Conservatism means wanting to keep the society as it is. It is the antonym of being progressive. And that’s it.
A party that wants things to to just remain stable as they are is a conservative party. A party that wants to make dramatic changes is a progressive, or maybe also regressive, party. But absolutely not conservative.
Yes, in USA some people have started using the word “conservative” in a different meaning. That doesn’t alter what the word really means. Those who want to conserve what exists.
(And in USA the Democratic party has taken the conservative role, whereas the Republican party has taken an anti-conservative role, driving radical changes to things. Changes to a direction I see as very damaging for everyone, but changes all the same. Wanting such huge changes makes you an anti-conservative.)
That will take time.
The Russia is now politically about where Ukraine was around year 1970. And it took Ukraine until 2008 to start seriously becoming democratic, and even then it seemed to keep regressing again and again. Only the aggression by the Russia in 2014 stabilized Ukraine’s path towards democracy. This took Ukraine altogether about 40 years and the Russia won’t be able to be faster than that. The couple decades of extremely immense propaganda have taken their toll. If the propaganda somehow ends this year or the next, then the children born now will still be imbued by it because of their parents’ thinking, and the children of the children being born now are going to be reasonably okay, already. But still not really ready for EU. But the grandchildren of children being born in 2026 might really be able to feel European. So, when those are adults, then maybe. If the Russia ends the propaganda now.
But the Russian propaganda is something that has existed for several centuries and from conversations I’ve had with Russians in Russian language, I don’t really get a feeling that they will be letting go of that anytime soon. A Russia without Pushkin… What would that even be? Such a huge part of their literature is so toxic that whatever they try to achieve, their old literature will pull them back into what they have been for centuries.
We can always live in hope, but I really don’t think the Russia can become anything humanely thinking anytime in the next two centuries at least.