The president called on the officials of all levels to “stop fooling around”

Recently, it has become a frequent practice to broadcast live meetings of the President with members of the RF Government. Thus, people have an opportunity to see in an online format the joint work of the head of state and members of the Cabinet of Ministers: how prepared they are for a particular meeting, how they communicate, what questions are being asked, how clear the wording of the tasks is, what the situation regarding deadlines is, etc. On the other hand, people can see for themselves how officials behave and what level of responsibility they demonstrate when it comes to the fulfillment of the tasks set by the President.

January 11, 2023, one of such meetings of the President with members of the Government took place, and it was broadcast live by Rossiya 24 TV channel. The agenda of the meeting, as Vladimir Putin himself indicated, was “social support measures in the new regions – arranging the payment of all social benefits to the local population”. However, apparently, after a preliminary conversation with enterprises’ directors, the first question of the President was: “How the instructions are being carried out to implement long-term programs to upgrade the aircraft fleet and the water transport fleet?”; the question was addressed to Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, Minister of Industry and Trade Denis V. Manturov.

Here is a direct excerpt from the conversation held between the President and the Deputy Prime Minister, which, in our opinion, shows all the inconsistency between the tasks clearly formulated by the head of state and the attempts the officials (of the highest rank) make to sidestep the question.

The above episode clearly shows how the President sometimes has to resist a “huge and suffocating wave of inertia” ¹ . In the words and behavior of the head of state there was a sense of accumulated emotional dissatisfaction with the fact that throughout the entire power vertical there are officials who do not understand Russia’s current situation and are often “fooling around”, finding some excuses, showing a hidden unwillingness to adapt to the demands of the time, when in the context of aggravating external threats to national security the role of clarity and efficiency in fulfilling the tasks of the President is significantly increasing.

An excerpt from the meeting of the President of the Russian Federation with Government members, January 11, 2023

Vladimir Putin: “As for today’s agenda, we agreed to focus on social support measures in the new regions – arranging the payment of all social benefits to the local population... But before we begin, I would like to ask Mr Manturov to tell us how the instructions are being carried out to implement long-term programs to upgrade the aircraft fleet and the water transport fleet. We worked on this a lot last year, and we all realize how critical these issues are, especially with regard to air transport ”.

In his report, D. Manturov pointed out that “in 2023–2025, Aeroflot will receive 63 aircraft, including 34 Superjets under the import substitution project, 18 MC-21 and 11 Tu-214 aircraft... separate passports will be approved this year under orders placed by other airlines to ensure the implementation of a comprehensive program for developing the aviation industry... Our shipyards plan to build 260 civilian vessels in 2023–2027... Overall, the program for upgrading the civilian fleet has been drawn up for 231 billion rubles”.

D. Manturov ended his report by clarifying the tasks at hand: “Today, the key task it to rapidly approve the investment project passport. We are ready to submit it to the Government and hope that my colleagues will quickly resolve procedural issues, which will allow us to start financing in this quarter as you, Mr President, have instructed us...”

Vladimir Putin: “Mr Manturov, as long as there are no manufacturer’s specifications (passports), as you mentioned yourself, and companies do not have those, just like they have no contracts, there is no understanding of what they will do or what they need to do. It is taking too long. Please, I ask you to speed up this process. Enterprises do not have contracts for 2023, what can I say to that? As you said, there are no manufacturer’s specifications. When will they be ready? And there are no contracts yet”.

Denis Manturov: “Here is the instruction, Mr President. We have the contracts, as I reported, from the Defense Ministry, from the civilian customers, the State Transport Leasing Company and other leasing companies – this is in terms of helicopters. And we have all the plans drawn up for aircraft. They take into account the technical trials, certification and import substitution programs – the Superjet and MC-21. Everything has been fully drawn up”.

Vladimir Putin: “Mr Manturov, you say everything is ready to go, but there are no contracts. This is what I am telling you. Let’s discuss this after the meeting. There is no point in our splitting hairs at this point. I know no contracts have been signed with the enterprises, the directors told me so. What are you fooling around for? When will the contracts be signed? This is my point. Directors of enterprises are telling me there are no contracts while you are telling me that everything is ready to go. When will the passports be available? When will the contracts be signed? These are the questions I need answers to”.

