Kremlin’s Latest Effort to Talk about the Future an Abject Failure, Pryanikov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Nov. 10 – Over the past week, much ink has been spilled in Moscow over a new article by Aleksandr Kharichev of the Presidential Administration which suggests that the future of Russia will be based on the family and take the form of one or another Russian novels of the past, albeit novels in his imagination with multiple possible endings.

            Kharichev’s article, “The Conception of the Primary Values, Factors and Structures of the Social-Historical Development of Russia,” Zhurnal Politicheskikh Issledovaniy 6:3 (2022), is available online at naukaru.ru/ru/nauka/article/53483/view. Among articles discussing it are vedomosti.ru/politics/articles/2022/11/07/949054-zadumalis-nad-formirovaniem-novogo-obraza-buduschego, kommersant.ru/doc/5651860 and republic.ru/posts/105978).

            Most are respectful given Kharichev’s status even if they are not enthusiastic about an article so abstruse that in the words of one commentator, Aleksandr Nazarov of Nakaune, it makes Vladislav Surkov a model of clarity (nakanune.ru/articles/119805/). And Nazarov cites another, Pavel Pryanikov who is if anything is even more savage.

            According to Pryanikov, Kharichev’s article fails to provide any image of the future at all because it doesn’t talk about “who we are, where we are going, and when we will get there.” Instead, if asserts that the family must be the basis of “a stable society” but does not address either the problems of Russian families or birthrates.

            It is a good thing that people in the Kremlin are finally trying to come up with some image of the future, the commentator says, but for it to be meaningful, any presentation has to be more specific than this both in content and time. Otherwise it is a waste of everyone’s time and effort.

            The most obvious conclusion one can draw from Kharichev’s article is that he felt he had to publish something to justify his place. He’s published something, but whether it justifies anything is very much a matter of dispute.

            Nazarov agrees. He says that “the situation is serious” and the country’s future must be discussed now, not by talk of metaphors but by discussion of real programs. As the Signals telegram channel has just pointed out, Russia needs to talk about how to avoid a new Time of Troubles or perhaps even more precisely to discuss how to get out of the one it is in.