Social and cultural characteristics and problems of Russian society. Sociocultural features and problems of development of Russian society

Introduction

Social and cultural development of Russian society in many ways due to economic and political reasons. After liquidation Soviet Union was completely the usual social order has been destroyed the lives of Russian people, which influenced the formation of a new mentality and behavioral norms.

The main features of social cultural development Russia can be called increased social stratification and the formation of new population groups. The 1990s in Russia were unprecedented compared to Soviet era differences both in the current income and consumption of the population, and in its provision of real estate and durable goods.

As a result, social inequality has increased in the country, which is expressed not only in quantitative parameters. The new population groups that emerged (rich, middle classes, middle- and low-income) formed their own ways of life. At the same time, during the years of recovery, despite favorable average economic indicators, the differences between these structures continued to deepen.

Apparently, they are “encapsulated” (fixed) due to the actual stopping the process of diffusion of social groups. After the initial rapid social mixing of social strata in the 1990s, there was a sharp (we believe, even too sharp) decrease vertical mobility and an orientation towards extracting rent from the achieved situation was formed. E. Gontmakher, T. Maleeva. Social problems of Russia and alternative ways to solve them//magazine “Economy Issues” No. 2 2008.

The main social problems of Russian society

It can be argued that as a result of economic, social and political processes of the last 15-20 years, Russian society is still failed to consolidate around common goals and values. Currently it is a gradually increasing complexity set of microcommunities, arising for many reasons.

Some it is more difficult to determine the exact list of problems. It is the public services, their leaders and their representatives that most often become the producers of “social problems”, the solutions to which they themselves then propose. It is the state that then turns to the professional community of experts to justify the formulation of such problems and justify options for their solutions.

Non-profit organizations and civil society structures most often do not have sufficient financial resources to pay for orders for in-depth and objective research.

Therefore, even if there is a diversity of opinions and assessments, Russian the expert community most effectively defends the priorities and interests of the state, not citizens. Rimsky V.L. Features of Russian social policy//Internet conference “Social market economy” from 02.20.06 to 04.30.06.

However, among them we can identify the main problems, the presence of which is beyond doubt: falling demographic indicators, deterioration in living standards against the backdrop of rising prices and declining wages, social vulnerability of the poor, increased alcoholism, drug addiction, and tuberculosis incidence(Table 1).

According to a survey by the Public Opinion Foundation FOM, conducted on January 21-22, 2006 in 44 regions of Russia 51% of Russians consider high prices for housing and communal services to be the most painful social problem.

Russians also list the main social problems as lack of money for food and goods (37%), rising prices and inflation (35%), alcoholism (33%) and high prices for medical services and medicines (32%).

Table 1

Main indicators of the standard of living of the Russian population as of September 2008 http://www.gks.ru/ Official website of the Federal State Statistics Service of the Russian Federation

According to another FOM study conducted on November 23, 2006 (1,500 survey participants), the majority of respondents named low wages and housing problems as the main problems (Figure 1).

Thus, we can add to the number of socio-cultural problems of Russian society financial difficulties population for various reasons, poor organization of health and education systems, personal problems of people caused by an unhealthy psychological atmosphere in society.

The listed problems of socio-cultural development are complemented and aggravated political instability in the world, the development of the financial crisis affecting the growth of the Russian economy, as well as cultural issues. Cultural infrastructure workers are being laid off. The cultural infrastructure in Russia is quite developed, but at the same time it remains ossified, technically and morally outdated. It was strongly influenced by the former social order and its inherent cultural politics; the consequence of this is an orientation towards centralized management and direct budgetary content, a noticeable deficit own initiative cultural institutions, their unpreparedness for existence in conditions of social and economic pluralism and a free market. As a result, there is cooling of the population’s interest in the heritage of Russian and world civilization. The average Russian considers going to a bar or watching a TV show to be cultural leisure. This is also a result of the mass craze for cinema, the Internet and the high cost of other cultural entertainment. The level of political culture, the ability to adapt to society, and the quality of performing professional duties directly depend on the general level of culture. Actual problems cultural policy of modern Russia. Anthologies. - St. Petersburg: Lenand, 2008. - 258 p.

Picture 1

Socio-cultural problems noted by Russian citizens during the FOM survey dated November 23, 2006

In the field of healthcare, a multi-structure and fragmentation have formed, which worsens the quality of medical services provided.

