Political picture of the world in Russia’s strategic planning documents (the example of sustainable development concept)

Introduction: contemporary global political reality is difficult to describe and analyze. The civilization-wide crisis is characterized by the inability of states to engage in trusting interaction and partnership, which, in fact, negates the efforts of countries in strategic planning, nullifying concepts, strategies and programs at the very stage of development. The search for tools capable of transcribing the world turbulent processes into coordinate systems suitable for further analysis comes to the fore. In our opinion, such an analytical tool can be a political picture of the world as a high-level concept, which includes basic conceptual and orientational constructs that describe the whole set of ideas about the state’s place and its role on the world scene and vectors of its development in spatial and temporal terms. Today we are witnessing the demonstration of claims to significance and power struggles among well-known political world pictures: Western world picture, Eurasian, European, coalitional and Chinese concepts (BRICS, “One Belt, One Road”, SCO, “One Destiny for All Mankind”, etc.). A striking example is the concept of sustainable development, which is a supranational strategic document and manifests itself as a political picture of the world. Despite its universal acceptance, it has received selective implementation in national strategic norms and exemplifies scholarly debates about its source origin and affiliation with the Western model of the world order. Objectives: to analyze the place, role and functions of the political picture of the world in the system of strategic planning documents in Russia (using the concept of sustainable development as an example). Methods: historical analysis, comparative methods, content analysis. Results: structural elements of the political picture of the world are the basic general civilizational and political categories: culture, morality and law, political order, ideologies, nations, states, history, languages and so on. The sustainable development concept has structural categories like the concept of “the political picture of the world”. One should note the trend of politicization of sustainable development concept and its contradictory nature, which is manifested, on the one hand, in its universal acceptance by the world community of states, and, on the other hand, in the emerging discourse about the source origin and “dangerous” correspondence of its structural elements to the components forming national political pictures of the world, and, as a consequence, the need to adapt sustainable development goals to the peculiarities of national political pictures of the world. Conclusions: the strategic planning system and strategic policy-making institutions of Russia are picture-forming institutions, strategic planning documents contain structural elements that make up the political picture of the world. The concept of sustainable development is generally embedded in Russia’s strategic planning documents. Despite the divergence in such categories as the issues of war and peace, security, respect for sovereignty, development of ideas of justice, patriotism and volunteerism in society, the concept of sustainable development appears to be the basic core of the reviewed strategic planning documents and forms a significant part of the modern political picture of the world in Russia.