No 2 (2015)

In the given article there are viewed the main stages of contemporary Russian politics in the Arctic and analyzed the main problems that Russia faces in realization of its interests in this region. Special attention is paid to the Russia’s approaches to solving of the key problems of the region such as international regime and the prospects of production of carbohydrates in the Arctic.

In the given article, the authors propose and operationalize the notion of “charts power” (or “index power”, “ratings power”) as a significant component of soft power of national states and international institutions. The authors prove that numerous comparative ratings of different countries that have become extremely popular in recent decades could be used as an economic weapon and an effective tool of influence. The article analyses the mechanisms of ratings power and emergence of “rating thinking”. The authors conclude about the importance of actual and potential threats to national security of the Russian Federation from charts power of the foreign states.

The subject of the study is the category of revolution. The author tries to understand how revolution as a legitimate government overthrow of a sovereign nation works as a concept in current political situation. In her view, since the Islamic Revolution in Iran it becomes quite impossible to classify the revolution as the bourgeois and socialist, since 1991 - to talk about it in line with the theory of change of social formations. In her article the author analyzes the results of the overthrow of the government during the revolution as a legitimate act, and explains why, in her view, the concept of the revolution is “dead”. The category of revolution is studied by the author through techniques of political Conceptology. As the methods of investigation the author used comparative, historical method, and methods of analytic philosophy. The main conclusion of the study is the exhaustion of modern concept of revolution because of its ambiguity and elevated semantic load, which are stretching the notion of enabling and legitimizing any illegal overthrow of the government, including those which are not in the interests of “sovereign nation”. The concept of revolution in the way in which we are accustomed to perceive it, has exhausted itself, because it consists of continuous fiction, but in today's world radically change the structure of suppression and oppression.

This article analyses the most relevant aspects of the policy networks concept. On the example of a number of issues, the change in focus of scientific interest in this approach found out. In that case, we examine the heuristic potential and applicability of this theory in the Russian political science and political practice. In addition, the author names the most important Russian specialists in policy networks theory and reviews some of their works that include method of policy networks analysis.