A group of Russian political scientists, led by influential Kremlin-linked expert Sergei Karaganov, published a report this summer (English version here) in which they sought to formulate a coherent ideology for Russia. The title of the report is “Russia’s Living Idea-Dream: The Code of the Russian Citizen in the 21st Century.”

Attempts to codify Putinism

To this day, the ideology of the Putin regime remains unsystematized: pieces of it can be found in different speeches, political actions and statements by Russian government officials. Yet in recent years, the political regime has increasingly attempted to articulate a consistent ideological doctrine and instill it in Russians, particularly young people, who are considered the least loyal to the regime. Hence the appearance of ideological classes in schools and universities.

Judging by fragmented public data, the greatest efforts in systematizing ideology has come from officials of the Presidential Administration, a body with decisive influence over many aspects of political life in Russia. The Kremlin’s curator of ideological courses for students, Andrei Polosin – considered a close associate of Deputy Chief of the Presidential Administration Sergei Kiriyenko (they previously worked together at Rosatom) – stresses, in teaching the courses, the concept of “Russian civilization,” which is said to rest on five pillars: “collectivism,” “a special path,” “spirituality” (dukhovnost’), “freedom and will,” and “pioneering” (pervoprokhodchestvo). In 2023, Polosin, describing the “characteristics of the Russian people,” spoke of the “essential presence of a super-goal, messianism.”

Another example of the Presidential Administration’s intensified efforts is a 2025 policy article by senior Presidential Administration official Alexander Kharichev in the journal Notebook of Civic Education (Bloknot grazhdanskogo prosveshcheniya). Kharichev likewise presents Russia as a civilization. He argues that Russia possesses a “special statehood” that functions not only as a political institution but also as a “spiritual center.” He points to the supposedly inherent “paternalism” of Russians, their preference for one-man rule, and their personalization and sacralization of power. According to Kharichev, the “highest goal” of Russians is “service.”

The Russian Constitution explicitly prohibits a state ideology. Yet this, too, has become a matter of debate in recent years. For example, at the World Russian People’s Council in Moscow in autumn 2022, Sergei Mironov, leader of the A Just Russia party – part of the so-called systemic opposition – proposed repealing the constitutional ban on ideology. “How can we live without a state ideology now? We are fighting for the Russian world, we speak of the importance of all traditional faiths in Russia, especially Orthodoxy, we speak of patriotism. The president never tires of speaking about this!” Mironov complained.

Who is trying to codify Putinism?

This summer, a new document again set itself the specific aim of formulating an ideology for Russia, the previously mentioned“Russia’s Living Idea-Dream: The Code of the Russian in the 21st Century.” 

Karaganov is one of the founders of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, a Russian think tank that includes former diplomats and some current politicians. The council is a founding member of the Valdai Discussion Club, whose meetings Vladimir Putin attends annually. Karaganov also serves as academic director of the Faculty of World Economy and International Affairs at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, one of Russia’s leading universities. Perhaps most significantly, he sits on the scientific subcommittee of Russia’s Security Council. According to Meduza sources, in this capacity Karaganov may have influenced the thinking of Nikolai Patrushev, a former secretary of the Security Council and one of closest siloviki to Putin.

In 2023, Karaganov’s name made international headlines: he published an article calling for Russia to launch a “preemptive nuclear strike on Europe” and thereby “break the West’s will” in the war with Ukraine. Despite – or thanks to – this extreme proposal, his standing in the eyes of Russia’s top leadership only grew. In 2024, he was invited to moderate the central session of the most important event on the Russian political calendar – the St Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) – with Vladimir Putin. Introducing the president, Karaganov declared that Putin faced the task of “saving a world that is sliding and being driven toward a world war.”

Karaganov’s report should not be considered the official position or ideological doctrine of the Russian regime. Nevertheless, it sheds light on the views currently circulating among Russia’s top leaders. According to Meduza, Karaganov does not closely coordinate with the Presidential Administration; rather he supposedly operates independently, using his “own channels” (apparently a reference to the Security Council) where he can convey his thoughts to Putin.

Russkie or Rossiyane?

