We cannot and do not want to return to the pre-February 24 situation

The RUSSTRAT Institute presents a transcript of the speech of the Deputy Chairman of the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation Pyotr Tolstoy (“United Russia”) at the round table “Russia: what image of the future meets the goals of national development?” held on June 1, 2022 in the REGNUM news agency, organised by the RUSSTRAT Institute and the REGNUM news agency.

About the return to the unified, implanted Soviet ideology of the dictate of "party committees". I am convinced that any idea based on lies or coercion does not work. I agree that there should be a national consensus on such issues. I just want to say that we are now in a historical situation where it is impossible to formulate any idea about the future of the state without ideology.

For a ship that doesn't know where it's going, no wind is fair. Therefore, the need for an ideology and a national idea is higher than ever before. Whether it is two theses, or five theses, but the formulated goals and guidelines are absolutely obvious and the most important sign of such an idea.

Therefore, all the desk specialists who write the conditional fifteen points of the national idea in order to publish a small brochure later, in my opinion, are still a little out of touch in this situation. Of course, the overwhelming majority of the population should share such ideas in the first place. All different social strata and different nationalities.

However, this is also important for today. Because the purpose of this special military operation in Ukraine is to determine the real, actual place of Russia not only in international security, but also in the system of international politics. So now the following interesting thing is happening: the country's leadership, the president, and the secretary of the Security Council are saying that Russia has entered a stage from which there will be no turning back. In other words, we will not be able to return to the pre-February 24 situation. We can't, we don't want to, and the vast majority of our people agree with this.

But there is one "but". The fact is that we have quite a significant part of our so-called elite, which for 30 years formed itself and imagined itself as an elite, today they have closed their eyes and pretend that nothing is happening. Thinking that "now we will sit out the situation in Israel, at the dacha, somewhere else, then we will return and everything will be as before."

The problem is that there is no "as before". And that they don't come back. Accordingly, our military actions were the impetus for the beginning of changes around the world and, of course, Russia should also respond to them. First of all, within ourselves - changes in our internal politics, in our ideology. This is the concrete assistance to the front that everyone can contribute to today.

These changes are fairly obvious. We need to get rid of what is foreign, what has been brought into Russia for 30 years as almost a colonial country, a “third world” country.

Accordingly, the commitments that were made by the previous leaders of the country in previous stages should be completely revised. We must proceed from the interests of the majority of the country's population. That is why Russia has withdrawn from the Council of Europe, and why we must withdraw from the Bologna education system. I believe that we should also withdraw from a number of international organisations.

Please delete us from scientometrics. With scientometrics, they have now adopted, in my opinion, an extremely funny approach: we are leaving this system of Western publications, but we don't seem to be leaving it. In fact, the same publications remain a criterion, we just move them from the first place to the second. And we put our scientific publications in the first place.

So, in principle, this is a consequence of the education reform in general. In my opinion, absolutely a failure. The state's attitude to culture is also, in my opinion, not particularly effective and correct. Why? Because, of course, the state wants to measure everything, but education and culture cannot be measured. You can only ask the Minister of Education a question: "How do you see a citizen who has received an education in the country? Who are they?"

As an experiment, I asked several ministers of education and the Ministry of Education this question, but there is no clear answer. They say this is a modern person. That is, they should be able to click on the buttons, okay. And the value series?

Goal setting is completely absent precisely because there are no ideologues in the country. There is no idea of Russia's development. Russia cannot live without an idea, it cannot develop without an idea. People can't do anything without an idea. If this is the idea, it’s possible to continue to go without direction for another 30 years. But then it will definitely end in something not very good.

It seems to me that the second point is, of course, building one’s own. But it's definitely not that we take some Soviet forms and begin to revive them, while snorting from Marxism-Leninism. It's not going to work. I agree that there was a complete bankruptcy of the hypocritical Soviet system, which before our eyes in ’91 and ’93 absolutely collapsed in the perception of the majority of the country's population. And it is, by the way, against the background of the collapse of ideology.

