia. The culturological aspect is the most important element of public diplomacy, as it defi nes a set of values and cultural policies aimed at transmitting a state’s position to a foreign audience. Although the very objectives of public diplomacy diff er for Russia and Armenia, both states face the necessity of adjusting their policies, focusing not on comparing themselves with anyone or in opposition to anything but rather on the crystalization of their own cultural, ideological and integrational position (in the Russian case) and on preservation of the historical and spiritual unity of a state with communities living abroad (as is the case with Armenia). In light of the absence of a state concept of PD, it is especially important for Armenia to form a Council for Public Diplomacy to bring together theoreticians and practitioners specializing in the fi eld from the Republic of Armenia and unrecognized Republic of Artsakh, giving them an opportunity to acquaint themselves with the experience of public diplomacy in states that are among the most active initiators of this policy in international area.

This article examines problems of Russian-Polish cooperation in the preservation of the historical memory of the Second World War. The author analyzes attempts to build a dialogue and problems arising in the matter of preserving the common memory of the war, while also estimating the possibility of overcoming them. The issues of cooperation in this sphere at the interstate and interregional level are considered separately. Attention is drawn to the methods of interaction that give the greatest result: academic, intercultural cooperation, and the implementation of the projects of “people’s democracy.” The author also pays attention to the institutional aspect of the issue, considering the history of the formation and activities of the Polish state bodies concerned with the preservation of historical memory. Problems of the work of interstate bodies on interaction in this sphere are likewise examined. This work brings to bear information from the Polish and Russian press, archival sources and decisions of the current state authorities of the two countries.

This article attempts to analyze the evolution of the political identity of the Soviet Union in the context of the transformation of humanitarian discourse. This discourse can be defi ned as a set of ideas transmitted in a political language about the sociopolitical identity of a person, his rights and freedoms. Analyzing the development of the system of ideas about man, rights and freedoms in the offi cial Soviet discourse, the article demonstrates how such ideas formed the collective political identity of the Soviet state at various historical stages. The author concludes that Soviet ideology and offi cial political discourse throughout the entire period of existence of the Soviet state reproduced the concept of humanitarian universalism, which was an alternative to Western humanitarian discourse and constituted both the Soviet strategy of foreign policy and the international identity of the Soviet state overall.