Actualization of images of the past in citizens' ideas about the future of Russia

   The article is devoted to the analysis of the results of a political and psychological study of the perception of Russian citizens of their country, conducted in the fall of 2022. The empirical basis of the study was obtained using qualitative methods: in-depth formalized interviews, incomplete sentences, projective drawing techniques. The article concludes that the image of the future of Russia is becoming clearer in the views of Russians, compared to the results obtained in previous studies, but some respondents also retain a feeling of uncertainty. Two scenarios of the country's development are revealed, positive and negative one, each of which is conditioned in the respondents' views by the events of the past, with which their consciousness draws logical analogies. The study showed that there is some consensus in the views and opinions of citizens regarding their country since the current event context stimulates less controversial assessments of historical events. The events currently taking place are interpreted by the mass consciousness as a repetition of the events of the past and allow to structure the historical memory of various strata of Russian society in a system of opposite evaluations (good-bad), leveling out the ambiguity (and at the same time irrelevance). History during periods of turbulence is perceived not only as «some-thing of the past», but also as «something that is happening now» and as «something that will be repeated in the future». The study reveals a trend of political perception demonstrating the connection between images of the past and images of the future, which we call the mechanism of the «Renaissance» construction of the image of the future, within which the perception of time by citizens acquires special features. It is suggested that the mechanism of the «Renaissance» construction of the future allows the consciousness of the respondents to get messianic ideas from the past, in the absence of unique messianic ideas in the modern communicative space, and to determine some universal, understandable guidelines for everyone to strive for now and in the future, both personally and collectively. The revealed polarity in citizens' assessments of the past, present and future of Russia, as well as the segmentation of these assessments, are determined by subjective factors of political perception: the influence of generational features of the perceiver's worldview, the individual and group social experience they have acquired.

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