1. POLITICAL SCIENCE AS A SCIENCE AND ACADEMIC DISCIPLINE

The term "political science" was formed from the Greek words politik (state or public affairs) and logos (word, doctrine), which literally means "political science", or "the science of politics". Indeed, political science explores the political life of society in its most diverse manifestations. She, in particular, studies:

• problems of political power and human relationships;
• their political interests, attitudes and positions;
• activities of political institutions (first of all, the state and parties);
• foreign policy of states, the role of international organizations, etc.

The formation of political science as an independent scientific and academic discipline took place at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries, and the final design was done after the Second World War, with the creation in 1949 of the International Association of Political Science under the auspices of UNESCO.

In Russia in the late XIX - early XX centuries. Political science also developed quite intensively. However, after the Bolshevik October 1917, this development stopped - until the end of the 1980s. The place of political science in the Soviet period was taken by such ideologized disciplines as scientific communism, the history of the CPSU and others.

In the post-communist period of development of our state, political science regained the rights of citizenship in Russia and proved to be the most appropriate way. The fact is that a dramatic change in the life of Russian society, which has embarked on the path to the market and democracy, has brought many people into a state of new ideological confusion. Anarchist, nationalist, religious-fanatical and other extremist and anti-social ideas about the national exclusiveness of individual nations, their unlimited sovereignty, absolute freedom and “democratic” permissiveness have attacked them from various sides. There were dozens of different parties and movements, hundreds of thousands of new people "hit" politics.

The situation is complicated by the fact that the Russians do not yet have a single clue - a nationwide idea that would unite people and define the prospective development of society that is exciting to everyone. In these difficult conditions of ideological and political "confusion", political science takes on particular importance.