The methodological aspects of analysis and forecasting of military-political situation in the context of alliance building, influencing the military sphere of national security, are shown. Negative factors indicating the imbalance of global and regional security assurance system are revealed. It is emphasized that understanding of military conflict development in the form of an “escalation ladder” will allow the political and military leaders to prevent the loss of controlability of the conflict. The main trends of military and political situation determining military dangers and threats to the Union State,
as well as the peculiarities of its development in the medium- and long-term forecasts were revealed. It has been specified that challenges and threats to the military security of Belarus and Russia will be of a complex and multidirectional nature, affecting all spheres of their activities. The task of their foreign and military policies is strengthening international security and strategic stability on the global and regional levels. The main features of military conflicts and armed struggle in the XXI century are defined. It is concluded that peaceful development of the Belarusian state in the conditions of increasing military violence is possible under the condition of guaranteed provision of military security of the state. It is important to continuously forecast the international and military-political situation, to improve the military organization of the state, the unity of the state power, the army and the people of the country. The main military strategic task for the political elite of the state is to deter aggression in any of its manifestations.

   In the context of increasing instability in international relations it is one of the forms and strategies in the struggle for human potential. Ideologies, which are actively used to destroy the socio-economic systems of other countries, influence the value orientations of individuals, change their motivation for effective interaction in the preservation and sovereign development of their own national model, become a powerful weapon in the era of digital transformation of society. Under these conditions, it becomes necessary to manage the social potential of the information environment as a condition of demographic security. The article describes the results of the research concerning the influence of information environment on the changes in demographic attitudes and migratory behavior, as well as on the socio-demographic situation in the country in general. The necessity of identifying informational and socio-cultural factors that have an impact on sustainable demographic development of the republic is reviewed.

   The article introduces into scientific circulation a wooden comb from the excavations of medieval Pinsk. This comb was discovered in 1963 during the archaeological research under the leadership of P. F. Lysenko on the territory of the fortified part adjacent to the Pinsk stronghold. A feature of the comb is its linear-circular ornamentation, supplemented with a pigment of dark red colour. In order to study by non-destructive methods the pigment contained inside the elements of the circular ornament of the comb, as well as the macrostructure of the wood of the comb, the object was studied using a video spectral comparator Regula 4305D in infrared and ultraviolet light. Based on the study of the degree of penetration of infrared rays and the absence of luminescence in ultraviolet light, it was established that cinnabar could be used as a pigment. The study of the macrostructure and preservation of the wood of the comb allows us to say that it was made of boxwood. Taking into account the analogies found in the materials from the excavations of Novgorod, as well as items from the collections of world museums, the comb can be dated no earlier than the 15^th century. Most likely, this comb was an object of import. The need for a more thorough primary processing of archaeological materials in the field in order to detect possible traces of paint on objects made of organic materials is noted.

   The article focuses on the sources and processes of borrowing vocabulary in the Chinese and Russian languages of the late XX – early XXI centuries in a comparative aspect, including the dynamics of the functioning of borrowed lexical units. Using national corpora of both languages we compared similar units borrowed by Russian and Chinese languages, analyzing the functioning frequency of these words in the texts of the studied languages.

   The article discusses the concepts of “heritage” and “value”, identifies approaches to determining the value of architectural heritage objects, and provides recommendations for its definition. The traditional interpretation of the concept of “heritage” is undergoing changes in modern times, and therefore, its value becomes the fundamental basis for its protection and preservation. Modern researchers distinguish groups of values (tangible and intangible), which are based on the interpretation of architectural heritage as part of the past and related to its modern existence in the context of a certain place, time and community. Thus, the determination of the value of an architectural heritage object should be based primarily on the study of its historical and architectural and artistic features (as an element of the past) and its current state in the context of sustainable development. Currently, there are two approaches to determining the value of architectural heritage objects: a formalized, based on a point system, and an approach linking value values with their material carriers, which allows taking into account the individual characteristics of each monument. The general standard for determining the value of architectural heritage objects has not yet been developed.

   An artistic picture of the world in a literary work contains a system of artistic images, motifs, reflecting various aspects of cultural universals and having cultural meanings marked with the help of cultural codes. Codes of different cultures can be combined in works of art, but national cultural codes are aimed at showing the specifics of mental attitudes, features of the worldview, and behavior patterns of representatives of a certain culture. Investigating the specifics of the national picture of the world, researchers turn to the peculiarities of the representation of cultural meanings within the framework of dyads: “good – bad”, “life – death”, “male – female”, “real – ideal”, “West – East”, “own – someone else’s”, “harmony – disharmony” and others. The article examines changes and constants in the definition of cultural meanings highlighted with the help of the dyads “possible – impossible”, “now – then” using the example of Belarusian epic works of the first decades of the 20^th century and the turn of the 20^th and 20^th centuries. It is concluded that national cultural codes act as carriers of deep historical and cultural meanings, through which the social, economic, geopolitical, cultural features of representatives of a certain nation or even the population of the state as a whole are manifested.

   The conceptual model of human capital ruralization forms common and unified approaches to the management of its development, contributing to an increase in the level of concentration of agrarian human capital in the context of rural areas. The platform for its practical implementation is an organizational and economic mechanism of human capital increase, based on the diversification of employment, motivation of labor and creative activity of the population and digitalization of rural areas, taking into account existing spatial socio-economic inequalities. The latter form the basis for the
typology of agrarian regions due to the features of natural and agricultural zones, the development of rural areas, the nature and intensity of population settlement, the availability of human resources, the demographic and gender structure of residents, socio-economic potential of the spatial economy, the state of infrastructure in rural areas, lifestyle, historical and cultural traditions and mentality. The formation of the theoretical basis, the systematization of methodological principles, and the identification of socio-economic regularities form the basis of the ruralistic concept of human capital concentration. This approach is based on the stage-by-stage development of adjacent (primary) territories, the transformation of which will subsequently create prerequisites for the modernization of the aggregate infrastructure of the so-called secondary area. This phenomenon can be characterized as a “reverse wave” of labor migration, the effect of which will also be reflected in the concentration of human capital in the agrarian regions. Thus, the complex mechanism of creating favorable living conditions, modernization of socio-economic infrastructure, expansion of the type range of agrarian productions and the list of services, deepening of diversification of employment of rural population forms the empirics of the concept of human capital ruralization.