“The Constitutional Ban on State Ideology Means a Ban on Revising the Ideological Tenets of Liberalism”: What the 30-Year Absence of a State Ideology Leads to

In the article, we continue to reveal the topic related to the problem of liberal ideology, which was actually established in Russia after the adoption of the Constitution of the Russian Federation in 1993, which proclaimed a ban on official state ideology (Article 13). The emphasis is placed on the empirical results of monitoring sociological research, which allow us to see the dynamics of changes in indicators of the intellectual, creative and moral level of Russian society for the period from 1996 to 2024. The study was carried out in the Vologda Region, but a comparison of the data obtained with the results of opinion polls conducted in other regions of the Russian Federation suggests the existence of identified trends in many regions of the country. The analysis has shown that, on average, over the period from 1996 to 2024, the proportion of people interested in various topics about life, such as family, culture, upbringing of younger generations, the life of the country and society, etc. decreased by 11 percentage points. The proportion of people who do not tend to engage in creative activities in everyday life has increased by 15 percentage points. The proportion of people experiencing remorse in the case of committing certain immoral acts (deception, rudeness, injustice, etc.) decreased by 8 percentage points. The generalization of expert assessments given in the article indicates that the cause of negative trends is largely the ideology of liberalism, which is based on the ideas of consumerism and money as the leading values in life, the understanding of benefit as the only driving force of social development. Special emphasis is placed on the values and behaviors of the ruling elites, who continue to adhere to the basic tenets of liberal ideology, which, in the context of the special military operation, leads to extremely negative consequences for the country and creates real threats to national security. Some of the ruling elites are still guided by liberal attitudes that contradict traditional spiritual and moral values such as justice, patriotism, and the priority of the spiritual over the material, which are contained in Presidential Decree 809 of November 9, 2022. Therefore, there is a growing need in the expert community and among the general public for a real understanding of the answer to the question “What kind of state are we building?” Our contribution lies in the analysis and interpretation of the database of sociological data accumulated from 1996 to 2024 in the context of current problems of public administration effectiveness.