The second feature of modern health care - its rise in price. With the liquidation of the Iron Curtain, modern diagnostic and treatment technologies poured into the country in a wide stream. Their appearance, on the one hand, increased the quality of diagnosis, improved treatment results, and shortened the time to restore lost health. On the other hand, it led to an increase in cost medical care by several orders of magnitude.

The next problem is funding gap, i.e. discrepancy between the real needs of healthcare and the allocated financial resources. Kadyrova F.N. Modernization of healthcare: one hundred answers to pressing questions. - M.: Healthcare Manager, 2007. - 272 p.

The fourth is a costly healthcare model with excess bed capacity. The poor equipment of pre-perestroika health care, the lack of effective medicines and advanced technologies were compensated for big amount hospitals, a whole army of doctors and a strong clinic. Over the past 10 years, the preventive component of healthcare has weakened, and from preventive it became curative. And we are left with a bloated bed network and a large number of inefficiently operating hospitals.

Health and education how the most significant social institutions continue to suffer from high level corruption. In 2004, bribes to prestigious universities increased by 15 - 20%. The amount of a bribe for admission to law and economics faculties of universities ranged from 10-25 thousand euros in the capital and 9-22 thousand dollars in the provinces. For humanities faculties of universities, these figures ranged from 8-15 thousand euros in the capital and 8-12 thousand dollars in the province, and for natural science faculties - 6-8 thousand euros in the capital and 3-5 thousand dollars in the province. Corruption in Russian universities increases annually by 7-10% (All about bribes)// “News of Russia” dated 22.06. 2005.

According to monitoring data from the Higher School of Economics, 70% of families admit that significant investments are necessary for a child to successfully enroll in a university, but only 60% of respondents are solvent. Children from high-income families chose such specialties as journalism, architecture and design, children from low-income families chose pedagogical specialties (data for 2002-2003).

This trend reflects the mood of society, which continues to consider education as the key to a secure future for its children.

It may also be noted that in general Russians' view of the future is becoming more optimistic compared to the 90s of the last century. People attach more importance not only to economic and political issues, but also to relationships, careers, and a healthy lifestyle. The desire for the latter is especially pronounced against the backdrop of the problems of alcoholism and drug addiction. According to data presented at the international scientific and practical conference dedicated to the 20th anniversary of the national scientific center narcology of Roszdrav, more than 3.5 million Russians - 2.4 percent of the total population of the country suffer from alcoholism and drug addiction. About 70 thousand drug addicts die every year, most of them are young people barely 25 years old. Bogdanov S.I., Koshkina E.A. Medical, social and economic consequences of drug addiction and alcoholism. - M.: PER SE, 2008.- 287 p.

It's crushing the Russians and AIDS epidemic. In general, today in Russia there are about 336 thousand officially registered HIV-infected people, of which 7,952 have died. And this is just the beginning - according to calculations by the Federal Scientific and Methodological Center for the Prevention and Control of AIDS, about 1 million Russians are actually infected. Moreover, if earlier 90 percent. Of all HIV-infected people were drug addicts, today only 12-15% of them are. Increasingly, pregnant women and mothers, and teenagers who engage in unsafe sex are becoming victims of AIDS.

Among causes of drug addiction and alcoholism you can note social factors: psychological shock, political shock, economic shock, which occurred after the fundamental breakdown of the state system, the prevalence of drug addiction in the region, unemployment and personal: family problems, lack of attention and love, lack of harmony in relationships.

Also, the socio-cultural development of Russia is influenced by terrorism, the role of oligarchs in the political and economic life of the country, the environmental situation, bureaucracy, the presence of extremist and fascist youth groups.

The aggravated ideological and socio-cultural problems of modern Russia are reflected in the state of the entire society, primarily modern family responds to ongoing changes and transformations.

Chapter I. Features of the study of rural society in the sociology of culture.

1.1. Settlement theory and approaches to sociological description rural residents

1.2. Sociocultural aspects of rural community analysis.

Chapter II. Basic values ​​and way of life of the Russian rural community

2.1. Working life and labor values ​​of rural residents.

2.2. Family values ​​of residents of a Russian village.

Chapter Sh. Problems and prospects for transforming the basic values ​​and lifestyle of the Russian rural community.

