Ideological Vectors and Scalars of Action for Proponents of Change

The materials of monitoring studies of the Institute of Sociology of the FNISTS RAS in recent years examine the sociopolitical (related to ideological orientations) characteristics of those Russians who are supporters of changes in the country. An analysis of the database of the all-Russian survey on a representative sample conducted in the autumn of 2018 made it possible to single out avant-garde groups (18% of the population). They desire change more than one and a half times more often than Russians in general. The strongest vector of desire for change is associated with the liberal ideologeme, which also unites around itself supporters of the socialist and (to a lesser extent) «state-owned» ideologies. Liberalism plays the role of a kind of catalyst: without its «additive», all other ideologies and their combinations, as a rule, are much weaker associated with the desire for change. The identification of vectors (ideological directions) of the desire for change is complemented by the measurement of its scalars (force). Data on the actual participation of respondents in mass actions makes it possible to distinguish the «core» of actors for change differently: this is 6% of the population who demonstrate not only an increased desire for change, but also more frequent (almost 2 times more often than other Russians) participation in mass actions for change. In this «core», the liberals prevail over the Russian nationalists, but weaker (no longer by 6 times, but less than 2 times) than in previously identified avant-garde groups. This shows that in the «core» of the actors of striving for changes to a certain extent, there is an effect of mutual neutralization of supporters of multidirectional (liberal and nationalist) changes.