Russian Conservatism as a Right to Justify War from the Perspective of Moral Foundations by J. Haidt and Groupthink Syndrome by I. L. Janis

In this article, the author attempts to describe something called Russian conservatism. He then considers why Russian society may succumb to such ideas, what belief in Kremlin propaganda may lead to, and whether there are grounds to believe that we already have evidence that Russian society is heading in a specific direction. The author refers here to two researchers and their understanding of group processes. The first is Jonathan Haidt, and the second is Irving L. Janis. I refer to J. Haidt because of his research on moral behavior. In his 2012 book (Haidt, 2014) – The Righteous Mind – he asks in the subtitle: Why are good people divided by religion and politics? It can be paraphrased: why are good people able to murder other good people because of religion and politics? Here, we will refer to the Kremlin’s ideology, which is conservatism in Russia, and ask ourselves: is there any counterweight to it? Then we will consider whether Russian society has really become so polarized that there is no balance between people with a conservative and, for example, liberal approach, in order to refer to I. L. Janis’s research (Janis, 1982) on group behavior, including extensive research devoted to the groupthink syndrome, to explore whether it can be assumed that this type of thinking has already occurred in Russia.