Politics
‘Russian Dream’:
Ideological Blueprint or Ideologues’ Pressure Tactic for a National Idea?
July 25, 2025
- Paul RobinsonProfessor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of the Ottawa
In his analysis of a newly published text outlining guidelines for a contemporary Russian ideology, historian Paul Robinson describes it as a modernized version of mid-19th-century Slavophilism, though with a stronger emphasis on Russia’s Eastern roots. Rather than a new Kremlin creed, the publication appears to be an attempt to persuade the authorities to finally challenge the constitutional ban on an official ideology.
Ever since the collapse of communism, Russians have struggled to define their national identity, their country’s place in the world, and the values that should underpin their society. In the early 1990s, the idea that Russia was a European country that should rest on liberal democratic values briefly held centre stage, but this vision was soon abandoned due to disillusionment with the realities of shock therapy and Westernization.
In the mid-1990s, President Boris Yeltsin called for the definition of the ‘Russian Idea’ only to abandon the project once it became clear that nobody could agree what it was. The 1993 constitution forbade the country from having an official ideology (a rule designed to prevent a situation of ideological conformity such as existed under communism), and so efforts to define the ideological foundations of post-Soviet society came largely to a halt.
In the mid-1990s, President Boris Yeltsin called for the definition of the ‘Russian Idea’ only to abandon the project once it became clear that nobody could agree what it was. The 1993 constitution forbade the country from having an official ideology (a rule designed to prevent a situation of ideological conformity such as existed under communism), and so efforts to define the ideological foundations of post-Soviet society came largely to a halt.
Cover of the report "A Living Idea – Russia’s Dream. The Russian’s Code in the 21st Century. The Ideological Foundation of the Russian State-Civilization".
From Ideological Flexibility to a Vision of Russia as a Distinct Civilization
For the most part, Yeltsin’s successor, Vladimir Putin, has been happy to keep things that way, preferring ideological flexibility over the constraints of a formal state doctrine. Many conservative intellectuals, however, have long been unhappy with this state of affairs, pointing out that any society, if it is to be stable, has to have a commonly agreed understanding of itself and its core values.
As political tensions with the West have grown, the Russian state has increasingly defined Russia in terms of opposition to the West, and in the last few years as an entirely distinct civilization. But that has raised the questions of what defines Russian civilization and makes it distinct, questions to which the state has no easy answers, due to its lack of clear ideological foundations. The process of defining Russian civilization has therefore acquired a new political importance.
Into this political context, there now steps a new report titled ‘A Living Idea – Russia’s Dream. The Russian’s Code in the 21st Century. The Ideological Foundation of the Russian State-Civilization.’
The report’s primary author is prominent public intellectual Sergei Karaganov, but it is not his work alone. Rather, it is the collective product of numerous individuals from the Council of Foreign and Defence Policy, the Higher School of Economics and its Institute of World Military Economics and Strategy, as well as the journal Russia in Global Affairs.
As such it is perhaps a good reflection of thinking among elements of that part of Russia’s intellectual class that devotes itself to studying foreign and defence policy. Karaganov himself is especially well-known and last year was granted the honour of moderating Putin’s speech to the St Petersburg International Economic Forum. Thus, even if this report does not reflect the views of the entire foreign and defence policy community, it certainly represents those of a well-connected segment of it, and as such is worth paying attention to.
The report’s starting point is that Russia is ‘a unique civilizational formation’ and that like any human society it needs a unifying idea. This cannot be Western liberalism, a philosophy spread ‘by liberal-globalistic elites, striving to strengthen their privileged position and to facilitate their control over the masses.’
Russia, according to the report, needs to develop an alternative, something that it has not yet done. Due to the constitutional prohibition, this cannot be a formal state ideology, but it could instead be designated as ‘Russia’s dream’ and as such play much the same role as an official ideology. This dream is necessary in order ‘to save the human in humans, to protect the Russian civilizational code, and to save the world from global thermonuclear war.
For the most part, Yeltsin’s successor, Vladimir Putin, has been happy to keep things that way, preferring ideological flexibility over the constraints of a formal state doctrine. Many conservative intellectuals, however, have long been unhappy with this state of affairs, pointing out that any society, if it is to be stable, has to have a commonly agreed understanding of itself and its core values.
As political tensions with the West have grown, the Russian state has increasingly defined Russia in terms of opposition to the West, and in the last few years as an entirely distinct civilization. But that has raised the questions of what defines Russian civilization and makes it distinct, questions to which the state has no easy answers, due to its lack of clear ideological foundations. The process of defining Russian civilization has therefore acquired a new political importance.
