The article is devoted to the study of a complex set of problems related to the ideas of democracy and practices of democratic transit in the mirror of Contemporary history. The author proceeds from the fact that the loss of geopolitical bipolarity has led to the intensification of efforts to form a new world order. Democracy has become its political form. At the same time, contemporary political development follows a variety of multidirectional trajectories. Democratization is not a normative, one-line and progressive process.

The author tries to analyze such basic concepts as “democracy”, “good governance”, “human rights” in relation to the non-Western societies, and to develop an adequate methodology to study the ways of social and political development of modern States. He focuses on identifying the peculiarities of governance and the functioning of power, establishes the form of the interaction between the socio-cultural environment and the political institutions in post-Communist, post-colonial and post-totalitarian States.

It is concluded that the 21st century will witness the struggle of democratic and anti-democratic trends not only on a global scale, but perhaps - in less dramatic forms - in the very citadels of traditional democracy.

If viewed from a formal-legal point of view, the de facto entities (the ones which are most important for the present discussion: Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Transnistria and the so called People’s Republics in the South-Eastern Ukraine) do not exist for the international community. However the “virtual” existence of these states does not prevent them from being real participants in the political and security processes in the post-Soviet space. Many momentous events in Eurasia are connected, in some way, with the developments around such statelets. The author considers the establishing of the de facto states in the context of the USSR dissolution, of the ethno-political self-determination during this process and the transformation of the international law after the end of the “Cold War”. He defines the unrecognized states, creates their typology and explains their similarities and differences. In his view, the phenomenon of the de facto entities is not limited exclusively to the “frozen conflicts’’, so a productive analysis of these formations is not possible without considering their domestic dynamics, the peculiarities of nation/state-building and the processes of democratization. The author pays special attention to the importance of the Eurasian de facto states to the international affairs, particularly in the context of the lack of common criteria for self-determination and territorial integrity of states.

The article is devoted to the comparison of the Soviet and Russian historiography of the Anschluss of Austria in 1938. In the approach of Soviet and Russian historians, there are significant differences in the study of the Anschluss. The article examines in detail not only the works of Soviet historians, but also the main publications of the archival documents prepared in the second half of the 1940s-1950s by the NKID / USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs (the principle of selecting documents, analyzing published materials, etc.). At the heart of the Soviet interpretation there was the thesis of the diplomatic isolation of the USSR in the pre-war period, which prevented the Anschluss from being averted. In addition, it was stressed that Austria was the victim of German National Socialism. But, of course, the fact of supporting the Anschluss by the majority of the Austrians was not denied. The study of the Austrian resistance movement was important.

However, based on the research of Russian historians in the 1990s - 2000s it becomes obvious that one can not unequivocally speak of the diplomatic isolation of Moscow in the late 1930s. The situation was much more complicated. The key to further research was the declassification by the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service of the archival material concerning the events of 1938-1939. More attention in recent years’ studies has been given to the role of the Polish factor, to the interests and ambitions of Warsaw.

The article analyzes the revolutionary propaganda among the Russian prisoners of war in Japan in 1904-1906. As a result of the Russo-Japanese War, extremely unsuccessful for the Russian Empire, more than 70 thousand Russian soldiers were captured by the enemy. A very active revolutionary agitation by the opponents of tsarism was carried out among the prisoners of war. The Russian revolutionaries and their supporters also made plans for the military invasion of Russia from the territory of Japan with the aim of overthrowing tsarism. In the Russian historiography, this issue has not been adequately analyzed yet. In the article, the author uses the methods of a concrete historical analysis. Based on the previously unused sources, the research aims at the study of the impact of 1904-1906 revolutionary propaganda on the change of the political views of the Russian prisoners of war. The author comes to the conclusion that the documentary sources do not allow the researcher to definitely determine the effectiveness of the revolutionary propaganda impact on the political views of the imprisoned Russian soldiers and officers in Japan. Nevertheless, the military defeat of tsarism in the war with the weaker enemy and the acquaintance with the achievements of the Japanese culture and the economy made many of the prisoners of war think about the necessity of the democratic reforms in autocratic Russia.

This article analyzes the experience of establishing Russian-Chinese joint Bachelor’s and Master’s Programs, their modern development and legal grounds.

The author uses the comparative and the problem-chronological methods, as well as such methods as content analysis and event analysis. The author pays particular attention to the training plan, the areas of study and the geographic coverage of joint programs. The author identifies ten different training schemes, showing their development since the mid-1990s. The analysis of the areas of study shows which areas are of most interest in terms of employment for the graduating students and how well they are consistent with the general trends of establishing joint programs with other States. The study of the geography of the Russian-Chinese joint programs makes it possible to set a rating of the Russian and Chinese regions cooperating in this area, to show the degree of their interaction and to also identify the group of universities-leaders in the number of partner universities and in the number of joint programs.

