The article covers certain aspects of artificial intelligence in international relations. The study aims at identifying the role and key dimensions of AI research and application in international relations. The results of the study reveal paradigmatic differences in the approaches to the research of AI in international relations. Research dimensions include international security and the new types of conflicts, technological competition and sustainable development, ethics and human rights. As far as the application of AI in foreign policy is concerned, the expert discourse was analyzed and three utilitarian functions of AI were identified: 1) AI as a diplomatic tool; 2) AI as a topic for negotiations; 3) AI as a factor of the changes in the international environment. Thus, AI is one of the key technologies for the next decade with the potential to become a core factor in the redistribution of power in the international system. As part of international relations digitalization, AI influences the actors’ perceptions of the changing system. At this point, most research papers deal with AI within the framework of cybersecurity. This article aligns various approaches and presents a comprehensive perspective of AI in international relations.

This article is devoted to the trade and economic relations between the USSR and the Austrian Republic, whose modern borders were drawn up only at the end of the Second World War. The author aims to give a brief overview of the main scientific results (dissertation studies, monographs, scientific articles) of domestic – Soviet and Russian – historians and economists. The article attempts to analyze the influence of the state ideology on the development of domestic Austrian studies and to trace the reflection of the ideological confrontation between the East and the West during the Cold War on the works devoted to the Soviet-Austrian relations. Analyzing the topics of key scientific works, the author identifies several large thematic layers in the study of the history of the modern Austrian Republic and its interaction with the USSR and the Russian Federation. Among them: the political life of Austria, its international interaction, the economic development of the Austrian Republic, as well as the Soviet-Austrian relations in the political sphere. Nevertheless, both in Soviet and Russian historiography, according to the author, there are still poorly studied areas – the least covered topic remains the trade and economic interaction of the modern Austrian Republic with the Soviet Union in the second half of the 20th century.

This article aims to analyze the political-military relations between the Australian Union (AU) and the United States since the mid-2010s, considering their historical continuity, and taking into account the deteriorating relations between Australia and China in 2020–2021. The growing tensions between the two countries and China, which followed the failed “policy of engagement”, have been unfolding largely due to Beijing’s activities in the Asia-Pacific since the mid-2010s, which Australia and the United States began to perceive as a threat to the liberal world order they were promoting (the “rule-based order”). The author concludes that in 2016–2021, despite the deep economic ties between the three countries and the uncertainty after the election of President D. Trump, the military-political relations between the US and Australia continued to strengthen, taking an anti-Chinese orientation, with an emphasis on the multilateral formats as part of implementing the American global strategy.

After the collapse of the USSR, Russia lost its superpower status as well as its influence over a very large territory in Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the Caucasus. The Western countries, primarily the United States, took advantage of this to include these regions in the orbit of their influence. At the beginning of the 21st century, Russia has begun to regain its presence in Central Asia and the Caucasus by creating such organizations as the EAEU and the SCO. At the same time, Russia pursued the goal of returning the superpower positions lost after the collapse of the USSR. One of the important reasons for the formation of the EAEU was that some countries of the former USSR felt the need to restore economic ties that had existed before 1991. This organization soon began to expand towards the Middle East. Iran was one of the first countries in the region to start negotiations with the organization. This article presents an analysis of Iran’s relationship with the EAEU. In 2019, the Agreement on the Free Trade Zone of Iran with the EAEU entered into force, which led to a significant increase in bilateral trade. A possible entry into the EAEU for Iran, on the one hand, will not bring very large economic benefits due to the peculiarities of the structure of its economy and the need for modern technologies that this organization cannot provide for this country. However, it will allow Iran to expand and deepen its interaction with the countries of Central Asia and resist the US pressure. In particular, it will be possible for Iran to neutralize the impact of the devastating American economic sanctions by developing ties with the EAEU in the field of economy.

Norway’s foreign policy towards Russia is built on two pillars. The first is to ensure and maintain national security. For Norway, this is NATO membership and close integration with European states. The second pillar is cooperation with Russia. Norway’s main challenge is to balance these pillars in a changing global environment. After the parliamentary elections in 2021 in Norway, a left-wing coalition came to power, as a result of which there was a change of government. In his statements, the new Prime Minister of Norway J.G. Støre notes the particular importance of an open and constructive dialogue with Russia and the intensification of cooperation between the two countries. Despite the mutual sanctions regime after 2014, Norway and Russia need to establish a constructive dialogue and strengthen relations in areas that meet the national interests of both states, namely cooperation in the North, environmental protection, climate change prevention, nuclear safety, fishing, etc. Recent developments in bilateral relations give some hope that the dialogue between the two countries will be conducted in a more open and trusting manner. At the same time, however, it should be borne in mind that Norway, as a NATO member, will continue to adhere to the general principles of security policy characteristic of the alliance, which may entail significant disagreements on a number of issues, including those related to the prospects for cooperation in the Arctic.