Denis Manturov: “With regard to the aircraft passport which I just reported on, the instruction was issued strictly in accordance with the task that you set. Other passports will be ready during this quarter based on the funds available under the budget, including under the preferential National Welfare Fund program”.

Vladimir Putin: “I want all of this to be done within a month. What quarter are you talking about? Do we not understand the circumstances we are in? Please complete this work within a month. Okay?”

Denis Manturov: “We will try to do our best with our colleagues from the economic bloc. Thank you”.

Vladimir Putin: “No, do not try to do your best; please get it done in a month. It must be done in a month, no later. Agreed?”

Denis Manturov: “Yes”².

Russia’s current situation represents a culmination of the country’s long-term struggle to preserve its national sovereignty, which began in 2007 , after the President declared at the international level that Russia was not going to change the traditions of pursuing an independent foreign policy.

“Russia is a country with a history that spans more than a thousand years and has practically always used the privilege to carry out an independent foreign policy. We are not going to change this tradition today”3.

The long way toward the beginning of the special military operation (SMO) was marked by the year 2014, when, following a coup d’etat in Ukraine, the Collective West began working methodically on the implementation of its “antiRussia” project, including eight years of Donbass shelling.

Vladimir Putin has taken a number of effective steps to prepare the country (society, public administration system) for the potential possibility of the worst-case and quite likely scenario for the development of relations with the Collective West:

V March 21, 2014 — the Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol were admitted to the Russian Federation ⁴ ;

V January 15, 2020 – an initiative to amend the RF Constitution was introduced ⁵ (amendments were aimed at strengthening traditional spiritual and moral values and organizational foundations of the public administration system);

V June 4, 2021 — Presidential Decree banning extremist organizations from participating in elections ⁶ (which brought to nought the activities of Navalny’s headquarters*);

V July 2, 2021 – a new National Security Strategy was signed (according to experts, the system of national values, moral and spiritual values was for the first time “prominently marked ... a separate priority was given to “ideological leadership, which is necessary in the world” ⁷ );

V December 15, 2021, during a meeting at the Russian Foreign Ministry, the U.S. party received drafts of the treaty between the Russian Federation and the United States of America on security guarantees and the agreement on security measures for the Russian Federation and the member States of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization ⁸ .

This agreement included Russia’s demand that NATO “shall not deploy military forces and weaponry on the territory of any of the other States in Europe in addition to the forces stationed on that territory as of 27 May 1997”; “shall refrain from any further enlargement of NATO, including the accession of Ukraine”; “shall not conduct any military activity on the territory of Ukraine as well as other States in the Eastern Europe, in the South Caucasus and in Central Asia”.

Main provision of the agreement on measures to ensure the security of the Russian Federation and member States of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization ⁹:

• •    Article 4. “The Russian Federation and all the Parties that were member States of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as of 27 May 1997, respectively, shall not deploy military forces and weaponry on the territory of any of the other States in Europe in addition to the forces stationed on that territory as of 27 May 1997 ”.

• •    Article 5. “The Parties shall not deploy landbased intermediate- and short-range missiles in areas allowing them to reach the territory of the other Parties”.

• •    Article 6. “All member States of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization commit themselves to refrain from any further enlargement of NATO, including the accession of Ukraine as well as other States ”.

• •    Article 7. “The Parties that are member States of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization shall not conduct any military activity on the territory of Ukraine as well as other States in the Eastern Europe, in the South Caucasus and in Central Asia ”.

“In December 2021, we officially submitted draft agreements on security guarantees to the USA and NATO. In essence, all key, fundamental points were rejected. After that it finally became clear that the go-ahead for the implementation of aggressive plans had been given and they were not going to stop ”¹⁰.

However, all these demands made by Russia were ignored. January 26, 2022 , U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken stated that “the U.S. will continue to uphold the principle of “open doors” in NATO” ¹¹ ; moreover, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg noted: “We will not compromise on the core principles on which our security has been based for decades” ¹² . In fact, this meant NATO has rejected the basic requirements of security guarantees that Russia insisted on complying with.

