Smulkina Natalia

№ 2, 2018

• How do Russians Perceive their Country Today?

  The article is based on the materials of the study of the perception of Russia by its citizens, implemented at the Department of Sociology and Psychology of Politics of the Faculty of Political Science of the Lomonosov Moscow State University. The research technique of the study included methods of semi-structured interviews and projective tests. To interpret the data, the authors used both qualitative and quantitative methods, in particular, coding and scaling answers to open questions and statistical analysis. As a result of the empirical analysis, the authors revealed certain features of the formation of the image of Russia in the minds of Russians regarding their rational and unconscious perceptions of territory, people, government, political leaders and the role of the country in the international arena. The authors also tracked the impact of certain factors on this process and recorded differences in the image of Russia among residents of different regions.

  According to the conclusion of the authors, although the process of the development of the image of Russia and the formation of the Russian national-state identity has been going on for as long as a quarter of a century, it is still far from completion. The psychological state of Russian society is extremely volatile. The revealed distrust of the citizens towards the government and the state proves that the negative trends dating back to the 1980s that led to a serious complex of “national inferiority” have not been completely overcome. The rise of national pride that took place in 2014 has not yet taken root.

  DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-2018-89-2-51-68

  Pages: 51-68