EVOLUTION OF VALUE ORIENTATIONS OF RUSSIANS IN THE 1990s

Vladimir Pantin, Vladimir Lapkin

CONCEPTS:

Values- these are generalized ideas of people regarding the most significant goals and norms of behavior, which determine priorities in the perception of reality, set orientations for their actions and deeds in all spheres of life and largely form " lifestyle” society. The system or set of dominant values ​​in a concentrated form expresses the characteristics of the culture and historical experience of a given society.

Trying to explain what has happened to Russia over the past decade, some focus on the mistakes of state leaders, others see the causes of all Russian hardships in the machinations of powerful and numerous "enemies", and still others state that the country and its citizens are not ready for the reforms that have begun. Despite the apparent reasonableness of these explanations, they seem superficial to us, giving a vague and sometimes distorted idea of ​​the true, underlying causes of the crisis that Russia is experiencing. Such explanations, as a rule, leave aside everything related to the worldview, values ​​and orientations of Russians. Meanwhile, for the majority of Russian citizens, the last ten years have become a period of a kind of "value break" - a deep and by no means painless transformation of basic, fundamental values, attitudes, and life guidelines. We venture to suggest that it is this transformation that has not yet been completed that determines many of the contradictions and paradoxes of modern Russian reality, and the unsurmounted crisis of value orientations ultimately determines the insurmountability of all other crises that are characteristic of today's Russian society.

At first glance, it seems that the transition to democracy and adaptation to the values ​​of a modern market society are no more difficult for Russian citizens than for citizens of other post-communist countries, for example, the states of Eastern Europe. Those who share this view proceed from the fact that Russian society is urbanized, industrial, and the values ​​of the archaic, traditional society in the Soviet period were destroyed along with the patriarchal way of life and the former estates. However, at the same time, one important circumstance remains in the shadow, which is an exceptional feature of Soviet society (absent even in the former socialist countries of Eastern Europe). It's about depth social destruction when, along with the archaic, the sprouts of self-consciousness of the individual, autonomous from the state, were destroyed, and on the field cleared in this way, a completely special, in its own way unique system of values ​​of the Soviet person was formed. This system of values ​​differed significantly from those value orientations that prevailed in the countries of Western and Eastern Europe or Latin America, which made a more or less successful transition to democracy and the market. In contrast to these countries, the values ​​that dominated Soviet society actually blocked the formation of a modern civil society and market relations. That is why the transition to democracy and the market in Russia turned out to be associated with unusually complex, contradictory and, to some extent, unprecedented processes in value sphere.

In principle, shifts in the system of dominant values ​​always play an important role in the transition from authoritarian and totalitarian regimes to democracy, which is shown, in particular, in the works of S. Lipset, R. Dahl, D. Rastow, N. Lapin, A. Melville and others But the transition to democracy and the market has never and nowhere taken place in conditions where the original system of values ​​dominating at the beginning of the transition did not so strikingly correspond to the ultimate goal of this transition. Therefore, the intermediate results of the Russian transformations turned out to be significantly different than, for example, in the Eastern European countries.

It seems to us that the study of the main trends and directions of changing values ​​in Russian society is not only of purely scientific, academic interest, but also has a lot of importance for practical politics. With this in mind, we formulate the main questions that we will consider in this article:

* What are the most important shifts in the value orientations of Russian society and its individual groups that took place during the 1990s, to what extent do these shifts contribute to Russia's progress towards democracy and the market?

* what might be the socio-political consequences of these shifts?

* In what directions is the evolution of the values ​​of a post-Soviet person living in a transitional society taking place and will take place in the future?

Answers to the questions under consideration can be obtained using an in-depth comprehensive analysis of numerous data from mass surveys conducted at different times by various sociological services, as well as using a wide array of empirical data on the relationship between value shifts and changes in the socio-political life of Russian society. The authors rely primarily on specific sociological studies (all-Russian mass representative polls) of the Public Opinion Foundation, conducted in the years, in a number of which they adopted direct involvement. The purpose of these studies was to elucidate the dynamics of the main political and value orientations of the inhabitants of Russia during the period of the establishment of new political and economic institutions. In addition, the article uses the published results of studies conducted by other scientific centers and other specialists.