3.1. Social deviations as a result of transformation of the axiospace of villagers.

3.2. The values ​​of preserving cultural tradition and the values ​​of development

Conclusion of the dissertation on the topic "Sociology of culture, spiritual life", Tsapok, Sergey Viktorovich

List of references for dissertation research Candidate of Sociological Sciences Tsapok, Sergey Viktorovich, 2009

Please note that the scientific texts presented above are posted for informational purposes only and were obtained through original dissertation text recognition (OCR). Therefore, they may contain errors associated with imperfect recognition algorithms. IN PDF files There are no such errors in the dissertations and abstracts that we deliver.

Modern sociocultural situation

The modern sociocultural situation can be characterized as the completion of the transition from industrial to post-industrial information society, which leads to a change in priorities and values ​​not only in the sphere of economics and politics, but also in the sphere of culture and morality. Information becomes a basic resource, which inevitably leads to an increase in the value attitude not only to the information itself, but also to the ability to obtain, process and use it.

The currently experienced socio-cultural and theoretical-cognitive situation as a whole is also usually characterized as a “postmodern state”, the basic characteristic of which is the crisis of the historical meta-narrative. It cannot be assessed in the moral and ethical categories of “good or bad,” but it is necessary to understand that the crisis of the metanarrative at the national level destroys social memory, leads to the atomization of society and, ultimately, to the loss of national-state identity.

The modern sociocultural situation is increasingly being conceptualized as a situation of cultural transition, which in terms of synergetics can be described as a kind of bifurcation point in which a single social action may lead to large-scale and unpredictable consequences. In this situation, the tasks of professional humanities education change: from simple transfer of professional skills to developing the ability to comprehend the sociocultural whole in its historical dimension and the conscious formation of a worldview. In this new sociocultural situation, humanities education in Russia and in the world as a whole is experiencing dramatic changes. In the new conditions of rapid social change, the development of globalization processes, existence in real historical process Different political systems, levels of economic development, dialogue of cultures, society presents new challenges to the humanities, and historical science in its broad sense.

This requires a specialist unconventional methods solving non-standard situations, presenting to society a qualitatively different intellectual product. Naturally, with this approach, the traditional model of humanities education, widespread in the world, focused on the transmission of ready-made knowledge, an illustrative method of teaching, and passive assimilation, loses its effectiveness. The new education strategy highlights disciplines aimed at developing a specialist who, at the level of understanding, knowledge and skill, is capable of developing such an intellectual product as new knowledge.

Characteristics of the modern sociocultural situation in Russia

To characterize the modern sociocultural situation in Russia, it is necessary to take into account three groups of factors that determine it today:

Factors of internal development, such as the economic model of development, social dynamics, changes occurring in state structure and political regime, and many others;

Historical factors, national development factors Russian culture and the cultural features of the Soviet period, in the spirit of which the living generations of Russians were brought up and educated;

The influence of the global, primarily Western, sociocultural situation on modern Russian cultural processes.

It should be noted that all of these factors not only determine the modern socio-cultural situation, they condition it in an intense objective competition among themselves for the right to become the spiritual dominant of today's cultural development of Russia. A parallel can be drawn with the Middle Ages, when at least three traditions fought among themselves for the right to determine the sociocultural situation in Europe: barbarian - the northern Germanic tribes, ancient - Greek and Roman and Christian.

Christianity won, becoming the spiritual dominant of European cultural development for a whole millennium.

Now in the economic life of Russia there are complex, ambiguous, often contradictory processes associated with the initial accumulation of capital, which often takes uncivilized forms and determines complex relations regarding property. Under conditions of various types of monopolism, market relations are established, which has the most disastrous consequences. The principle of private property has been politically and legally proclaimed, but its implementation is taking place in a bitter struggle, without finding adequate forms (suffice it to recall voucherization, privatization). The model of social development in the country has changed, but it is too early to talk about replacing sociocentrism with anthropocentrism, as some researchers argue. Anthropocentrism today can be discussed as one of the trends in the development of Russian society. Real, established anthropocentrism presupposes civil society, the existence in society of a formalized ideology of free owners, and respect for the dignity of the individual established at all levels in society. And it will be in Russia when, in the community of free owners, the measure of all things becomes not a class, not a nation, not a social stratum or group, but each individual.

Confirmation of the fact that an anthropocentric tendency exists in Russia is the state policy in cultural matters.

