One of the main conclusions of the workshop is that political liberalism as an ideology and as a political thought in Russia has been largely discredited. Western countries and international organizations have probably underestimated the trauma of the collapse of the Soviet Union, which instilled in a significant part of the Russian public a distrust toward liberalism, there understood as an ideological justification to destroy the Soviet Welfare state. This disqualification of political liberalism, associated by the Russian public opinion with neoliberal economic practices responsible for huge socioeconomic inequalities, contributes largely, today, to the call within Russia for a return to a Great Power status.
We need to remember that a large part of the Russian society has been calling for Russia’s international prestige and a comeback to some Soviet practices and conservative values since the early 1990s – with the electoral successes of the Communist Party for instance – long before “greatpowerness” and conservatism became the flagship of Putin’s third mandate. Indeed, for part of the public opinion, Russia’s greatpowerness is synonym for a strong state domestically, capable of reinstating a paternalistic social-economic order.
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