The author draws attention to the problem of the inadequacy of the legal and institutional framework of the Russian-Chinese cooperation in the field of the Bachelor’s and Master’s programs. This paper also provides the comparative analysis of the Russian and Chinese joint educational programs in partnership with other foreign States. As a result the author defines the proportion of the Sino-Russian programs in this field of inter-university collaboration.

The article is devoted to the analysis of the energy policy of the administration of D. Trump, reveals its novelty and continuity in the realization of the main goal - the reduction of the dependence of the American economy on oil and gas imports.

The aim of the research is to identify the new directions in the Energy Plan “America First”, to reveal the interrelation between its implementation and the US foreign policy. This plan, aimed at turning the USA into an energy superpower, includes the increase in hydrocarbon production and in export volumes, the simplification of the legislative framework that limits coal, oil and gas production. According to the author, the success or the failure of the energy and economic program of D. Trump will depend on the choice of the strategy and the tactics of the USA behavior in the Middle East, Europe and the international arena as a whole.

This work is the first scientific article in Russia which is devoted to the discussion of anti-Russian sanctions during the parliamentary and presidential elections in the Czech Republic in 2017-2018. The aim of the work is to analyze how and why the diversity of the points of view on Russia will affect the Czech foreign policy towards the Russian Federation. A typological and a comparative method of research were used in the paper.

The elections have shown that among the Czech politicians and parties one can see both the critics of Russia who consider the current sanctions as insufficient measures, and the supporters of the complete ease of anti-Russian restrictions. The split was evident even within one definite party, and those parties that revealed the diversity of attitudes towards the Russian Federation, had got the greatest support. The reasons for such contradictions were the memories about the tragic pages of history as well as the common approaches to the issues of the Czech foreign policy - such as the attitude towards the EU and the NATo. In general, the critical approach to Russia in the Czech elite prevails; the country is unlikely to advocate the abolition of the anti-Russian sanctions, but their opponents will still have a significant impact on the Czech politics.

Since the year 2013 the vast group of states in Central and South-Eastern Europe have suffered political crisis. It exposed the systemic problems of these countries - as well as the problems of the whole region. These local crises are taking place along with the crises on the higher level - the crisis of the European integration, of the Euro-Atlantic Security, accompanying the deterioration of the relations between the West and Russia. All this shows that the reevaluation of the processes that have developed since 1991 in Europe is needed. The author of the article gives his estimation of the results of the post-socialist transformation in South-Eastern Europe in the context of the current political situation in the countries. Using traditional historical methodology (narrative, retrospective, comparative and structural methods) as well as the country and area studies, he shows that the results of the transformation are not so unambiguous. The socio-economic crisis, the structural problems, the rise of authoritarism along with the remaining ethnical issues show that the traditional view on the transformation as a progressive transition from the authoritarian socialist to the democratic capitalist state system has failed. The lack of a modern approach that might reflect all current regional trends demonstrates the uncertain future of South-Eastern Europe which is probably returning to its historical role of a playground for the Great Powers.

In the article, the key challenges are analyzed, which Republic of Moldova has been facing since gaining independence. The main accent is put on such factors as formation of political identity, socioeconomic development, geopolitical status of the country, shaping of sustainable political institutions. The author provisionally identifies two periods of Moldova’s sociopolitical development - the 1990s and the 2000-2010s. It is argued that the key differences in the country’s development during both periods can be explained by the evolution of Moldova’s political system, which is moving towards greater centralization, and by the change of the country’s geopolitical status, which makes the classical post-Soviet “seesaw politics” now impossible for Moldova.

The article considers the next stage of the constitutional reform in Kazakhstan. In the Constitution adopted in 1995, the changes in the past were already made in 1998 and 2000, mainly with the aim of increasing the scope of the President’s powers, changing the timing of the next presidential elections. In recent years, the trend of careful democratization of the management system has prevailed. The events of 2011 are indicative. The proposal to hold a referendum with the aim of extending the powers of the incumbent President until 2020, proceeding from the initiative group of citizens, was approved by the country’s parliament, but blocked by the President. However, right after that N. Nazarbayev held early presidential elections. The reform of 2017 is formally aimed at redistributing powers in favor of the government and parliament. Nevertheless, the real content of the adopted amendments is not so unambiguous. It is important that the constitutional reform is not limited to these topics only. The amendments are also related to the creation of the International Financial Center “Astana” and its legal status, the introduction of an additional language into the article on the unitarity and the territorial integrity of the state. At the same time, there was no abolition of the ban on the possession of land by foreigners, a very sensitive issue for the Kazakh society.