State and Political Discourse in Russia

The collapse of the Soviet Union coincided with the de-legitimization of Marxism-Leninism as the primary state and political discourse in post-Soviet Russia. Nowadays, instead of forming an official and explicit ideology, the Russian political space offers a multiplicity of political discourses associated with the contemporary state and its various organs, such as: the Party, the presidential administration, the bureaucracies and media or with the different places of ideological production such as scholars, think tanks and other intellectuals revealing plurality and fluidity within their political languages. The main neo-conservative ideological constructs promoted by Moscow (its’ statism, counterrevolution and anti-‘Maidanism’, traditional values, sovereign democracy, unique civilization, nation, real Europe etc.) are apparently correllated in terms of their mutual influences, adaptations, imitations or rejections with their existing counterparts and similar notions in the West. The apparent demise of Russian notions of Liberalism; the multiplicity of ‘liberalisms’ in contemporary Russia; the influence of the Soviet experience, perestroika, the instability of the 90s, of Western thought and foreign policies on Russia’s liberal ideas and expectations; all continue to determine the role of the remaining institutions and actors promoting political, economic and constitutional liberalism, manifesting as an alternative discourse that, although weakened, is still accredited.