Secession and Incompleteness of Russia’s Modernity

Abstract

The article focuses on the forming and persistence of Russia’s paternalist socio-political system, where state acts as a principal subject with society merely being an object of governing, control and social integration. The author notices that all formal changes in Russia’s statehood (from theocratic system to partially secularized empire and further on to Soviet authoritarian model including its present modification) have preserved the paternalism in relations between authority and society and the development of civil trends. Such ‘incomplete’ type of Modernity in Russia cannot be interpreted exclusively in terms of traditional methodology, which explains the emergence of socio-political phenomena mainly through peculiarities of various socio-economic and geopolitical relations. According to the author the key role in breaking the transformation of Russian society from a theocratic to a civil (contemporary) one belongs to the catastrophic Religious Secession of the 17th century. The author suggests his own model for comparing Russian and Western (initially European) ways of evolution from pre-Modernity to Modernity, which includes three stages: the individualization of personality; the individualization of faith; the secularization. Each of these stages meant important transformations in intellectual, religious, social and political spheres, which caused the transition to Modernity age. The failure of faith individualization during Russian Secession is regarded as an important factor, which lead to demoralization of society and its inability for social integration at the very moment of Russia’s introduction to Modernity. As a result the society was unable to integrate on the basis of individualized moral values and became an easy prey for bureaucratic (aristocratic at that time) class, which has pushed Russia towards semicolonial type of modernization along with conservation of its paternalist model.

E-mail: alla.glinchikova@gmail.com

Key words: secession, individualization of faith, paternalist society, civil society, joint empire