The article analyzes global changes in the international arena, which in a concentrated form reflect the dynamics of the most complicated geopolitical processes, the dialectics of the interconnection of the old and the new in the world politics. We study its problem nodes and key issues. The world political process is considered as an expression of a flexible mobility, variability, dynamic interaction of a multitude of objective and subjective factors that determine the content, nature and vectors of the evolution of the world community. The author focuses on the systemic set of interdependent subprocesses: global, regional, local-country, inertial, crisis, etc. Dialectical interrelations of national and global in world politics are traced. Great attention is paid to the role of social networks in the global space. The peculiarities of the globalization of information processes, their influence on the alignment of forces in the world arena, geopolitical capabilities and the potential of the information sphere in the competitive rivalry of states are revealed. The strategic lines of Russia’s foreign policy are analyzed taking into account the latest trends that determine its geopolitical status and place in the world community. In the actual problematic refraction, the features of Russophobia in world politics, its phantoms and realities are being comprehended. The most important issue of world politics — achieving geopolitical goals by increasing the desirable or reducing the undesirable is being conceptualized. Geopolitically, it is extremely important that it is the cultural and humanitarian imperative that lies at the basis of «soft («flexible or intelligent») power», which comes to the forefront of world politics. «Soft power» is considered as a comprehensive tool for solving foreign policy problems with the support of the opportunities of civil society, information and communication, humanitarian and other methods and technologies. At the same time, close attention is paid to underwater reefs — the risks of destructive and unlawful use of «soft power» in order to exert political pressure on sovereign states, interfere in their internal affairs, manipulate public opinion and consciousness.

Former Soviet Union countries is of special interest for China. Russian influence in former republics has been declining since the Soviet Union collapsed. China used these changes to start developing of bilateral relations with Central Asia states, as a first priority, and continued with Ukraine, Belorussia, South Caucasus governments. Former Soviet countries’ course to weaken Russian influence helped Chinese policy to be promoted. It has altered from bitty steps to concerted course in the region. China began to play a major role in the trade and economic development of Central Asia, supporting its policy with political mechanisms. To strengthen its positions, Beijing proposed its “One belt - one road” strategic initiative, which consists of two major projects : Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Route Economic Belt. These projects involve almost all of the former soviet states, of which Central Asian countries play a major part. This world region is seen in China as a platform for invading European markets, and it also provides a way to avoid trespassing of the Russian borders. In the context of Chinese “One road — one belt” initiative, there is a great concern of the cooperation with EAEU project. EAEU is aimed to provide coordinated unified economic policy with state-members, to guarantee the free movement of goods, capital and labour. Moscow sees its initiative as an instrument for construction of economic and political structure in the region, same as Beijing does. Possibility of two global projects coexistence, which can be distinguished as competitive, is a problem to be solved.

Collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and increase in the number of the Caspian Littoral States lead to the necessity of renewal of the legal status of the Caspian Sea. Former Soviet-Iranian agreements, which had previously determined the legal status of the basin, didn’t correspond with the needs of the time because of the lack of juridical regulations about such topical issues as: marine mineral exploration, environmental requirements to the mineral resources development, capture levels of the living marine resources, etc. Unilateral actions of some Littoral States didn’t find support of their neighbors. That aggravated a situation in the region as well as adversely affected the negotiation process within the framework of the Special Working Group for drafting a Convention on the legal status of the Caspian Sea at the level of Deputy Foreign Ministers of the Littoral States. The article analyzes the core role of four Caspian Summits in the negotiation process of the Littoral States. The author underlines positive influence of the summits on establishment of multilateral cooperation mechanisms in the region as well as development of relations in the “Caspian Five”. The key benchmarks of the negotiation process are considered. Special attention is given to the legal documents of four Caspian Summits which outlined the principles of cooperation of the Caspian Littoral States. Positive balance of the First Caspian Summit (Ashgabat, 2002) is considered. The key roles of the Joint Declaration of the Second Caspian Summit (Tehran, 2007) as well as the political Statement of the Fourth Caspian Summit (Astrakhan, 2014) as political guidelines for the negotiation process on the legal status of the basin are highlighted. Great significance of the Agreement on Security Cooperation in the Caspian Sea, which was endorsed within the framework of the Third Caspian Summit (Baku, 2010), is estimated. The author proceeds from the assumption that all efforts of five nations should be focused on forging the compromise on key issues of the draft comprehensive Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea to finalize the text of this pentalateral legal agreement as promptly as practicable and to adopt it on the Fifth Caspian Summit in Kazakhstan.

