The Habitus of the Ruling Elite of Modern Russia

The purpose of the article is to establish the peculiarities of the habitus of the ruling elite in modern Russia. The methodological basis is the position according to which certain points of view, type of thinking, habitus correspond to the social position. As a method of collecting information, one of the varieties of document analysis is thematic analysis. According to the results of the study, the following characteristic of the habitus of the ruling elite of modern Russia was given. The ideological attitudes of the Russian elite are oriented towards the patterns of Western culture, but the stability and depth of the referential orientation towards the West of the Russian elite groups depends on the political and economic situation. The ruling elite of Russia is conservative, it is generally satisfied with its position in Russia. The same reason leads to its negative attitude to any significant social transformations. The conservatism of the Russian elite leads to the rejection of analytical thinking, with the help of which reality is decomposed in order to construct from its parts the future that is fundamentally different from the present. The ruling elite strives to see the world as integral and organic. The elite strata, at least, are suspicious and distrustful of the intellectual abilities and moral qualities of the Russian population. Attributing certain stable socio-psychological qualities to the population (irresponsibility, low ability to self-organize and adapt to changing socio-economic conditions, infantilism, inadequate assessment of reality) indicates a deep gap between the elite and other social groups, which, given such an obvious stigmatization, becomes not only political or economic, but also psychological. And this, in turn, is an additional conflictogenic factor. Failure to take into account the peculiarities of the situation of opposing social groups, which is a consequence of socially determined stigmatization, will be perceived as an arrogant and dismissive attitude, which often becomes the detonator of social clashes. Such a negative and exaggerated assessment of the socio-psychological qualities of the population is reflected in the quality of public administration. In the latter, there is a tendency to primitivization and one-sidedness of influence, a constant search for simple solutions. The failures caused by this are justified by the immaturity of the people, their low moral qualities, which only intensifies the social gap and differentiation.