“We are a state-civilization, even a civilization of civilizations,” reads the first line of Karaganov’s report. Everyone, including the abovementioned Russian ideologists trying to formulate a coherent doctrine, describes Russia as a separate civilization. Putin himself has called Russia a “state-civilization” in his speeches. The concept of a “state-civilization” also appears in Russia’s Foreign Policy Concept.

Karaganov makes it clear that by calling Russia a “state-civilization,” he does not classify Russia as either “West” or “East” – the debate over which has been ongoing since at least the 19th century, when Slavophiles and Westernizers confronted each other ideologically. By singling out Russia as a separate civilization, Karaganov seeks to resolve the contradiction between these two polarized camps. Still, he employs the now seemingly archaic language of the Slavophiles. For example, in his report he uses the word “russkie,” the name for ethnic Russians, as opposed to “rossiyane,” the term preferred in official discourse when referring to all citizens of Russia. Karaganov thus includes “Belarusians,” “Tatars,” “Chechens,” and “Little Russians” – a term used in Tsarist Russia for Ukrainians – as russkie. 

To justify this, Karaganov takes the position of an external observer, writing, “today, to the external world, we are all russkie, despite the diverse components of our common civilization,” in an apparent attempt to play on the fact that in English, as well as many other languages, there is no distinction between the more ethno-nationalistically charged russkie (used in official discourse to designate ethnic Russians, excluding Tatars, Ukrainians and other groups) and rossiyane, which became established in official discourse in the late 1980s. At that time, representatives of the Yeltsin administration began using this previously bookish word to disassociate residents of Russia (the RSFSR) from their Soviet identity while avoiding ethnic connotations.

Later in the report, Karaganov uses both rossiyane and russkie interchangeably, stipulating that use of the latter “needs to be widely discussed and carefully explained to the public… The two are used interchangeably in many of Pushkin’s poems.”

The use of the word russkie, along with archaisms such as “Great Russians” and “Little Russians,” is not the only element that Karaganov borrows from the 19th-century Slavophiles. For example, at the very top of his report, he calls Russians (rossiyane) a “God-bearing people” (narod-bogonosets). This concept, drawn from Slavophile discourse, was popularly associated with Fyodor Dostoevsky (it appears in The Brothers Karamazov and Demons). Today, the idea of a “God-bearing people” is used mainly by Orthodox fundamentalists and monarchists. They assume that the Russian people (russkie) have a special spiritual and religious mission, generally defined as opposing mystical “evil.” Karaganov later elaborates on what exactly this “mission” consists of. He explains Russia’s victories over Napoleon and in World War II by citing the “confidence of the Russian people in the patronage of higher powers.”

Ideology or idea?

In the introduction to his report, Karaganov explicitly states that Russia needs an ideology, which is to be imposed on Russians through “textbooks, discussions, images, literature and art.” Otherwise, he warns, Russian civilization will “die.” However, he subsequently avoids the word “ideology,” preferring instead the more cumbersome “idea-dream.” The reason for this is straightforward: in Russia, as noted above, the Constitution formally prohibits a state ideology.

Karaganov also points to the Soviet Union’s negative experience in developing a unified doctrine: “The USSR’s imposed Marxism-Leninism and faithlessness intellectually castrated its ruling stratum and thus led to its defeat,” he writes. Nevertheless, he insists on the necessity of having and implementing an ideology, citing the demands of the Ukraine war (note he says “war” instead of the official “special military operation”).

Karaganov as a conservative ideologist

Karaganov’s doctrine is conservative in nature. He paints “modern civilization,” defined as modern technology and “mainly Western culture,” as the main threat and traces its origins to the Enlightenment. It was in response to Enlightenment ideas and their embodiment in the French Revolution that conservatism emerged as a formal political ideology. Like 19th-century conservatives, Karaganov argues that modern civilization, built on the ideals of the Enlightenment, destroys man’s humanity, as well as the family. He also denies the universality of progress and rationality.

Karaganov conservative worldview draws on Lev Gumilev’s theory of passionarity-driven ethnogenesis. He describes the Russian people as “passionate” – in the sense of Gumilev – and references civilizational cycles. Gumilev viewed Russia as a living organism passing through cycles of birth, rise and fall, where a special internal energy – “passionarity,” an excess of tension and determination enabling expansion and flourishing – eventually causes exhaustion and collapse. 

