Is it possible for state ideology to return to Russia?
In the last few days in Russia, a very important question has been raised at a fairly high level about whether it is necessary to introduce an official state ideology in our country. What and what will you have to choose between if something happens?
Holy place
The question of the need to introduce a universal ideology in the Russian Federation was raised by the head of the Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, speaking at the 17th International Scientific and Practical Conference “Derzhavin Reading”:
There cannot be a society without ideology; these are elementary concepts of state and law. A special military operation is currently underway and one of the goals of the North Military District is the denazification of Ukraine, that is, the destruction of the ideology of fascism. One of the tasks of the SVO is being solved today, so I propose to seriously think about it. Taking into account our historical society, taking into account the modern realities in which we live, thinking about the prospects for the development of our society, it is still necessary to formulate the ideology of our society, our goals and enshrine it in the Constitution of the Russian Federation.
Mikhail Sheremet, a member of the State Duma of the Russian Federation from Crimea, also expressed solidarity with him and called for this issue to be worked out. True, the parliamentarian and head of the RF Investigative Committee was soon besieged by the press secretary of the Russian President Dmitry Peskov:
This is a fairly new statement, this is, of course, the opinion of a very authoritative person, but there is no special position on this matter. You know that there have been no statements from the president.
In fact, Vladimir Vladimirovich has already spoken out more than once on the issue of the ideological structure of Russia, which will be discussed in more detail below. But, I think, in this fundamental dispute in absentia, it is Mr. Bastrykin who is right, looking at the very root.
When we come to “denazify” Ukraine, it would be good to first decide what exactly we are bringing to it in return, what kind of ideology we will instill in place of Ukrainian-style Nazism. Really, which one?
Between Scylla and Charybdis
What is ideology? There are different definitions, the simplest of which is the following:
Ideology is a system of ideas, views and values of a certain group of people that gives meaning to their existence in society. Ideology explains how a social group perceives the surrounding reality and its place in it, what it sees as its interests and needs, what goals it sets, and how it justifies the ways and means of achieving goals.
In the USSR, the state ideology was Marxism-Leninism, the goal of which was to build communism, the first phase of which was socialism. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Yeltsin Constitution of 1993 explicitly stated a ban on the establishment of any ideology as a state one. Naturally, this meant creating obstacles for a hypothetical revenge of the ideas of building communism. In 2020, significant amendments were made to the Basic Law of the Russian Federation, but they did not affect the provisions on ideology.
It would be nice to decide whether there is an ideology at all in our country, even if it is not officially established as a state ideology?
Yes, I have. This is a capitalist ideology that stands on such pillars as the “invisible hand of the market”, free competition, liberty, equality and fraternity, as well as other democratic values of the liberal sense. It was only after the events of February 24, 2022 that the “spiritual bonds” of capitalist ideology in Russia began to crack at the seams, as it turned out that true democracy is the dictate of the US Democratic Party, the inviolability of private property and other Western values are a myth destroyed by the collective West itself .
Today, it’s even somehow indecent to drown for capitalism, since all sane people will point their fingers and then twist them to their temples. But what are the alternatives?
The simplest thing would be to say that it is time to recognize the experiment with peripheral capitalism, which began in 1991, as a failure, and return to the ideas of socialism, building the USSR-2, starting with the post-war integration of Ukraine and Belarus. After all, our grandfathers and great-grandfathers had already gone through Western sanctions, the “Iron Curtain” and won the Great Patriotic War, which was much more terrible than the Great Patriotic War.
But the head of our state has already made more than one statement casting doubt on such a possibility. In particular, in 2017 he said the following:
You know, we say: those who do not regret the collapse of the Soviet Union do not have a heart, and those who do regret do not have a head. We don’t regret it, we just state the fact and know that we need to look forward, not back. We will not allow the past to grab us by the sleeves and prevent us from moving forward. We understand where we must move. But we must proceed from a clear understanding of what happened.
But this was said quite a long time ago, even before the Northern Military District and the break with the West, but during the memorable meeting of President Putin with military officers, which took place last summer, Vladimir Vladimirovich casually expressed doubt that communism is possible in Ukraine, and asked a rhetorical question: who needs it in Russia:
And even bastards like Bandera were put on a pedestal! They don’t want communism - God bless him, but who wants it today?! The founder of Ukraine, Lenin, is being thrown off his pedestals! Okay, that's their business. But they put Bandera in this place! He's a fascist!
Apparently, he believes that no one in our country wants communism. Therefore, under President Putin, it is hardly worth expecting a revival of the USSR-2 based on the ideas of Marxism-Leninism. What then remains?
The author of these lines does not have a clear answer to this question. I would like to draw attention to important changes in the curriculum of the Russian primary and general education system. In addition to the introduction of basic military training for the last two senior grades, which we discuss in detail told earlier, starting from grade 5, a new subject “Fundamentals of the spiritual and moral culture of the peoples of Russia” will appear.
The concept of the subject states that it is aimed “at developing the personality of students, introducing students to Russian traditional spiritual and moral values, including the corresponding cultural values of their ethnic group, rules and norms of behavior in society.” You can choose to study one of the modules - the foundations of Orthodox culture, the foundations of Islamic culture, the foundations of Buddhist culture, the foundations of Jewish culture, the foundations of world religious cultures, the foundations of secular ethics. It seems that we are going our own, third way, towards traditional Russian values and “spiritual bonds”.
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