International Affairs No. 5, 2020 – Table of Contents

Key words: coronavirus, WHO, UN Security Council, pandemic, security.

THE GLOBAL SPREAD of the novel coronavirus infection has irreversibly transformed world politics. Major international organizations cannot ignore these tectonic changes. The question is: How do we respond to them? Under what flag and with what slogans should we wage war against an unseen enemy? In more official terms: How should we qualify pandemic challenges, and what importance should we give them? How should we prioritize the distribution of international resources and efforts when fighting this and other pressing threats? After all, other problems do not disappear during pandemics. On the contrary, they become more acute, and the resources of states and international organizations are always limited. …

Key words: Yalta-Potsdam system, Ye.M. Primakov, multipolarity, UN, controlled chaos, democracy, USA, BRICS, USSR.

THE MODERN WORLD is constantly undergoing structural realignment. The existing political reality is facing such a great number of challenges and threats that it is heading toward systemic instability. The Yalta-Potsdam system is being eaten away by attempts to redesign fundamental international institutions. We are witnessing efforts to destroy the world order that arose from the victory of the anti-Hitler coalition over German National Socialism, Italian fascism and Japanese militarism in World War II. A new world order is taking shape that is based on the principles of multipolarity. …

Key words: post-global world, COVID-19, pandemic, multipolarity, global networks, economic cycle, non-institutionalized world, Eurasia, Russian statehood.

THE POST-GLOBAL WORLD is still in embryo, but it is already clear what some of its basic characteristics will be, and it is details and limits of these characteristics that are yet to manifest themselves. …

Key words: Constitution of the Russian Federation, European Union project, Brexit, pandemic, refugees.

IN JANUARY 2020, Russian President Vladimir Putin put forward a package of amendments to the 1993 Constitution of the Russian Federation. In the spring, a broad discussion of the proposed changes in the Basic Law began. …

Key words: post-truth, politics, fakes, information, security, political process, political campaign, political communication.

IN RECENT YEARS, an interest in the post-truth phenomenon has spread far and wide into political and other social sciences. On the whole, it is related to the process of psychological impact on human consciousness and subconsciousness, in the course of which people might radically change their opinion about any important social or political event that has already taken place. This happens under an impact of reinterpretation of previously disregarded events or their details. The public is offered interpretations that occupy information space and penetrate public consciousness; they are accompanied by fakes disguised as verified news, or inventions and rumors presented as versions, opinions of respected “experts,” “fashionable” bloggers and journalists entrusted with the task of planting “post-truths” in the collective mind of target audiences and individual minds of each of its members. The collective opinion changed by “post-truth” might change individual positions of citizens. …

Key words: Russia, Iran, international treaties, JCPOA.

International Affairs: Your Excellency, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarifvisited Moscow quite recently. Could you give us some details of his visit? …

Key words: growth of fundamentalism, secularism, sacral event.

THE GROWTH of fundamentalism can no longer be ignored, an alarming fact. It seems that the process has been caused, among other factors, by what is defined as “a crisis of dominant ideology.” Today, this point is accepted by many. …

Key words: coronavirus, shale, green energy, Ukraine, Germany, Nord Stream 2, oil storage facilities.

Armen Oganesyan, Editor-in-Chief of International Affairs: While the coronavirus epidemic may not have turned the world upside down, problems building up in various spheres of human life have reached a critical mass under its impact. Naturally, the energy industry, as an important sector of the world economy, has felt its effects. It is not only that the dramatic drop in oil prices occurred at the peak of the epidemic. The thing is that for a very short historical period, the world has reached a point where we must answer many questions and address many challenges of a global nature. …

Key words: Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), internal market, supranational level, common customs tariff (CCT), investment projects.

IT IS TEN YEARS now since a Customs Union was established within the framework of the Eurasian Economic Community (EurAsEC): common systems of tariff and non-tariff regulation took effect on January 1, 2010, and a Customs Code that provided for the abolition of customs clearance of goods in mutual trade between Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Russia came into force on July 1, 2010. The entry into force of these key agreements formalized the common customs territory of the three states. …

Key words: Constitution of the Russian Federation, Constitutional amendments, national legislation, international law.

Question: Konstantin Iosifovich, one Constitutional amendment enshrines the provision that decisions of international organizations will be implemented only to the extent to which they are not in conflict with the RF Basic Law. Will our ratification process on international treaties change? …

Key words: Rossotrudnichestvo, soft power, interstate relations.

Question: Mikhail Dmitriyevich, as we start our conversation I would like to point out that, regrettably, very little is known about Rossotrudnichestvo in Russia, so public interest in this agency, which is using soft power tools in practice, is very high. …

Key words: narcotic drugs, psychotropic substances, international control, Eduard Babayan.

ALL MANNER of social processes, including sometimes those of international significance, are often closely connected to the personal contribution, energy, talent, knowledge, and life experience of specific individuals and their ability to lead others and inspire them with their enthusiasm and belief that a given idea is correct and a certain goal is achievable. In this article, we would like to tell about one such extraordinary individual: a talented scholar, organizer and promoter who lived a difficult but vivid, active and eventful life. …

Key words: SADC, Russia-Africa Summit, Sergey Lavrov, Stergomena Tax, pandemic.

RUSSIA established official relations with the Southern African Development Community (SADC) in March 1999 by appointing its then ambassador to Botswana, Valery Kalugin, as its official representative to SADC. This regional organization dates its history to 1980, when nine countries established what is known as the Southern African Development Coordination Conference (SADCC) and is the forerunner of the Southern African Development Community (SADC). A declaration issued by the SADCC founding member countries and newly independent Namibia and a treaty signed by them established SADC in August 1992. …

Key words: Russia, Croatia, Balkans.