One of the most important players in the geopolitical process in the Caspian region is Iran. In this article, we consider Iran’s policy on a wide range of problems in the Caspian Sea region that the country has been following since the collapse of the Soviet Union. For more than two decades, one of the important tasks of the Iranian Foreign Ministry was to define the international legal regime of the Caspian Sea, which was complicated by the geopolitical changes in the region associated with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of new Caspian states - Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan. Initially, Iran tried to justify the division of the sea, based on the former Soviet-Iranian agreements. However, the new Caspian states believed that the geopolitical status underwent fundamental changes and the previous contracts couldn’t justify modern challenges. In this connection, the tasks of preserving the national interest to the maximum extent and at the same time maintaining constructive relations with other Caspian states, especially with the Russian Federation, became urgent for Iran’s policy. Environmental pollution and lack of financial and technological resources for energy extraction are a serious problem for Iran in the Caspian Sea. The Islamic Republic of Iran is still at the stage of research into the extraction of energy resources in the region and has not entered the mass production stage due to international sanctions. However, after the agreement with the “5+1” and the lifting of sanctions, Iran has the opportunity to extract oil and gas from the Caspian. The activities of Western companies and their close cooperation with the new Caspian states are also a problem for Iran. The military presence of the West, especially the United States, in the Caspian region is considered a direct security threat from the Iranian point of view, and Iran has serious objections and fears in this regard.

The Author analyzes the regulatory structure proposed by the President Putin’s strategy of «Great Eurasia» in Russian official and economic policy frameworks and development programmes, Examines internal and external factors affecting the Eurasian Union, as a base for building relationships within the «Great Eurasia». The emphasis the author makes the EAEU’s interest in the development of economic relations with the countries of «Great Eurasia» with the use of the Union. He also analyzes the dynamics of the negotiation process for conclusion of trade and economic agreements between the EEC and China and the challenges and opportunities of member countries in economic relations with China. Considered the level of compatibility of the Eurasian Union and the initiative «One belt and one road». A separate part of the article devoted to economic cooperation of Russia and China and their possible interaction in the construction of the Grand Eurasia.

Twenty years have passed since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Up until the point of dissolution, the Soviet authorities and intellectual elite had attempted to build a community in order to unite all Soviet citizens in the spirit of socialist modernisation. Although it is difficult to demonstrate that ‘a Soviet nation’ was successfully created [1], the attempt to build such a nation can serve as a case study through which to examine nation-building processes for constructivists as well as modernists . In addition to socialist modernisation, the Soviet nation aimed to be identified as a state, which would make it similar to the political nations dominant in western countries. Contrary to western tradition, however, it was not a nation state that provided full rights for all its citizens, but rather a socialist state that was ‘ruled by workers and peasantry’. Nevertheless, the authorities aimed to give the Soviet nation the characteristics of a specific nation state. “It was a nation that in historical terms strived, or more accurately part of which strived, to form or proclaim a particular state” [2]. While at the time of proclaiming the USSR there was no such thing as the Soviet nation, it can be assumed that it was intended to become a constructed titular nation. The majority of national communities, even created ones, have an ethnic core. However academics cannot agree on the kind of state the USSR was, to what extent it took into account the ethnicity of its multinational population, how much it reflected the values, culture, and interests of its largest population group (i.e., the Russians) or even whether it was a Russian national state despite the strong influence of Russian ideology and politics. Some Russian academics, especially those in nationalistic circles (e.g., Valerij Solovej) as well as western scholars such as Terry Martin and Geoffrey Hosking stressed that Russians dominated demographically and politically. However, the USSR did not aim to nurture traditional Russian values. It rather fostered the deethnicisation of Russians and the ethnicisation of non-Russian. Another group of scientists, including those from post-Soviet states (e.g., Žambyl Artykbaev, Otar Džanelidze, and Georgij Siamašvili) as well as western scholars (e.g., Rogers Brubaker) concede that positive processes such as the allotment of territory to republics and other territorial units, the constitution of authority and administrative apparatus, and the formation of the elites once characterised the ethnic history of the USSR. All these processes, however, were dominated by a lack of sovereignty, a loss of national identity, and damage to the living environment. Georgia rather than the USSR has always been regarded by the Georgian people as their mother country. The Soviet Union, which was considered to be a voluntary union of equal republics, was in fact an artificial creation that non-Russian nations were forced to join. The majority of Georgians did not therefore claim the USSR as their homeland: ‘The USSR was for its nations a socio-political state not a homeland’ [3]. 

