Discussions on the Russian Humanitarian Policy Perspectives in the Post-Soviet Space

Abstract

The choice of the audience and content of Russia's humanitarian message calls into question the effectiveness of domestic humanitarian policy in the post-Soviet space. In domestic strategic planning documents, the target audience is the ruling elites of the post-Soviet states, compatriots, and the "Russian world". The choice of the elite as the addressee leads to the fact that Russia's humanitarian policy forms the dependence of interstate relations on maintaining the positions of the ruling elite, which forces us to sacrifice resources and, possibly, reputation to hold the status of a politician declaring a "pro-Russian" position. The appeal to compatriots, in turn, problematizes inter-elite interaction, arousing the concern of the post-Soviet elites, whose efforts to build nations and assert their legitimacy on a nationalist basis. The target audience's choice is reflected in the content of the humanitarian message, which seems situational and internally contradictory due to the specifics of the addressees. Overcoming these contradictions, according to the author, is only possible if the choice of the final addressees and the humanitarian message's content is revised, which requires a clear definition of the goals, forms, and methods of Russia's humanitarian policy in the post-Soviet space.