In 1984, for reading, distributing and referring to the works of A.I. Solzhenitsyn (b. 1919) could have lost his job, been “banned from traveling for life,” or been expelled from the party. Then no one in their wildest dreams could have dreamed that ten years later the head of the Russian state would talk for several hours with a recently disgraced dissident writer, asking him for advice on how to organize Russia.

Sociocentrism is a concept according to which in relationships between society and the individual, priority belongs to society.

Anthropocentrism is the concept of the Italian Renaissance, according to which man is at the center of the universe. This concept became the ideology and practice of the European Modern Age and the Enlightenment. The centuries-old existence of this idea as a priority in European ideology contributed to the early emergence of the idea of ​​human rights and its development into an independent concept already in the second half of the 17th century. This concept, known as the “concept of natural law,” was formulated by the English philosopher J. Locke (1632–1704), who identified the rights to life, liberty and property as the basic natural inalienable human rights.

In the new Russian state Freedom of conscience and freedom of religion are legally enshrined and practically implemented; atheism is no longer a position of the state. The state stopped engaging in ideological censorship, and many outstanding works philosophy and fiction. Pluralization of funds mass media led to the elimination of the propaganda function of these means in favor of their informational purpose.

Radical changes have occurred in the relationship between the state and the intelligentsia. Not only did discrimination against the advanced intelligentsia cease: citizenship was returned to those expelled, expelled, and those who left during the previous period. political regimes, their works have not only been rehabilitated, they have become the property of those for whom they were intended - viewers, listeners, readers. For the first time, the authorities brought people of high professionalism closer to them as equals, provided a political and professional platform for everyone capable of creating alternative programs for organizing economic and social life in the country. Special storage facilities overflowing with prohibited works of Russian and world classics were liquidated. The pluralism of publications expanded the reading range of the average citizen, provided the opportunity for real spiritual choice (and the authenticity of choice is a criterion for the authenticity of freedom), and made it possible to form a home library without regard to the “knock on the door” for the fact that it contains works by A.I. Solzhenitsyn or A.D. Sakharov.

However, this phenomenon, which is decisive for the emancipation of the individual and the development of genuine culture in the country, still has negative aspects. First of all, the intelligentsia, whose activity and struggle ensured the changes that have taken place, cannot always take advantage of the benefits brought by these changes. Low wages for scientists, teachers, doctors, creative intelligentsia, a symbolic scholarship for students does not allow them to purchase books, visit theaters, or travel to get acquainted with world and domestic culture.

For the intelligentsia, the creators of works of art, the process of emancipation was not only a blessing, but also a test. These processes, however, became a test for the entire intelligentsia. Thus, teachers were faced with questions of how to teach, what to teach, what sources to teach, since not only the vices of the past became obvious, but also the negative phenomena of the present. Not all intelligentsia pass this test. Freedom of creativity often turns into freedom of competition between various factions of the spiritual elite. For example, conflicts and discord in the Art Theater and the Bolshoi Theater. Writers' Union and other creative unions. We can say that not a single fundamental work has been created in any area of ​​culture over the years. Similar facts have already found their interpretation in the works of Russian cultural scientists. Some consider the acquired freedom insufficient:

“I think that the current social confusion, in which you can’t figure out where to go - to church or to the market - is not freedom, it is chaos. And it is correct to talk about the influence of chaos on culture... And freedom... We have not yet lived to see freedom. Freedom is not a simple absence of censorship, it is a balance based on one’s own depth, on an established personality.”

Quite often a person, after seventy years of tutelage (and rebellion against tutelage), has not yet learned to stand on his own two feet and go his own way, without paying too much attention to politics. The trouble is not freedom, but the unaccustomment to freedom.

Despite the positive trends in the modern sociocultural situation, they are not a sufficient basis for defining the modern political system of Russia as democracy.

Democracy is, in addition to these characteristics, a developed community. But today organized society has been destroyed, an organized anthropocentric society has not formed. There is a confrontation between democrats and conservatives in society, while none of them has a developed concept of a positive political and governmental development of the country. Everything is expressed in contradiction: democrats do not want totalitarianism, conservatives do not want Russia to turn into a “backyard of the West.” And society, under the influence of processes of social stratification, under the influence of party confrontations, disintegrates, every community is lost, including the community of cultural orientation.

