Abstract: The research subject is the discourse of political presence reproduced in Russia’s public sphere since the 2000s. The article considers the history of appearance of this concept in the public sphere and its penetration into the scientific one. The research object is the history of political thought in Russia. The author analyzes the polysemy of this term to attempt to study the specificity of formation and reproduction of public political concepts. The author assesses the prospect of their application in political practice as operational analytical categories. The research methodology is based on the critical discourse analysis. Using this scientific tool, the author considers the structure and the method of reproducing one particular discourse concept. The special author’s contribution to the research of the topic is the fact that he is the first to notice the randomness of using the term “political presence”. The author concludes that the term “political presence” needs to be strictly defined. It is necessary to give precise criteria to defining military, economic and political presence. 
 

Abstract: The study is focused on the problem of hydro-conflicts in Innermost Asia. The research object is the geopolitical situation in the region after the collapse of the Soviet Union which had led to the revision of the established models of state-to-state relations. Therefore, the research subject is the process of political struggle for water and energy resources. The chronological context of the research is the post-Socialist period, i.e. the period of deconstruction of the system of interrelations, established during the period of a large-scale Soviet presence in this region. The research methodology is based on event-analysis. This method includes the policy study via the successive consideration of events. The scientific novelty of the study consists in two theses: firstly, this study is one of the first attempts to consider the problem of building the water power plant in the Selenga river valley in its political rather than ecological aspect; secondly, geopolitical problems in Innermost Asia are for the first time considered in the context of water and energy resources allocation.