Opening address of editor-in-chief.

The article regards fundamental matters of governance of Russian economy development.

Operational result of the strategy being executed by political-economic US clans, which brought to power the current US President Barack Obama and keep under control the majority of European countries political leaders, influence the world economy future and the Russian economy in 2015–2016, is manipulative handling of world oil prices. This strategy is designed to create new economic and political balance of powers in the global arena through trying to expropriate the accumulated financial-economic resources of a number of oil-exporting countries and to focus the short- and medium-term trend of stimulating antirecessionary economic development of the West developed countries, based on increasing natural and industrial resources exploitation, especially Russia, on nonequivalent economic compensation for supplied energy resources. At the same time there is an attempt to unhinge” those political regimes, including Russia, which the West doesn’t like. Russia should draw up adequate conclusions from the current situation, they should form the basis for the national economic sovereignty policy in the ХХI century.

For guiding the process of European integration to address economic development goals it is necessary to develop and adopt a common strategy of commercial-economic policy of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), the Concept of integrated industrial and agricultural policies, as well as plans for their implementation. This involves harmonization of national and EAEU development policies: industrial, agricultural, scientific-technical, energy, transport etc. Subsequently it is necessary to create strategic planning system of the EAEU development, including long-term projections, the medium-term concepts and strategies for commercial, industrial, agricultural, scientific-technical policy, the main aspects of socio-economic, monetary and fiscal policies, as well as interstate programs and action plans for their implementation. As soon as possible it is required to develop and adopt strategic plan of EAEU development and its implementation program for the next decade. Such approach to planning development of Eurasian economic integration will allow to fully realize its potential and to achieve maximum macroeconomic effect in the member states.

The inequality problem is one of the key problems of the economic theory in XX-XXI centuries as according to most researchers’ estimates the impact potential of this phenomenon on the key economic indicators is very high. Inequality is caused by a lot of factors, ranging from biological ones. The article attempts to review the latest research of the inequality phenomenon in its various aspects and to assess its potential impact on the present-day Russia’s development.

Demographic projections — the basis for management decisions in the social policy field. Based on the average projection variant of Rosstat at the beginning of 2014 for the annual age-sex groups, we offer analysis of the population dynamics of the main socio-demographic groups in 2013–2031 and comments on social policy in response to demographic challenges (changes in demographic structure and quantity fluctuations in demographic groups that require expansion and contraction of social infrastructure over the next two decades). The proposed social policies are mainly associated with increasing elasticity of social infrastructure and implementation of the balance policy “family — work”.

Winners of the program “Characters of the Century” by results of 2014.

The main strategic trends of 2014 in the annual project “Strategic matrix of Russia”.

A brief release of the first meeting of the expert-discussion club of “Analytics” Association held in the Chamber of Commerce of the Russian Federation on December 1, 2014.

The article represents a short version of scenario-based forecast of development of Ukraine and the Russian-Ukrainian relations, prepared in July 2008. The forecast has not been published previously. Subsequent developments have fully confirmed the anticipated, although at the time of the forecast preparation a lot of things would seem futurological fiction on the tails of probability distributions. Assessments of the state and prospects of the Ukraine development, made in 2008, are of practical interest today.