The article investigates the causes of corruption in Russia and the possibilities of counteraction of it. The article gives examples of mass corruption in modern Russia, shows its negative consequences for the society and the state, proposals to counteract this phenomenon are offered. Special attention is paid to the inadmissibility of corruption among law enforcement and judicial authorities. The article provides abundant facts and data describing corruption in Russia and demonstrating its scope. Giving grounds to their own positions, the authors refer to foreign and Russian experience of anti-corruption measures.

Main attention in the article is paid to the administrative reforms in Russia, as well as to the personnel policy and struggle with corruption. The normative regulation of civil servants in the Russian legislation is a relatively new institution which requires further improvement and development. The author analyzes new sources about the state civil service in Russia, and also recent scientific publications.

The article explores the methodology of political reforms of K.D. Kavelin, a brilliant representative of the Russian conservative liberalism of the XIX century. This methodology was an original variant of the progressive liberal modernization of Russia «from above», based on the principles of evolutionary transformation of the socio-political institutions. At the system-level K.D. Kavelin’s theoretical approach is an alternative to the destructive program of reforms, which in modern Russia is referred to as «liberal».

The article is devoted to the impact of «administrative resources» on the democratic process and political governance. The comparative analysis of presidential election campaigns in Russia and other former Soviet countries has allowed the author to detect specific political and technological mechanisms that provide manipulative influence on the citizens voting activities. While analyzing the post-Soviet democratic practices of electoral formulas the author used international research projects data, sociological surveys, and content analysis of media reports and OSCE observers.

In the article the author analyses the phenomenon of religious institutions’ return into the Russian secular social and political space. Special attention is devoted to the problem of harmonization of the church-state relations. The author examines the actual stand of the Russian orthodox church and defines three basics stages of the church-state relations that have formed trough the historical evolution in the Russian state: pre-secular, secular and desecular.

Ethnic conflicts and the problem of national identity in contemporary Russia put the scientific community in need for in-depth analysis of nationalism. The article is devoted to the notion of nationalist discourse in the context of the study of political parties. Approaches by foreign and Russian scholars (especially A. Miller’s and V. Malakhov’s theories) are examined and the author’s own version of the understanding of the term «nationalist discourse» is offered. This concept gives us the opportunity to analyze programs and everyday practices of political parties.

The article examines the process of forming a civil society in the Moscow region, and the society’s attitude to it. Besides, the role of the state in the development of civil society is studied. The author touches upon some economic, political-legal and social aspects of forming a civil society. The role of the Public Chamber of the Moscow region in this process is also given attention to. The author considers the state should promote the process of forming a civil society in the Moscow region by reconsidering its priorities in this sphere.

Clan communities in the political process in Kazakhstan have a long history, including both periods of minimizing the impact on power and the periods of revitalization. After the country gained its independence these clans quickly began to recover and gained new qualities in Kazakhstan. Among such qualities only a few most common ones resemble the connections and relationships updated by the traditional tribal structure of the society. The article represents the characteristic features of the latent communities’ influence on the political process in Kazakhstan in different historical periods.

The article examines changes in the quality of the integration strategy of the Commonwealth of Independent States, actualization trends promoting equal political potential post-Soviet countries, the necessity of transformation strategy of national elites of the newly independent states. Created as a mechanism of «civilized» divorce, the Commonwealth is currently experiencing the need to change the paradigm for further development. Trend equality integration capabilities of all participating countries is a strategic direction of reforming the CIS.

The article is devoted to the transformation of the definition «Black Hundred» in the historiography of the Russian’s right-monarchist movement of the early twentieth century. For the first time the early XXth century Russian scholars’ points of view on the definition of the key concept of historiography of the right-monarchists movement are shown. The author comes to the conclusion that the development of the definitions in the historiography was politicized. The scientific researches were biased even on the level of key concepts discussion.

The term “liquidationism” was used by V.I. Lenin as a term of abuse for those who challenged his views especially during the years of so-called Stolypin reaction. Despite its significance, this term has received very little attention. This article attempts to address this gap in our knowledge by examining how Lenin used it against N.A.Rozhkov, the individual who, in the Bolshevik leader’s mind, did more than anyone else to raise concern over the meaning of the term. The subsequent polemic that ensued between Lenin and Rozhkov drew the attention of other key political figures including A. Martynov and lu. Martov. The conflicting ideas and viewpoints that emerged from this acrimonious debate were published in the Menshevik journal entitled Nasha Zaria (Our Dawn) and these discourses are scrutinised for the first time. This article attempts to show that Rozhkov was an independent thinker who could not be easily pigeonholed and who offered a viable political alternative to disillusioned social democrats. It also draws the conclusion that by 1912 leading Mensheviks were already so varied in their thinking they were unable to provide a fundamental critique of either Lenin’s views on liquidationism or Rozhkov’s call for a legal organisation that he believed ultimately would help bring down the Tsarist regime.

The article considers various points of view on problem of the commodity deficiency in 1950-e-1980-e and the attitude of the population of the RSFSR to it, formulated in modern Russian historiography. The article structurally allocates various research aspects of the declared subject analysis: from consideration of the citizens’ protest moods, that were their reaction to the interruptions in provision of goods, to the population’s indifferent attitude to the problems of shortages. The author states that the population could even take those economic difficulties as habitual, being part of ordinary everyday life. The article presents the critical analysis of the offered points of view, that allowed to allocate the most well-reasoned positions.

