The Ideological and Political Spectrum: General Methodological Context and the Situation in Modern Russia

Abstract

The concept of the “ideological and political spectrum” in the political science literature is used to describe various ideologies and their propagators, such as political parties and social movements. However, there is no single definition of this term. In fact, the ideological and political spectrum reflects the diversity of political parties or their counterparts. As a rule, this refers to the main characteristic of the internal structure of the ideological and political scale, that is, the positioning of parties and social movements based on the right-left spectrum. The aim of the article is to identify the specifics of the tradition of distinguishing between right-wing and left-wing political parties in the methodological context. Objectives: to identify the basic principles on the basis of which certain political parties belong to the right or left political spectrum; to consider the situation of differentiation between left and right in the Russian political field. It is concluded that there is practically no division between left and right in Russian society. A significant part of respondents in the Russian Federation are unaware of the differences between right-wing or left-wing parties, which indicates a low level of their political awareness. It is stated that the main feature of the majority of political parties in modern Russia is a gravitation towards values and principles, rather than ideological doctrines.