STARTING POINT - SOVIET VALUES

Let's start with a description of the value system of Soviet society, which became the starting point for the evolution of value orientations of the vast majority of the inhabitants of modern Russia. The complete dominance of this peculiar system of values ​​on the eve of perestroika and the beginning of democratic reforms in the Soviet Union is explained by the fact that the traditional culture of pre-revolutionary Russian society (including the noble, peasant, merchant, urban petty-bourgeois subcultures) was almost completely destroyed during the Soviet period, and the dominant place not only in ideologies, but also in the mass consciousness were occupied by Soviet myths, Soviet values, Soviet “traditions”.

It is important to emphasize that the values ​​of late Soviet society were not a mere cast from the official communist ideology; in many ways they were the result of a specific compromise between the real relations that existed within different layers Soviet society, ideological dogmas and paternalistic consciousness, inherited from the former Russia, but transformed into a kind of "religion of the total state." The real core of the system of Soviet values, as domestic and Western studies show, was not the ideas of socialism and communism, but ideas about the state as the source of all social benefits, all rights and duties of citizens. And this is not about the fact that the state really played a decisive role in the economy, politics, and especially in the social sphere. hallmark of the Soviet consciousness were an explicitly or implicitly expressed myth about the state - the owner of all material values, all products of the past, present and future labor of its subjects, about the state, which "endows" them with these benefits in accordance with the merits to it, as well as the principles of social justice and equality. Therefore, the central Soviet value, under which all other values ​​were adjusted and in accordance with which they were modified, was “ State" with a capital letter, giving light and warmth, life and prosperity.

Very firmly rooted in the consciousness and value sphere of a significant part of Soviet society special variety state paternalism differed significantly from the “classical” paternalism known from the history of other countries. A feature of Soviet state paternalism was the complete fusion of the most important social values ​​with ideas about the state as the only force capable of ensuring the realization of the social rights of citizens. At the same time, no equality, implying the possibility of an agreement between an individual and the state, and even between society as a whole and the state, was not assumed: only the state was a real subject, but not an individual or a social group. Officials and even top leaders could act incorrectly, but in the consciousness of a Soviet person, the state was always right, because in this consciousness the idea reigned not of a real, but of an ideal state, a state-father, a state-god.

In accordance with this, many other important values ​​were understood, which acquired a specifically Soviet coloring. Thus, “social justice” meant, first of all, the distribution of benefits by the state in accordance with the merits to it and the position held in the hierarchy of government posts, ranks and professions. “Equality” expressed not so much the equality of all before the law (in this respect there were equal and “even more equal”) or equality of opportunity, as it is understood in Western countries, but the equality ensured by the state in the distribution of material wealth and in the performance of duties to it - again, taking into account the position in the Soviet hierarchy. "Order" - a very important value for the Soviet and post-Soviet consciousness - meant, first of all, order in the entire state, a stable system of power, having strength and authority, and in much lesser degree perceived as order in the affairs of an individual or a small group of people.

The flip side of the dominance of state paternalism, paradoxical as it may seem at first glance, was the latent formation of the so-called "consumer egoism" or "consumer individualism" - the most characteristic feature of the post-Soviet consciousness, which will be discussed in more detail below. This phenomenon developed as the pressure of state coercion against loyal Soviet citizens became weaker, and the overall dependence of the average consumer on the state still persisted. If until the mid-1930s the traditional value orientations that persisted encouraged most people to become self-reliant, and the Soviet state eradicated such incentives, then in the era of “developed socialism” the value orientations of Soviet people underwent irreversible changes, a kind of inversion: consumer dependency imposed by the state has become the norm, and the desire for economic independence has become an anomaly. Under these conditions, social ties between individuals inevitably weakened; each to a greater or lesser extent turned into an individualist consumer, waiting for the satisfaction of his needs from the state, and at the same time entrusting him with all the functions of social reproduction, seeing other people primarily as competitors in the consumer field, but having no reason to see them as potential partners. As you know, the Soviet state tried in its own way to fight this consumer individualism, labeling it as “philistinism” and “consumerism”, actively promoting the values ​​of “Soviet collectivism” and “labor enthusiasm”. However, as society became more complex and differentiated, became urbanized, the ideology, designed for the poorly educated mass of people from the countryside, more and more often did not work. Official "collectivism" and official "enthusiasm" had an ever weaker effect on people's consciousness, gradually turning into a myth about a heroic past. Asceticism has become unfashionable, since the 1970s people in real life, not fictional life, have been increasingly guided by the hedonistic principle “ you can’t forbid to live beautifully”. In the depths of the Soviet system of values, based on the deification of the State, its peculiar, although not quite productive, self-denial was ripening.

