Budaev, A.V. Key approaches towards the use of “soft power” in the interests of implementation of the foreign policy of the Russian Federation.

Abstract: The modern Russian political science and practice interpret the term “soft power” very widely. It is due to the fact that the “soft power” concept was taken from the Anglo-Saxon neo-liberal literature, interpreted into Russian by several authors at once, and they did not even try to synchronize these interpretation, thus each of them has put a different meaning into the term “soft power”, and these meanings differ from the classical neo-liberal works. Many Russian authors did not use an interpretation at all (since many people in the Russian Federation know English language), and based their understanding of the term “soft power” solely on their intuition. As a result many interpretations of this term appeared, and they are often rather far from the original, causing confusion in the studies of experience of applying soft power instruments in the foreign policy of the modern states.

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