Current Russian government authorities have encountered a serious problem. It is possible that they do not perceive this fact just yet, but the significance of the problem does not diminish as a result. This issue concerns the crisis of loyalty. Today, the Russian authorities should strive to resolve this problem. Unfortunately, the capacities for such manoeuvring are rather restricted. Thus, the only step that the existing political elite can actually take today, if they indeed wish to maintain the existing status quo, is to exhibit a real change of power.

Loyalism is not just the practice of living through the 2000s, but is one of the first attempts to sum up the results of this experience. Because drawing conclusions as to the results presupposes the existence of some sort of intellectual effort based on a certain level of education, it is not actually desirable. At the same time, discussing the bearers of loyalism and defining this phenomenon as something akin to a frame of mind characteristic of the so-called educated class (or the ‘thinker class’) in terms of loyalism does not require a greater share of education and thinking activity.

Recent years have shown that the state has not disappeared anywhere. It became particularly clear when the largest global corporations and transnational companies (this very term, ‘transnational,’ resounds of negation of the state) ran for help to their governments. Of course, the state is still way more powerful than any transnational corporation. There are no other institutions in place that would be able to resolve serious problems. Nobody even talks about such institutions, if we don’t take into account harangues about the global government. But, in a sense, this also means the state.