It is also important to keep in mind that despite the noticeable processes of social differentiation that took place in Soviet society in the 1970s and 1980s, in the value aspect until the end of the 1980s. it still remained fairly homogeneous; Of course, the “monolithic unity” of Soviet society was a myth, but at the same time, the totality of its ideal ideas and values ​​was depressingly poor. Even emigrants who left Soviet Union to Western countries, as shown by authoritative studies conducted in the United States in the early 1950s (the Harvard Immigrant Interview Project) and in the 1980s. (“Project of Soviet Interviews”), largely shared the idea of ​​the all-powerful role of the state in ensuring social rights and living standards. This was all the more true for the bulk of the population of the USSR, who often had no other value system of coordinates and other ideas about the possible relationships between the individual, society and the state, apart from the one that dominated in Soviet society.

Only at the end of the 1980s did an intensive erosion of the former value system of Soviet society begin, a rethinking of the role of such values ​​as the individual and the state, freedom, justice, democracy, human rights, money, etc., not only at the level of individuals, dissidents, but also entire social (elite and mass) groups. In fact, the very picture of the world began to change, formed in the minds of Russians, initiating those tectonic shifts in the field of values, which marked the 1990s, those changes that are still far from being completed.

STAGES OF EVOLUTION

In general, there are three main stages in the value evolution of Russians in the 1990s, and each of these stages is characterized by its own prevailing processes in this period. The first stage covers the period of 1 yy, the second stage approximately corresponds to the period of 1 yy. and the third stage - the period after 1997.

Period 1 yr. characterized by the collapse of the previously dominant system of ideologized Soviet values, accompanied by shifts in various directions, the most important of which were: the value system of liberal democracy, characteristic of modern Western society, “traditional” values ​​in their soil interpretation; and finally, the asocial values ​​of marginalized and lumpenized strata. During this period, a more or less value-homogeneous society was splitting, turning it into a heterogeneous society, value-heterogeneous. It should be noted that among the main reasons for these tectonic shifts was a massive disappointment in the possibilities of state paternalism, a feeling of inconsistency between what was happening as it should be. This period was characterized by a rather high politicization of the majority of Russians, which manifested itself, in particular, in the increased rating of such values ​​as “ freedom", “democracy", “human rights"; on the contrary, such ideologized Soviet values ​​as “ internationalism", “collectivism", “enthusiasm", “struggle" etc. at that time were rapidly losing their significance and receding into the background.

During this short but turbulent period, various, sometimes contradictory, opposing value blocks were formed and revealed. So, on the one hand, in the minds of the broad strata of the Russian population, such important values ​​of modern (as opposed to traditional) society were mastered, such as “ professionalism", “personal dignity", “freedom to choose beliefs and behavior”, “efficiency”, “, “ and others. On the other hand, many values ​​of Soviet society have found a kind of “second wind”, taking on the appearance of “traditional Russian values” that have now become popular (for example, “ patience", “endurance", “equality", “call of Duty"). As a result, blocks of values ​​opposing each other were formed, which were conditionally perceived as “liberal-market”, “Soviet”, “traditional”, “Orthodox”, etc. Along with the political and social demarcation, there was also a delimitation of values, which sometimes reached the degree of open confrontation, division. However, the main feature of these processes was that various, including contradictory To each other, values ​​and blocks of values ​​(often even as polar as “liberal-democratic” and “Soviet”) often coexisted within the same social group and even coexisted in the minds of one and the same person. This feature was revealed in the course of numerous sociological studies and was explained primarily by the extremely contradictory nature of the complex processes that took place in society.