After that, it became clear that the RF President had “no other option for defending Russia and our people” ¹³ , except to announce the recognition of the independence of the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics on February 21, 2022 , and the launch of a special military operation (SMO) on February 24, 2022 in order to “protect people who, for eight years now, have been facing humiliation and genocide perpetrated by the Kiev regime” ¹⁴ .

After February 24, 2022, it became clear that a return to the former relations between Russia and the Collective West was simply impossible. The Rubicon has been passed, and then Russia has no other choice but to realize its designated goals. This has become a matter of not just a struggle for sovereignty, but a struggle for existence, “for Russia’s right to be on the political map of the world ” ¹⁵ .

“The Western elite make no secret of their goal, which is, I quote, ‘Russia’s strategic defeat’… This means they plan to finish us once and for all” ¹⁶ .

According to the philosopher, political scientist, and public figure A. Dugin, the beginning of the SMO “became the culmination of modern Russia; we entered the war with the West, or rather, we admitted openly and honestly that the war is already underway and realized the scale of the fundamental confrontation... the president and the state did what was vital, what we should have done a long time ago, and when we didn’t, we only made the situation worse” ¹⁸ .

And despite numerous public assurances by senior NATO officials that “we are not going to get involved in World War III ... directly getting involved in the conflict” ¹⁹ , “neither NATO nor NATO allies are part of the conflict” ²⁰ , it was obvious to Russia that this was just “forgery, fraud and distortion of the truth”.

Today, when exactly a year has passed since the start of the SMO, there is no longer any doubt about the fact that, essentially, was obvious from the very beginning: the conflict that Russia has entered into is not local, but global, civilizational; and our country’s opponent in this confrontation is not only the current Kiev regime, but, first of all, the NATO bloc, the so-called “Collective West”, which publicly declares that Russia “must be eliminated” and that “free and independent states must be created in the post-Russian space” ¹⁷ .

Behind our backs, a very different plan was being hatched. As we can see now, the promises of Western leaders, their assurances that they were striving for peace in Donbass turned out to be a sham and outright lies… Now they admit this publicly and openly, and they feel no shame about it” ²¹.

M. Zakharova: “From the point of view of the West, it was all just a fabrication in order to pump up the Kiev regime with weapons, to prepare politically to start the very fighting that we saw at the beginning of 2022, when the Kiev regime began to inflict deadly strikes on Donbass. This confession of Chancellor Merkel, former Chancellor Merkel, has a terrible message: the West is using forgery, machinations, manipulations, all kinds of distortions of the truth and law that can only be imagined. Even then, in 2015, during many hours of negotiations, they already knew that they would never fulfill their promises and that they would pump the Kiev regime with weapons”²².

S. Glazyev: “The Germans remember that it took eight years for the formation of the Hitler regime and the militarization of Germany, its preparation for war. They, along with their patrons, have now applied this experience in Ukraine. All we are left to do is wonder at our own naïveté and complain that they have deceived us again ”²³.

E. Satanovsky: “... From the very beginning, no one intended to implement the Minsk Agreements, and their only goal was to save Ukraine from military defeat, to gain time to gather forces against Russia in the North Atlantic Alliance itself... and in general, to get prepared for the complete and final destruction of our country...” ²⁴

The 12 months of the SMO have shown that both geopolitical adversaries (Russia and the countries of the Collective West, led by the United States) underestimated each other’s capabilities in some aspects. Thus, despite an unprecedented scale of the sanctions attack by NATO countries on the Russian economy, they have not been able to carry out the “sanctions blitzkrieg”; the RF President points out publicly and regularly when he gives an open assessment of the state of the Russian economy: “The idea was clear as day – they expected to suddenly and violently crush the Russian economy..., but this blitzkrieg did not happen... Everything is working, everything is functioning, everything is stable” ( Insert 1 ).

As for Russia, the deep internal consequences of the country’s existence in a “viscous, enveloping liberal fog”, which we wrote about five years ago in the article “One Year Left before the Fourth Presidential Term”, were underestimated: “The general conclusion regarding the most probable future of the Russian society can be expressed in one sentence – ‘it is in a fog’ . It is hard to disagree with such expert evaluation of the present and the future of the Russian society taking into account the economic and social policy pursued by the ruling elites and ineffective for large parts of the population, the policy leading to the decrease in the standard of living and quality of life as a result of reforms in education, healthcare and housing” ²⁵ .

