Russian Cultural Policy: Goal-Setting and Outcomes

The article explores the challenges of goal-setting and performance measurement in strategic planning and program-based management in Russian cultural sector. It reviews the shifting definitions and target values of attendance-related KPIs for public demand between 2005 and 2025. While previous academic work has addressed certain aspects of goal-setting in Russian cultural policy, no comprehensive analysis has yet traced the trajectories of indicators that define normative demand for cultural goods. The methodological framework combines three elements: a substantive analysis of strategic and programmatic planning documents; a comparative review of attendance-related indicators across time periods and governance levels; and a reconstruction of both planned and actual indicator values. These values are grouped into three categories: physical visits to cultural institutions, attendance at events, and access to digital resources. The findings reveal that frequent revisions of target metrics, the lack of a unified calculation methodology, and the substitution of strategic goals with operational indicators disrupt the logic of strategic planning and complicate the analysis of long-term sectoral trends. Moreover, the practice of setting unrealistically high targets often leads to failure in achieving stated goals. Together, these factors formalize performance evaluation and distort the real priorities of public cultural policy, ultimately undermining the quality of public administration.