During the second period 1y. The most important were, first of all, the processes of accelerated demarcation of values ​​between elite and mass groups, as well as between young people and older people. If in the first period the main value division was observed between the politicized and rather numerous supporters of the “democrats”, on the one hand, and their opponents, on the other, now it has faded into the background. The elite and adjacent groups have sufficiently strengthened their position, which contributed to the establishment in their minds of new values ​​corresponding to the extremely advantageous social positions of these groups. At the same time, the mass strata of Russian society, which to a large extent felt themselves “homeless”, abandoned by the state to their fate, mastered completely different values, which were a complex conglomeration of the “old” and “new”, the result of a kind of “adaptation” of the former social political, paternalistic attitudes towards a reality in which the state has “withdrawn itself”.

The studies of the Public Opinion Foundation, conducted during this period, made it possible to fix the main line of the value delimitation of post-Soviet society, passing between the “elite-forming” (directors, entrepreneurs, managers, farmers, etc.) and the “mass” (employees public sector, workers, ordinary rural workers, pensioners, etc.) in groups. This demarcation reflected and continues to reflect the existing sharp differences in the position of elite and mass groups, differences in personal resources (level of education, qualifications, social ties, etc.) of the individuals that make them up, their “social capital”, life strategy, and, ultimately - which has become an additional source of social and political upheavals - conflicts between the subjects of political, economic, social decisions and the bulk of the population.

The delimitation of the mass and elite groups covers a wide range of basic values ​​and in most cases is characterized by the solidarity of the latter. At the same time, a relatively small group of values ​​was also identified (“ money”, “wealth”, “individualism”, “freedom”, “legality”, “sense of duty”, “collectivism”, “justice”, “equality”, “supremacy of state interests over the interests of the individual”), in relation to which the elite groups were split. This kind of internal conflict of value preferences of the groups that form the Russian economic and political elite - between those oriented mainly towards market or administrative-state mechanisms of governance - is highly indicative. It characterizes not only the heterogeneity of the Russian elite, but also a very important features the evolution of its value preferences: in particular, the rejection of the principle of “economic monopoly” (the key one for the former Soviet ruling elite) in favor of the market principle of competition, as a rule, is accompanied by a noticeable decrease in the sense of social responsibility and a reorientation towards the values ​​of shamelessly selfish consumerism.

At the same time, during this period, Russian society, considered as a set of mass socio-demographic groups, retained its homogeneity to a much greater extent (at least in relation to the basic values ​​that are significant for the majority of the population) than could be expected based on widely widespread notions of its inherent deep schisms. The value core of the mass consciousness, being freed from the superficially ideologized "shell", demonstrated its strength. To a certain extent, it resisted the processes of its blurring and polarization, transforming in evolution, but not being destroyed. The value polarization of society was manifested primarily in the growing demarcation between “fathers” and “children” (between the older - more than 55 years old - age group and young people under 25 years old), as well as between people with higher education and poorly educated (having only primary education) Russians .

At the same time, it is important to note that polarization by age affected a number of key values ​​for modern society, associated with new, market relations and most accurately characterizing the features of adaptation to them of polar age groups. Thus, a study conducted by the Public Opinion Foundation in 1994 showed that the greatest differences between the extreme age groups were observed in relation to such values ​​as “ labor”, “money”, “freedom”, “personal dignity”, “industriousness”, “property”, “professionalism”, “education”(table):

Value

age group

education

16-25 years old

over 55 years

initial

higher

Human rights

personal dignity

industriousness

Own

Professionalism

Education

Faith in God

With regard to most other values, including such as “ a family", “safety", “democracy","wealth", “legitimacy”, “collectivism" no significant differences were observed between the age groups. This indicates that the lines of demarcation between "fathers" and "children" passed and still pass through strictly defined positions. First of all, we are talking about the attitude to work. Unfortunately, the value industriousness” in its former sense, in the eyes of a significant part of the youth, it is subject to devaluation and remains mainly in those groups where the traditional consciousness is steadily resisting change. This fact, which shows the difficulties and contradictions in the establishment of liberal market values ​​in the minds of Russian citizens, must be reckoned with by those who are trying to understand the psychology of the new, “market” generation of Russians: many of its representatives tend not to asceticism and self-restraint in the name of the interests of the cause, in the name of accumulation of capital, but rather to "hedonism", when, on the contrary, the acquired capital serves primarily as a means to ensure maximum enjoyment. Of course, this does not mean that in Russia there are no prospects for establishing a domestic analogue of the “Protestant ethic” at all, the point is that the processes unfolding in the mid-1990s were not very favorable for this assertion, and it is unlikely that such prospects can be associated directly with the “new generation” of Russians who entered the working life in the mid-1990s. The road ahead will apparently be much more difficult and lengthy.