Therefore, it is necessary to create a new one. Based on what Elena Vladimirovna spoke about: Russia is a technological superpower, Russia is a cultural superpower. Russia is also a superpower in terms of its geopolitical ambitions. What is there to hide - of course, we will return to ourselves all those who have been with us for centuries. This is clear.

But also a few more theses. In principle, for a Russian person, the state is a value, sovereignty is a value, and most importantly - the nation, the subject of history. Without these basic concepts, there is simply no Russia as such. The basis of our unique interethnic consensus is respect for all who enter our world. But forcing Russians living in Tatarstan to learn the Tatar language is, of course, complete nonsense. This is not why Ivan the Terrible took Kazan.

The second is what you do not have, in my opinion, and what is really important. Any upbringing and any personality formation - it begins with the family. And so I believe that the state, society and people should protect the family. There must be some sacredness of the family, because this is the basis of human existence.

I want to say only one thing: today in Russia very little is being done to protect the family and much is extremely stupid. State policy is focused only on social assistance to the severely needy. This is certainly important, but it is only one component of the state aid system that the President has built for families with children. Practically from birth to adulthood. But it is aimed at a very, very small part of our society.

Assistance should be broader and involve more affluent families. This is the first one. Second, of course, the topic of abortion is a painful topic for any society and it is painful in our society, but such a step as removing abortions from the compulsory health insurance system, in my opinion, can be quite discussed and there are people who give quite serious arguments.

Why does everyone have to pay for this operation and how much of a disease is it? In addition, we also need a complete reform of the guardianship authorities, which over 30 years have been fully sated with these juvenile technologies. This cannot be reformed. It only needs to be dissolved and re-created.

Another thesis is the economy for people. We need social justice, but the goal of economic activity should not be abstract indicators, not the award "best financier of developing countries", which for some reason the Russian Finance Minister gratefully accepts. I would, for example, spit in the face for such a bonus.

The criterion is not capitalisation, not GDP, not 6th place in the world in terms of economic indicators. The criterion is happiness. The criterion is how people perceive the economic situation. In fact, this is a perception – it may not even be directly related to objective figures.

It has to do with how specifically people's lives are changing. The fact that in a small village there were two collective farm tractors and the chairman's car, and now there are 15 cars and a big TV in every house - this does not make people happy. Maybe something else does, but not specifically this.

Therefore, there is a difficult question of balancing consumption and the joy of life, which must be found in the form of an idea. But it seems to me that the idea of an economy focused primarily on people, and not on abstract indicators, is the solution. After all, we always use GDP figures, but no one uses the number of satisfied people, happy families - whatever you want to call it.

In terms of the economy, there is also a topic related to demographics and simply changing the behaviour of people in a country that occupies 1/6 of the land. And where 15% of the population aspires to live in "human collars" in Moscow. In principle, this is due to this ugly model of the economy that has been functioning for the last 30 years and which we now need to change. Because for our country, the preservation of the territory, the preservation of the way of life in these territories is more important than short-term labor results. Regardless of how this work is evaluated by international institutions.

There is also an important point about the development of equipment and technology – these areas should be under the control of ethics. This is the main issue in the development of digitalisation and artificial intelligence. But these are probably already details, it has nothing to do directly with ideology. This is just a thing that they are quietly trying to push through under the guise of telemedicine, digital distance education, and so on.

In fact, "rise of the machines" needs fairly clear regulation, and this is where my colleagues in the parliament and I are also trying to work. Yesterday we were just at an event where our colleague told us about the words of a woman who works with difficult teenagers. She asked them a question - what do you live for? Teenagers say I want to buy a car, I want to buy a smartphone, I want this, I want that.

And then she asks them. What are you willing to die for? They think and speak - for a girl, for my mother, for the Motherland. And, of course, to bring together the understanding of what people live for and what they are willing to die for, to tie this up within society - this is the way to create a common understanding of our foundations, which can be shared by the majority.

I am sure that everyone is thinking in this direction right now, and we just need to change reality brick by brick. After all, in fact, Russian is an action. It's not just sitting there, spitting at the ceiling and saying "I'm Russian, what a delight!". If you do something for Russia, then you are Russian. Of course, we can't heat up space with a blowtorch, but we will confidently continue to do what is possible.

Thanks.