The Russians want a wise hand – Newspaper Kommersant No. 15 (7460) of 01/27/2023

At the site of the Foundation for the Support of Public Diplomacy named after. A. M. Gorchakov on Thursday presented a report on the image of the future of Russia in the minds of Russians. Its authors came to the conclusion that the citizens of the Russian Federation want the government and society to communicate in the future as equal partners, but the source of such changes should be the government itself, and not ordinary Russians. And such paternalism, according to researchers, is characteristic of representatives of all ages.

The report “Sociology of the image of the future-2033: Russia drawn by itself” was prepared by a team led by a leading researcher at the Institute of International Studies at MGIMO Alexei Tokarev. For the most part, the work was funded by the RFBR-EISI grant. As part of the study, 48 focus groups were conducted in 23 settlements of 17 constituent entities of the Russian Federation: respondents were asked what problems they see in today’s Russia and what they would like to see in ten years, and were also asked to supplement their answers with drawings.

One of the main characteristics of Russians, identified in the course of the study, was “paternalism”. Neither society nor business are capable of becoming “agents of change” – only the state, the authors of the report note, referring to the picture, where the flag “Change!” hangs on the Kremlin’s Spasskaya Tower. In another drawing, the government is depicted as a big man with the caption “big and strong,” and the people as a small one. Paternalism is also reflected in attitudes towards corruption: on the one hand, focus group participants believe that it should be eradicated, on the other hand, they admit that they themselves give bribes. Only three respondents said that when solving this problem, “you have to start with yourself”. By the way, paternalism is manifested in all age groups: young people, as researchers believe, may be characterized by the fact that their socialization occurred during the “oil boom” and not the difficult 1990s, and besides, they may be romanticized ideas about the practices of the USSR according to the stories of their parents.

At the same time, Russians would like to see government and society communicate as equal partners in the future, the report notes. This is confirmed by the drawings: on one, two people, signed “power and people”, shake hands; on another, an OMON officer is nursing a child; on the third, “people” take first place on a symbolic pedestal with the caption “People are the law.” Now, officials are perceived rather negatively in the minds of Russians: for example, respondents drew them as an “aggressive hedgehog” on a mountain of apples or a person in a crown riding a turtle, again denoting “people”. At the same time, the government is “not despised” and “not hated”, and its credit of trust on the part of society has not been spent, the authors of the study point out.

But the opposition in the images of the future is almost never found, the researchers say: the respondents depicted it only in a few drawings and for the most part as an “object of suppression / being in prison”, unable to influence power, let alone take it away. “That is, fellow citizens do not perceive it (opposition.— “b”) as a third force within political relations: there is only power and people, and the essence of the political lies in the interaction between them,” the report says.

Its authors also emphasize that young people were the main victims in the sanctions war. “At each youth focus group, we noted frustrations due to Russia’s “current isolation” from the world, a feeling of being on the “roadside of history,” a feeling of being “excommunicated from civilization,” the researchers explain. Adults, on the other hand, perceive the situation more ironically: “We remember the 90s, when people were killed. And you were deprived of french fries.

The authors of the report did not record among the respondents the desire for active protest or revolutionary changes: focus group participants “too appreciate the increased standard of living” achieved over the past 30 years. “Respondents do not want to forcibly demolish the government, but they want to change it with a minimum of their own efforts: there is an abyss between a negative attitude in words and a willingness to act actively,” the document emphasizes.

A special place in the study is given to Moscow: focus group participants talk about it as “about another planet”, which, on the one hand, causes negative, but on the other hand, many respondents would like everything in their regions to be like in the capital. In international relations, respondents present Russia-2033 as one of the leaders of the multipolar world – “a peaceful country of the maximum level of attractiveness for business, investment, tourists and its own citizens.” The Russia of the future is also characterized by adherence to traditional values, although some of the young participants in the study noted that “the state suppresses” minorities.

At the presentation of the report on January 26, Aleksey Tokarev noted that the only politician mentioned by the respondents was President Vladimir Putin: “There are no other parties or their leaders in the image of the future.” Among older Russians, his figure was perceived, as a rule, positively, since the president is excluded from the system of bureaucracy and the space of negative assessments. The younger participants in the study also showed a more critical attitude, although they did not express specific complaints. “I like Putin, I don’t have specific raids. He just sits for a long time, ”the authors give a characteristic, in their opinion, opinion of a young man. They also believe that the president’s personality is still “the most important balancer” in relations between society and power.

Paternalism as the main feature of society is “neither good nor bad,” Viktor Poturemsky, director of political analysis at INSOMAR, comments on the results of the study. “When you watch science fiction movies or read science fiction literature, then the vision of the distant future, when “spaceships plow the expanses of the universe”, is very significantly influenced by the state of both technological progress and the mental state in which people are at that moment. Therefore, the fact that researchers have discovered paternalism as a trend is nothing more than a reflection of what is happening now,” the expert notes. According to him, paternalistic sentiments are now growing all over the world due to economic reasons and emergency conditions. “Not civil institutions and not ordinary people came up with a vaccine against coronavirus. The request to the government that it should be able to withstand threats and challenges and take care of citizens, increases the growth of paternalistic sentiments,” Mr. Poturemsky explains.

Andrey Vinokurov, Elena Rozhkova