At the same time, the line of demarcation between “fathers” and “children” touched on some very specific values ​​of modern liberal society, such as “ freedom", “personal dignity", “professionalism", “own", “money", but not like " democracy", “legitimacy”, “guarantees of political rights of the individual (speech, meetings, demonstrations, participation in elections, etc.)”. The fact is that in the conditions of disillusionment with politics that set in after 1993, young people preferred liberal market values, but not political or political values. This position of many young people manifested itself in the elections to the State Duma in 1993 and 1995. and partly even in the presidential elections of 1996, when the representatives of the older generation voted much more actively and willingly than the youth. On the one hand, such a reaction to the actions of politicians is understandable, just as it is understandable that it is difficult for young people to connect the possibility of consuming the benefits of a liberal market society with the need to participate in politics in order to protect the values ​​of liberalism and market freedoms. But on the other hand, the facts show that liberal market values ​​without their “political” component cannot gain a foothold, securely take root in the minds of even the most, at first glance, the most advanced groups of Russian society.

Value polarization on the scale of education is no less significant, but its nature is somewhat different (table). In relation to most values, including such as “ work", “industriousness”, “money" there were no significant differences between the groups differing in the level of education. At the same time, the lines of demarcation in this case passed along the most important positions characterizing the political culture of modern society: in relation to “ human rights”, “freedom”, “personal dignity”, “sense of duty”, “property”, “education”, “humanism”, “professionalism”. This is another example of the direction in which traditional consciousness (represented in this case by the position of Russians with primary education) is resistant to change. At the same time, we can say that Russians with higher education, as a social group, proved to be the most prepared for the development of liberal market values. However, it should be noted that this group seemed most prepared to master the values ​​of “idealized” liberal democracy, its “ideology”, while in terms of the degree of adaptation to the realities of the transitional Russian society with all its “imperfections”, it was clearly inferior to the same new “market” generation of young Russians. An increased need for self-realization and a heightened sense of social dissatisfaction, characteristic of representatives of this group, formed its actively expressed critical attitude towards the actions of the authorities (while simultaneously supporting the course of transformation).

The phenomena considered are quite consistent with the general trend of the period, which consisted in strengthening the role of deideologized and depoliticized values ​​in the minds of the majority of Russians. This trend was recorded in the already mentioned study of the Public Opinion Foundation, conducted in 1994, when it was found that values ​​such as “ a family", “safety", “conscience", “order”, “work", “human rights", “money", “legitimacy”, which are distinguished by de-ideologization and correspondence to real life problems in the conditions of modern Russia. A similar trend was found by a group of researchers led by comparing the data of all-Russian surveys conducted in 1993 and 1995. According to these data, in the period from 1993 to 1995. Among Russians, there has been a statistically significant increase in the prevalence of such values ​​as “ decency", there was an increase in the rating of such values ​​as “ a family", “success", “prosperity”. It is interesting that all these values ​​cannot be unambiguously classified as either “Soviet”, or “Western”, or completely “traditional”, or completely “modern”; they seem to denote problems and needs among the most important for a Russian person, regardless of ideology and cultural type. At the same time, such ideologically colored values ​​as “ power", “prosperity", “power", “democracy", “order”, “world", “justice".