Into this political context, there now steps a new report titled ‘A Living Idea – Russia’s Dream. The Russian’s Code in the 21st Century. The Ideological Foundation of the Russian State-Civilization.’
The report’s primary author is prominent public intellectual Sergei Karaganov, but it is not his work alone. Rather, it is the collective product of numerous individuals from the Council of Foreign and Defence Policy, the Higher School of Economics and its Institute of World Military Economics and Strategy, as well as the journal Russia in Global Affairs.
As such it is perhaps a good reflection of thinking among elements of that part of Russia’s intellectual class that devotes itself to studying foreign and defence policy. Karaganov himself is especially well-known and last year was granted the honour of moderating Putin’s speech to the St Petersburg International Economic Forum. Thus, even if this report does not reflect the views of the entire foreign and defence policy community, it certainly represents those of a well-connected segment of it, and as such is worth paying attention to.
The report’s starting point is that Russia is ‘a unique civilizational formation’ and that like any human society it needs a unifying idea. This cannot be Western liberalism, a philosophy spread ‘by liberal-globalistic elites, striving to strengthen their privileged position and to facilitate their control over the masses.’
Russia, according to the report, needs to develop an alternative, something that it has not yet done. Due to the constitutional prohibition, this cannot be a formal state ideology, but it could instead be designated as ‘Russia’s dream’ and as such play much the same role as an official ideology. This dream is necessary in order ‘to save the human in humans, to protect the Russian civilizational code, and to save the world from global thermonuclear war.
“Russia, claim the authors, is a ‘God-bearing country’ with ‘a mission before God and humanity’.”
Sergei Karaganov (center) moderates Vladimir Putin’s address at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. June 2024. Source: Kremlin.ru
The Ideological Roots of Sergey Karaganov’s Report
The report is largely a modernized version of mid-nineteenth century Slavophilism, with hints of Cosmism and Eurasianism, and occasional lines that could have been written by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Ivan Ilyin, or other twentieth century conservative Russian philosophers (see my earlier article in Russia.Post here). There is very little about it that could be said to be intellectually original. One can, for instance, find much the same logic in the writings of Alexander Panarin in the 1990s, such as his book The Russian Alternative. The report is very much part of a Russian tradition.
The Slavophile elements come out strongly in the depiction of the Western world as decadent, materialistic, individualistic, and overly rationalistic, compared to which Russia is portrayed as spiritually oriented, collectivistic, and founded on faith as well as reason. Modern Western civilization, the report says, ‘while making the person’s life more comfortable, destroys many of the functions that make him a person,’ leading to ‘an ever more evident degradation of the person himself.’
Russian philosophy has long been concerned with the issue of what constitutes ‘personhood’ and what makes someone a ‘person’ (the word for which in such philosophical debates was traditionally ‘lichnost’ but in this report for some reason is ‘chelovek’).
The report notes that ‘We are for Personhood (‘Chelovechnost’), true humanism, for preserving the Person in the person, the godly principle in him.’ True personhood relies on connections to God and to the rest of society – ‘a person cannot develop outside the family, society, nature, and country’. With its assaults on religion, the family, patriotism, and so on, Western civilization is thus portrayed as destroying personhood, in contrast to which, Russia, as the defender of religion, family, nation, and so on, is defending what it means to be truly human.
The report is thus in many respects profoundly conservative, although it denies this, saying that the values it promotes are not conservative values but universal human ones. Russia, by promoting these values, is thus defending humanity as a whole, giving Russia a holy global mission, albeit one that is more spiritual than political. Again, this is not exactly novel, but an updated version of the original Slavophilism.
The report is largely a modernized version of mid-nineteenth century Slavophilism, with hints of Cosmism and Eurasianism, and occasional lines that could have been written by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Ivan Ilyin, or other twentieth century conservative Russian philosophers (see my earlier article in Russia.Post here). There is very little about it that could be said to be intellectually original. One can, for instance, find much the same logic in the writings of Alexander Panarin in the 1990s, such as his book The Russian Alternative. The report is very much part of a Russian tradition.
The Slavophile elements come out strongly in the depiction of the Western world as decadent, materialistic, individualistic, and overly rationalistic, compared to which Russia is portrayed as spiritually oriented, collectivistic, and founded on faith as well as reason. Modern Western civilization, the report says, ‘while making the person’s life more comfortable, destroys many of the functions that make him a person,’ leading to ‘an ever more evident degradation of the person himself.’
Russian philosophy has long been concerned with the issue of what constitutes ‘personhood’ and what makes someone a ‘person’ (the word for which in such philosophical debates was traditionally ‘lichnost’ but in this report for some reason is ‘chelovek’).
