What do societies expect, and what are they afraid of in the new era? And what obligations does this impose on the states? On October 20, 2020 the Valdai Discussion Club opened its 17th Annual Meeting with a session titled “The World Is Not Sulking, It Is Composing Itself.” Andrey Bystritskiy, Chairman of the Board of the Foundation for Development and Support of the Valdai Discussion Club, opened the meeting. Tsogtbaatar Damdin, Member of the Parliament of Mongolia; Head of Mongolian delegation, the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly; Ivan Krastev, Chairman, Centre for Liberal Strategies (Sofia); Permanent Fellow, Institute for Human Sciences (Vienna); Vadim Radaev, First Vice Rector, National Research University Higher School of Economics and Samir Saran, President, Observer Research Foundation (New Delhi) participated in the session. The session was moderated by Fyodor Lukyanov, Research Director of the Foundation for Development and Support of the Valdai Discussion Club.