The article concentrates on the polemic that has been raging around the conception developed by K.Waltz, founder and one of the leading theoreticians of the neorealist trend in the study of international relations. Thorough analysis of the offertions of K.Waltz’s critics brings the author of the article to the conclusion that such criticism, in most cases, as he considers, unfounded, is accounted for by incomprehension of the inner logic of the Waltzian conception. By no means refusing to admit that the neorealist approach has its weak points (emphasis laid on rational nature of the international politics, insufficient elaboration of the question of retroactive influence of a state on the international structure, e.a.), the author is nevertheless convinced that this approach has a powerful heuristic potential, of which it ever retains the use in spite of the tendencies of the modern world — those related to transformation of the international structure, to erosion of the sovereignty and decrease of the role of states, to globalization of the economic and other spheres of international relations.