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A concrete fact (example) of “liberal fog”

Norilsk Nickel is Potanin’s main asset, which he received in the mid-1990s as a result of the operation “collateral auction”... Yeltsin’s team estimated the plant at 170 million USD. The price of the plant was underestimated by at least an order of magnitude. In just one difficult year of 1995, Norilsk Nickel received a net profit of about 730 million – more than 4-fold exceeding the total value of the controlling stake of the plant. “It was in fact a deal to alienate state property into the hands of the friends of the current government...”, – says Yuri Boldyrev, deputy chairman of the Accounts Chamber of the Russian Federation in 1996–2003.

What was the fate of Norilsk Nickel after the plant has found a new owner? The enterprise began to be “squeezed like a lemon”. Norilsk, whose infrastructure was on the balance sheet of the plant, also began to degrade. A lot has been written about this in recent years. And one of the consequences of degradation was a large-scale environmental disaster. It occurred on May 29, 2020...

The amount of dividends paid to Norilsk Nickel shareholders significantly exceeds the volume of capital investments in the company’s fixed assets. Over the five-year period, the total amount of dividends paid amounted to 903 billion rubles , and capital investments – 518 billion rubles . The amount of dividends is comparable to the budget of Krasnoyarsk Krai, whose population is almost three million people and whose area is larger than the territories of many European states. The amount of dividends paid to Norilsk Nickel shareholders in 2015, 2017 and 2018 even exceeded the amount of net profit ”³³.

“Norilsk Nickel is not an exception:

According to open source data, capital investments of the Novolipetsk Steel (beneficiary – Vladimir Lisin) for 2017–2021 amounted to 318.8 billion rubles . And the dividend payments for the same period amounted to 662.2 billion rubles, that is, more than twice as much.

Another example is PJSC Severstal (beneficiary – Aleksey Mordashov). In 2017–2021, capital investments amounted to 333.4 billion rubles , dividend payments – to 603.3 billion rubles ”³⁴.

One concrete example of the implications of this “liberal fog” can be found in the development of the mining and metallurgical company Norilsk Nickel, which (as experts note) was “squeezed like a lemon”, which eventually led to a large-scale environmental disaster.

After the RF President’s decision to begin the SMO (February 24, 2022) the external “fog” largely dissipated: it became clear who is Russia’s friend and who is its enemy; which way the country should go, and which way it should avoid... The head of state very accurately felt and formulated the opinion of the majority of the Russian population when he noted that “not a single ordinary citizen in our country felt sorry for those who lost their assets in foreign banks, lost their yachts or palaces abroad, and so on. In their conversations around the kitchen table, people have all recalled the privatization of the 1990s, when enterprises that had been built by our entire nation were sold for next to nothing and the so-called new elites flaunted their lavish lifestyle”35.

But the internal “fog” that is contained in specific people at all levels of government, “at the helm” of the economy, business, and culture, is still very dense. In this sense, the task of the President to form an understandable image of the future of Russia and the system of public administration, which is based on social justice, remains unresolved .

The specific feature of the current situation in Russia is also connected with the fact that there is a little more than a year left before the presidential election. We recall that the election of the head of state (according to the current electoral legislation ³⁶ ) are to be held on March 17, 2024. Head of the Federation Council Commission for the Protection of State Sovereignty and Prevention of Interference in the Internal Affairs of Russia A. Klimov pointed out that “the West will try to destabilize the presidential election in 2024, using a special operation as a pretext for interference in our internal affairs” ³⁷ .

Taking into account the nature of the current international situation and relying on expert opinion and the results of mass sociological surveys, we can state the following.

First, the upcoming 2024 presidential election has not only internal, but also external (global, international) significance , because over the past 22 years Russia under Vladimir Putin’s leadership has been a subject that really opposes the “distortion of the world order caused by the so-called unipolar agenda and the suppression of the world by Western domination for at least three centuries” ³⁸ .

