Traditional Russian Values: Institutional Analysis

Abstract

The article presents the results of an institutional study of the official Russian narrative about traditional values, which is aimed at identifying the degree of their integration into the system of legal norms. Using methods of comparative legal, thesaurus and content analysis, as well as the analogy method, the author attempts to assess the optimality of the choice of traditional values in Russia from the point of view of constitutional norms and postulates of the world religions and determine to what extent these values are incorporated into the documents of political goal-setting. The author treats as traditional the values recorded in the “Fundamentals of State Policy for the Preservation and Strengthening of Traditional Russian Spiritual and Moral Values” approved by the presidential decree in 2022, and compares them with the values of the Constitution, the basic moral imperatives of Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Judaism, as well as with the values outlined in the strategic documents and national development goals of the Russian Federation. The study shows that the officially declared traditional spiritual and moral values do not fully coincide with the constitutional ones and, at the same time, are more focused on secular ethics than on the principles of the world religions. Simultaneously, the author reveals their inconsistency with the top-level goal-setting documents and national projects. According to the author, in the current conditions, such a discrepancy, which weakens the effect of a legislator’s actions, may be preferable to the consistent and systematic introduction of values with their conventionality being questionable. Revealing socially significant norms is possible only after conducting a detailed and substantive study of public opinion, longitudinal trends, political and economic processes. Otherwise, normative entrenchment can cause further polarization of the society rather than its consolidation.