The past, of course, was difficult and forced Russians to endure and suffer, but everyone “endured”, and today in Russia “new Russians” are rising spiritually and materially at the expense of the impoverishment and degradation of others, whose decline in mental level is below the permissible norm.

All this serves as the basis for the emergence of potential and social conditions for the transformation of Russia into a third world country or for the emergence of an authoritarian hard regime in it.

However, what has been said does not mean thoughtless praise of the past - a balanced analysis, taking into account and preserving everything positive from the past is necessary, because civilization and culture always rest on the continuity and preservation of what was won and acquired through labor, which is always destroyed by barbarism. Wise leadership of the ongoing spiritual and cultural processes is necessary.

A positive aspect of the current sociocultural situation in the country is the deideologization of the entire education system.

Freedom in itself does not solve a single problem, but, on the contrary, by shaking social norms and increasing the spontaneity of people’s behavior, it gives rise to many new problems.

“Rallies are one of the most accessible forms of outpouring of group mass feelings. Apparently, it was not for nothing that the ancients spoke of domination in such times of ochlocracy - the rule of the crowd. Against this background, demagoguery flourishes, since the opinion of the masses in such a state does not represent the basis for the truth. All decisions, without exception, made under the pressure of such rallies, have unpredictable, often unpleasant social consequences.”

They also point out the “exuberance of feelings” characteristic of the transitional era, since the transition large groups The transition of people to new values ​​primarily occurs on an emotional level.

In this regard, the general problem of culture and democracy arises. It seems that this problem is solved by itself: democracy creates optimal conditions for the development of culture. Indeed, democracy is the most favorable regime for the implementation of the power of the people. It is democracy that protects pluralism of positions and freedom of choice, but, as N.A. pointed out. Berdyaev (1874-1948), there is also an inverse relationship between culture and democracy: democracy requires sufficient cultural basis, for its implementation certain conditions are necessary, cultivated among the masses for centuries and even millennia.

Spiritual liberation revealed the weaknesses and limitations of professional and humanitarian education in the country during the period of Soviet power. This, in particular, was manifested in the inability of the majority of the population to adequately perceive the works of Russian classical philosophy that came to us after decades of ban.

1. Socio-cultural features and problems of development of Russian society. Possible alternatives for its development in the future.

Russian society over the past ten years has been characterized by a radical increase in inequality, changes in stratification, upward and downward personal and group mobility, and the formation of a middle class.

In the last few years, a certain correlation between the level of income and the level of education, especially higher education, has begun to appear. New values ​​and goals are being introduced into the daily life of Russians, and new life practices and behavior patterns are being adopted.

Value system Russian society is also undergoing a serious transformation. In our lives, the role of material values ​​has increased: money and wealth, the importance of intangible values ​​has decreased

. The main features of the socio-cultural development of Russia - increased social stratification and the formation of new population groups. social inequality has increased. The new population groups that emerged (rich, middle classes, middle- and low-income) formed their own ways of life.

"Mass culture" is mainly built on the values ​​of money, selfish interest, and hence the corresponding influence that it has on mass consciousness. Such consciousness forms knowledge, ideas, norms, values ​​shared by one or another set of individuals, developed in the process of their communication with each other and joint perception of social information.

Positive changes in the cultural life of Russia include the appearance of a large number of periodicals, as well as big choice various literature...

The range of cultural endeavors is being enriched through the development of various kinds of public associations, movements, clubs, and associations. Cultural exchanges with other countries have become richer, and the feeling of cultural isolation is disappearing. New radio stations are being created. New orchestras are being organized, including symphony ones, and new theaters are opening. More and more films are being created that can already compete with Hollywood products and that are in demand by the audience. Domestic cinema continues to perform several main functions: informational, educational, critical.

Problems of development of the socio-cultural sphere of Russian society-a fall in demographic indicators, a deterioration in living standards against the backdrop of rising prices and declining wages, social vulnerability of the poor.

It can also be noted that in general, Russians' view of the future is becoming more optimistic compared to the last decade. People attach more importance not only to economic and political issues, but also to relationships, careers, and a healthy lifestyle.

Also, the socio-cultural development of Russia is influenced by terrorism, the role of oligarchs in the political and economic life of the country, the environmental situation, bureaucracy, the presence of extremist and fascist youth groups; the problem of modern national culture is the gap between the potential influence of culture on society and the actual ability of the masses to master it and use in everyday sociocultural practice. The dynamism of modern life has caused a significant complication in the structure and content of people's relationships with each other, with the natural and cultural environment. In addition, the possibilities for choosing forms and places for leisure, recreation, and satisfying intellectual and aesthetic interests have significantly expanded.