Non-Russian citizens in the Soviet Union perceived the Russians to be a state-building ‘nation’ and the USSR a Russian state. The Soviet authorities, who predicated internationalism on the Russian language and new Russian culture, actively combated ethnic nationalism (including Russian nationalism, which was associated with chauvinism and a tsarist legacy). Although Russkost was considered to be a remnant of a disgraceful past, it was nonetheless used as a tool to sovietise society. Indeed, Russian language and culture were both conducive to the assimilation of non-Russians. ‘The Great Russian nation’ was to be ‘the first among equals’ and thus Russia provided. Soviet state with certain features of ethnicity. However, Russian characteristics were never treated as instrumental to the USSR, because the aim was to form a new socialist, national community, that was beyond ethnicity, rather than to convert the citizens of the former USSR into Russians. Soviet ideology and science thus set the direction for nationality policy in the USSR, especially in terms of forming a Soviet nation. Based on the foregoing, the present paper identifies how the ethnic character of both the Soviet nation and the state.

The essence of the state gender policy at the present stage in the Republic of Belarus is substantiated. The regional peculiarities of the implementation of the state program document «The National Plan of Action for Ensuring Gender Equality for 2017-2020» are disclosed. The experience of designing a regional plan for the implementation of the state gender policy of the Minsk City Executive Committee for 2017-2020 is shown on the example of the Academy of Management under the President of the Republic of Belarus. In the broad sense, gender policy is understood as one of the strategic directions of social policy. At the same time, gender policy is aimed at overcoming discrimination based on gender, gender asymmetry in the sphere of power relations, gender imbalance in the labor market, employment. Gender policy in the context of international legislative acts takes into account the national identity, the features of the political system, and the socio-economic development of a concrete state. With all existing differences, gender policy in its narrow meaning is a purposeful, dynamic, adaptive process of public administration, regulation, coordination, control in the sphere of gender relations on three bases: political doctrine; state ideology; program priorities and values of gender equality. The interdisciplinarity of gender policy integrates it with other areas of social policy. Thus, gender policy is implicit in goals, the content of state family policy, demographic, educational, youth, protection of maternity and childhood . Formation and implementation of gender policy is based on analysis, interpretation of statistical data (social policy directions), which are disaggregated by sex, in the dynamics of indicators. Based on the UN used methodology, taking into account the national specifics of the Belarusian society, has been created relevant gender statistics and it is developing as an information resource for decision-making. Gender statistics in Belarus are used by authorities, practitioners-managers and scientists. Practice confirms that the use of a gender approach in public administration contributes to the procuring of the women rights, freedoms, and opportunities. It increases their social and political statuses both within societal institutions and at the state level. Conversely, ignoring the gender factor can be devastating for society and its institutions.

Participation of the church organizations in political process is considered. The Church as an institution takes an active part in international relations. Activity of the religious organizations on the international scene has ambiguous character. They, in a historical retrospective, used policy of interference in internal and in foreign affairs of the states. It is shown that religious institutes are capable to exert impact on policy of the state. Religious organizations have shown and have a contradictory impact on interstate relations. The church organizations tried to be active participants in political life. With the strengthening of secular power, religious organizations have not ceased to use political technologies of pressure on the policies of the ruling class. They changed them and adapted them to new political realities. As a rule, the church as an institution enjoys authority among the population in most countries. The world view of many social groups is still formed under the influence of religious doctrines and concepts. The church, as well as the state, can mobilize the supporters. Many of them are ready to advocate the interests of church in political process. The fate of many political regimes, directly depended on interaction with the leadership of the church. In turn modern political actors try to strengthen own political power by means of religious institute. The ruling class is interested in participation of church in policy. Their cooperation is mutually advantageous. Activization of the church organizations in political process depends on activity of the state. In Russia, the Russian Orthodox Church enjoys popularity. She actively advances interests of the Russian political elite which in turn give to ROC various support. Along with this, the church strives to counteract the spread of Western ideals in the country. Priests actively preach traditional Christian values in the socio-political process. Their influence increases every year.