Review: The subject of this research is the indirect forms of confrontation in intergovernmental conflicts conflicts. The object of this research is the “hybrid warfare” as a form of indirect confrontation. It is established that currently the methods of military and nonmilitary intergovernmental confrontation are being extensively used. One of the actively implemented concepts is the so called “hybrid war”. The author examines the key components of “hybrid” actions; and leaning on the analysis of historical experience, concludes that these approaches have deep historical roots. The article reviews not the classical mercenarism, but namely “hybrid” actions, when the hirer and the purpose of involving mercenaries are hidden, while military actions are accompanied by economic confrontation and massive information attacks. The examples of such actions can be seen in wars back in the XV–XVII centuries. The analysis of warfare and armed conflicts experience allows concluding the threat of “hybrid” actions is extremely relevant now and in the foreseeable future. It is also worth noting that in the future, other “hybrid” approaches towards intergovernmental confrontation that have previously been used in the past can be modified to the new conditions of civilizational development.  The author concludes that Russia should be ready to counter such threats, and outlines possible aspects of such counteraction.

Keywords: modern military concepts, economic methods of confrontation, information confrontation, hidden power confrontation, components of the conflict, soft power, indirect methods of confrontation, hybrid conflicts, hybrid action participants, history of hybrid conflicts

Review: Design is one of the most popular instruments for administration of policy in different fields and spheres. This is reinforced by creation, implementation, and support of numerous political projects of the local, regional, national, and global levels. At the same time, design and fulfillment of various political projects is complicated by the absence of sound understanding of the content and main approaches towards the key concept of project activity — “political design”. The modern social-humanistic scientific literature has formed explicit approaches towards understanding the stages of political design, the actors of project activity in the political sphere, resources of political design, criteria for the effective implementation of political projects, classification of political projects. However, the very concept of “political design” remains polemical. Its content is saturated with different meanings, which subsequently complicates the study of other aspects and vectors of project activity in the political sphere. This article aims to summarize the main approaches towards elucidation of the concept of “political design”, outline its key parameters, and formulate the relevant definition. Methodological framework for this article is comprised of the theoretical principles of the project approach towards interpretation of politics. The author provides the original definition of the concept of “political design”, systematizes the main approaches towards explanation of its structure and content, offers the socio-technological assessment of the key parameters of modern political projects, and develops additional grounds for their classification. The article identifies and compares the procedural, administrative, pragmatic, organizational, sociocultural, historical, and innovative models of project activity in politics, describes their heuristic capabilities and conceptual boundaries. The author also develops the criteria for assessing the quality of project activities in politics, and correlates them with the basic models of modern political design.

Keywords: project functionality, project type, project quality, project efficiency, project product, project methodology, design, project, design stages, design models

Review: This article sheds light on the situation related to 2017 Kurdistan Region independence referendum. Leaning on the primary sources, it is demonstrated that the party officials of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan warned the leadership of the Kurdish Regional Autonomy of Iraq represented by the Kurdistan Democratic Party about the consequences of shortsighted policy. The disputed territories, which are the subject of discussion between the leadership of the Autonomy and Baghdad, were controlled by the troops of the Central Government. The Iraqi leadership has also reduced the funds from the federal budget for supporting the government employees of the Autonomy. It resulted in payment arrears and mass disturbances in the Autonomy. The novelty of this research lies in the fact that this topic has not previously received due attention in the Russian sources. This article is first within the Russian Kurdish Studies to introduce the primary sources in Sorani (Kurdish dialect). It cannot be asserted that these problems have been resolved conclusively; the blame falls on the shortsighted and irrational policy of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, or even personally Masoud Barzani, who was removed from his office as result of the referendum. The representatives of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan denounced the detrimental consequences of holding the referendum in the existing conditions.

Keywords: Kirkuk, the US, Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, Kurdistan Democratic Party, Independence referendum, political crisis, Kurdistan Regional Government, Iraq, the Kurds, Middle East

Review: Among the neologisms actively used in youth environment, one come across multiple words with negative connotation, which are used to describe aggressive behavior or destructive emotional state. Aggression, conflict, alienation are the markers of modern society, which infiltrate all spheres of social life, including the system of education, which on the one hand is influenced by the external environment, while on the other is the mechanism for harmonization of public relations, formation of moral and ethical attitudes, as well as worldview values of the society. The ongoing anthropological crisis, which actualized the problem of conflictogenity in the sphere of higher education, laid the groundwork for this research. The goal of this article lies in the analysis and review of foreign research dedicated to the causes of conflicts that occur in the academic environment, as well as the mechanisms for their settlement. The author employs the combination of descriptive, comparative methods, classification, and introspection methods for the development of original perspective on the topic. Having provided the philosophical-psychological foundations of the modern anthropological crisis, and its conflictogenity in the system of higher education on the individual and institutional levels, the author classifies the types of conflicts along with the ways for overcoming them, and gives  special attention to such that may find their application in the Russian educational space. The main result of this research lies in the description of the types of conflicts in the academic environment, methods of their settlement, as well as practical recommendations for eliminating conflicts in the Russian universities. The novelty of this article consists in the systemic description of problematic field of the research – conflictogenity in the system of higher education, and determination of the mechanisms for overcoming conflict situations, considering national, cultural, and administrative specificity of higher education institutions in the Russian Federation.

Keywords: university, ombudsmen, academic culture, facilitation, conflic management, higher education, anthropological crisis, arbitration, internalization, globalization

Review: This article examines the methods of protest actions of the Tibetans residing in the territory of the People's Republic of China. The inability for legal self-organization and representation of the interests of ethnic minorities in the public space of PRC leads to the emergence of new forms of expressing protest moods, such as social network movements. Tibetan Buddhism is an important element of integration and construction of the identity of Tibetan society, which intensifies both positive and negative effects of China’s religious policy, and thus, causes various forms of disturbances from individual protest to large-scale temporary training centers of Tibetan Buddhism. The Russian scientific literature on the “Tibetan question” gives ample attention to China's religious policy pertaining to the Tibetan Buddhism monasteries and protests of Tibetan monks. The monasteries that have consolidated the religious and political power since the region became part of PRC, received particular attention of the party; organization and participation of the Tibetan monks and nuns in the protests seemed as the logical continuation of their traditional social role. The article systematizes the methods of protest activity of laity Tibetans, who believed that opposing the state policy implies the defense of their identity, which subsides due to the state homogenization project.

Keywords: protest movement, national minorities, Dalai Lama, religious politics, Tibetan Buddhism, Tibet Autonomous Region, People's Republic of China, regional politics, ethnic-confessional separatism, self-organization