The article discusses the contemporary state of political regional science in Russia. The author outlines three approaches towards the key notion of political region (political administrative, political system and political sociological), based on its own region-making factors, such as administrative borders, political interests and political identities. The author points out two main parts of political regional science; these are comparative federalism and regionalism on one hand and cross-regional comparative politics on the other hand. The key concepts of political regional science are intergovernmental (or inter-level in broader sense) relations and regional politics. The successful development of Russian political regional science needs for the integration with the Western political science and the resolution of contradictions with some of its traditions.

The author briefly considers the evolution of the main theoretical approaches in Western geopolitics which prepared the emergence in the late 1980s - the early 1990s of a new interdisciplinary field - critical geopolitics. Its main themes, categories and methods are characterized. Some results of Russia's geopolitical situation studies carried out in the last decade and using the concept of critical geopolitics are summarized.

The author argues that there exists bilateral negative link between reproduction of center-periphery model and patterns of state behavior in Russia: center-periphery model puts significant constraints on state behavior and perspectives of its modernization, while the state in its current form contributes to preservation of center-periphery structure. The only way from this «vicious circle» is the transformation of state and democratic reforms. This could allow to turn from imperial to federal model.

This article discusses the crisis of Federalism which has developed under the Putin and Medvedev tandem. The major challenge to the Russian state today is not confederalism or the threat of ethnic disintegration, as was the case during the Yeltsin era, but rather defederalisation and the creation of a centralised and quasi-unitary state. Putin and Medvedev's reforms have reinstituted Soviet style principles of hierarchy and administrative control from Moscow. Russia may have all the structural prerequisites of a federation but it is a federation which operates without the guiding principles of federalism. The Russian polity is a quasi-unitary state in federal clothing.

There are considered institutional changes in the Russian federalism after 1999. The author characterizes the present relations between federal Centre and the Russian regions, suggests measures for improving of institutional fundamentals of federalism in Russia and advances his opinion concerning a destiny of the Russian federalism.

Economic growth of the past decades coupled with the recent waves of democratization allowed to hope that multiculturalism and political tolerance could help to marginalize extreme nationalism and ethnic extremism. Nevertheless, political pressures exerted by ethnic and national minorities worldwide continue to pose multifarious challenges. The article examines some main debates on the subject that take place in Russia and beyond. The author argues that modern paradigms are not capable to provide us with an exhaustive framework that could tackle minority nationalism successfully. Instead of «eliminating» or «neglecting» the problem of ethnic minority nationalism we should think of new concepts that could help to integrate it into modern politics.

The article analyzes the present model of socio-economical development of Russian Far East. Problems of its labile functioning are connected with disbalance of interest of main actors. The authors state necessity of change of regional policy of government to employ cumulative potential of the region taking into account interests of all actors.

In the modern world key political and geographical ground of sovereignty is the polity location among other actors of world politics. Space is not able to determine the sovereignty of the territory, but may limit the choice of paths and tools of stateness formation. These conclusions are based on the analysis of experience of the small states.

The author considers the reasons of expansion of Russian and foreign scholars' interest to regional identity. The article analyses the basic methodological approaches to studying of regional identity as a factor of regionalization and region formation.

The Russian economic and political systems are still active developing; therefore an urgency of researches in sphere of mutual relations between the power and business doesn't raise any doubts. the article presented to your attention is devoted to the questions of the power and business interaction at regional level by way of example of the Russian North regions, to the analysis of the major factors underlying construction of interaction between the power structures and corporations, to the search of perfection ways in the interaction model between the power and business at regional and municipal levels.

The issue of federalism as a specific form of political space's organization is particularly topical for Russia mainly because of the nation's territorial expanses. Federalism is not reducible exclusively to the relationship between the central government and the component regions. The federal system represents a definite status within a polity. Russian Federalism has resulted from interaction between various political projects. In Russia the character of federalism is mostly administrative and juridical and, in some respect, it still keeps its ethnic character. At the same time, serious factors are engaged in contemporary Russian politics that prevent the establishment of a stable regime of the federative system's «self-sustaining». The purpose of new the Gorbachev Foundation's project is to study the status and the prospects of Russian federalism as a key problem in strengthening and further developing democracy in Russia. The goal of the project is to design a normative model of Russian federalism and propose recommendations for its practical implementation, based on an analysis of the positions of the regions and the processes now under way in the public space, involving relations between civil society and political authorities.

This article describes the results of sociological research on estimation of condition and development prospects of federalism in Russia, which was conducted by ZIRCON Research Group in January - May 2011. The opinion of population and elite groups of four regions about the foundations of Russian federalism development, administrative-territorial system of the Russian Federation and its principles, relations between subjects-regions and federative centre is presented. The results of the research indicate that at the moment a request for political and administrative autonomy of the subjects of the Federation is not obviously formulated by either citizens or regional elite groups. Regional identity is not a common phenomenon. The authors mark out necessary factors of federalism development: expansion of economic self-dependence of regions, existence of ethno-national or regional identity of citizens, democratization and decentralization.