Another key concept for Karaganov is “sobornost’,” a Slavophile term which can be as communal harmony. This slippery term from Russian religious philosophy denotes the spiritual unity of people in church and secular life. It represents an attempt to reconcile the individual and the collective. In a community characterized by sobornost’, people not only live side by side, but are bound together by a spiritual connection, a shared set of values and relationships, while still preserving their individuality. 

Finally, as a conservative ideologist, Karaganov clearly opposes any revolutionary change. Seeing no contradiction, he calls both the 1917 Revolution and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 “disasters.”

Karaganov’s anti-Westernism

As noted above, Karaganov regards “modern civilization,” which he identifies with the West, as the principal threat. However, he avoids labeling himself an anti-Westerner, as “anti-Westernism itself signifies dependency and constrained intellectual sovereignty.” Karaganov stresses that Russia’s ideology should be neither Western nor anti-Western.

In criticizing the West, Karaganov invokes the concept of “Atlantic civilization.” That comes from the philosophy of Eurasianism, the most prominent popularizer of which is Alexander Dugin. In the Eurasianist view, Atlantic civilization is maritime, liberal and individualistic, rooted in transatlantic ties between Europe and the US. It is contrasted with Russia’s “Eurasian civilization.” Atlantic civilization is presented as a symbol of a worldview and political-cultural system alien to Russia – one that must not be accepted or fused with, but consciously distanced from, so that Russia can pursue its own internally organic path of development, free of Atlantic influences.

Karaganov fingers Russia’s Western-oriented elites as an obstacle to the implementation of an ideology: “a segment of our elite has personally invested in, and is dependent on, the country’s westward orientation. (Finances were transferred there, children were for some reason educated there, etc.)” Tellingly, investigative journalists have that found Karaganov owns property in Germany and Italy.

The ‘code of the Russian’

Karaganov formulated the main ideas of his project in an “outline” – a brief exposition of the ideology in the form of instructions. Below are some examples.

• “Destiny”: To love and protect one’s family, society and the Fatherland, and to serve the state and (for believers) God – these are said to be universal, “truly human” values.
• Highest values: Honor, dignity, conscience, patriotism, love between a man and a woman, love for children and respect for elders are cited.
• Identity: Russia is a northern Eurasian civilization, open to the world yet preserving its cultural identity and political and spiritual sovereignty.
• Mission: Russians are a “God-bearing” people who defend what is best in humanity, peace and the freedom of nations, while recognizing cultural diversity – a people that “has a mission, but is not messianic.”
• Sobornost’: True freedom is revealed in service to a common cause; collectivism is elevated.
• “Warriors and victors”: Russia resists hegemony, with the highest duty being service to the Fatherland and state.
• Sovereignty and “peace-bearing”: Russia protects the right of all peoples to choose their own path, “shielding the world from all conquerors and world wars.”
• Justice: “Each should be rewarded according to his contribution to the common cause,” Karaganov writes, while the weak, lonely and elderly should be protected.
• “Deserved personal and familial well-being”: “Excessive, ostentatious” consumption is said to be immoral and unpatriotic. Meanwhile, business is cited as “a way to make life better and materially richer for all, not oneself alone.”
• “Leader-led democracy” and “people’s capitalism”: Political power, Karaganov believes, should be confirmed by popular election and feature strong local governance. Economically, property is said to be inviolable, but conspicuous consumption “shameful,” while business is to serve “collective prosperity, state strength and the new ideology of developing man through service to the Motherland.”

This set of values is supposed to form the basis for educating the younger generation and act as a guiding light for all citizens who share the “idea-dream.”

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Karaganov’s ideological project is rooted in the traditions of Russian philosophy of late Panslavism, Eurasianism and Russian messianism. What distinguishes his project from other contemporary attempts to craft a new ideologyis its heavier dose of mystical messianism, as well as its more Slavophile, radically nationalistic orientation than is usually expressed in official discourse. This is evident in his free use of the word russkie, along with concepts such as sobornost’ and “God-bearing people.”

It bears emphasizing: Karaganov’s project cannot be considered the official position of the Russian regime. Still, given his growing influence – after all, he was entrusted to speak with Putin about geopolitics at SPIEF in 2024 – this document provides insight into the growing ridigification of ideological production.