Regional stratification of society: global and local in culture, economics, and politics

The article is focused on the aspects of structural conditions and transformations of contemporary society in the light of the concept of regional stratification. Analyzing modern trends of transformation of cultural, economic and political spaces of modern Euro-Asian world, the author underlines the mission of state sovereignty and also describes some basic factors of regional diversity, in particular, collective memory's structure and identity. In combination with other economic and political factors, the collective memory and identity can stimulate processes of regionalization (decoupling) of a socio-political space. An example of the conflict between the official Kiev and the east regions of Ukraine shows that the basic factors can form not only local, but global confrontations of different political regions. In conclusion the author underlines, that Russia is in need of modernization of its approaches in strategy of positioning itself in the system of regional stratification in the contemporary world.