“Grant Us the Spirit of Solidarity”: Social Traditionalism as a Task

Abstract

The article highlights The Ideology of Social Traditionalism (Social Tradition), the scientifi c manifesto by Professor Alexander Shchipkov, in the context of the history of Russian religious and so- cial thought. The Fundamentals of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church (2000), The Russian Doctrine (2005), the fourth political theory developed in a number of papers by Alexander Dugin, as well as the study “Empire” (2022) by Konstantin Malofeev repre- sent the ideological model of social traditionalism as an adaptation of the socio-eschatological concept “Moscow, the Third Rome” to the modern socio-political reality. Social traditionalism is represented as a successful ideological experience of removing the historical an- tinomies of the Russian statehood in order to organically build its continuity originating not only from the Soviet Union, but also from the Russian Empire and the Muscovite Kingdom. The synthesis of socialist ideas in the economy (and — even more broadly — the ideas of social justice) and Christian conservative value paradigms is not an innovation, the article says. To prove its statement, it uses the example of Catholic solidarism among others. At the same time, the social-traditionalist ideological construction by Professor Alexander Shchipkov is seen as one of the most successful, philosophically re- fl ected and doctrinally formalized documents. Despite the existing conceptual contradictions, which are inevitable in conditions when many defi nitions in the scientifi c manifesto The Ideology of Social Traditionalism (Social Tradition) acquire new content, and the author of the manifesto proposes a number of neologisms being his own terminology. The article also gives an independent example of activi- ties performed by the international public organization World Russian People’s Council, one of the Deputy Heads of which is Alexander Shchipkov. Among today’s key tasks of the World Russian People’s Council is the comprehension and formulation of the Russian sover- eign ideology, which would be based on Orthodoxy. At this stage, this ideology remains “a task rather than a givenness”, including for the experts of the World Russian People’s Council, whose activity is coordinated, among others, by Professor Shchipkov. And the scien- tifi c manifesto The Ideology of Social Traditionalism (Social Tradition) is seen as important prolegomenon to this ideology.