This article is based on the definition of politics as a specific type of activity by actors (officials, professional politicians, and the ruling political elite) concerning power, its acquisition, and retention through methods and technologies legitimized by society through accessible expression of will on the one hand, and as a system of interactions between the state (power) and society (its organizations, institutions and individuals) — on the other. In this work, public policy is understood as a political course, legally and legitimately implemented by institutions of state power, which defines the target objectives alongside with the value foundations of specific areas of activity administration. At the same time, the character and features of the functioning of a particular state and society, as well as the content of the policies being implemented, are determined primarily by their civilizational foundations.
Based on an analysis of the current situation related to the functioning of contemporary states, the authors have made a conclusion that these states have lost their original pro-social nature and orientation toward public good achievement. This work argues that the prolonged transformation of the substantive and functional characteristics of state systems and institutions has led to the formation of the state’s own self-sufficient hierarchies, goals, values and interests, which often not only ignore and contradict public interests, values and goals but also have a distinctly antisocial character. Political elite capturing public policy leads to a deep crisis in the state-society interactions system and negative consequences for social development. The article places particular emphasis on the state’s use of modern digital technologies and algorithms, which predominantly act as new tools for manipulating public consciousness, covertly appropriating power, and legitimizing such appropriation, leading to a form of “comfortable totalitarianism.”

The article is devoted to identifying the features of Russia as a state of civilization, its inherent system of political and spiritual ideas and values. The emphasis is on the contemporary sound of this concept, its role in upholding the national sovereignty of Russia, its correlation with the general historical imperatives of social development. On the eve of the 270th anniversary of Moscow University, attention is also drawn to the ongoing development of the problems of civilizational characteristics of Russia by political scientists of Moscow State University, who have always sharply opposed the view of Russia as a meaningless geographical space that can be filled with any economic, political, mental form, for whom today the main thing is to rely on domestic traditions, consistently uphold national interests, and create nationally oriented schools in science and education.