The article examines the images of the American “Other” and their transformation in accordance with the foreign policy contexts. Due to the intensity of its impact on public perception and high sensitivity to international relations dynamics, the Russian film industry serves as a basis for studying this subject. To portray the connection between the foreign policy crises and the range of the American “Other” representations more vividly, the author focuses on such a peculiar genre of contemporary cinema as the anti-terror cinema discourse. This type of the cinema discourse, as proven by the instances of the American “Other” portrayal, comprises a fictitious narrative as well as political allegories. A more detailed study of their existential contexts provides that the negative representation of Americans is nourished by political conflicts. As they accelerate, they generate the tendency of a ‘new anti-americanism’, an intended distortion of the onscreen image of the American “Other”. The article suggests that the modern ways of portraying Americans are hardly novel, hence the sustainability of the ‘enemy’ image. The connection with foreign policy contexts, however, does not allow us to make a definite conclusion about the future of the American “Other” on the Russian screen. The probability of expanding the representation spectrum towards the positive side is also explained by the active exploitation of the Cold War as a metaphor of the highest point of ‘no return’ in the Russian-American relations.

In this article, the author analyzes the reaction to the State Emergency Committee (GKChP) attempted coup in August 1991 and the resistance to it in Volgograd. In scholarly literature and socio-political debates the opinion is widespread that resistance to the putsch was limited to Moscow and Leningrad, and the regions treated it rather neutrally or even supported the GKChP. Based on the memoirs, newspapers, rallies resolutions and news agency reports from Volgograd, the author shows the wave of protests in the region, compares what was happening there with what was happening in other regions and comes to the conclusion that the Russian regions did show widespread resistance to the coup. He also discovers the main factors that distinguished the regions of protest. A key feature of Volgograd and other regions, where the protest took on a broad, organized character, was the presence of a large number of independent democratically minded deputies in the local Soviets and the media independent of the old nomenclature. In addition, the residents of Volgograd had a direct access to Boris Yeltsin’s entourage, as the chairman of the regional Soviet, Valery Makharadze, was exactly at that time appointed the Chief State Inspector of Russia. As a result, journalists received and distributed the news about the resistance to the putsch on the part of the Russian leadership, while independent deputies won support for Yeltsin from the local authorities. The author concludes that the most important changes that created this combination of factors were predetermined by the elections to the Soviets held on March 4, 1990.

The paper presents an important part of the Soviet memory policy in Germany in 1945–1949 – the activities of the Soviet military to identify and record the graves, as well as to establish the identity of the Soviet citizens who have died in captivity – the prisoners of war and the so-called “Eastern workers”. It was also of great importance to record the atrocities committed by the Nazis against Soviet citizens. The article shows the process of forming a system of interaction between the Soviet military and the German local self-governing authorities, as well as the allies in the anti-Hitler coalition; the establishment of the system was necessary for the implementation of the above mentioned objectives. The specifics of the activities of the Soviet military missions in the western zones of occupation in Germany is pointed out, with the emphasis laid on the zone of British occupation, where the infamous Nazi camps for the Soviet prisoners of war were located, and the death toll was extremely high. Special attention is paid to the change in the position of the Soviet military missions in West Germany in connection with the escalation of the Cold War. The present paper displays the position that the Soviet prisoners of war who have died in captivity and the “Eastern workers” have taken in the modern culture of memory of Russia. The conclusion is made about the need for their commemoration as a kind of return to their homeland after many years of silence and oblivion.

The article attempts to analyze the experience of the present-day perusal in Russia and the United States of the works of outstanding sociologist P.A. Sorokin, written by him during the Second World War. P.A. Sorokin, a well-known Russian-American sociologist, has always attracted the attention of the scientific community with his extraordinary works that have opened new ways of development for social sciences. One of the issues of interest to the scientist was associated with the identification of the nature and essence of wars. The sociologist substantiated the relationship between the war and the subsequent militarization of society; viewed the fact of depletion of the nation’s “biological fund” as a result of the war; using concrete material, he demonstrated the relationship between wars and revolutions. Defending a sociological approach, the scientist suggested that a specific event should be correlated with the analysis of the war phenomenon as a whole. In his book “The Crisis of Our Time” (1941), P. Sorokin showed that the cause of World War II should be sought not in the peculiarities of totalitarian leaders, but in the disorganization and value disorientation of both international and internal relations of states after the previous war. In the book “Russia and the United States” (1944), P. Sorokin substantiated the idea of close cooperation between military allies as a necessary condition for maintaining a long post-war peace. All of Sorokin’s books have caused and still cause an ambiguous reaction in the American sociological community: from full acceptance to the rejection of his “marginal thoughts”. Our domestic discourse is built on the idea of preserving Sorokin’s heritage (Russian and American), deep study and popularization of his sociological concept.

Before Perestroika, the topic of Zionism in this country was negative. Only in the 1990s – early 2000s, there began to appear the works aimed at an objective study of Zionism in general, and in Russia, in particular. To objectively examine some aspects of the Zionist movement activities, the article analyzes archival criminal cases as a source on its history. Those cases were initiated by the Soviet security agencies when carrying out arrests of the movement activists. In most cases, the documents and archives of the Zionist organizations and parties were attached to these materials. All of them represent a unique historical source, access to which has been closed to researchers for a considerable time. These materials make it possible to trace the work of the Zionist movements during their particularly stressful years, when the Cheka–GPU–OGPU organs persecuted them alongside other counter-revolutionary parties. Historical and comparative historical methods were used as the main ones. These documents’ publication, promulgation and analysis will make it possible to replenish the source base on the socialist Zionism history in this country, to give an objective assessment of the events that have taken place, to present the previously unknown facts – all of which are currently acquiring special relevance.

Book review: Fainberg, D. (2020), Cold War Correspondents: Soviet and American Reporters on the Ideological Frontlines. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore