This article examines issues associated with the development of the current Russian state, and their study within the scope of philosophical and sociological knowledge. With that in mind, the author refers to a collective monograph called “The emergence of welfare state and its prospects in Russia. Reality and future”, which focuses on analyzing the contradictory condition of the constitutional principle of welfare state in Russia.

The article shows that the book in question, first of all, gives a substantiated interpretation of this contradiction based on scientific analysis of political and socio-economic realities; second of all, it describes and proposes ways of overcoming it. The contradiction between the constitutional principle of welfare state and the economic and socio-cultural modes which constitute the life of Russian society is interpreted in the aforementioned monograph based on a sociological study, the data from which points towards an ever deepening socio-economic divide within Russian society, with people being separated by increasing social distance, and consequently leading to the insuffi cient implementation of the government’s responsibility for protection.

The researchers draw attention to the problem of socio-economic inequality being unwarrantedly presented as merely the result of the population being divided into the poor and the super-rich; that material differentiation in terms of income and wealth generates overall differentiation in any given society. With that in mind the authors address the issue of the population being segregated in terms of quality of life, while examining it in correlation with level of human capital and society’s innovational development. In the study, solving this task in Russia is associated with activating the welfare state’s humanistic function, and with its evolution towards becoming a potent welfare state that creates the opportunity for leading a decent life and uninhibited personal development for all of its citizens.

The constitutional principle of a social state, the welfare state, socialization, income inequality, social distance, the protective function of the state, decent life, quality of life, humanism, constitutional socio-humanitarian research