Russia Between Non-Modern ‘Mandatory’ Institutions and Modern Democratic Culture

Abstract

Arkadiy Lipkin — Professor, Physics Department, Moscow Institute for Physics and Technology. Address: 9, Institutskiy Ln., Dolgoprudny, Moscow Region, 141700, Russian Federation. E-mail: arkadiy.lipkin@gmail.com

In this paper, I develop the notions of ‘local (sub)civilization’ and its ‘political’ and ‘cultural nuclei’ in order to describe and explain the main features of Russian history from the 18th to 20th century and project possible scenarios in the nearest future.

The ‘cultural core’ is defined as the sum of basic meanings, such as the meaning of an individual’s life, ideals, highest values, etc. The ‘political core’ is essentially a set of basic principles which determine the character of relations in a society. I distinguish two types of principles here: the so-called ‘contractual’ (natural for Western states) and ‘mandatory’ (natural mostly among the large non-Western societies).

In the latter case, I distinguish a structure of two subsystems: ‘basic’ and ‘attendant’. ‘The ruler’ (either individual or collective), ‘the masses’, and the state ideology are the main elements of the first; the elements of the second are ‘the ruler’, his court, officials, civil and army officers, engineers, and other strata of the educated urban population with their high culture related to education. The attributes of the masses are 1) delegating the rights of decision-making (and responsibility) to the ‘ruler’ and 2) initiating revolts (from time to time) when people become unsatisfied with how ‘the ruler’ fulfills his job. The particular thing about these revolts is that they never transform the social structure, even if they are successful. In the Russian history we have had, at least, three such ‘attempts’: in the 17th century, 1917 and 1991.

These revolts interweave with cycles of reforms and anti-reforms, which are forced through the ‘attendant’ subsystem. The main reason for such cycles is the perpetuating contradiction between the essentially non-European institutional system and European high culture of elites: the Russians keep catching up to Europe by fostering education and freedom, but the latter, sooner or later, will collide with a ‘mandatory’ political system, which usually leads to a counter-reaction in the form of anti-reform. This freedom-loving minority was at different times associated with: the young military officers at the end of 18th and the beginning of 19th centuries; the university audience of the 19th century; scientists and engineers of the military-industrial complex of the second half of the 20th century; and, finally, the ‘Bolotnaya Ploschad’ in the end of 2011, which was mostly represented by the socially and culturally advanced urban population of contemporary Russia.

The concepts of ‘political’ and ‘cultural nuclei’ allow us to define ‘modernization’ as a transition from a ‘mandatory’ to a ‘contractual’ type of societal organization. In contrast, ‘modernization without westernization’ can be regarded as a smooth transition, preserving the main features of a civilization’s ‘cultural core’ (which is, in fact, the case of Japan and Eastern Tigers). Russia’s attempts to launch this kind of transition (the Decembrist Revolt in 1825, the February Revolution of 1917 and, to a certain extent, the August Putsch of 1991) have failed, since the creative minority has been principally weak as opposed to the enormous inertia of the ‘mandatory’ political system. On the other hand, the revolutions by the masses have always brought radical change, but paradoxically replicated this ‘mandatory’ system again and again.

The analysis in the article shows that appealing to the protest attitudes of the masses without changing their attitudes towards democracy and paternalism is a strategy doomed to fail. The necessity of modernization is recognized by almost everyone in Russia today, but it has to be recognized that it would be impossible to also preserve the ‘mandatory’ system. The major difficulty is that the creative minority are too few and share too different ideologies to bring this knowledge to the rest of society. But, while it is obvious that they cannot form a single party (or, at least, it would be a very questionable enterprise), the protest movement may seek to promote a single agenda of enforcing social justice, i.e. the rule of law and equality before it.