Sustainable development: the definition of the essence and quality integrity

The purpose of the article is to identify the essence of the phenomenon of sustainable and unsustainable development, as well as to determine their modified forms. The relevance of the topic is due to the dysfunctions of the current scientific and practical paradigm of sustainable development, which does not take into account all the elements of the qualitative integrity of the problem. The methodological and methodical concept of the study is characterized by both a systematic and logical-epistemological approach to the definition of the essence of sustainable and unsustainable development, the unity of qualitative and quantitative analysis, as well as the use of the methodological potential of the dialectics of “general” and “special”. Integral scientific results consist in the definition of the essence and relevant forms of sustainable and unsustainable development; in the interpretation of sustainable progressive development and the characteristic of its qualitative integrity as a “project system»; in the scientific assumption that the modern Russian civilization is in a state of unsustainable regressive development, which determines the imperative of radical political, economic and institutional innovations.