Paul Goble
Staunton, June 26 – Aleksandr Bastrykhin, the influential chairman of Russia’s Investigative Committee, has called for an all-Russian referendum to amend the constitution in order to allow for the introduction of a state ideology, something that Russia’s basic law currently forbids.
He told the St. Petersburg International Youth Legal Forum that such a step was necessary to “answer the question: ‘What are we building?’” and he pointed to the case of China which combines socialism as a basic doctrine with a market economy (kommersant.ru/doc/8777915).
While it is unlikely that the Kremlin will move in that direction anytime soon given both the looming Duma elections and the certainty that both many Russians would oppose such a step and many in the Putin elite would likely disagree over just what that ideology should consist of and how it would be imposed, this is another sign that the Kremlin is moving in this direction.
And at the same time, it is another indication of the extent to which for many in the Putin regime, China has become the model for Russia, a reversal of the pattern of earlier decades and one that at least some Russians will be angry about for that reason even if they would like to see the revival of a state ideology in Russia.
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