Humanities & Social Sciences 3 (2017 10) 432-439 ~ ~ ~ УДК 378.4 Intercultural Education as a “Soft power” Tool Elena G. Tarevaа , Boris V. Tarevb * а Moscow City University 4-1, 2nd Selskokhoziastvenny proezd, Moscow, 129226, Russia b National Research University “Higher School of Economics” 20 Myasnitskaya Str., Moscow, 101000, Russia Received 14.09.2016, received in revised form 01.10.2016, accepted 12.01.2017 Nowadays intercultural dialogue is regarded as one of key points in various fields of knowledge: philosophy, sociology, political science, linguistics, methods of teaching foreign languages. <...> Despite the crisis of the idea of “interculturalism”, the interest to the dialogue of cultures is not going down. <...> The status of intercultural dialogue is changing, its role as a social and human phenomenon is being revised. <...> These changes are taking place due to the fact that the modern nature of international cooperation and cross-cultural communication is complicated by political, social, cultural processes caused by globalization, the opposition of civilizational values. <...> The global society faces many challenges in the process of preparing younger generations to unexpected, often conflict-prone, complicated conditions of international cooperation and communication. <...> There is a need to find specific tools that can reduce the intensity of confrontation, to diminish the devastating effects of modern globalization shifts and deformations. <...> The article raises the question of the application of the intercultural approach as a soft power tool in university educational environment. <...> Keywords: soft power, soft power tool, university education, culturally-based approaches, intercultural approach. <...> One of such areas can be attributed to ideology of interculturalism, being often used in Russian and foreign practices of scientific and socio-political activities. <...> As a core of this ideology serves the following position – an individual must be ready to participate Elena G. Tareva, Boris V. Tarev. <...> Intercultural Education as a “Soft power” Tool in the dialogue of cultures, to communicate with representatives of another society, who is marked by the specific national mentality, his peculiar vision of the world. <...> In the process of communication the interlocutors do not lose their national identity and recognize each other as bearers of different cultural concepts. <...> This leads to cultural expansion, and even cultural imperialism (E.W. <...>