What a 30-year absence of state ideology leads to: “Great nations are not built without great, guiding ideas, and having lost them, they collapse with a thunderous crash”

This article is the third in a series of editorial publications released in April – August 2025 and dedicated to analyzing expert opinions on the necessity and feasibility of creating an official state ideology in the country. The relevance of this issue is driven, on the one hand, by national security concerns, which have sharply intensified since the start of the special military operation in Ukraine, and on the other hand, by the goals of national development related to the need to define a vision for Russia’s future in the context of the transition from a unipolar to a multipolar world order. A synthesis of expert assessments, facts, statistical data, and monitoring sociological studies, which reflect the state of society and people’s subjective opinions about the situation in the country, leads to the conclusion that one of Russia’s key internal problems is the unsatisfactory quality of its ruling elites. A significant portion of them are unprepared for change, continue to live by the principles of the country’s departing era of “liberal fog”, and in every way, willingly or unwillingly, hinder Russia’s transition to a new stage of historical development, thereby jeopardizing its present and future. In this sense, the ideology proposed by many experts, which would be “mandatory for those who aspire to join the cohort of leaders of the Russian state” (S.A. Karaganov), appears to the authors as a completely logical and necessary step on the part of the President and the ruling political party. As long as there is no clear answer to the question “What kind of state are we building?” at all levels of government, such an answer is also absent among the general public, and as a consequence, people’s real lives often diverge from the public rhetoric of the authorities. The article focuses on the practical possibilities of implementing an ideology that could take on the character of a “philosophy of a common destiny” (Zh.T. Toshchenko) and form the basis of a new Social Contract, the need for which many experts have noted for our country. The authors’ contribution consists of the systematization of expert opinions, statistical data, and public opinion polls covering Russia’s historical development from the late 1990s (from the final years of Boris Yeltsin’s presidency), as well as actual cases of corruption and high treason within the country’s ruling elites (which primarily indicate that many of their representatives cannot be relied upon, as they are guided by personal interests that differ from the interests of the country, state, and society), and the administrative decisions made by the President, the Government, and the State Duma of the Russian Federation in the context of the pressing task of developing an ideology and forming a new Social Contract in Russia.