Articles

The changes that took place in 2014 in relations with the collective West after the coup in Ukraine marked a paradigm shift and put an end to hopes for the Westernization of our country. A reference to the period of the early 1990s is of interest here because it was then that the foundations of the political course of post-Soviet Russia were laid, including in the fi eld of constitutional creation. The author off ers his version of the periodization of the development of the Russian Constitution over 1990-1993 and the constitutional reform in general in an eff ort to fi ll the existing lacuna in the study of the topic. Each of the stages receives a separate article that discusses key events and trends. This article is the fi rst of three and covers the time from June 1990 to December 1991. This period is marked by a genuine search for an alternative to the Soviet system and the formation of a new model of power in the republic headed by a strong president. Although this construction was considered temporary at the end of 1991, it was legitimized in the Russian Constitution adopted on December 12, 1993. During this period, further, problems arose that later resulted in the “crisis of dual power,” the growth of separatism, and so on. The article introduces new sources into scholarly circulation, including interviews with participants in the events of the years under study.

In this article’s second part, the authors consider the results of the activities of the predecessor of English (insular) Protestantism, the theologian and philosopher William Ockham, who at the beginning of the 14th century formulated the basic postulates of a political phenomenon later to be called British imperialism. Occamism gave rise to individualistic liberalism as the foundation of bourgeois law; the idea of “human rights”; voluntarism as the primacy of will over reason; and the emphasis on empirical knowledge as a belief in progress and as a principle of utilitarianism. The authors describe the programming infl uence of Occamism on the formation of the mental foundations of the ruling estates and demonstrate the mental and political dynamics of British elites in the period of national history before the Reformation of 1534. The sustaining mental references of the British elites — including individualism, voluntarism, pluralism, skepticism, relativism, messianism, political expansionism — are also discussed. Finally, the structure of the mental-evaluational resource base of the elites is presented, featuring nominalism, imperial-patriotic liberalism and liberal law, conservatism, traditionalism, the law of the strong, hegemonism and the awareness of exclusiveness.

The history of political and legal doctrines includes many contributors whose names are now forgotten for one reason or another but who, in their times, expressed original ideas whose relevance continues to the present day. Such is the case with the 13th century Franciscan monk and scholar Roger Bacon, best known as an astrologer, alchemist and warlock. He is least remembered as a political scientist, since this aspect of his legacy has remained virtually untouched by biographers and scholars of his work. In this article the author reconstructs Bacon’s political views, defi ning as their key theme the problem of political elites and the role of political leaders in making responsible professional decisions.

This article describes the crisis of the liberal capitalist model of society. The current period is considered as a transitional one. According to the author, the conditions for changing the outdated paradigm of development are a synthesis of traditionalism, cultural and historical pluralism, and social justice. This synthesis, called by the author “social traditionalism,” involves overcoming historical disruptions in the life of every nation. For the West, such a model means a synthesis of Christian values and the achievements of classical rationality, which must be cleansed of the speculations of positivism and social racism. With this understanding, tradition is not a subject of restoration, but a method of cultural construction, and the rigid alternatives that the elite puts before society are an alarming sign of another coming or impending break in tradition. The general thesis of social traditionalism is that there are no, and cannot be, superfl uous people in society, there are no superfl uous peoples in humanity, and there are no superfl uous times in history.

This article presents an analysis of the process of formation of political subjectivity in modern Russian youth. At the beginning of the 21st century, under conditions of economic growth and the expansion of democratic freedoms, the political subjectivity of young people has becomes a topic of urgent public discourse. The desire of the Russian state to be an independent player in the international arena has led to a need to strengthen trust between the government and society. Building a constructive dialogue between the state and youth implies considering the younger generation as a signifi cant subject of socio-political relations. As a result of this analysis, the author concludes that the country has created appropriate mechanisms for constructive interaction between the authorities and young people, but due to changes in socio-political reality, they require regular modernization. Accordingly, the process of forming the political subjectivity of modern Russian youth is changing.