The report notes that ‘We are for Personhood (‘Chelovechnost’), true humanism, for preserving the Person in the person, the godly principle in him.’ True personhood relies on connections to God and to the rest of society – ‘a person cannot develop outside the family, society, nature, and country’. With its assaults on religion, the family, patriotism, and so on, Western civilization is thus portrayed as destroying personhood, in contrast to which, Russia, as the defender of religion, family, nation, and so on, is defending what it means to be truly human.
The report is thus in many respects profoundly conservative, although it denies this, saying that the values it promotes are not conservative values but universal human ones. Russia, by promoting these values, is thus defending humanity as a whole, giving Russia a holy global mission, albeit one that is more spiritual than political. Again, this is not exactly novel, but an updated version of the original Slavophilism.
“Russia, in the eyes of the report’s authors, is blessed by God, a fact proven by its recovery from the traumas of the 1990s, a true ‘miracle’ that has ‘only one “scientific” explanation – that God took pity on Russia and forgave her sins’.”
Russia is for Justice Rather than Freedom
In true Slavophile fashion, the authors portray Russia as resting on different spiritual roots than the West, although they differ from the Slavophiles in viewing Russia as a largely Eastern country, thus showing the influence of later Eurasianist ideas.
‘The main external sources of our identity lie in Byzantium and the Great Mongol empire and not in the West’, claims the report. Russia, it says, has a ‘tradition of sobornost’ and obschinnost’, using a couple of rather untranslatable words to indicate a tradition of collectivism in contrast to individualism.
Russians, says the report, are also distinguished from Westerners by their concern for justice rather than freedom, for their concern for peace, and for their use of force only ‘to defeat endless aggressions’ rather than for ‘looting and enrichment.’ Russia is noted also for the importance it assigns to sovereignty and to a strong state, to the principle of statehood [‘gosudarstvennichestvo’]. And finally, Russians are distinguished by their ‘sense of unity with nature’ and their understanding of the ‘active unity of man and nature.’
As previously stated, none of these claims are in any way novel. They are the long standing core of Slavophile, Cosmist, and Eurasianist mythology. They also lack firm evidential basis – the idea that Russians are more collectivist, more at one with nature, and more concerned with justice than their Western counterparts is, for instance, hard to empirically justify.
Nevertheless, the report uses them to derive the essence of the ‘Russian dream’: service of God manifested in service of fellow humans through society, the family, and the state. This has political ramifications, above all the strengthening of the state, something that is necessary not only for Russia, but also for the world as a whole, since the collective problems of humanity, such as climate change, hunger, and poverty, can only be solved by strong states.
‘Оnly a strong state, resting on the support of a strong society’, the report says, can save humanity from the degrading influence of the negative trends of modern civilization, that deprive the person of many of the functions that make him a person. … The state is needed to counteract the previously mentioned tendencies and the efforts of contemporary globalists liberal elites to destroy the person … [and also] to counteract the efforts of liberal imperialist globalist elites to weaken it in order to seize it and impose its dominance.’
In true Slavophile fashion, the authors portray Russia as resting on different spiritual roots than the West, although they differ from the Slavophiles in viewing Russia as a largely Eastern country, thus showing the influence of later Eurasianist ideas.
‘The main external sources of our identity lie in Byzantium and the Great Mongol empire and not in the West’, claims the report. Russia, it says, has a ‘tradition of sobornost’ and obschinnost’, using a couple of rather untranslatable words to indicate a tradition of collectivism in contrast to individualism.
Russians, says the report, are also distinguished from Westerners by their concern for justice rather than freedom, for their concern for peace, and for their use of force only ‘to defeat endless aggressions’ rather than for ‘looting and enrichment.’ Russia is noted also for the importance it assigns to sovereignty and to a strong state, to the principle of statehood [‘gosudarstvennichestvo’]. And finally, Russians are distinguished by their ‘sense of unity with nature’ and their understanding of the ‘active unity of man and nature.’
As previously stated, none of these claims are in any way novel. They are the long standing core of Slavophile, Cosmist, and Eurasianist mythology. They also lack firm evidential basis – the idea that Russians are more collectivist, more at one with nature, and more concerned with justice than their Western counterparts is, for instance, hard to empirically justify.
Nevertheless, the report uses them to derive the essence of the ‘Russian dream’: service of God manifested in service of fellow humans through society, the family, and the state. This has political ramifications, above all the strengthening of the state, something that is necessary not only for Russia, but also for the world as a whole, since the collective problems of humanity, such as climate change, hunger, and poverty, can only be solved by strong states.