The article reveals the problem of providing secondary schools in the Ukrainian SSR with teaching staff during the Khrushchev «thaw». Quantitative and qualitative structure of the teaching staff is explored on the basis of archive sources. The author highlights the ways of increasing teachers’ educational qualification. Besides, the main problems connected with pedagogical staff school completion are studied. The author concludes that the characteristic feature of the manpower policy of the educational system authorities was inaccurate planning; so it resulted in both the excess and lack of teachers.

As a result of studying the archive documents in the Russian State Archive of Contemporary History, several most prevalent points of view of Soviet citizens about the USSR’s actions in the Six-day war of 1967 were identified. They vary in the degree of loyalty: from full approval of government actions to direct calls on Soviet citizens to provide military support to one of the sides in the conflict. All eight points of view which are considered in this paper are supported by relevant documented opinions and quotations from the letters. In spite of the Soviet mass media’s attempts to form the idea of a unanimous public support of the government in those events, the author doesn’t consider it to be trustworthy.

The article, written within the framework of the conception of "balance of power”, is devoted to the investigation of the initial period of the War of the Austrian Succession known in the historiography as "The First Silesian war”. For the first time in the Russian historiography the author considers the military and diplomatic history of the period. The author examines the pre-history of the military conflict and its causes. The intentions of the leading European powers as well as of the states interested in the prosecution of war (France, England, Spain, Russia, Prussia, the Kingdom of Piedmont and Sardinia) are also investigated. The role of Bavaria and Saxony as active participants of the conflict is also considered. The First Silesian war ended with signing of the Breslavskij peace treaty. The author comes to the conclusion that signing of the treaty did not resolve all-European contradictions. Prussia received Silesia, but failed to break down Austria’s resistance. The other participants of the conflict kept to their aggressive plans concerning "the Austrian succession”. Thus, the continuation of the war was inevitable.

The article deals with the conflicts and contradictions that arose between the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Ministry of Peoples’ Education and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Empire in the course of their participation in the process of managing religious organizations. The reasons of interdepartmental contradictions were in subordinate religious communities of various ministries, as well as in the purposes and objectives that were set to different departments. Mitigation of conflicts between the agencies was achieved through the gradual empowerment of the Interior Ministry and the simultaneous reduction of the competence of the Foreign Affairs Ministry and Education Ministry.

This article studies the views of the representatives of the conservative direction of public thought at the end of XIX - the beginning of the XX centuries, expressed in the periodicals concerning the development of the factory and social legislation in Russia. The article analyses the perception of the working legislation by publicists from the following mass media: newspapers «Moskovskiye Vedomosti» and «Novoye vremya», magazines «Russian Review» and «Direct Way». The article mentions the problem of settlement of the Russian workers’ legal status which was aroused by the conservative publicists. The author examines the way the conservative press covered both the drafts and the laws approved by the government and the State Duma at a turn of the XIX-XX centuries.

The article is an answer to the point of view expressed by a number of authors (J. Frazer, W. Burkert, F. Karahashi and C. Lopez-Ruiz), according to which the Greek myth of Hippolytus has roots in the Middle Eastern myths about the goddesses of fertility (Cybele, Ishtar, Astarte) killing masculine characters. While analyzing the sources, the author comes to the conclusion that only in two sources (Euripides’ "Hippolytos Stephanephoros” and Athenaeus’ "Deipnosophistai”, the latter being clearly and directly dependent on the former) appears the motive of Aphrodite’s intention to kill Hippolytus on purpose. All the other numerous sources either do not mention Aphrodite’s role at all or portray it in a completely different way (it is not Hippolytus but his stepmother Phaedra who is the object of Aphrodite’s revenge as she is Helios’s descendant). The motive of Aphrodite’s revenge on Hippolytus appeared most probably as a result of Euripides’ rewriting his earlier tragedy and does not have even Greek folk roots, let alone the Eastern ones.

. The article examines the characteristics of the events of World War II, which are traditionally interesting for both the scientific community and the public. The author studies the emergence and development of the U.S. strategic intelligence in the Italian seat of war. The backstage talks between the U.S. intelligence and the heads of Nazi Germany arouse the author’s special interest. Using diverse materials, including memoirs and diplomatic documents, the author comes to the conclusion about the real contribution of the U.S. Office of Strategic Services to the victory in World War II in Italy.

The article discusses the difficulties of political reforming in the countries of Eastern Europe in the postsocialist period. It is emphasized that during the transition period new governments made serious political mistakes. New political elite and political parties of the East European countries failed completely to solve a number of difficult political problems. Among them the author mentions: the imperfection of the parties and party systems, inadequate role of the political parties in the development of the civil society; negative phenomena in the interaction of multiparty democracy and election campaigns; discrepancies between the electorate’s sympathies and the membership of parliaments; the existence of "fictitious” and "non-liberal” parliamentarism; the violation of the democratic pluralism principle and the lack of tolerance; the arrogant attitude of the political elite and governments to the citizens; the suspension of a certain part of the society from participation in the political process; and lustration.

The present article discusses the question of the phenomenon of "political rejection” of Russia in modern Poland, the reasons of its existence which lie, first of all, in the history of rather difficult bilateral Polish-Russian relations, as well as in the policy of the Polish elite, its political parties, and in the Polish party’s inadequate understanding of its geopolitical interests. The authors of the article emphasize that efforts should be taken both from Poland, and from Russia to eliminate such negative phenomenon. Good-neighboring development of the Russian-Polish relations meets the demands of long-term interests of the people of both countries.