The Russian State and Russian Statehood in the Whirlwinds of Ideological Transformations

Abstract

The article presents the author’s interpretation of the concepts of Russian statehood and the Russian state, the role of ideology in their development. The thesis is argued that ideology is formed on the basis of national archetypes and becomes the basis of statehood and the development of all state-legal forms. The modern state ideology of Russia is assessed as civilization-oriented. Enshrined in the Constitution of the Russian Federation in 2020, the moral imperatives based on traditional spiritual and moral values are a guarantee of Russian national identity and the basis for the constitutional and legal protection of Russia’s sovereignty. Statehood is considered as a process of self-determination of a nation developing in time and space, when, under the influence of a set of social relations, the elements are formed initially, and then the state itself. The state is an external static form of developing statehood. Based on worldview transformations, priority is given to one or another understanding of the state. With regard to the Russian state, the author characterizes the February 1917 attempt to make a parliamentary democracy out of it, assesses the failure of the Bolshevik experiment with war communism, the formation of the Soviet state and law, and the rejection of cultural and historical continuity by socialist statehood. The state of the USSR period is characterized as a natural stage in the development of Russian multinational  statehood .