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The present article is devoted to the problem which is debated today, namely, whether Greek poleis and the Roman Republic were early states or they represented a specific type of stateless societies. The diversity of sociopolitical evolution is expressed in a tremendous variety of the early states proper among which the bureaucratic states represent just one of many types. The democratic early states without bureaucracy were early states of another type. In this article Athens and the Roman Republic are analyzed as examples of this very type

This article starts with a brief analysis of the causes of state collapse as states undergo the process of political evolution. Next, I describe and analyze the mechanisms of social-political crises arising in the process of modernization. Such crises are a consequence of the inability of many traditional institutions and ideologies to keep up with changes in technology, communication, system of education, medical sphere, and with the demographic change. This analysis suggests that an accelerated development can cause a system crisis with potentially serious consequences to the society. It is important to take this aspect into consideration because some scholars insist that the economic reconstruction and development are necessary for nation-building. This actually implies a rapid economic advancement (otherwise, the economy could not be reconstructed and developed). However, one should not ignore the possibility that very rapidly developing countries may run the danger of falling into the trap of fast transformation. The present article describes several mechanisms that can contribute to sociopolitical instability, including social tensions arising from rapid urbanization, youth bulges, and 'resource curses'

In the coming decades in the process of globalization the position of the USA and Europe will weaken, while the role of developing countries will increase. The role of the two largest emerging economies – China and India – will be of special significance. What future will these fast-growing giants face? The demographers agree that pretty soon India will lead the world in population and thus surpass China, while China will encounter serious ageing population problems. But economic and political scenarios of the future are quite different: from resounding success and world leadership to collapse caused by demographic and socio-politic al troubles. Which of them is more feasible? In the present article I analyze the Chinese and Indian development models separately and comparatively and make a forecast of their perspectives in the 21st century. Such an analysis could be helpful for understanding Russia's ways of development.

The danger of deflation has been rather frequently mentioned recently among numerous concerns over the European and partly American economies. Analysts cite the Japanese economy which has been suffering from deflation for the last two decades despite the large investments in economy and the government's efforts to increase inflation. Similarly, notwithstanding many trillions of dollars, euros, pounds and yen that were invested in economies over the past few years, the inflation in the Western countries still remains low. On the whole, there are reasons to maintain that European countries suffer from 'the Japanese disease', and this disease can progress or even become chronic. The USA, albeit to a lesser extent, has signs of the disease as well. As a result, the financial infusions can become permanent, as it happened in Japan. The present paper defines reasons of the problem, explains the irregularity of the inflation-deflation processes in the world and also offers some forecasts on this basis that the crisis-depressive phase of development in the global economy will continue for a relatively long time. Based on our analysis of available resources and the theory of long cycles, we suppose that the new crisis will begin in 2020–2021. We also suppose that in the next 5–10 years, the global economy will continue being in the crisis-depression phase with rather sluggish and weak rises. The paper also offers some forecasts for the forthcoming sixth Kondratieff wave (2020 – the 2060/70s), identifies its possible technological basis and discusses possible consequences of the forthcoming technological transformations.

The chiefdom concept is one of the most productive in social anthropology and political evolution. It helps to deeply understand the process of complication of society's structure and the development path from stateless society to early states. However, even when states spread everywhere, chiefdoms still remained political and administrative actors. At present one can find some features of chiefdoms in developing countries (e.g., in some regions of Africa) and in different kinds of organizations especially in illegal and terrorist ones. Thus, using chiefdom theories one can clarify a few basics of such kind of organization as well. Therefore, it makes sense to show how such chiefdom-like structures preserve and develop the features of ancient polities within them. Thus, in the modern world, along with states, one can find numerous alternative social and political organizations, which, to a greater or lesser extent, have some features that are similar to certain ancient polities. How and why is this possible? We hope that this paper will shed some light on this question. However, it requires and deserves further study.

The globalizing world needs more and more the globalizing social knowledge. That is why we experience such an acute defi cit in productive metaconcepts and macromethods that could make it possible for us to study the development of both polities and suprapolitical systems in the global temporal and spatial perspective, that would provide us with a reliable methodology of the connection between the micro- and macrolevels, between the local and the global, with an instrument allowing to compare political systems in an objective way using various parameters, to detect macrotrends within the enormous historical diversity, to identify causal hierarchies affecting processes of political globalization, and so on.

The formation of the Afroeurasian world-system was one of the crucial points of social evolution, starting from which the social evolution rate and effective-ness increased dramatically. In the present article we analyze processes and scales of global integration in historical perspective, starting with the Agrarian Revolution. We connect the main phases of historical globalization with the processes of development of the Afroeurasian world-system. In the framework of the Afroeurasian world-system the integration began a few thousand years Before the Common Era. In this world-system the continental and supracontinen-tal links became rather developed long before the Great Geographic Discoveries and thus, they could quite be denoted as global (albeit in a somehow limited sense). As some researchers are still inclined to underestimate the scale of those links in the pre-Industrial era, it appears necessary to provide additional empiri-cal support for our statement. It also turns necessary to apply a special method-ology (which necessitated the use of the world-system approach). We analyze some versions of periodization of history of globalization. We also propose our own periodization of globalization using as its basis the growing scale of interso-cietal links as an indicator of the level of globalization development.

