Post-Soviet Russia: characteristics and social and political contradictions

The paper deals with the establishment of the social and political system of the post-Soviet Russia as an ambiguous process with many divergent development trends. At the same time, the authors assume that the post-Soviet Russia has developed in the context of the contradictory and dynamic interaction of the various social and political forces pursuing their interests and fulfilling their goals and ideas. The logic of the country’s evolution becomes clear to some extent in a historical retrospective. The main purpose of the study is to understand this logic as a certain sequence and interdependence of events and facts, political processes and trends, as a common development line of the post-Soviet Russian society. An attempt is made to identify and explain the trends in the country’s evolution in the critical period of liberal market reforms. Using political science and philosophical tools, the authors analyze the direction and nature of changes in Russian social and political institutions and relations in the 1990s, consider the opportunities and conditions of further country’s development scenarios in the post-Soviet period, and learn the lessons from fundamental social transformations. In their opinion, moderate authoritarianism with the elements of illiberal democracy on the social and economic basis of state capitalism is the possible development scenario for Russia in the near future.