The invasion of a limited contingent of Soviet troops into Afghanistan at the end of 1979 caused a mixed reaction among the Communist parties in Europe. Some of them subject the actions of the USSR leadership to sharp criticism. The article reveals to what extent the US administration was aware of the critical attacks against the USSR and the CPSU by the most powerful Western European Communist parties to determine how the factor of Eurocommunism influenced the Afghan vector of the US policy in 1979-1982 and how the American course turned out for the Communist parties themselves. The study is based on published documents (including electronic collections) of the Administration of the President of the United States J. Carter, the State Department, and the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States, as well as unpublished documents of the Central Committee of the CPSU from the funds of the Russian State Archive of Modern History, press materials and memoirs. It is concluded that 1) the invasion of Soviet military units into Afghanistan provoked a fierce battle of superpowers on the periphery of the Cold War, and in fact, became its peak; 2) one of the results of the Soviet operation was a deeper split in the world communist movement with its subsequent decline; 3) the United States sought to take advantage of the escalated disagreements between the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the largest communist parties in Western Europe (especially Italian, to a lesser extent Spanish and French) and encouraged the actions of the European Communists aimed at distancing themselves from the CPSU and severing relations with the USSR. At the same time, Washington avoided public statements and actions that could look like a manifestation of solidarity with the Communist parties of Western Europe (primarily with the ICP), including the relation to the USSR policy in Afghanistan, giving priority to the policy to exclude completely the possibility for communists to participate in the governments of NATO states. Such a policy, against the background of the ongoing war in Afghanistan and the decline in the USSR's international prestige, contributed to the isolation of the European communist parties in their countries and the weakening of their electoral opportunities.

The purpose of the paper is revealing the peculiarities of Voltaire’s views on the last stage of the Northern War, ended by the Treaty of Nystad, as well as presenting the specific character of the great enlightener’s evaluation of the Russian empire and its historical role. The author finds out, why Voltaire, condemning fascination with the history of wars and kings, in his two works: «The History of Charles XII» and «The History of the Russian Empire under Peter the Great» paid great attention to the Northern War and Peter I’s participation in it.

The reasons of the French historian interest to the named subject are viewed in terms of the modern methods of historical analysis, «philosophical» basis of his views on war and civilization, features of historical presentation.
The paper shows Voltaire’s change in attitude on interpretation of the military historical subjects, first covered in «The History of Charles XII» and then in «The History of the Russian Empire under Peter the Great». The focus of the paper is on the up to the present-day controversial issue, whether Peter I was involved in Gorth–Alberoni conspiracy, aimed at the complete political change in the appearance of Europe. The 18th century historian ultimately came to the conclusion that the Tsar had made use of Gorth’s plans as a tactic means for solving his own foreign policy problems. This point of view is shared by many contemporary historians. Peter I’s declaring Emperor was the direct consequence of victorious end of the Northern War. It was found that Voltaire drew a more optimistic picture of Peter I’s imperial title recognition, than it actually was. According to Voltaire, the specific feature of the Russian Empire, created by Peter I, lies in the fact that it was a self-civilizing empire, bringing enlightenment on the neighboring «barbaric» peoples.

The author of the paper, reviewing specific cases, arrives at a conclusion, that Voltaire’s works of high confidence for their time took a worthy standing in the world historiography of the Petrine era, due to a wide range of sources, the historian’s ability for their critical assessment, his seeking to maintain a certain evaluation independence in the description of events from different perspectives, his commitment to historical truth, his talent of a writer.
The work is carried out within the project, aimed at publishing a first complete scientific edition of «The History of the Russian Empire under Peter the Great» in Russian.

