Smirnov Alexei

Test by Ukraine Polish Conservatives Seeking Foreign Policy Strategy

The dramatic events in Ukraine related to the “Euromaidan revolution” in 2014 had huge foreign policy repercussions. For several reasons, including the historical ones, Poland appeared to be involved into the Ukrainian affairs more than any other European country. So how does the Polish strategy in relation to Ukraine look, and how is it being implemented? In search of an answer to this complex question A.Smirnov considers the position of the Polish right-wing conservatives that represents a curious synthesis of the overall Western, European and national-patriotic dominants of political consciousness.

DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-2015-78-3-131-149

AXIOLOGY OF EUROPEAN CONSERVATISM: BETWEEN TRADITION AND PROGRESS

Having analyzed principles of conservative consciousness embodied in the attitudes and electoral preferences of the Europeans, A.Smirnov comes to the conclusion about the prematureness of the verdict on semantic exhaustion of conservatism and its complete transformation into a meaningless category. The author posits that the socio-economic transformations of the last decades that heralded the triumph of liberal principles only partly affected political, cultural and ideological foundations that define the inner world of the European peoples; and a variety of disasters and challenges of this century may reunite conservative ideas with their former conceptual value. In this case, ascribing values to these ideas, which are now largely depleted, will once again become popular and in demand.

DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-2014-75-4-129-144

Test by Euroscepticism: European Integration Crisis in Mirror of Conservatism

On the basis of the analysis of the evolution of the EU right and center-right parties’ programs tenets under the conditions of the European integration project crisis A.Smirnov comes to the conclusion about the ideological and political degeneration of the forces that position themselves as conservatives. According to his assessment, desperate euroscepticism as well as equally desperate euro-optimism evenly characterize the diseased state of the European conservatism that is identified with so many different moods and vectors of political activity. Although the ideology of conservatism retains its relevance in modern Europe and a significant number of European citizens are interested in the expeditious development of the social world order model with the historically rooted system of values and development guiding principles, this “social request” that is in fact formed in the framework of the conservative discourse remains unrealized since there are no forces that are ready to take on its implementation.

DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-2013-71-4-49-66

North Caucasian Ethno-Political Processes and Problems of Self-Determination

The key problem of public regulation in the North Caucasus is to find the optimal and acceptable mechanism that would allow to combine republican sovereignty and ethnic sovereignty (first of all among titular peoples), as well as popular sovereignty which belongs to all citizens. The difficulty is that ethnic sovereignty of each North Caucasian nation calls for the resolution of territorial problems and should be constitutionally formalized. North Caucasus' natural weakness of the civil basis for national sovereignty has conditioned the close link between statehood and ethnicity. The stability of ethno-national entities is largely secured by their inclusion into Russian legal space.

DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-2000-16-2-44-59

Pages: 44-59