Finally, the third period after 1997 was marked by contradictory processes of value consolidation and value demarcation within the elite groups themselves, as well as the revival in the minds of fairly wide sections of the Russian population of value orientations associated with state paternalism and a special Russian version of authoritarianism. During the years it seemed that the “pact of elites” that began to take shape after 1993, which sharply increased the social and value demarcation between the elite and the bulk of the population, would at least lead to political and value consolidation within the elite itself. Within the framework of the “political class” of Russia, there was open talk about reconciliation between the “reds” and “whites”, about “blurring the divide between them”, about the fact that the communists are gradually “growing into power”, turning into an “intra-system” party, etc. However, the crisis year of 1998 revealed all the fragility of intra-elite consolidation, revealed the presence of opposing interests and values ​​among its various representatives: “old elite groups” (directors of enterprises belonging to “stagnant” industries, chairmen of collective farms, heads of local authorities in depressed regions and others), on the one hand, and representatives of the “new elite groups” (entrepreneurs, directors of enterprises working for export, heads of local authorities in the most “rich” regions, etc.), on the other. The “Pact of Elites”, which has been in the process of formation for many years, has not acquired legitimate forms, has not been embodied in a system of effective political institutions. In other words, today's conflict of interests and values, which began as a conflict between the elite and the general population, eventually affected the elite groups themselves. Behind the façade of external unity within the Russian elite, a deep and irreconcilable conflict of values ​​was brewing, which was revealed explicitly in the years. as a political conflict.

In turn, some strengthening in the minds of representatives of mass groups of ideas and orientations associated with state paternalism has taken on forms that are noticeably different from its “classical”, Soviet version, which can rather be characterized as a paradoxical combination of value orientations, conventionally called by us “quasi-authoritarianism” . Unlike classical authoritarianism, based on a combination of economic freedoms, non-interference of the state in the sphere of private interests of citizens with a sharp restriction of political freedoms, in the minds of a considerable part of the Russian population (at least 20% in 1997), the ideal was a combination of strict state control over economy with the preservation of political rights and freedoms. This “quasi-authoritarian” type of orientation combines the mutually exclusive values ​​of personal freedom and democracy in the political sphere with the value of the state as the only force that ensures order in the economy and its very functioning. Of course, as history shows, such a regime cannot exist in reality, but in the minds of many Russian citizens it is a desirable ideal, which is quite consistent with the combination of the usual orientation towards the “master state”, “father state” with some, at first glance, , liberal preferences in the political sphere (such as, for example, free elections).

It is not difficult to foresee in what direction the value orientations of the supporters of "quasi-authoritarianism" will evolve, given that for the representatives of this group the most natural "link" with those for whom neither economic nor political rights and freedoms are of any significance values. Strong authoritarian power in the specific conditions of today's Russia (as, indeed, the growth of chaos in the absence of power) can most likely become just a prologue to the new advent of totalitarianism, in which the state will decisively suppress public freedom.

GENERAL TRENDS

The most general trend characteristic of the evolution of the values ​​of Russian society throughout the 1990s is that the previously dominant value system of Soviet society has undergone significant and diverse changes. This made possible the drift of value orientations in various directions, which resulted in a significant value demarcation among Russians. On the basis of various blocks and systems of values ​​that are formed in modern Russian society and dominate in different social groups, certain models of behavior are formed, including socio-cultural types of attitudes of Russians to political and political economic changes. On the same basis, various, sometimes polar opposite, assessments of the causes of the political and economic crisis in Russia in the 1990s are formed. Thus, in 1995, 32% of the respondents agreed with the statement about the cause of the crisis, consisting in the fact that “there are no conditions for good productive work in Russia”, and the same number, 32%, did not agree with this. Almost the same picture was observed in relation to the thesis, which to a certain extent contradicts the previous one, that “in Russia they have forgotten how to work for real” (35% agree and 32% disagree). A variety of possible causes of the Russian crisis appeared, including such as “Western countries are pursuing a policy aimed at weakening Russia” (42% agree and 15% disagree) or such as “Russians are pushed aside by non-Russians from leadership positions, prestigious professions property” (18% agree, 38% disagree). There is a significantly different perception by Russian citizens of both the crisis itself and its causes, especially those relating to a critical assessment of the state of society, which is largely due to the difference in value preferences. It should be noted, however, that the ethnic factor has not gained popularity as a cause of the crisis, while xenophobic sentiments are much more common.

