Russia's Calamitous Time: Historical Transformations, Crisis, Values And Perspectives)

Abstract

The author of this paper conceives of its task as three fold-namely 1) crucial social forces as inner barriers caused overall decolonization and so rapid break up of the USSR; 2) the origins and consequences of overall crises faced our country and reshaped our reality; 3) for what social, economic and political reasons great majority of Russian population are beyond the limits of the "poverty line", they are really extremely poor. The author still seems to start from the assumption that pathological social transformations and inevitability of the deep crucial shock are due to a phenomenon of total alienation of man in our society. The author builds up a typology of the alienation, including seven gradual stages (or circles) shown as total absolutely closed complex: 1) the alienation from power; 2) the alienation from self-organization of labour; 3) the alienation from the results of labour; 4) the alienation of the goods-producing structures from consumption's needs; 5) modification of historical self-consciousness with indulge their own fetish for leadership cults and personification of the enemy's image; 6) total loss of the sense of personal safety; 7) the alienation of rising corruptive structures from the legal economic activity's framework. Only thanks for these reasons there occurred and reshaped framework of social life overall socio-cultural crisis of soviet society. Now we faced the evidence of total spread of the crisis in social and cultural spheres, and the results of their interrelationships. The author examines three stages of the crisis. The first one has begun in the middle of 50-s when the institutionally sanctioned structures of power were unable to control the actions of other groups of population and to dispose of means to socialist valued ends. It was really the first step away of despotism. The second period (from the middle of 60-s) is mentioned as the lime of stagnation of official economy and great transformation of business activity into the "shadow" sphere. Under the third period (from the middle of 80-s) the process of destruction affected all spheres: economic, political, goods-producing, social, cultural (including moral, the labour, ethnic, ecological spheres). To the author's mind it was a crisis of underdeveloped socialist society. It has definitely pathological character, and society has firmly transformed into the critical entity with core contradiction between culture and social relationships caused the break up of the main integrative forces which maintained and controlled over social order in any society. The author suggests that only three variants of our development arc possible now: 1) by the regulated market relations to the human socialism; 2) by the governing establishment of market relations to capitalism; 3) by the combination of extraordinary and regulated market mechanisms to mixed (polysectoral) economy. Within the frame of reference the author distinguishes four developmental alternatives relevant to the choice of strategies suggested before: 1) democratic social order; 2) social disaster; 3) renaissance of totalitarian regime, and after that a direct way to social catastrophe; 4) consensus between the main political forces by the institutionalization of social conflicts. Just now in Russia after the putsch in August 1991 is widely spread a sense that the country must seize upon the new opportunity or else fall into fresh disaster. The time is needed to be seen as the last stage of pathological socio-cultural crisis. The most important problem emphasized by the author is forseen character of the development: depersonalized institutional or creative human dimension. The author defines the character and the rank of the super-value's orientations in our society. He presents some of the findings of a recent research project "Our values today". He attempts to distinguish the key polar values' orientation: equal access to societal resources (equal possibilities) or equal start status; readiness to the political dialogue or struggle for the victory over the political enemy. The author analyzes the dynamics of oppositional system of values (values of free enterprises, for instance), and it's transformation into the dominative one. He makes clear distinctions between polar different macropositions (for instance, consumer's conformity and so on). The author prevents destruction of evidence that prevailed trend remains the devotion lo human values, we have not faced with the complete destruction of our traditionally Russian humanitarian system of values.