Sovereignty in the perception of the Russian civil society: A sociological dimension

The article considers a new period in the life of the Russian society and the state - the rejection of the comprador model of governance and the transition to a strategy of sovereign development. For the Russian society, sovereignty ensures not only external and internal independence but also a cognitive breakdown of the entire system of views, ideas and illusions about the possibility of the Russian civilization to become a part of the West. This is a complex and painful process affecting the interests of different social groups and accompanied by a clash of positions in the economy, public administration, science, education, culture and information environment. The watershed between ideological positions regarding the sovereignty of the Russian statehood runs along the line of refusal to follow Western concepts of development and the choice of traditional moral values as the ideological basis of the Russian sovereignty. The concept of sovereignty ideologically justifies the country’s development strategy. Issues of sovereignty are considered in many theoretical works, mainly revealing its role in the formation of a multipolar world order, but there are practically no empirical studies showing the nature of society’s perception of the transition from a comprador system of relations to a sovereign development model. The article is based on the results of expert surveys conducted with the participation of the author by the Institute of Socio-­Political Research of the Federal Center of Theoretical and Applied Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences. According to experts, the sovereignty of the Russian statehood needs to be strengthened at all levels: state-­political, spiritual-­ideological and economic. Many subjects of civil society still do not realize the impossibility of returning to the previous system of relations with the West and the finality of Russia’s rejection of the previously pursued Western course.