‘Оnly a strong state, resting on the support of a strong society’, the report says, can save humanity from the degrading influence of the negative trends of modern civilization, that deprive the person of many of the functions that make him a person. … The state is needed to counteract the previously mentioned tendencies and the efforts of contemporary globalists liberal elites to destroy the person … [and also] to counteract the efforts of liberal imperialist globalist elites to weaken it in order to seize it and impose its dominance.’
Aleksey Khomyakov, 1804-1860, philosopher and co-founder of the Slavophile movement. Source: Wiki Commons
Western liberal democracy in incompatible with this kind of strong state, claims the report. Liberal democracy can function only in conditions of relative peace and stability and is incompatible with Russia’s particular conditions and the increasingly unstable state of the world.
What is needed instead is a ‘leader democracy’ [‘liderskaia demokratiia’], a term that remains frustratingly undefined, but seems to endorse Russia’s current political system. At the same time, though, the authors stress that this ‘leader democracy’, while authoritarian in terms of central government, should allow for local democracy (an idea that again has Slavophile roots as well as appearing in the writings of Alexander Solzhenitsyn), and should guarantee freedom of thought since ‘intellectual, spiritual freedom is the undoubted precondition of a country’s prosperity’.
The latter idea reflects a long-standing Russian philosophical concern with ‘inner freedom’, as found in the writings of such diverse writers as Boris Chicherin, Ivan Ilyin, Nikolai Berdiaev, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and others. The report comments that ‘Combining intellectual freedom, freedom of thought, and political authoritarianism is not simple. But Russian history gives examples.’ Unfortunately, it doesn’t say what those are.
What is needed instead is a ‘leader democracy’ [‘liderskaia demokratiia’], a term that remains frustratingly undefined, but seems to endorse Russia’s current political system. At the same time, though, the authors stress that this ‘leader democracy’, while authoritarian in terms of central government, should allow for local democracy (an idea that again has Slavophile roots as well as appearing in the writings of Alexander Solzhenitsyn), and should guarantee freedom of thought since ‘intellectual, spiritual freedom is the undoubted precondition of a country’s prosperity’.
The latter idea reflects a long-standing Russian philosophical concern with ‘inner freedom’, as found in the writings of such diverse writers as Boris Chicherin, Ivan Ilyin, Nikolai Berdiaev, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and others. The report comments that ‘Combining intellectual freedom, freedom of thought, and political authoritarianism is not simple. But Russian history gives examples.’ Unfortunately, it doesn’t say what those are.
“The question that arises from all this is to what extent these views are shared by anyone outside of the report’s authors and especially by anybody in authority.”
It is difficult to say. One should not assume that just because the authors are well-connected, their opinions reflect those of the people actually running the country. Indeed, if they did, the authors wouldn’t have felt it necessary to publish a report saying all these things.
Clearly, this is an effort to convince the authorities of the need to act in the perceived absence of action. Indeed, at one point the report contains a veiled criticism of President Putin for refusing to challenge the constitutional prohibition of an official ideology and for failing to recognize the need for a national idea.
Putin has often been seen as an ideological balancer. He permits intellectual entrepreneurs such as Karaganov to generate ideas and then co-opts the ones that he finds politically suitable, while at the same time rejecting the ones that he doesn’t and refusing to be limited by the confines of a single ideological system.
This report notes that one of the reasons for the lack of a formal state ideology is the resistance of ‘technocrats’ who still ‘dominate in the leading layer of the state’, and that the Presidential Administration has no department specifically devoted to ideological issues. This raises the possibility that Putin and other high state officials may actually be one of the prime barriers against the adoption of the kind of ideological prescripts put forward in this report. When Putin eventually leaves office (as in due course he must, if only due to death), a turn back towards liberalism might be possible, but if this report is anything to go by, a turn in an even more conservative direction might be every bit as likely.
Clearly, this is an effort to convince the authorities of the need to act in the perceived absence of action. Indeed, at one point the report contains a veiled criticism of President Putin for refusing to challenge the constitutional prohibition of an official ideology and for failing to recognize the need for a national idea.
Putin has often been seen as an ideological balancer. He permits intellectual entrepreneurs such as Karaganov to generate ideas and then co-opts the ones that he finds politically suitable, while at the same time rejecting the ones that he doesn’t and refusing to be limited by the confines of a single ideological system.
This report notes that one of the reasons for the lack of a formal state ideology is the resistance of ‘technocrats’ who still ‘dominate in the leading layer of the state’, and that the Presidential Administration has no department specifically devoted to ideological issues. This raises the possibility that Putin and other high state officials may actually be one of the prime barriers against the adoption of the kind of ideological prescripts put forward in this report. When Putin eventually leaves office (as in due course he must, if only due to death), a turn back towards liberalism might be possible, but if this report is anything to go by, a turn in an even more conservative direction might be every bit as likely.
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