Having Bureaucracy Come Up with an Ideology for Russia will Do More Harm than Good, Kurginyan Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 14 – Sergey Kurginyan, the leader of the Essence of the Times, says that “the current Russian bureaucracy can only create forms without any content” if it tries to draft a new ideology for the country and that such a creation will in the end do more harm than good (realtribune.ru/kak-nelzya-sozdavat-ideologiju-v-rossii).

            “Russia can’t survive without an ideology,” the political analyst says; but it will not have a successful one if the Kremlin asks the bureaucracy to prepare it. That is because “everything done in a bureaucratic manner will be destructive” as “there is nothing worse than the bureaucracy these days.”

            At present, Kurganiyan says, Ukraine has shown how the development of a genuine ideology can give a country a real boost. In fact, “Banderite ideology is Ukraine’s strongest weapon now.” Russia shouldn’t try to mirror that, but Moscow must recognize how powerful an ideology can be and how it must be developed in a non-bureaucratic way.

            In seeking to create a new ideology for Russia, he continues, the country “can’t go back to the time of Mikhail Suslov and hope to succeed by naming some bureaucrat to be minister for ideology.” If that were to happen, what would result would be “forms devoid of content” that would do more harm than good.

            “There is nothing more important for Russia than a vibrant ideology,” Kurginyan concludes; “and there is nothing more destructive than a bad one.”