By neglecting to construct an image of the future that would provide meaning and direction to the politics of the present, both Russia and the West found themselves in a strange situation. The future, from which we and they had turned away, began to overtake us all. At least through new technologies, their influence on human life and on a great many social interactions. In essence, it was something of a trap, writes Dmitry Efremenko. The article was prepared specially for the Valdai Club roundtable titled “Homo Perplexus: How to Stop Fearing and Learn to Love Change”, which took place on June 17, 2025 in St. Petersburg.
A little more than 10 years ago, shortly before the historical events of 2014, Ivan Krastev decided to correct Francis Fukuyama and drew attention to the fact that in modern conditions, it is much more appropriate to talk not about the "end of history", but about the "end of the future". In his opinion, the future is losing its legitimising power almost everywhere; it is no longer a factor justifying a particular political and economic course. Krastev insisted on the universality of this diagnosis, but especially emphasised that Russia on the eve of 2014 corresponds to it almost to the maximum degree: “If the classical communist discourse lay on the axis between “before” and “after,” then the modern Russian political discourse lacks a time axis, everything is placed on the axis of space – between “here” and “there”.
And indeed, for a very long time, it seemed that our own image of the desired tomorrow was simply not needed in Russia; it was replaced by a comparison with a significant other - with the West, with America or Europe, and to some extent - with China.
By neglecting to construct an image of the future that would provide meaning and direction to the politics of the present, both Russia and the West found themselves in a strange situation. The future, from which we and they had turned away, began to overtake us all. At least through new technologies, their influence on human life and on a great many social interactions. In essence, it was something of a trap.
Part of the West, represented by America under Trump (even during his first presidential term, but especially actively now) tried to escape from the trap, first by defining its significant other – China – as an irreconcilable rival, and then – with the help of such technovisionaries as Elon Musk or Curtis Yarvin by trying to mobilise the image of the future they proposed (or assumed) for a political U-turn. Today we can already see that this is a very risky attempt with a completely unclear outcome.
What happened to Russia is, in a sense, even more interesting. For most of the post-Soviet period of history, the main tasks of Russian society, which was overcoming the deep trauma of the collapse of the USSR and the radical transformations of the 1990s, were survival and adaptation. The level of ambition of these tasks was initially underestimated. For a long time, the Russian government wisely agreed not to demand more from society than was necessary for adaptation, growth of well-being, maintenance of political stability and provision of an acceptable level of governance. The reduction and aging of the population contributed to a further decrease in national ambitions, but at the same time the problem of the quality of human capital and its compliance with the new structure of the economy continued to worsen, and attempts to find a way out through a steady influx of labour from the post-Soviet republics in many ways exacerbated social disproportions and gave rise to new ethno-confessional tensions. For Russia, the high level of immigration from the republics of the former Soviet Union partly weakened the acuteness of the problem of depopulation, but did not remove it.
In these conditions, it was much more comfortable not to think about the future, but to try in every possible way to preserve some semblance of social homeostasis, an acceptable level of well-being and a sense of ontological security, barely acquired in the mid-2000s. In these conditions, the preferred policy for the state authorities was not so much targeted, strategically oriented institution building, as agent manipulation, a course toward maintaining stability in manual control mode. If the international environment had remained favourable, it would have been possible to move along this inertial trajectory for quite a long time. However, the growing geopolitical competition in the post-Soviet space and attempts at internal destabilisation in the early 2010s led to an awareness of the existential nature of threats to Russia and its society.
One of the rather unexpected consequences of the events of 2014 and especially 2022 was the almost forced return to the future as something that gives meaning to the present.
Thus, Russian society and the state need to build their own project for the future, which will inevitably turn out to be very dangerous. Therefore, among the most important tasks in developing such a project should be reducing risks and - as much as possible - managing uncertainty.
It is important, however, to understand that there are no miracle or universal recipes for internal and external turbulence, for the arrival of various kinds of ‘black swans’. But there are principles - fairly well known - in accordance with which it makes sense to build the functioning and goal-setting of both the state and - as much as possible - society. Among these principles are:
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solidarity,
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justice,
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responsibility,
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security.
If we limit ourselves to brief characteristics (it is clear that each of these principles can be discussed for a very long time), then we can say the following.
Solidarity is what ensures the stability of the social order, what encourages people within a society, community or group to act together and for the benefit of each other based on common values and goals. Very often, solidarity is not limited to acting for mutual benefit. It also implies a willingness to sacrifice something for the sake of others, and an understanding that this is a sacrifice for the common good. If solidarity really becomes the basic principle of social and political structure, it means that competition of various kinds, while continuing to exist, ceases to be the dominant factor in social development. Thus, through the affirmation of a culture of social solidarity, an attempt is made to find a middle way between extreme liberalism and various excesses of collectivism. The affirmation of the principle of solidarity also implies the search for a balance between hierarchical and network-based social interactions.
Justice in this context is largely determined by solidarity. Justice not only guarantees adequate recognition of the merits of the individual, but also creates opportunities to support weak and vulnerable groups of society, which, by the way, is consistent with the completely liberal theory of justice of John Rawls. The mechanisms for ensuring this kind of justice may be different, but Social Darwinism is certainly excluded.
Responsibility is understood not only as a moral and legal principle, as adherence to duty and moral imperatives, but also as a willingness to answer for one’s actions before society, to take its interests into account, and in a broader sense, which presupposes both solidarity with future generations and mindful respect for the memory of past generations. Such a connection between the past and the future is very important.
Finally, security. Security is largely connected to the three previous principles; it is also about ensuring the conditions for their implementation in an increasingly turbulent and unpredictable world. Securitisation is a very controversial trend, but firstly, this genie left the bottle a long time ago, and secondly, given our specific circumstances, we cannot escape this genie. Security is inevitably understood very broadly - from physical security to the ontological sense, when we are already talking in many ways about actions at the level of social psychology, including the control of narratives.
We cannot claim that these principles themselves foster social harmony or that there are no contradictions between them. Contradictions will sooner or later be revealed, and at the theoretical level they can be discussed for as long as you like. At the level of practical politics, the art of governance consists in effectively combining these principles, and creating favourable conditions for the implementation of the project for the future.
But here the question arises: is the recognition of the priority of these principles a step towards a new state ideology? One can take the formal, legal path, referring to the constitutional norm prohibiting the proclamation of a state ideology. But, in the end, constitutions change, either partially (as has repeatedly happened with the 1993 constitution) or completely. What is important is that by taking certain actions in recent years, for example, insisting on the formation of a single line of textbooks on history and social studies, the state is actually moving in this direction. Although this does not yet comprise an ideology, it is at least an ideological framework behind which stand very specific values and interests.
The problem of social stress resistance makes us think about how Russian society will cope with the increasing intensity and complexity of changes in the future. One way or another, but for Russia one of the main ways to ensure relative social balance in an increasingly unstable world is to purposefully revive (partly – to form anew) the culture of solidarity, to stimulate the desire of various forces of society – from mass groups to various elites – for mutual understanding and cooperation for the sake of common security and well-being. Outside our country – in contrast to the Western “rules-based order” – this could be a call for community, joint actions based on the principle of “unity in diversity”. This could even be called a strategy of inter-civilisational solidarity, which is acceptable and understandable for the world majority, especially for the great civilisations of East and South Asia. But this, of course, is a separate topic for discussion.
