All-Russian vote on amendments to the Constitution, which was conducted from June 25 to July 1 of 2020, showed that a vote of confidence, granted by society to a current system of public governance and the President personally during previous presidential elections, was confirmed. With a high voter turnout (68%), 78% of them supported Vladimir Putin’s initiative to amend the Main Law. However, a detailed analysis of “pressure points” of the last vote (regions where the share of votes against constitutional amendments was above national average numbers) confirms experts’ opinions that an idea to unite society around this event did not work out. The lack of real changes in the solution of key issues related to overcoming flagrant social inequality and the growth of the level and quality of life, which would be visible to general population, leads to people’s exhaustion from another positive goals of socio-economic development that might not be fulfilled once again and remain only in a declarative form. It affected the dynamics of public opinion, and, in particular, it echoed in a high level of protest in most Russian regions (in 47 out of 86), its regional centers, and large industrial towns during all-Russian vote on amendments to the Constitution. At the same time, the President’s Executive Order on Russia’s national development goals through 2030, dated July 21, 2020, pushes back dates of national projects’ implementation (from 2024 to 2030) once again and additionally decreases the level of optimism toward the implementation of national development goals until 2024 – exactly until the next elections of the President of the Russian Federation. An analysis of factual information and expert assessments, carried out by the authors, forces to state that, despite another vote of confidence granted by society to the President and his system of governance, the future of Russia’s socio-economic development (at least until 2024–2030) remains unclear, and it increases residents’ fears for their own and their families’ life prospects, as well as for the country itself. In these circumstances, it is difficult to disagree with an opinion of several experts that, in order to overcome long-standing unresolved vital problems that concern population and improve the efficiency of the public administration system, it is necessary to take active steps (primarily by the President) toward the nationalization of ruling elites. Continuing balancing between liberal and state-patriotic forces in power may once again lead to failures in achieving key national development goals, which threatens the legitimacy and the very future of the Russian statehood
Keywords
public opinion, social inequality, efficiency of public governance, all-russian vote on amendments to the constitution, national development goals