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2017.02.002. ALEXANDER FIRSOV. SPECIAL FEATURES OF MAINTAINING POLITICAL STABILITY IN MODERN RUSSIA //
"Vestnik rossiiskoi natsii", Moscow, 2016, № 5, P. 224-235.
Keywords: modern Russia, political stability, color revolutions, national interests and priorities.
Alexander Firsov,
expert of All-Russian union of civil unions «Russian nation»
The article deals with the main problematic aspects and mechanisms of maintaining political stability in modern Russia. Special attention is paid to countering "color revolutions", technologies of destabilization of political regimes.
If we turn to the experience of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, we can see the following trend: as long as the state was tightly keeping control over the political situation - whether it were the secret political police of the tsarist regime or the NKVD in the Soviet times - the country experienced relative political stability, which, with tightening of the state control over dissidents, transformed into stagnation of the political system. Next followed short periods of half-liberal reforms, causing destabilization and collapse of the ruling regime - both in the case of Tsarist Russia, and in the case of the collapse of the Soviet Union. When the authorities tried to switch over to the adaptation model the result was a crash of the whole political system. In the opinion of A. Firsov, this experience shows that an abrupt transition from the conservative model of suggestive nature to the adaptation model, characteristic of liberal democracy, is impossible.
Examples of protest activity in the United States and the EU countries show that the more rooted the adaptation model and the liberal-democratic, interactive type of relationship between government and society are, the more outrage and protest activity is caused by the government's attempt to "put things
right" by traditional power methods. Thus, the author concludes, the more mature the institute of civil society is (in the presence of human rights organizations), the harder and more painful for the political system the transition from the adaptation model to the conservative one will be. Accordingly, in the countries where civil society is still weak or is only in an embryonic stage of its formation, it is easier for the state to respond to external and internal challenges within the frames of the conservative model.
In relation to the Russian practice, one should also take into account the general level of political culture of the population, political and legal literacy, as well as national socio-cultural features. If we consider the examples of Tsarist and Soviet Russia, as well as those of the current political situation, it will be safe to say that the basis of legitimacy of power, its very nature in the Russian political practice is a deep tradition - personalized perception of the power by the society. Many researchers are convinced that the Russian people from time immemorial needs a strong political leader, directly associated with the state itself, and the punitive function of the state and strict control over dissent within the country are perceived as the only true way of control and are identified with the political one. However, repressions and stability are the concepts by far not identical, and it requires considerable statecraft to find that fine line that divides control over the political situation from a totalitarian political regime. Consequently, it is the state that bears the responsibility for identifying the threats and challenges that can really threaten political stability.
Currently, the Russian government seeks to harmonize control and "manual" management. However, the liberal expert community constantly feels oppressed due to the fact that the government follows its own principles and its own understanding of the current political processes in Russia. It should be added that a developed civil society in Russia is not formed at the moment due to the peculiarities of the national mentality that gives ample opportunities from the point of view of the use of force to ensure
national security in the country. Timely response to emerging socio-economic challenges completely meets interests of the Russian society, which as the author writes, seeks neither to protest actions nor to active expression of political positions. Moreover, Russian society has for centuries found it more comfortable to build relationships with the government on the basis of obedience, not a dialogue. As soon as the state (be it Tsarist or Soviet power) tries to establish such a dialogue through creation of new channels and institutions for bilateral communication, the situation immediately goes out of control, because the extremist forces regard such steps as weakness of the state and begin to demonstrate activity for the conquest of power (in fact, that was how the Bolsheviks came to power).
In the history of the Russian state since the moment of its formation, the national security has been viewed as a system of guarantees for the territorial integrity, sovereignty and national interests based on power methods of political stability. However, in the modern world there have emerged new, sometimes unpredictable factors of destabilization. These include, in particular, the problem of the so-called "color revolutions" and the technologies of their remote implementation. If we consider the notion of "color revolution", it usually refers to the technologies of implementation of government coups and subsequent external control of the political situation in the country in the framework of artificially created political instability. In this case external pressure over the government is exercised through political blackmail with the use of protest potential of the youth movement.
The object of a "color revolution" is not lobbying for the interests of a specific social group or the population in general, but actually the power, in this case the subject of "color revolution" is precisely the political regime, and overthrowing of this regime is the ultimate aim of all the actions. Researchers identify the existence of a specially organized (under a special network form) youth protest movement as favorable conditions
for the implementation of "color revolutions". Another feature of a "color revolution" is, according to the author, the lack of proper revolutionary ideology of the masses of protesters. This is due to the fact that the Anglo-Saxon political strategists almost always ignore the specifics of the mentality of the population in the country where the "color revolution" is conducted. In this context, it would be extremely difficult for the Anglo-Saxon strategists to organize protest activity with the large-scale mobilization of the masses due to the fact that the majority of the Russian population is accustomed to clear ideological assumptions in the protest actions. In this regard, it seems also necessary to establish a unified state political ideology and form up national mass culture so that the state ideological attitudes were a priority over external influences on mass consciousness.
Author of the abstract - V. Schensnovich
2017.02.003. ALEXANDER KOCHETKOV. SPECIFIC FEATURES OF THE FORMATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE POLITICAL CLASS OF MODERN RUSSIA // "Vlast", Moscow, 2017, № 1, P. 12-18.
Keywords: political class, political elite, bureaucracy, political consultants, political technologists, political journalists, political experts, political lobbyists, party functionaries.
Alexander Kochetkov,
Dr.Sc. (Philosophy), professor, Moscow State University
The author examines the structure of the political class of Russia and the role and influence of the main groups of the Russian political class on the modern political process. The nucleus of the political class is the political elite - a special social section, which takes the crucial strategic decisions. It wields