Second, there is every reason to assume that after the election in March 2024, Vladimir Putin will serve his fifth presidential term, which means that the line of further severing the ties between Russia and the West will continue. Some experts,

“After the start of the special operation, according to the idea of the Americans, our country was supposed to be overwhelmed by anti-war rallies... however, the special operation in Ukraine, instead of a split and protest sentiments, only united our society even more... It is obvious that the anti-Russian strategy of the Collective West has failed. At the same time, the main miscalculation of the Americans was that they did not take into account our mentality ”³⁹.

emphasizing the importance and necessity of Vladimir Putin’s new presidential term, say that “now it is quite obvious there is no one to replace the current President ⁴⁰ .

The most important point is that the trust of Russian society in the current President (ultimately, the decisive factor on which the results of any vote depend) has been strengthening over the years.

In this sense, the Collective West has clearly underestimated the mental features of Russian society as “an integral characteristic of the people living in a particular culture, with their special way of perceiving the world, way of thinking, hierarchy of life values, forms of everyday and social behavior” ⁴¹ . Back in 2016, Vladimir Putin noted: “In the mentality, in the soul of a Russian person, there is always a desire for some high moral ideal, for some high moral values” ⁴² .

The results of a public opinion monitoring conducted by VolRC RAS show that in response to the aggravation of threats to national security, society is consolidating around patriotic values and the head of state. In the conditions of the SMO, on average, in 2022, compared with 2021, the level of popular trust in Vladimir Putin has increased significantly (by 7 p.p., from 49 to 56%; Insert 2). In addition, the level of trust in the RF Government of the Russian Federation has increased significantly as well (by 6 p.p., from 40 to 46%), the level of trust in the Federation Council also increased (by 5 p.p., from 30 to 35%), as well as the level of trust the majority (16 out of 21) of key governmental and non-governmental institutions in general (Tab. 1).

Table 1. Governmental and non-governmental institutions that citizens of the Russian Federation began to trust more often in 2021–2022, %*

Group of institutions	List of institutions
Institutions, the trust in which has increased by 11% or more	1.    RF President 2.    RF Government 3.    Federation Council 4.    State Duma 5.    Local self-government bodies 6.    RF Civic Chamber 7.    Vologda Oblast Civic Chamber
Institutions, the trust in which has increased by 6–9%	1.    Prosecutor's Office 2.    FSB 3.    Non-governmental organizations 4.    Directors, heads of enterprises 5. Banking, buisness circles
Institutions, the trust in which has increased by 5% and less	1.    Court 2.    Oblast government 3.    Mass media 4.    Political parties, movements
Total: 16 institutions
* Detailed data are provided in Insert 2.

“Many people believe that the aggravation of relations between Russia and the countries of the Western world occurred after the famous speech of Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Munich Security Conference in 2007. However, this is not the case... The West realized even earlier that “he is a real Russian patriot” who will not grovel either to the United States or to Europe. This was the reason why they don’t like Putin ”⁴³.

Thus, the data of sociological surveys and expert opinions indicate a high degree of probability of Vladimir Putin becoming President for the fifth term, and this can in no way suit the political elite of the Collective West, which has been at war with him personally for many years and with the direction in which Russia is developing under his leadership . That is why, in the period remaining before the presidential election in Russia, NATO countries can undertake certain steps that will lead to an escalation of hostilities during the SMO, and an increase in social tension within Russia.

In such circumstances, it is obvious that in the next 12 months the President will have to make the necessary decisions related to improving the country’s defense capability; strengthening discipline (primarily in implementing the priority needs of the armed forces); ensuring the functioning of the Russian economy in the new realities of international relations that have changed since February 24, 2022; maintaining the standard of living and quality of live of the broad strata of population and social protection of certain categories of citizens; improving the functioning of the information and cultural space, which is acquiring a particularly important role in the context of the SMO.

“Gradually, Russian people come to understand that there will be no former world: its internal content is deformed, the former structure of the economy is changing. The war forces us to re-adjust comprehensively and in everything ”⁴⁴.

At the same time, it is very important how these forced decisions will be perceived by society. The results of 2022 showed that the resource of public trust in the President is significant. Not only public rhetoric, but also specific decisions of the head of state are aimed at the realization of national interests and fully correspond to the nature of the present time ( Insert 3 ).

Insert 2

Insert 3

⁴⁵ The Insert presents a continuation of the monitoring of management decisions of the authorities, which we started in the article: Ilyin V.A., Morev M.V. (2022). A difficult road after the Rubicon. Economic and Social Changes: Facts, Trends, Forecast , 15(3), 29–32.

