Russian citizens’ images of a country’s future: contents and psychological optics

Abstract

Recent changes in Russian and world politics were followed by substantial transformations of public mentality. These transformations affected not only current political perceptions, values attitudes, but also their vision of their country’s future. The article discusses Russia’s future images as it is viewed by respondents in a study, carried out by a chair of Sociology and Psychology of Politics in the end of 2023 – beginning of 2024 in 37 Russian regions. The study shows that in respondents’ concepts of Russia’s future one can trace the influence of both global and national context. The global trend influenced by a new social reality, leads to the growth of uncertainty and ambivalence of our expectations from future. Russian national trend differs from the global one. One can observe clear signs of consolidation of society, growth of optimism and decline of pessimism, though expectations of a future contain a number of ambivalent feelings. Results of the study give evidence to the fact that images of future have changes both in contents of expectations as well as in their psychological parameters.
It is noteworthy that individual future seems more positive to respondents than future of their country. That means, individualistic tendencies are predominant. We have met this tendency before. But if in 2000-s it was a sign of a drive from soviet type of collectivism, today one can tackle it as a change of citizens’ national identity. Earlier the majority of respondents identified themselves with their local community, now national-state identity dominates over a local (territorial), ethnic or religious ones.