Section 1 of this article presents a mathematical analysis of the longterm global urbanization dynamics and demonstrates that it could be described as a series of phase transitions between attraction basins. This makes it possible to suggest new approaches to the analysis of global social macroevolution. Section 2 presents a threestage model of the macroevolution of the World System statehood (early – developed – mature state) that, we believe, describes the main features of political macroevolution better than the twostage model proposed by Claessen and Skalník (early – mature state). This model has been used as a basis for the analysis of changes in the development of political structures from the prestate polities and the most primitive early states (and their analogues) till the modern supercomplex states. In this section we also analyze the relationship between the growth of the territory controlled by the World System states and the growth of the statehood complexity. Finally, Section 3 attempts at the detection of the correlation between the global evolution of political structures and global urbanization processes. This study confirms the presence of a system of attraction basins and phase transitions within the World System macroevolutionary development field, as well as the presence of mathematically interpretable correlations and interrelations between the analyzed global processes – political, urbanizing, demographic, technological, and sociostructural.

In this article we analyze processes and scales of global integration in historical perspective, starting with the Agrarian Revolution. We connect the main phases of historical globalization with the processes of the development of the Afroeurasian world-system. In the framework of the Afroeurasian worldsystem the integration began several millennia BCE. In it the continental and supracontinental links became so developed long before the Great Geographic Discoveries and thus they could well be denoted as global (albeit in a somehow limited sense). Among some researchers there is still a tendency to underestimate the scale of those links in the pre-Industrial era; thus, it appeared necessary to provide additional empirical support for our statement. It also turned necessary to apply a special methodology (which necessitated the use of the world-system approach). We analyze some versions of periodization of globalization history. We also propose our own periodization of the globalization history basing on the growth of the scale of intersocietal links as an indicator of the level of globalization development.

Foreword: Of Cycles, Changes, and Transformations -- Preface -- Acknowledgements -- Contents -- Chapter 1: Introduction. Cyclical and World-Systemic Aspects of Economic Reality with Respect to Contemporary Crisis -- Origins of Modern Economic Cyclicity -- The System of Economic Cycles -- Kondratieff Waves -- Juglar Cycle -- About This Book and Its Structure -- Chapter 2: Kondratieff Waves in the World System Perspective -- Long Waves in the World Economic Dynamics -- How Real are Kondratieff Waves? Discussions and Empirical Evidence -- Kondratieff Waves in the Post-World War II GDP Data

The idea that our Universe emerged as a result of the extraordinary power of the Big Bang from singularity (i.e., a state of an infinitely small quantity and infinitely high concentration of matter) is still very popular today. It was one of the main postulates of the Big Bang theory that completely formed in the 1960s–1970s. However, at present this idea as well as the Big Bang theory is outdated, although it is still shared by many scientists. Being widespread since the end of the 1970s the Inflation theory appears more modern. The main reason for the emergence of the Inflation theory was that the Big Bang theory could not satisfactorily explain a number of the contemporary parameters of the Universe. The Inflation theory makes still widespread views of the Big Bang theory archaic, in particular as regards the following points: 1) the history of the Universe started with the Big Bang; 2) it started with the singularity. According to the Inflation theory, the Big Bang was not the beginning and the moment of the origin of the Universe, but it was preceded by at least two epochs: inflation and post-inflationary heating. That is, the Big Bang or precisely the hot Big Bang is just a phase transition from the state of cold inflation to the hot phase. Since the Inflation theory does not consider the Big Bang as the initial phase there emerges an intricate problem of the role of the Big Bang in the process of the formation the Universe as a whole. The paper considers the confusion with the Big Bang notion, a number and sequence of 'bangs' and why the theory can dispense easily without the notion the Big Bang. We will also discuss some advantages and disadvantages of the Inflation theory.

В статье дан анализ исламизма как социально-политического течения, рассмотрены его многочисленные социальные функции, широкая общественная поддержка, глубокие народные корни, объяснены причины его многоликости. Показано, что умеренный исламизм в отличие от радикального стремится интегрироваться в легальное политическое пространство, а потому может быть союзником в борьбе с радикальным исламизмом, так же как и сильные светские политические режимы. Рассматривается история появления исламизма с конца XIX в.: он возник как ответ на западную империалистическую экспансию, разгром Османской империи и отмену османского халифата. Началом организованного исламистского движения стало возникновение "Братьев-мусульман" в Египте в конце 1920-х гг. Показаны основные вехи развития исламизма, причины так называемого Исламского возрождения с конца 1970-х гг. и роста исламского терроризма, а также современное состояние исламизма.

The author considers Islamism not only as a socio-political movement, but he also examines historical and civilizational features of the Near and Middle East, which contributed to the fact that it was just the place where Islamism emerged and manifests itself as a perceptible phenomenon. Historical, ideological and socio-political reasons for its appearance and widespread use in most Islamic countries are mentioned in the article. The paper regards the historical development of Islamism, the reasons for its victories in the 1970 - 1980s, and the rise of the Islamic revival. Islamism is one of the most complex social phenomena of the present time. It is a many-sided, changing and heterogeneous movement, within the framework of which a very intense ideological and political struggle takes place. The author pays attention to the deep roots and broad social support of Islamism by the population, its numerous social functions. The definition of Islamism and its main trends (moderate and radical) are given in the article. The reasons for its plurality are explained. It is shown that moderate Islamism, unlike radical one, seeks to integrate into the legal political space, and therefore can be an ally in the struggle against radical Islamism, as well as strong secular political regimes.

In the present article some forecasts of technological, political, as well as social and economic development of the world are presented in a systematic manner. The author presents short-term (10-15 years), medium-term (20-50 years) and long-term (50-100 years) forecasts which are based on the theories of long cycles and related technological modes, as well as on the theories of production principles and production revolutions.