But the biggest problem of modern Russian culture is the confrontation between “folk” culture and “mass culture”. By the way, Russia has almost always been characterized by the fact that true art is always the art of the past, not the present.

Prospects for the development of Russian society

For the socio-cultural development of Russian society as a whole, there is a favorable forecast, despite a number of existing problems. In the socio-cultural complex, the process of forming a system of state entrepreneurship is underway. The development of cultural organizations is largely related to the prospects for the development of cultural tourism and enterprises providing various forms of leisure. For a modern Russian, the most significant socio-cultural values ​​are a good education, a prestigious job, a happy family, doing what you love, creativity, material wealth, reliable friends, honesty throughout life, spiritual, intellectual and physical self-improvement, acquiring new knowledge and travel. All this confirms the fact of the formation of the middle class in Russia in the course of socio-cultural development.

Currently, it is necessary to develop an effective state socio-cultural policy. The federal target programs in force today are poorly developed; they only indicate general priorities and directions of activity in the socio-cultural sphere, and are too abstract in nature and do not take into account the specifics of specific regions and territories.

The entire history of Russia is imprinted by the significant factor that, due to its geopolitical position, the country found itself between two civilizational centers - the West and the East. Russia, which united many ethnic groups, arose at the intersection of the power paths of Europe and Asia, experiencing powerful sociocultural influences from both the West and the East. The Eurasian position of the country, of course, cannot be reduced to a purely geographical interpretation. Bearing in mind this peculiarity of Russia, V.O. Klyuchevsky wrote: “Historically, Russia, of course, is not Asia, but geographically it is not quite Europe. This is a transitional country, a mediator between two worlds. Culture has inextricably linked it with Europe, but nature has imposed on it characteristics and influences that have always drawn it to Asia, or attracted Asia to it.” The peculiarity of Russia’s position is that from the very beginning it acted as an object of Europeanization on the part of Western European peoples (for example, Norman and Germanic) and at the same time as an agent of Europeanization in relation to peoples located east of the original Slavic settlements. At the same time, Russia is an object of orientation from the side of its array eastern peoples and an agent of orientation towards the European West. Hence the original for Russian national identity the dilemma of civilizational identity with the constantly reproducing impossibility of choosing between “one’s own” and “alien” values ​​(in this case, both the East and the West act as the “alien”), as well as the impossibility of uniting them.

The genesis of Russian civilization, a cumulative (from the Latin сumulatio - accumulation) process of accumulation of civilizational resources, spanning several centuries (VIII-XV centuries), already initially combined many cultural influences. Clergyman Russia was formed under the influence of three ideological and cultural streams coming from the south (Byzantium), the west (Western Europe) and the east (Golden Horde). The influence of the South, the East, and the West, alternating, alternately dominated Russian culture. In the VIII – XIII centuries. this influence was dominated by the South (Byzantium). The strongest impact was from the 10th to the 15th centuries. rendered by the East (Mongol-Tatars). And after that, Rus' was subjected to powerful Western influence.

The specificity of Russia lies in its civilizational and cultural complexity, which includes many religious, ethnolinguistic and cultural-historical streams. Here the impulses of East and West, North and South, Forest and Steppe, Nomadism and Settlement, Ocean and Continent collided. However, it is precisely this complexity, which certainly acts as a feature of Russia, that complicates its civilizational identity. We can talk about the drama of civilizational uncertainty in relation to Russia. The search for one's own civilizational identity has become one of the dominant features of Russian national identity.

The thesis about the civilizational uncertainty of Russia (in a “soft” or “hard” version) is put forward by many modern well-known domestic scientists, historians and philosophers. Thus, I. Yakovenko defines Russian civilization as a semi-barbaric “involuntary civilization,” the outskirts of the civilizational world. A. Panarin points to the absence of strong “civilizational staples” in Russia and the fragility of its civilizational syntheses. Historian V. Mezhuev characterizes Russia as a country that “has not so much become becoming civilization, the appearance and contours of which are still only vaguely visible in the ideological quests of its thinkers and artists.”

