Conservative Trends in Contemporary Russian Society

Abstract

This article attempts to analyze the origin, content, and prospects of the trend toward increasing conservatism in contemporary Russia that has been observed in the collective consciousness, as well as in the media and in political contexts. This trend creates the illusion that society and the government are united in a single political nation, something that has not been possible in post-Soviet Russia for over 20 years. However, this illusory reality faces new threats and challenges. These include a schism in values and civil conflict. This trend “broke” the tendency, observed in the 2000s, toward an equalization of the value field around the synthesis of conservative and liberal values and the related synthesis of the demands of the new Russian middle class. This analysis will show that there has been a reanimation of the archetypal collective consciousness manifested in values related to strengthening the state, anti-Westernism, and the “Russian world.” The attitude of society in general has become more radical than official government policy. The public mainstream stands in sharp opposition to the group of pro-Western liberals, who are oriented toward the kind of development seen in Europe, democratic values, and the free market. At the same time, these values are largely imposed by political circumstances “for show,” while the people who hold these values are rarely prepared to follow them in “real life.”

Keywords:

• conservatism
• neoconservatism
• liberal minority
• conservative majority
• values
• ideologies
• archetypal consciousness
• power
• anti-Westernism
• radicalism
• the “Russian world”

Notes

1. A picture of the conservative wave on the eve of the 2013 events in Ukraine was outlined in March 2014 in Byzov (2014a).

2. In this context, I am not discussing the quality and/or advisability of these laws or decisions.

3. From here on, we will use data from the monitoring study conducted by the Institute of Sociology in October and November of 2014, which surveyed 3,500 people (this study was led by Russian Academy of Sciences academician M. Gorshkov).

4. The 2001 and 2009 studies were conducted as part of sociological monitoring of the Russian Independent Institute of Social and National Problems and the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Leontiy Georgievich Byzov

Leontiy Georgievich Byzov is a candidate in economic sciences and a senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology, Russian Academy of Sciences.