Sociological research makes it possible to identify in modern Russian society the values ​​that differentiate (separate) and the values ​​that integrate (unify) various social groups. Among the most important values ​​that quite sharply differentiate between elite and mass groups is “ education", “professionalism", “personal dignity", “industriousness”, “human rights". Among representatives of elite groups (entrepreneurs, managers, directors, heads of collective farms and state farms), the rating of these values, as a rule, is significantly higher than among representatives of mass groups (pensioners, workers, collective farmers, etc.). Such a steady separation of elite groups from the mass strata characterizes the desire of the Russian “establishment” to consolidate society on the value bases of modern society acceptable to these elites - education, professionalism, personal dignity, hard work, human rights. The problem is that such aspiration is opposed by the passive, but very stable resistance of the majority of mass groups that find themselves in a position social outsiders and those who are not interested in the consolidation of society according to the rules proposed by the elite, and on the basis of such value priorities that leave them no hope of changing their current plight. It is quite likely that this conflict of values ​​underlies the mutual misunderstanding of the Russian authorities and ordinary citizens that is clearly expressed today. In terms of its sharpness and possible social consequences, such a conflict is much more dangerous than the value discord between “fathers” and “children”, highly educated and poorly educated, and even between “poor” and “rich”. In this sense, the inattention of the elite to value priorities and orientations of the mass strata can lead to a further deepening of the socio-political crisis, to a deepening split in society, which is fraught with a new catastrophe.

The general picture of the value delimitation of society changes dramatically in the transition from professional groups to socio-demographic, differing in the level of education, age and income level. Values ​​that significantly differentiate Russian society at the level of professional groups, with socio-demographic gradation, as a rule, acquire the quality of integrativity. Yes, from total number Of the 59 values ​​used in the study by the Public Opinion Foundation, only 10 differentiate socio-demographic groups. At the same time, only five of them can be considered really socially significant: these are “ democracy", “justice", “money", “equality" and " patience". It is in relation to these values ​​that there is a demarcation between the main socio-demographic groups of the Russian population, and it is precisely on the basis of these values ​​that it is currently impossible to unite Russian society.

The trends that differentiate society, however, are opposed by opposite tendencies, personified by values ​​integrating various professional, elite and mass groups. It is characteristic that the corresponding values, among which, among the most significant, “family”, “security”, “freedom”, “spirituality”, “humanism”, - by their very nature carry a powerful charge of social consolidation and stability, which it would make sense to use for forces interested in socio-political harmony. This is especially true for the first three values, which have a fairly high and stable rating among Russian citizens and which are, at the same time, the most important values ​​of modern society.

One can trace several more end-to-end trends characteristic of the processes of transformation of the value sphere of Russians throughout the turbulent 1990s. First, let us note the de-ideologization of value preferences as a general trend. An ordinary “average” person in modern Russia, in terms of his value orientations, appears, first of all, as a de-ideologized pragmatist, who is in a difficult transitional situation and tries to combine the most diverse, at first glance, incompatible value orientations. At the present time, first of all, values ​​are coming to the fore, which are associated not so much with stable and ideologically colored norms and principles of behavior in a stable society, but are a reflection of the most acute, screaming problems of modern Russia. Of particular note is the strengthening of the role of such values ​​as material wealth and stability of life. Thus, a survey conducted by the Public Opinion Foundation in April 1998 showed that among the values ​​of individual life “ material wealth, comfortable housing, good living conditions” ranks second (61%) after “own health, health of loved ones”(76%), and “life stability, no upheavals”- third place (33%). As the material situation of a significant number of Russians worsens and the instability of their lives increases, these fundamental values ​​come to the fore, pushing “ideologized” values ​​to the back of consciousness.

All this does not mean that Soviet or any other ideological values ​​have been lost altogether, they have only receded into the background or third plan and are in a latent state. Any acute political crisis may again lead to their activation in the minds of a part of the population. And yet, the majority of Russians are not yet inclined to put ideology and ideologized values ​​at the forefront - neither liberal-democratic, nor conservative, nor communist, nor any other.