This article analyzes the role of social networks in the process of political socialization of modern young people. The author notes that Internet technologies and social media have had a signifi cant impact on the transformation of traditional forms of social and political communication. The hierarchical structure, where the key agents of socialization are the institutions of the family, schools, and traditional media, is being replaced by a network model with its inherent non-linear and non-hierarchical processes. The result of this has been the emergence of a network model of political socialization characterized by nonlinear processes, the strengthening of subject-subject relations, the introverted character of socialization and the predominance of horizontal relations between the participants of political socialization.

This article analyzes the eschatological basis of the communal (congregational) structure of representatives of pre-revolutionary Russian religious divergence: radical Old Believer priestless (bespopovskikh) interpretations on the one hand and intra-church mystical outgrowths — khlystovstvo (asceticism/fl agellation) and skopchestvo (castration) — on the other. The author assumes that all such divergences are largely based on the Russian pre-schismatic eschatological tradition, which postulates a special spiritual and political mission of the Tsar — bringing his people from the earthly reality to a heavenly one. Nevertheless, in the discourse of the radical bespopovites and inner-Church mystical sectarians, there is a cardinal substitution of eschatological aspirations. The idea of the unity of the people through the Church in the struggle for the triumph of the “Heavenly Jerusalem” is replaced in this discourse by the idea of a full disclosure of eschatological reality in small religious groups, each of which considers its “ship” as eschatological completeness led by “Christ the King.” Thus by considering the specifi cs of eschatological consciousness the article raises the problem of the specifi city of the monarchical self-consciousness of the pre-revolutionary Russian peasantry.

In this article the author attempts to determine the place and role of Buddhism in the process of building a regional political order in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by identifying key characteristics that refl ect the specifi cs of the East Asian region. Contrary to the conventional belief of the universality of state and legal institutions — which, according to Francis Fukuyama’s prediction, was to take place with “all human societies” — the region under study demonstrated its own value-ideological attitudes. Buddhism was never perceived by the people of East Asia exclusively from a religious, sacral position. It was a way of thinking and living that undoubtedly fi gured in the development of state institutions as well. Although in a closer study of the principles of power, place, and the role of the head of state and his relationship with the Sangha diff ered in the tradition of Hinayana (South-East Asia) and Mahayana (North-East Asia), the author provides a set of characteristics typical of any existing current in Buddhism which played a decisive role in the question of its infl uence on the regional political order. An important feature of the region was the presence of predominantly nationstates, which meant that religion played a signifi cant role in forming the identity of the subjects of each state, who felt themselves guardians of ancient traditions, culture and language. Buddhism allowed the peoples of the region to be perceived as part of a whole, and above all, by these peoples themselves — a concept that Japan took advantage of by declaring an ambitious project to create a “Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere.” Playing on cultural and spiritual contradictions and the opposition of “European” to “Asian,” the Japanese managed to achieve signifi cant success in implementing this project in a short period of time, which was greatly facilitated by Buddhism itself and its most active minions both in Japan and on the continent.

This article is devoted to the study of the formation of radical Islamic movements in Central Asia in the post-Soviet period. The authors analyze the factors of radicalization of Islam in the Central Asian region in the late 20th — early 21st centuries using the examples of the Islamic movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) and the Islamic Revival Party of Tajikistan (IRPT), whose activities are currently prohibited by the leadership of the republics. One of the main reasons for the growing infl uence of radical Islamists is the extremely diffi cult socio-economic situation in Central Asia during this period. Despite the “Salafi trend” in the Islamic world, especially among radicals, the Wahhabi leadership of the IMU and the IRPT were unable fi nd support in the eyes of the majority of the population of the post-Soviet republics, and the status quo continues in the region. However, the dominance of Sufi s in the countries of Central Asia and the marginalization of leading Islamic groups does not mean that there are no prerequisites for the development of religious extremism — which could pose a threat to both the security of Russia itself and the allies of the Collective Security Treaty Organization.