Continuation of Insert 3

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But, as the President himself noted during his first inauguration on May 7, 2000, “ in Russia the head of state has always been and will always be the person who is responsible for everything in the country” ⁴⁶ .

And in this sense, there exists a “weak spot” for the resource of public trust in the state and the authorities, since the legitimacy of any government is determined primarily by how much the public rhetoric of its representatives does not diverge from what is being actually done .

The fact is that some representatives of the power vertical, when implementing a number of decisions visible to the general public (through the media, social networks, personal experience), contradict Russia’s goals in the global conflict with the West and thus discredit themselves, demonstrating their unwillingness to conform to the contours of a new Social Contract being formed in the country. And, no less important, they discredit the entire system of public administration, showing that they are simply “out of place”, and often it is an important place that requires quick and specific management decisions to implement the tasks set by the President.

Concrete examples of managerial decisions and actions of officials, which sometimes represent “incredibly dangerous duality”, sometimes purposeful “destructive work”, and sometimes are “the pinnacle of cynicism and inhumanity” and thus “discredit the authorities”, “undermine trust in the state”, create conditions for “internal protest in society”, are presented in Insert 4.

“In modern Russia, the part of the elite that was historically formed as a class of preferential trade and a “big grab” remains such to this day and is not motivated for pro-national changes.

A significant part of Russian business representatives seek to leave Russia, restructure their companies taking into account the sanctions imposed on the Russian Federation, save or withdraw their assets abroad. A significant part of the bureaucracy is also paralyzed ”⁴⁷.

For example, in his program “Besogon”, the film director Nikita Mikhalkov, who holds an active pro-governmental position, regularly raises the question of contradictory and ambiguous statements by Dmitry Peskov, Spokesperson for the RF President (in particular, about Russians who left the country), as well as about the “destructive work ..., the underlying provocative imposition of the idea of dismemberment of Russia”, which is conducted by the Yeltsin Center. Over the past 17 episodes (starting with the emergency issue of March 5, 2022, which became the first one after the start of the SMO) Mikhalkov has quoted Peskov five times ⁴⁸ and spoke about the activities of the Yeltsin Center three times ⁴⁹ ; but so far nothing has changed in real life.

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Such facts suggest that many officials still hope that “it will be possible to return everything as it was, at least in some form … Such sentiments exist both in the business elite and among officials (especially the corrupt rent beneficiaries)” ⁵⁶ . But, as experts note, “in order to be adequate to the modern world and, most importantly, to serve Russia, we must try to make a moral choice even in the current difficult circumstances... the only way to live a decent life is to live in accordance with the principles of social justice ” ⁵⁷ .

Social justice is the cornerstone that unites Russian society. The majority of citizens have been experiencing the need for social justice for many years. Over the past seven years (from 2015 to 2022), the share of people who consider modern Russian society unjust has increased by 9 percentage points (from 51 to 60%), and it is observed in most (13 out of 14) socio-demographic groups ( Insert 5; Tab. 2 ).

It is for a reason that justice (in fact, as an indicator of the effectiveness of public admini- stration) was included in the list of traditional Russian values, which were legislated by the RF President in November 2022 and which are “the basis of Russian society”, “moral guidelines that form the worldview of Russian citizens”58. But making this principle dominant among officials at all levels of government is a difficult task, designed for a long-term perspective. And in order to address this task, first of all it is necessary to achieve victory in the SMO.

“Traditional values include life, dignity, human rights and freedoms, patriotism, citizenship, service to the Fatherland and responsibility for its fate, high moral ideals, strong family, creative work, priority of the spiritual over the material, humanism, mercy, justice , collectivism, mutual assistance and mutual respect, historical memory and continuity of generations, unity of peoples Russia”⁵⁹.