There are very common views according to which Russia is a conglomerate of various civilizations, an “intercivilizational space.” “I proceed from the fact,” writes one of the leading Africanist theorists, Yu. Kobishchanov, “that Russia arose and developed as a dynamic system of cultures and civilizations. Russia has never been the territory of any one civilization.” L.I. Semennikova believes that Russia is a special historically established conglomerate of peoples, belonging to all existing types of civilizations, united by a powerful centralized state, and this turns Russia into a heterogeneous, segmental society.

The ideas of civilized “underdevelopment” and “intercivilization” of Russia are united in the concept of A. Akhiezer. In his opinion, the country seems to be torn between two civilizations: traditional and liberal; having gone beyond the first, it was unable to overcome the boundaries of the second. Occupying an intermediate position between these civilizations, Russia has developed the inorganicity and instability of its civilizational status into a special systemic quality of an “intermediate civilization”, stimulating destructive tendencies of sociocultural reproduction, in particular the split of culture and society, reproducing their inorganicity.

E. Rashkovsky takes a compromise position. Recognizing that Russia has the qualities of “civilizational uncertainty” and “an intercivilized continental ocean,” he views this as a civilizational characteristic of Russia, “the basis of the substantive and structural uniqueness of Russia,” which cannot interfere with studying it as a sociocultural, civilizational whole.

Along with the concept of civilizational uncertainty in Russia, there is a point of view that Russia has its own civilizational peculiarity and is quite recognized in both domestic and foreign science. For example, we can note the fact that all famous authors theories of local civilizations (Danilevsky, Spengler, Toynbee, Huntington) considered Russia as a separate civilization, independent and original. At the same time, Danilevsky considered Russia the basis of the Slavic civilization, Toynbee characterized it as Russian-Orthodox (daughter of the Hellenic), and Huntington considers Russia the carrier state of the Orthodox-Slavic civilization, representing one of the eight main civilizations. Russia is also viewed as part of Eastern European civilization. There is a concept of Russian civilization (Platonov O.). The Eurasian concept is very popular in our time, according to which a synthesis of European and Asian principles was carried out in Russia, as a result of which a Russian super-ethnic group and its original culture emerged.

Russia has experienced several waves of targeted Western influence. The first powerful wave is, of course, associated with Peter’s transformations. It was a radical attempt to bring Russia closer to Western Europe, “Europeanization” from above. However, this attempt was made after the civilizational synthesis was completed. Foreign cultural material could no longer be assimilated in significant quantities. It was “rejected as contrary to systemic quality, although it was vitally necessary.” The German philosopher O. Spengler characterized a similar phenomenon as “pseudomorphosis” - the destructive influence of a borrowed culture on the recipient culture, associated with the latter’s inability to creatively master the acquired spiritual experience. The result of pseudomorphosis is the inability of society to independently move from one historical era to another. Society turns out to be split into two worlds that are not connected with each other (with their own type of social relations, type of economic and legal relations). The essence of the situation of pseudomorphosis in relation to Russia is that the reforms of Peter I split Russian society and led to the formation of two different structures - “soil” and “civilization” (in the terminology of V.O. Klyuchevsky). The Western type (“civilization”) included only a small part of society, mostly literate and active. The majority of the population continued to adhere to the old ethical norms and forms of life (“soil”). In Russian society, a large gap has formed between the enlightened part of society and the traditionally living masses. They constituted, in essence, two civilizational levels, each related to the West in different ways. The narrow, upper, ruling, educated layer perceived itself as part of the West. The bulk of the people lived in another world, from which the pro-Western power was often seen as hostile. The elite for the most part turned out to be alien to the people in spirit, and there was a separation of the educated layer of the country from the people. The presence of bearers of two psychological paradigms among the Russian people explains many aspects of Russian history.

All of the above allows, in our opinion, to conclude that Russia is still only moving towards civilizational self-determination. This movement occurs in conditions when the world is divided into two parts unequal in their power and influence - the West and the non-West. At the same time, the non-Western world, which includes Russia, is extremely complex, heterogeneous and unable to compete on equal terms with the much more powerful West. “The West... uses international institutions, military power and economic resources to control the world by maintaining Western supremacy, protecting Western interests and spreading Western economic and political values,” notes S. Huntington.

Thus, the entire social and cultural life of Russia is permeated by the mixing, interweaving and superimposition of not only contradictory, but also mutually exclusive orientations.