The article analyzes the Russian higher education system as an essential part of the “soft power” of Russia’s foreign policy. A comparison is made of the youth potential contingents in the CIS countries in the context of demographic aging. The role of Rossotrudnichestvo in the policy of the Russian language spreading in the post-Soviet space is considered. The authors conclude that Russia is interested in attracting foreign youth to Russian universities and claim the lack of an adequate state policy; they suggest measures to radically change the situation with foreign students’ education in Russian universities.

The article presents a macroeconomic analysis of the main trends of the CIS countries’ economic development for the past 25 years, the author carried out a comprehensive comparative analysis in terms of GDP, the level of income and investments, as well as evaluated the structure and sources of economic growth. The paper proposes and substantiates a number of classification criteria, on the basis of which the countries were ranked.