Table 2. Categories of population groups in which the sense of injustice of society increased for the period from 2015 to 2022, %*

Categories of population groups	Population groups
Categories in which the sense of injustice of society has increased by 20% or more	1.    Men 2.    Persons under the age of 30 3.    People with secondary and incomplete secondary education 4.    20% of the least well-off 5.    Residents of districts
Categories in which the sense of injustice of society has increased by 11–19%	1.    Women 2.    Persons aged 30–55 3.    People with secondary vocational education 4.    60% of the middle-income people
Categories in which the sense of injustice of society has increased by 10% and less	1.    Persons over 55 years of age 2.    People with higher and incomplete higher education 3.    20% of the most affluent 4.    Residents of Vologda
Total: 13 population groups
* Detailed data are provided in Insert 5.

56 Chadaev A. Fear of victory and hope of defeat. On the sentiments of a significant part of the Russian elite. Available at:

57 Fursov A. How to survive in the 21st century. Available at:

58 Presidential Decree 809, “On approval of the foundations of state policy for the preservation and strengthening of traditional Russian spiritual and moral values”, dated November 9, 2022.

59 Ibidem.

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Thus, according to the data presented in Insert 5 , since 2015 the proportion of people who consider modern Russian society unjust has been increasing in almost all major segments, and if society does not see justice from the state, more precisely, it sees that “justice is not for everyone”, then the legitimacy (trust) of the authorities is under threat.

“ We proclaim that we are fighting for justice, but our society lacks it so much that the hair stands on end. We talk about honesty and purity, and our heroes, our people, our church, our history, our identity really embody honesty and purity, but our ruling class does not meet these criteria in any way...

We see a president who fights almost alone, there is a group of people who support him politically, there are people who are ready to rise up and wake up to save Russia. But a huge suffocating wave of inertia does not allow us to recover”60.

Therefore, a protective mechanism should be laid down in a new Social Contract, which protects the statehood as much as possible from managerial personnel who put their personal interests above the interests of national security and national development . In order not to lose the resource of public trust, it is necessary to make people clearly aware of the direction in which we are moving and the state we are building . And this cannot be done without the appropriate focus of managerial personnel. According to experts, “ the task of modernizing the personnel policy is now super-urgent ” ⁶¹ .

We cannot but agree with such a statement and we are aware of the urgency of the task of the “personnel revolution from above”: “... we need not only a strong, powerful, modern army... we need a completely different state ” ⁶² . A state in which all elements of the ruling hierarchy are aimed at the realization of national interests and in which the actual deeds of officials do not diverge from the tasks formulated by the President.

“...now the main task is how to implement personnel changes, that is, how to push the elite clans away from power and systematically replace incompetent officials or agents of Western influence with competent and patriotic professionals... The existing clan elite in Russia is not voluntarily transformable, evolutionarily transformable... the issues of inefficiency of the society’s management system can be peacefully resolved by a personnel revolution from above (i.e. a new personnel policy) followed by political reform...

If Putin wants to and will act wisely and cunningly, decisively and consistently, then he may well rein in all the oligarchic clans without demolishing the entire power system” ⁶³.

It is unacceptable to continue “fooling around” even in peacetime, because it slows down the process of national development and aggravates the internal situation in the country. But in today’s conditions, when the “war is no longer hybrid, but almost real” ⁶⁴ , this is simply unacceptable, because it poses a threat to the very existence of Russia.

According to experts, “ it is impossible to fight by half... When we fight by half and not completely, then we lose. We actually win only the patriotic wars when the whole people are engaged, the whole state is engaged, when everything is for the front, everything is for victory, when there is not a single element in the state, in society, that is not included in the system of struggle for victory” ⁶⁵ . Only under these conditions can victory be won. And only after the victory will it be possible to talk about the real formation of a new Social Contract in Russia.

Perhaps we can agree with one of the expert opinions expressed by V.A. Lepekhin, Russian sociologist, political scientist, director of the Institute for the Study of Development Problems of the Eurasian Economic Union; he gave a concise assessment of the prevailing social sentiments in society: “What is the way out? And what do we see as guarantees of Russia’s victory in another clash with the West and serious systemic problems within the country?.. If we try to build an algorithm for the way out, it should look like this: “From the mobilization of elites to economic modernization, and further on to a solidary state”... The head of state in modern Russia can be the subject of positive changes. Actually, this is exactly what the majority of the country’s citizens expect from the President of Russia: they expect wise and effective decisions. But whether there will be a harsh purge of the elites, a change in the economic model, and when this will happen, we do not know yet”66.