The Civil Enlightenment Bulletin recently published a policy essay by Alexander Kharichev, the head of the Putin administration’s team responsible for “monitoring social trends.” In the article, which reads like a blueprint for building Putinism, Kharichev reflects on the “development of Russian civilization” and what “drives Russians.” He also introduces something new in Kremlin rhetoric: an open proclamation that Russian state authority is “sacred.” Meduza special correspondent Andrey Pertsev summarizes Kharichev’s essay and explains what it means for a senior Kremlin official to make these arguments.

Building a good Russian patriot

While Alexander Kharichev’s department in the presidential administration officially “monitors social trends,” his team’s actual work is organizing election campaigns for pro-Kremlin candidates and developing the state authorities’ ideological doctrine. Kharichev’s policy essay is billed as an “exclusive” for the Civil Enlightenment Bulletin, which is published by the Znanie Society. That organization’s supervisory board chairman is Sergey Kiriyenko — the Kremlin’s domestic policy czar, Vladimir Putin’s first deputy chief of staff, and Kharichev’s direct superior.

In his essay, Kharichev discusses Russia’s “value-based sovereignty,” which he argues should complement other types of sovereignty, from political and economic to technological. The essence of value-based sovereignty, Kharichev says, lies in the ability of Russia’s state and society to defend their system of values. He reasons that “Russia had become the largest country in the world” by the 17th century, and that its geographical features shaped “the scale of [Russian] thinking and determined the country’s development.” He calls Russia “the ark of humanity,” warning that “enemies have for centuries tried to seize the country’s riches,” meaning its natural resources.

Kharichev claims that Russia has acted as a bridge between Western and Eastern civilizations throughout this time, shielding the two sides from “destructive conflicts.” He speaks of Russia’s “special form of statehood,” which supposedly played a “leading role in organizing society, acting not just as a political institution but as a spiritual center.” “This, in turn, shapes a special public attitude toward the state: paternalism, a preference for centralized authority, personalization, and the sacralization of state power,” Kharichev concludes outright. 

It’s a remarkable statement given that Kremlin officials have not previously expressed ideas about the sacred nature of state power in Russia, at least not publicly.

Kharichev then outlines the structure of “Russian civilization.” At its center is the individual — “someone who contributes to the development of society.” The second level is the “family,” which he frames as “sustaining civilization’s existence (both biologically and socially).” At the third level, society establishes ethical and moral norms, while the state, placed above it, organizes people’s lives. At the top is the nation itself, which “creates the conditions for the state’s development and prosperity.” Speaking on behalf of Russians, Kharichev makes the following declaration:

Kharichev says “service” — fulfilling your duties to your family, society, and country — is a person’s “highest purpose” and insists that “we [Russians] are more willing than others to lay down our lives for higher ideals,” choosing sacrifice over “comfort.”

Throughout the text, Kharichev pits rationalism against faith, legal formalism against truth, and individualism against the family. Unsurprisingly, in his view, Russians should rely on faith, truth, and family values. “We choose collectivity, family, and multinationalism,” says Kharichev, defining freedom as the ability to “unite and mobilize for a common victory.” 

Living by these principles, Russia finds itself threatened by the “transhumanist and post-humanist ideologies” that Western countries allegedly seek to impose. Their aim, claims Kharichev, is to sow a “value divide” and fracture society. The answer, he argues, lies in traditional values and patriotism, which he says is the Kremlin’s current focus:

Kharichev devotes a separate section of his essay to Russia’s declining birth rate, which is now at one of its lowest levels in the country’s history. He describes large families as a “social norm” and expresses concern that parts of Russia could be left “unsettled and undefended” without more children.

In the article, Kharichev repeatedly refers to Vladimir Putin and the war in Ukraine. He claims that the words “We are one big family” echo across both the front lines and Russia’s home front.

Kharichev closes his text with a portrait of the “person of the future, the bearer of the Russian civilizational code.” This figure is “a patriot by conviction, capable of collective work, of creation, and of improving the world.” The Russian patriot “upholds traditional morality, builds a strong family, and views service as the highest form of self-actualization.”

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Not his first rodeo

This isn’t the first time Alexander Kharichev has put his name to ideological messaging. In 2022, he wrote an article titled “Perception of Core Values, Factors, and Structures of Russia’s Sociohistorical Development.” His co-authors were Andrey Shutov, dean of the political science faculty at Moscow State University; Andrey Polosin, a longtime associate at Rosatom and in various election campaigns; and Ekaterina Sokolova, a staffer at the pro-Kremlin Expert Institute for Social Research (EISI).

In that earlier article, the authors held brainstorming sessions with pro-Putin students and concluded that the drivers of Russia’s development are the individual, the family, society, the state, and the nation — the very same components of “Russian civilization” Kharichev identifies in his new essay. The idea that “service” constitutes a guiding value and the highest form of social belonging had previously appeared in Russia’s DNA, an article by Kharichev and Polosin, published in the pro-Kremlin outlet Vzglyad, which EISI founded.

Kharichev has been writing for years about “Russian civilization.” The same concept now underlies “The Fundamentals of Russian Statehood,” a required course for all first-year university students in Russia as of September 2023. None other than Andrey Polosin designed the curriculum. 

Two political consultants who work with the Kremlin’s domestic policy team told Meduza that they believe Kharichev had one reader in mind with his most recent essay: President Putin.

Kharichev draws heavily on the legacy of historian Lev Gumilev, whose cyclical theory of civilizations — birth, rise, decline, and death — is a recurring theme in Putin’s rhetoric. Gumilev posited that self-sacrificing visionaries are the driving force behind the development of civilizations. Meanwhile, Putin is convinced that Russia, as a civilization, is in an ascendant phase and “on the march.”

In recent statements, the president has repeatedly emphasized the need to raise the birth rate in Russia, leading regional and federal officials to propose increasingly absurd policy solutions (for example, cash incentives for schoolgirls who have children). Kharichev’s manifesto also mirrors Putin’s priorities in this area.

A political strategist familiar with the essay who has ties to the Kremlin told Meduza that the text “reads like a blueprint for building Putinism as we know it today.”