Articles

The author analyzes the impact of the new coronavirus infection on the campaign for the election of deputies to the 8th State Duma, both during the campaign period and at the time of voting. Research objectives are to find out whether the coronavirus pandemic affected the election campaign in general and the transparency and legitimacy of the electoral process in particular; what forced changes have been made to the electoral system and the pre-election work of candidates and parties, and whether these changes are applicable outside the conditions of the pandemic. In the article, the author research the program documents of the parties, uses content analysis, and the comparative method. As a result, the author came to the conclusion that the coronavirus pandemic had a serious impact on the 2021 election campaign, in terms of organizing, preparing and conducting voting, and in matters of electoral activities of political parties and candidates. Some changes are situational, and not applicable outside the conditions of epidemiological risks, others, systemic, have chance of becoming standard practice outside the conditions of a pandemic. The changes affecting the electoral process did not affect the transparency and legitimacy of the electoral process, and in some aspects made it more convenient for voters.

Based on empirical quantitative data, the article examines the relationship between the severity of the epidemiological situation in a particular country (1), the stringency of protective and restrictive measures imposed by the government (2), and the institutional characteristics of the country (including the quality of healthcare, management, the level of public confidence in the government, value orientations, etc.), which determine the specifics of the application of measures and their effectiveness (3). As a result, with the help of the index of the severity of the epidemiological situation, institutional characteristics were identified that most affect the effectiveness of the measures applied and, if possible, allow combining the relatively easy passage of the pandemic with relatively lax measures. Based on statistical indicators, practical recommendations have been developed aimed at reducing the severity of the epidemiological situation and reducing the severity of measures.

The article’s primary purpose was to identify relevant scientific approaches, models, and scenarios for digitalizing the space of contemporary policy. To solve the work tasks, we used discourse analysis, critical analysis and predictive scripting. According to the research results, the authors could identify the essential effects of current technological transformations that ensure the close interweaving of the traditional political space and the digital environment into a single digital space of politics, claiming to form an independent phygital socio-technical reality. Among the key areas of transformation of the space of traditional politics, we can include the intensive digital algorithmization of the socio-political sphere of the life of the modern state and society, the emergence of digital intellectual actants, as well as alternative subjects of digital politics, to which we primarily include global technology corporations. Based on the study results, the authors describe a scenario for forming hybrid state-technological regimes that combine the resources of political power, digital infrastructures and technologies into a single subject of socio-political governance of a new type.

The article is devoted to the problem of the formation of digital sovereignty of Russia in the context of the formation of a global digital society. The paper examines various approaches in political science to understand digital sovereignty.
Authors analyze the threats that arise to Russia’s sovereignty during the process of digitalization develops, as well as the conditions for the implementation of Russia’s digital sovereignty in the global digital society.
The article pays special attention to the fact that ensuring the digital sovereignty of Russia is the main condition for ensuring the national security of the country, so it is important to reveal the main tasks of the state to ensure its digital sovereignty and its practical activities in this direction.
According to the results of the research, today national digital sovereignty is necessary not only for the creation of national digital resources, but also for the national independence of the state in the era of the global digital society.

The foreign policy of the state has its own specifics because its effectiveness depends on many circumstances that go beyond the framework of national sovereignty. Differences in approaches to the analysis of foreign policy, as well as in the definitions that are given to it, are explained by the variety of factors affecting it and its associated “diversity”. In general, foreign policy is both the general course of the state, the basic principles that characterize its position in a foreign environment, and the practical actions or behavior of the state outside its borders, finally, it is a complex, multi-level process of preparing and making appropriate decisions. Often, it is the process of making foreign policy decisions and related organizational, bureaucratic, psychological, and other problems that occupy a central place in the analysis of the state foreign policy. At the same time, for all the importance of the results of the analysis of the decision-making process, they do not give a complete picture of the foreign policy of the state, leaving without due attention its conceptual foundations and the behavior of the state in the international environment. Russian authors, without denying the place that decision-making takes in the foreign policy of the state, proposed to consider its formation and implementation in the unity and continuity of all its stages based on the concept of “ foreign policy process”. At the
same time, the need to pay attention to the dialectics of the factors of the foreign policy process is especially emphasized. In the light of the exacerbated value, culture and politics-based contradictions in the contemporary world, factors of civilizational, political, cultural, and regime nature affecting the foreign policy of states are attracting increasingly growing attention.

The article examines the political and legal thought of Hans Kelsen and Carl Schmitt in the context of the opposition of descriptivity and prescriptivity. The comparison of the presented doctrines in this aspect is based not only on the presence of antagonism between them, but proceeds from the fact that a discussion existed for a long time between the thinkers. Although their discussion devoted to sovereignty, democracy and the guarantor of the constitution, nevertheless each time, it exposed methodological differences in the views of jurists. At the same time, in a broader ideological and theoretical perspective, such an aspect of comparison fits into the problem of the descriptive and prescriptive status of political and legal science. Thus, an appeal to the chosen topic allows us to deepen knowledge both about the vicissitudes of the relationship between the pure doctrine of law by G. Kelsen and the doctrine of decision by C. Schmitt, and to offer a theoretical model for resolving the descriptive-prescriptive conflict, which arises from the desire to reconcile the positions of thinkers.

During the war years, the creation of an image of an ally or enemy could take place through a rich range of forms and methods: publishing pamphlets, holding traveling exhibitions and concerts, showing films, giving lectures, and making media appearances.
This article is an attempt to describe the image of Red Army soldiers and officers in 1943–1945, which was formed by means of cinematography and a memo for soldiers of the contingent of troops stationed in Europe, published on the eve of the meeting on the Elbe.
In the article, the authors come to the conclusion that the symbolic policy in the United States during the period under review was reoriented towards the formation of new ideas about the USSR and Soviet citizens. Negative cliches gave way to positive images of reliable allies in the fight against Nazi Germany. At the same time, the principle of identification was actively used: the citizens of the Soviet Union and their way of life were positioned in terms of focusing on similarities with the patterns of American culture.

The article is devoted to the analysis of the mechanisms of formation of a dual “Soviet-Orthodox” identity in the context of the dynamics of memory of the Soviet period of history. Variants of reconciliation of identities by Soviet citizens in the post-war years are considered. The study of the mechanisms of reconciliation of seemingly contradictory identities allows us to turn to the analysis of the influence of collective memory about significant events of the Soviet past. The main conclusion of the work is that it is necessary to share political loyalties as identification of oneself with state institutions and a plurality of cultural identities associated with collective memory. The memory of the Great Patriotic War, in particular, the construction of the crypto-Orthodox narratives of the Soviet leaders, plays an important role in uniting the Soviet and Orthodox identities.

The article is based on the transcripts of the meetings of the State Council of the Russian Empire in 1914−1917. Their analysis shows that members of the upper house of the Russian parliament, who, focusing on “public opinion”, on the “progressive public” and pursuing particular interests, created opposition to the government in the State Council and made their own “contribution” to prepare the catastrophe of 1917, when the empire ceased to exist, and the country, undefeated by the enemy on the battlefields, was among the losers of the war. Even in an extreme situation, they continued to formally comply with the requirements of the regulations and refused to discuss pressing political problems. Many of them, having taken the podium, were engaged not in solving state problems, but in self-presentation, flirting with the liberal public, kowtowing before the “public opinion” expressed by it. Thus, particularism, opposition to the government, the formalism of the State Council of the Russian Empire, the lack of a timely response to the current political situation reduced the role of the upper house of the Russian parliament in politics to zero, that led the country to disaster.