In the article, on the example of the conflict of the Courland governor P.A. Valuev with the Baltic nobility, happened in 1857, the legal status of the Baltic nobility in the Russian Empire is considered. The main issue considered in the work is the problem of the relationship between the imperial center and the national outskirts in the middle of the 19th century, which, in turn, is closely related to the results of the Northern War (1700-1721), which ended for Russia with a victory over Sweden and the annexation of the former part of the Swedish kingdom Estonia and Livonia. The local aristocracy received guarantees from the highest Russian authorities to preserve all privileges, which put it in a slightly different position than the nobility of the inner Russian provinces. Under Catherine II, when Courland was incorporated into Russia, these privileges were extended to the Courland barons. In the XIX century, under Nicholas I and Alexander II, all the "rights and liberties" of the Baltic nobles were also invariably confirmed. As a result, there was a situation in which the German barons considered themselves bound by personal obligations personally with the Russian monarch. This situation, typical of medieval feudal Europe, ran counter to the Russian patrimonial socio-political model, which irritated the Russian elite. The special position of the Courland nobility eventually led to a clash with the governor P.A. Valuev, who, acting within the framework of general imperial legislation, tried to establish general imperial orders in the province. Governor-General of the Baltic Region A.A. Suvorov, Interior Minister S.S. Lanskoy and Emperor Alexander II himself were involved in the clash. And although Valuev's position ultimately triumphed, and his opponent, Baron Gan, was forced to leave the post of Courland leader of the nobility, in general, this did not change the situation in any way. The model of “center-outskirts” relations considered in the article allows a deeper analysis of the difficulties that the local administration in the Baltic region faced when trying to unify the local administration system with the general imperial one. The main conclusion of the article can be considered the thesis that the Russian central government, represented by the governor and the governor-general, did not dare to drastically break the existing management model, in which the local elite (nobility) had a significant impact on the situation in the region. Courland, along with other Baltic provinces, remained a special territory in the political and legal landscape of the Russian Empire.

The article examines the current trends and features of US and EU protectionism towards Russia, its possible consequences and ways of response. Protectionism has been increasing since 2020, which is manifested in the intensification of the use of existing instruments and the development of the new ones.

The article analyzes possible consequences of the spike in countervailing investigations by the US against Russia. The author highlights possible application of similar restrictive measures by other partners as an additional risk. An unprecedented event is the US Department of Commerce review of Russia’s status as a market economy country for purposes of antidumping duty investigations. Non-market economy status expands the capabilities of the US to “overcount” dumping and impose duties, thus impeding the activity of Russian companies on foreign markets. The US acknowledged for now that there does not exist a sufficient degree of evidence to justify a change in Russia’s market economy designation, nevertheless, one cannot rule out such attempts in the future.

In the EU context, the practice of energy adjustments, which results in overstated production costs, normal value and anti-dumping duties for Russian goods, is continued. A new protectionist step is the publication of the report “On significant distortions in the economy of the Russian Federation for the purposes of trade defence investigations”, which lays an additional basis for the continuation and strengthening of restrictive measures. The article analyzes a new instrument of environmental protectionism, the EU’s carbon border adjustment mechanism, a levy on imported products based on the embedded CO2 emissions. The measure will affect important positions of the Russian exports – cement, electricity, fertilizers, iron & steel and aluminum. The mechanism can be considered an attempt to make up for the EU’s lack of natural competitive advantages in mineral raw materials and to impose its vision of economic policy goals on the rest of the world.

In conclusion, the author highlights features of American and European protectionism towards Russia – active employment of the role of the state in the economy factor as well as environmental factor as pretexts for introducing or tightening restrictive measures.

The main ways of Russia’s response to new challenges can be the use of the WTO platform in cooperation with other countries, the search for new economic levers in relations with the partners (including application of trade defence measures), the detection of possible market distortions in the EU and the US for possible use in EAEU investigations.

Small innovative and venture enterprises face significant financial and managerial difficulties in the early stages of their development, which makes it necessary to provide them with sufficient support at the start. Different governments choose different ways to solve this problem. In Russia, in the 2010s, an emphasis was made on creating business incubators as SME support infrastructure and key players (as well as a potential driver) of regional entrepreneurial ecosystems. Nevertheless, the latest official data shows that the number of business incubators in Russia has gradually declined over the past five years, making it a critical phenomenon to analyze. We conducted a comprehensive survey among a selection of Russian business incubators.