THE HISTORY OF RUSSIA is closely connected with the history of the Balkans. Our country has for centuries been considered a defender and protector of Slavic peoples in the Balkans, connected to them by shared cultural, linguistic, spiritual, and religious values, as well as by shared identity and civilizational roots. At the same time, Russia has never brought confrontation to the region, pursuing its policy in a purely constructive and friendly key, to the best of its ability countering the Westerners’ course toward dragging the Balkans into the policy of dividing lines by promoting and inculcating anti-Russian elements. …

Key words: Russia, RSFSR, USSR, Estonia, diplomacy, I. Gukovsky, M. Litvinov, L. Stark.

THE ESTABLISHMENT of diplomatic relations between Russia and Estonia and the history of the first two years of their bilateral cooperation is an important landmark in the history of our interstate dialogue. In the first quarter of the 20th century, both states were making their first steps on the world arena and often looked together for the solutions of many important and urgent problems. …

Key words: Russia and Tajikistan, strategic allies and partners, the 75th anniversary of victory in the Great Patriotic War, fate of migrants, coronavirus pandemic.

Question: Igor Semyonovich, the Russian Foreign Ministry leadership has repeatedly stated that currently, special attention is being paid to Central Asia, in particular relations with the Republic of Tajikistan, Russia’s strategic ally and partner. How do you assess interstate relations between our countries? Is it possible to speak about a new stage in their development? …

Key words: anti-Hitler Coalition, USSR, U.S., Great Britain, Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Second Front, Potsdam Conference.

HISTORY knows any number of fantastic metamorphoses, when adversaries or even enemies became partners and even allies (or vice versa), of which the anti-Hitler coalition of the Soviet Union, United States and Great Britain during the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945) and their collective contribution to the victory over fascism are the greatest examples. Having approached the critical point in history, the leaders of the coalition members – Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill – demonstrated a lot of wisdom. They pushed aside the enmity and mistrust of the prewar years to close ranks in the face of the threat from the bloc of aggressor states. …

Key words: Vyacheslav Molotov, evacuation of the diplomatic corps, Kuybyshev, British Ambassador Sir Stafford Cripps, U.S. Ambassador Laurence Steinhardt, Norwegian Ambassador Rolf Andvord.

IT WAS AT THE COST of tens of millions of lives and vast-scale devastation that our country defeated Nazi Germany and its satellites, saving humankind from the Brown Plague. The Red Army fought heroically, those who had not been drafted into the military worked selflessly, and Soviet diplomats made their contribution to the victory too. …

Key words: Crimean Conference, Stalin, Roosevelt, Churchill.

MY FATHER, Boris Fyodorovich Podtserob, was the senior assistant of the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union during the war. This position allowed him to attend a number of historic diplomatic talks. That is how he came to participate in the Yalta Conference. My father did not leave written memoirs, but he used to tell me about the fateful meeting among three of the world’s giants. …

Key words: Admiral Fyodor Ushakov, Mediterranean campaign, Second Coalition, Palermo, Naples.

IN AUGUST and September 1799, the Sicilian port of Palermo hosted a visit from a Russian-British-Turkish fleet. As one historian said, there was “a forest of masts all over the Palermo harbor.”¹ The visit isn’t really a historical landmark, nor is it a reason for anniversary celebrations. But amazingly, there is, as it were, a bridge between that event and the present day. …

Key words: Saint Peter and Paul Cathedral in Karlovy Vary, Prime Apls.

KARLOVY VARY, a spa in the Czech Republic, is well known in Russia: many visited it and even more heard about it. In the last couple of centuries, the share of Russians among those who came as patients and those who wanted to settle permanently remains fairly big. Its popularity among Russians goes back to the September 1711 visit of Russian Emperor Peter I to Carlsbad (the German name of this Czech city). It got its status and name in 1370 from Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Bohemia, who, having injured his foot during hunting, immersed it in a natural reservoir of local mineral water and felt much better. Carlsbad in German means “Karl’s hot spa,” and Karlovy Vary in Czech means “Karl’s Boiling Waters.” …

Key words: Dmitry Bogomolov, Soviet embassy in Nanjing, Sino-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, Chiang Kai-shek, Kuomintang.

AFTER THE SOVIET UNION and the Republic of China restored diplomatic relations in 1932,¹ the USSR’s foreign ministry – the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs (NKID) – began to ponder who to appoint as the plenipotentiary representative (ambassador). …

Key words: Baltic countries, events of the 1940s.

THE EVENTS of summer 1940 in the Baltics remain the subject of largescale discussions at all levels – from classrooms to offices of heads of state. This is to be expected: “The basic trends of historical politics in the Baltic countries are the use by the political elites of administrative and legal instruments to consolidate the preferred ‘versions of the past’ as well as active political efforts at the interstate level to make the Baltic Versions of the past’ part of the common European memory policies.”¹ I should say that these efforts were fairly successful. Late in the last century, Russia failed, for objective and subjective reasons, to present its interpretation of these historical events in their fullness. In the last decade, the situation changed …

Key words: Armenian genocide, Armenian children.

John S. Akopov and Igor Bondarenko have just published a new book in Bratislava. The former is an essayist and member of the Union of Russian Writers, and the latter a professor, Doctor of Law, and president of the European Academy of Security and Conflictology.* It relates one of the most terrible pages in the history of the Armenian people – the destruction of their future through the indiscriminate slaughter of children in an episode of genocide under the Ottoman Empire. …

Key words: biographical reference book, Russian Consulate General in Kharkov, Diplomatic Kharkov Project.

THE IMPORTANCE of books has long been characterized aphoristically. This is corroborated by quotes from great people who have become prophets of social developments and human fates. …