Moscow University Bulletin. Series 12. Political Science. 2019. 2.

This article examines the nature of the origin and functional principles of socalled fake news — reports that are deliberately false in nature which can create a stir in a society around a non-existent informational case born of the same news source. In combination with viral technologies and mechanisms of distribution in the media and social networks, fake news in modern political campaigns is becoming a dangerous tool for infl uencing the mass consciousness of societies. The main task of fake news in modern political campaigns and processes is the interception of the political agenda, with its subsequent closure to the news feed generated by the fake news itself, as well as the creation of general excitement around the given news story. In some cases, fake news can be used by extremists to create socio-political tensions, provoke panic and raise protest sentiments, which can create signifi cant threats to national security.

This article analyzes the phenomenon of unfriendly attitudes towards the United States — attitudes which are today defi ned as “anti-Americanism.” The immediate object of the study is numerous issue-related discussions in the Russian Internet space in which the participants express this or that understanding of American actions towards Russia and present and explain their subjective assessments of these actions. The article draws attention to the narrowing of the subject fi eld of anti- Americanism; it is noted that the latter today focuses on crisis-level international processes and events related to the interests of the two countries and the contradictions of these interests in the fi eld of bilateral relations in their most important areas: the confrontation in Syria and NATO’s approach to Russian borders, economic and political sanctions, the dramatic events in Ukraine and others. The “reactive” nature of anti-Americanism can be easily traced through a large amount of empirical material fr om the discussions in the Runet space, wh ere outbursts, both transitory and substantial, are associated with specifi c international events that have received wide publicity in the media. In the context of information warfare, the online community, one way or another, reproduces the maxims drawn directly from the media or from other posts that ultimately go back to the same media sources, and very rarely off ers any individual reasoning indicating the presence of a personal message by the authors. The article analyzes the rational and emotional constituent elements of the issue-related posts and identifi es their radical components.

This article provides an analysis of the problems that Bosnia and Herzegovina must deal with in order to function as a stable country nearly a quarter-century after the end of the civil war. The analysis is based on the theory of ethnic confl ict and rational choice theory, using the methodology developed by Roger D. Petersen and presented in his study “Understanding Ethnic Violence.” In addition, the institutionalist approach is also used in the part of the study that concerns the structure of the political system of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The article consists of two chapters. The fi rst off ers an analysis of the correlation between ethnic composition, demographic trends and the process of nation building in Bosnia in the second half of the 20th century, as well as an examination of the causes of the ethnic confl icts and related dysfunctionality of Bosnia and Herzegovina as a state. The second chapter contains an analysis of the structure of the Bosnian political system and its administrative entities and of how these institutions relate to the processes that create ethnic confl icts in this particular country.

This article is devoted to the study of the attitude of the inhabitants of Bulgaria and Hungary to Russia and Russian politics after the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and in the context of Russian-Ukrainian confl ict relations. The authors of the article note that today in the Bulgarian and Hungarian societies there is a split of public opinion into Pro-Western and Pro-Russian camps. Using the method of regression analysis, the authors demonstrate that such a split has its own specifi cs in both countries. It is most signifi cantly manifested in the political life of Bulgaria, where the division East / West structures the party and political system of the country. The article highlights the geopolitical orientation and support of President Vladimir Putin as the key factors infl uencing the “post-Crimean” attitude of Bulgarians and Hungarians to Russia.

The Prussian colonel and political thinker Carl von Clausewits (1780–1831) is known as an author of the famous quotation: «War is nothing but the continuation of politics in diff erent ways». Anyway, his treatise «On War», where this statement was fi rstly presented, is still raising many debates among the researchers, because this essay of Clausewits had not been completed. In political end textual analyzing of its contentce, the author concludes that Clausewits considers approaching peace as the main aim the war. However, the German thinker does not assert that this peace can be universal and eternal and new wars are impossible. The original peculiarity of Clausewits’s theory is acceptance of those wars that only threaten the opponents and are to reassure the negotiations as one of the main perspectives of state politics.

The author examines the political-philosophical and sociological aspects of the formatting of violence in international relations (IR). The study reactualizes concepts aimed at the advancement of the world community toward social justice and the absence of war based on the optimization of political and legal regulation of IR. The analysis connects the teleology of “social justice” with the functional and systemic approaches to the hierarchy of regulators of violence, which theoretically substantiates the prospects of international “pacifi cation.” The activation of the problem of progress towards social justice was stimulated in international-political theory both by the memory of the world wars and the Cold War and by modern changes in social reality — the turbulence of world politics. Such a hierarchy is an indispensable condition for overcoming the imbalances that arise in the anarchistic variety of regulators; it orders the subordination of regulatory complexes (formats) that determine the regulation of international relations.

This article presents a comparative analysis, using Boolean algebra algorithms, of the prerequisites for color revolutions. The author off ers for verifi cation a hypothesis on the infl uence of four factors — ideological division of the political elite; unity of the opposition; participation in the political process of forces external to the political system; and support of the population — on the outcome of the color revolutions. Based on the confi gurations of factors obtained, a conclusion is drawn for each country-case of the necessary and suffi cient reasons for the color revolutions. Some of the analyzed scenarios of color revolutions (mainly in former Soviet countries) were realized under the infl uence of all four factors, while other cases — mainly events in the countries of North Africa and the Middle East — were caused by combinations of two or three factors. A necessary but not suffi cient reason for the emergence of color revolutions is “support of the population.” In combination with other causes, it forms two compositions of factors that are suffi cient for the emergence of a color revolution. The first is a combination of the factors “support of the population” and “ideological division of the political elite”; this is suffi cient even in the absence of “support from outside” and “unity of the opposition.” Secondly, a combination of the factors “support of the population,” “support from the outside” and “unity of the opposition” is suffi cient even in the absence of the “ideological division of political elites.”

This article analyzes issues of Serbian-Russian relations in terms of foreign policy potential for the Russian Federation. Key aspects of Russian foreign policy resources in Serbia are examined, including economic, defense, cultural and reputational resources. The signifi cance of the southeastern region of Europe for contemporary Russian foreign policy, security and economics is also discussed , as are the prospects for Serbian-Russian relations in the context of Serbia’s integration into the European Union. The author also examines the main trends in bilateral trade and cooperation in energy. The article maintains that bilateral cooperation between Russia and Serbia in the fi eld of economics is not suffi cient in terms of the status of strategic partnership. At the same time, at the current stage of development of bilateral relations, Serbia is considered the most successful example of the implementation of Russia’s “soft power” strategy.