Putin's "Russian New Thought

On the last day of the year 1999, the day before he became the "Deputy President", Putin published his document: Russia in the New Millennium, the so-called "outline in the new century". In this long article, he gave a comprehensive description on future's Russian official ideology, which is entitled "Russian Thought". Its meaning is profound.As a cultural concept, Russian Thought refers to the most essential and unique spiritual factors of Russian Nation, and the expression of unique Russian thinking method. Originated from religious thoughts, following the process of forming and emerging of Russian State, this thought gradually was changed into an ideology system that only belongs to Russian nation. This dissertation summarizes and probes this process, classifying "Russian Thought" into three categories: "Russia's status in the world's civilizations (position); Where to go (direction) ; How to do it (Development)."As the theoretic basis of his policies and political approaches, Putin's "Russian Thought" is completely different from scholars' theoretic research and contains his own distinguished understanding and feeling. Putin's so-called "Russian New Thought" is used to serve Russia's state policies on politics, economy, and foreign affairs. Based on profound studies and summary on over 70 years' history of Soviet socialism and the experiences and failures of over ten years' reform led by Yelichin, this "New Thought" contains many philosophical thoughts that are originated from Russian traditional culture and articulated into modern background.Deeply rooted into several hundred years' Russian traditional culture and closely connected to thoughts and methods adopted by Czars, Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev and even Gorbachev, Putin's new thought is distinguished from his previous generations by his own innovations. For example, he mentioned "three Nos": no return to the past, but at the same time no negative comment on the achievement of the past; no more radical reform; no more simple transplantation of western system. This dissertation makes description and analysis on this point.Employing the method of comparison and historical analysis, this dissertation explores the successes and failures of over 70 years' practice on Soviet socialism beginning from "New Economic Policy" at the end of "October Revolution". The author of this dissertation thinks that generations of Soviet leadership started by Stalin overestimated power of Soviet socialism, which led to mistaken positioning of Soviet Union in the world system and incorrect domestic and foreign policies. It is this cause that led to the collapse of Soviet Union. Based on this history, this dissertation givesan analysis and research on Putin's 'conceptions and strategies of state administration and his three years' effort on recovery of Russia's big power status, which is divided into such 4 categories as strategies on politics, economy, culture, and foreign affairs. The author of this dissertation thinks that Puking has resolved the problem of Russia's positioning by regarding Russia as one branch of European culture, established Russia's direction of development by setting the objective of becoming market-oriented power enjoying democracy and liberty, and found specific method of realizing this objective by adopting the policy of reform and opening so as to articulate Russia with the whole world.This dissertation thinks that Putin has to make his choice under the condition of international community's recombination, Russian mainstream political culture's recession, and social system's profound change, so he is confronted with a series of factors which bring great trouble to his reform. Among all these troublesome factors, Russian traditional culture is a "Kafutin Canyon".In traditional Russian thoughts, "patriotism" was always combined with Chauvinism and aggressive expansion, on which Putin often talked without any sense of guilt. This kind of "patriotism" is actually based on the concept of "third Rome" and "great Savior", which...