Comparing the world BI average characteristics (secondary data from InBIA, International Business Innovation Association) and UBI Global (the data obtained through Surveys conducted in 2012, 2016, and 2020) helps us understand the actual state and dynamics of business incubation in Russia. The surveys contain a wide range of questions covering essential aspects of business incubators' activities, including BI program, clients, environment, effectiveness, and finance.

The study shows that business incubators in Russia have undergone several external positive changes, including increased square space, staff quantity, the average annual number of residents, the annual budget, etc. At the same time, the total number of business incubators also significantly dropped, which means that all of the above positive changes do not reflect the growth of the business incubation market and the scaling of the most effective structures; on the contrary, it is an optimization.
As a result of the study, we formulate several additional questions for future research and study to understand better the challenges business incubators currently face in Russia, the reasons for their recent consolidation, and possible ways out.

The article focuses on the political cartoons about Russia and analyzes the potential of multimodal media texts as the tools of popular geopolitics. The author also employs S. Hall’s concept of propaganda, considering the text of a caricature from semiotic perspective. The integration of the theoretical fields of popular geopolitics and propaganda is substantiated, since political cartoons not only form stereotypes about politics and international relations among media readers, but also perform propaganda functions, broadcasting the point of view of the information platform on Russian politics and Russia. The empirical base of the study embraces 242 political cartoons from Russian-language and English-language foreign media, posted in the public domain on the Internet in 2020-2021, the period of the COVID-19 pandemic. Political cartoons are analyzed with the method of expert evaluation and interdisciplinary classifier for the analysis of political cartoons. The obtained empirical results were subjected to statistical processing, including the identification of correlations. The results demonstrate that in foreign media political cartoons about Russia and Russian politics create two different images of Russia. The first description is typical for English cartoons where Russia appears in the context of international relations, mostly its ties with the United States; and the target character in English cartoon is the Russian president. Englishlanguage cartoons are more often focused on harsh criticism and the use of schematized images. Moderate criticism dominates in Russian-language cartoons of foreign media; the target characters are not only the president, but also other representatives of Russian society. Thematically, Russian-language cartoons are constructed in the context of Russia's internal political problems; the field of education is usually the most intentionally “negative”. According to the study, it is the Russian-language cartoons of foreign media that have the most complex and rich visual code and use Aesopian language. In conclusion, the author highlights the importance of further studies of the tools of popular geopolitics, as well as the need to improve the practice of creating multimodal media texts in the logic of the Russian understanding of geopolitics.

The article takes a political philosophical perspective in a conceptual analysis of the nation, focusing on its axiological foundations in the political theories of modernity and postmodernity. It reviews the political philosophy arguments explaining conditions and reasons for individual ethnic groups to become nations. The author emphasizes the role of religion in this process as the main factor in forming national values and identity beyond tribal ties. Despite its importance religion is often dismissed in the research literature on nationalism and nation-building.

To stress the importance of collective solidarity for sustaining a national identity, the author juxtaposes the idea of the nation understood as a collective of individuals living in a nationstate united by common values to the idea of the people understood as a collective of individuals living in a nation-state driven solely by their egoistic interests. From this perspective the people render institutions of the national state dysfunctional because of their disrespect for the common values, while the nation strengthens state institutions, making its nationstate resilient to the current global problems.

Book review: Nazarov V.P. 2022. Development of theoretical and methodological foundations of strategic planning. Moscow: KnoRus. 332 p.

Book review: A.V. Krylov, A.V. Fedorchenko, V.M. Morozov. Jerusalem: history, demography, economy and Russian policy towards the Holy City. Moscow: MGIMO-University, 2022. 370 p.

Book review: Annemarie Profanter, Elena Maestri (2021). Migration and Integration Challenges of Muslim Immigrants in Europe. Series Title: Politics of Citizenship and Migration. Palgrave Macmillan. 289 p. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-75626-0