Abstract: Professor of Moscow State University, Doctor of Political Sciences I.I. Kuznetsov reviews the book of Herfried Münkler “Imperii: Logika gospodstva nad mirom – ot Drevnego Rima i do SShA”/Per. s nem L.V. Lannika pod red. T.A. Grablevskoi; komment. i vstup. st. L.V. Lannika – M.: Kuchkovo pole, 2015. – 400 s (“Empires: The Logic of World Supremacy – from Ancient Rome to the USA”). The methodology of the research comprises the systems approach, the structural-functional and comparative-political approaches, the methods of analysis, synthesis, induction, deduction and observation. The monograph of Prof. Münkler is a very interesting study of the complicated political issue of the fate of empires in the modern world. The author reasonably claims that the imperial form of government had maintained peaceful mutually-beneficial coexistence of various peoples and ethnic groups of different cultures, values and political traditions within a single state for a very long period of human history. Imperial government was based on the principle of “unity in diversity” which didn’t suppress the identity of small nations, but helped them preserve it. Nowadays, in the complicated conditions of the global instability intensification, the imperial form of organization of multinational states again becomes actual and competitive even in comparison with another, more widespread, form – federalism. 

Keywords: diplomacy, international relations, U.S. foreign policy, world politics, global information space, geopolitics, interests, state, security, USA

Abstract: The main foreign-policy objective of Hitler’s Germany – to conquer “life space” – was connected, first of all, with conquering the USSR which was supposed to become the “German India”. To substantiate its claims to the Soviet territory, the Nazi ideologists developed their “race theory” and propagated the myths about the “demographic threat” posed by the peoples of the Soviet Union and some military and political “Russian Bolshevik” and “Asian threat”. The development of the plan for determining the fate of the USSR peoples resulted in the program of their “germanization”, deportation and destruction, which was not implemented because of the victory of the Red Army in the Great Patriotic War. This article is built on the research of numerous sources, including archive materials, and studying existing Russian and foreign historiography. During the Soviet era, the ideology of the German national socialism was considered, primarily, from the point of view of its “class bias”, i.e. economic objectives. It was considered that Hitler aimed at gaining world supremacy in the interest of the German bourgeoisie. Any matters related to the national policy of the Nazi leadership were pushed aside. However, it was the insufficient attention to the national aspect of the plans made by Hitler’s Germany which resulted in the remaining vagueness in the assessment of the future awaiting the peoples of the USSR if the Third Reich had won.

Keywords: Great Patriotic War, national policy of the USSR, Nazism, “race theory”, “life space”, geopolitics, A. Rozenberg, national policy of Germany, national relations, Third Reich.