Russia’s Soft Power and National Revival　　　　Xu Hua

　　Russia has given the high attention to the theory and practice of “national image” although its response to the concept of “soft power”, which was put forward by Joseph Nye, hasn’t been positive. Starting from his third term, President Putin has put the soft power issue at the strategic level. Russia’s understanding of “soft power” has the distinctive national features. Culture, language, and the image of leader are the important resources in the construction of Russian soft power. With setting the international cooperation agency, “the Russian world” foundation, the Valdai Club and cultural exchange, Russia improves the national image, while strengthening the construction of the media to manage to have the right to speak in the field of international communication. So far, Russia has achieved good results on that. However, Russian soft power, doesn’t match with its hard power. Since the Ukrainian crisis broke out, Russia almost lost its soft power at all. Being a great power, Russia still has long way to go to develop it soft power.

　　The Comparison of the Soft Power Factors in Foreign Strategies between China and Russia　　　　Wang Xiaoquan

　　Foreign strategy is not only a kind of soft power, but also is an important carrier of soft power and a way of mobilizing soft power resources. Factors such as culture, history and strategic theory belong to the subjective internal factors affecting foreign strategy. Strategic goals of China and Russia are similar, but the paths of realizing strategic goals are very different. China’s foreign strategy has been led by benevolence thoughts, while Russia prefers to power in its foreign strategy and has certain expansionary characteristics. China’s strategic vision and forward-looking are not as good as Russia’s one and it resulted in a fact that large number of strategic resource has not been fully taken advantage.Russia’s strategic resources is difficult to meet the demand of foreign strategy,although Russia is good at superpower game and can fully mobilize its resources.

　　Comparative Analysis of the Soft Powers in the Regional Policies of China and Russia　　　　Xiao Bin

　　As a global and neighboring countries, both China and Russia are attached great importance to construction of soft power and directly used it in their regional policies. This study, with 9 indicators of three categories, compares the soft powers of regional policies of China and Russia. The comparison found that China tends to increase the country’s appeal in the regional policy, while Russia manages to look for more tools of soft power that can be used. On the whole, China’s soft power has breadth than Russia, but Russia’s soft power has more hardness than China has. In the Oceania, Africa and other regions, which are far from China and Russia, China’s soft power is better than that of Russia, while Russia’s situation is just opposite in the surrounding area. China’s soft power is better than Russia in the relations with regional powers also. Although China and Russia have roughly similar tools of soft power, Russian tool has more strength and more penetration power.

　　Privatization of Agricultural Land and Circulation Problems in Russia　　　　Xiao Huizhong

　　Privatization and circulation of agricultural land is core content of the Russian agricultural transformation. Russian agriculture has changed a lot for past 20 years, but it still being widely criticized. On the one hand, “land” as a symbol of agricultural land privatization is difficult to translate into actual private farmland, that makes most of the Russian farmers only a nominal owners of private land. Another controversial question is that agricultural land hasn’t turned into market and use efficiency of agricultural land is low. Agricultural land in the state ownership still is dominant. Russia’s agricultural land reform is not a hard copy of western example. The reform has its own characteristics and it is unfinished business.

　　Property and Performance: Farmland Privatization and the Logic of Agricultural Development in Russia　　　　Wang Zhiyuan

　　Agricultural development is in relation to the state of the property right of agricultural land in Russia, the complexity of agricultural development has made this relationship complicated and confusing. Analysis of the initial conditions of property right reform found that the privatization reform met some difficulties. Bad terms of trade made some obstacles to the development of the family farm and introduced gradual character from mandatory institutional change. Mutual complement between farm enterprises and residents economy is helpful for increasing farmers’ income, although it does not favor the agricultural production efficiency. It also provides a landscape of coexistence of public sector, private property and low production efficiency.

　　Some Thoughts about the First World War　　　　Zhang Shengfa

　　The First World War is a prominent fault line in the process of the evolution of human civilization. It was not only the result of discordant and unbalanced development of human society in the economic, political, social, cultural and mental aspects, but although the first conflict of different countries, different powers and various ideological trend globally. It’s the most important thing is that drawing lessons from history, seeking correct way and effective method to preserve world peace on the basis of summary of the painful historical experience. Except for imperialism, civil war psychology is another important one among the many factors that led to the WWI. Today, there is something to be thoughtful in numerous results of the WWI. In crisis situation caused by the war, Russia and the Scandinavian countries chose different path for social development: the former took the way of violent revolution, the latter found the way of class cooperation.

　　Taxes on Industry and Commerce of Russia in the Second Half of the 19th Century　　　　Zhang Guangxiang and Liang Honggang

　　Russian industrial and business developed rapidly in the second half of the 19th century. However, tax system of industrial and commercial didn’t adapt to it. Some statesmen carried out the industrial and commercial tax reform actively when they were in office of the ministry of finance.Though the reform of tax system of the industry and commerce made tax system more rationalized, it failed to achieve the goal of balanced allocation of industrial and commercial tax due to the rigid constraints of the political situation and unsound laws of industry and commerce. Even so, the tax reform in Russia had a profound impact on the development of industrial and commercial enterprises.

　　The Declaration of Helsinki, Human Rights Norms and the Collapse of the Soviet Union　　　　Xu Zhenwei

　　In the 1970 s, the United States and other Western countries carried out the human rights campaign against the Soviet Union through bilateral diplomacy. At the same time, they actively use multilateral mechanism through the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE) to promote the Soviet Union to improve its human rights. CSCE became the instrument of the American human rights diplomacy, and the declaration of Helsinki that was adopted by CSCE, became action platform and guiding principle for international organizations of human rights and the dissents of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union admitted the western standard of human rights in spite of fact that the declaration of Helsinki has some inner contradictions. This means that the Soviet Union accepted the western discourse hegemony on human rights issues. The Declaration of Helsinki was used by the United States as a weapon to “unfold” the social power of the Soviet Union. It is also one of the catalysts for the collapse of the Soviet Union.