Russian State Authority is ‘Sacred’ and the Duty of Russians is to Obey, Kremlin Aide Says

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Apr. 18 – A senior Kremlin aide has now openly declared what it is obvious Putin believes. According to Aleksandr Kharichev, Russian state authority is “sacred” and the duty of Russians is to obey up to and including the sacrifice of their lives in order to support its existence.

    Kharichev, head of the Presidential Administration team responsible for monitoring social trends but someone who has written frequently about ideological questions in support of Kremlin candidates in election, makes this declaration in a special policy essay for the government’s Civil Enlightenment Bulletin.

    His words have been picked up by various Moscow outlets where they have been described as the basis for the development of a full-blown Putinist ideology and even as “a blueprint for the construction of Putinism” (meduza.io/feature/2025/04/18/sotrudnik-ap-aleksandr-harichev-napisal-statyu-kotoraya-vyglyadit-kak-instruktsiya-dlya-stroitelya-putinizma).

    On the one hand, Kharichev’s words are no surprise. They represent a pastiche of arguments drawn from Putin himself and writers like Lev Gumilyev and only make explicit what these have implied. But on the other, his saying them now suggests that the Kremlin has decided that it is time to create an explicit ideological foundation for Putin’s system.

    In his essay, Kharichev “pits rationalism against faith, legal formalism against truth, and individualism against the family” to argue that “Russians should rely on faith, truth and family values rather than rationality, law, and individual rights, values that set Russia at odds with the West, a Meduza commentator says.

    “Living by these principles,” this commentator says, “Russia finds itself threatened by ‘the transhumanist and post-humanist ideologies’ that Western countries seek to impose on it,” with the aim of “sowing divisions and fracturing society.” Only by promoting traditional values and duty-bound patriotism can those efforts be countered.