Secondly, the trend of the formation and development of the so-called “consumer individualism” or “adaptive individualism”, which was noted at one time and was noted for all the 1990s, is a cross-cutting trend. According to these and other authors, the individualism characteristic of the post-Soviet person is not the individualism of Western society, which implies the existence of a civil society, a developed system of social ties, a culture of participation, etc. Post-Soviet individualism is, first of all, not a completely adequate reaction to the former, collectivism was in many ways imposed from above, and its reverse side is the collapse of social ties, the weakness of civil society, the lack of solidarity in defending one's social and political rights. In contrast to the consolidated Western society, Russian society is atomized, and this state characterizes all its main social groups, including the political elite, engulfed in a continuous internal struggle for power and unable to protect not only national, but also their own group interests.

Finally, thirdly, all of the 1990s are characterized by the fundamental incompleteness of the formation of a single, consistent system of values ​​that would be shared by the overwhelming majority of Russian society. The existing blocks of old and new values ​​do not form an integral unity, often they more or less clearly conflict with each other, preventing the formation of a stable “core” of the new value system. Value conflicts are observed not only between various professional and socio-demographic groups, but also within the main social groups of Russian society. None of these groups is homogeneous in their value orientations, which often look inconsistent and contradictory. Thanks to this inconsistency and inconsistency, noticeable fluctuations are revealed within the elite and mass groups. One of the manifestations of this instability may be a change in political preferences - from commitment to democratic rights and freedoms to support for the "strong hand" regime.

SOME CONCLUSIONS AND FORECASTS

So, Russian society, its elite and the bulk of citizens are in a state of uncertainty and variability in the choice between different directions of value evolution. Among these areas, it should be noted Russian and Soviet traditionalism, moderate (“enlightened-patriotic”) pragmatism, radical Western liberalism and "asocial individualism". As for traditionalism in the sphere of values, formally, a considerable part (from a third to a half) of the Russian population is the supporters of Russia's orientation mainly towards “traditional Russian values”. At the same time, the analysis shows that in the minds of many supporters of “traditional Russian values” there is a characteristic interweaving of Russian (“ catholicity”, “will, freeman", “Faith in God") and Soviet (“ collectivism", “enthusiasm", “equality", “guarantees of social rights of the individual”). Some values, such as patience", “hospitality" or " the supremacy of state interests over the interests of the individual” in general, it is difficult to unambiguously attribute them only to traditional Russian or only to Soviet values. Therefore, in our opinion, one can speak of Russian and Soviet traditionalism as two different, but extremely close value orientations, whose supporters together make up 30 to 40% of the Russian population.

There are quite a few supporters of Russia's predominant orientation towards Western values, who openly proclaim this - only a few percent of Russian residents. At the same time, the share of Russians for whom, along with others, the most important are such traditional values ​​of Western society as “ inviolability of private property”, “government intervention in privacy citizens”, “efficiency” and others, ranges from 10 to 15%. Approximately the same number or slightly less supporters of Russia's development along the path of the most accurate reproduction of Western models of democracy and the market. In this regard, the share of supporters of radical Westernism, which peaked in the early 1990s and then began to decrease, now apparently amounts to no more than 5-10% of the population of Russia.

There are much more supporters of moderate (“enlightened-patriotic”) pragmatism, for whom Russia’s orientation towards both Western and traditional Russian values ​​is optimal, than supporters of radical Westernism: their share is approximately 40-45% of the number of Russian residents. For most of them, Russia's development is preferable, which would fully take into account its peculiarities, historical and national specifics, but at the same time allow the country to remain open, use Western institutions and Western experience to improve the lives of Russian citizens.

As for the explicit and open supporters of values ​​directly related to asocial individualism, it is rather difficult to estimate their number. Nevertheless, according to indirect data, their share is not so small and, as one might assume, is at least 10-15% of the Russian population. Nevertheless, supporters of asocial individualism, as well as radical Westernism, in general, are in the minority, and the key value confrontation, which also results in a socio-political confrontation, in modern Russia takes place between “traditionalists” and “moderate pragmatists”.

In this regard, if we are guided by the tendencies of value delimitation that have been observed so far, then in the coming years the situation in Russia will develop quite dramatically. If the Russian elite fails to consolidate in terms of values ​​and politics on a broader basis than before, taking into account the position, interests and values ​​of the mass strata, the country will move from crisis to crisis, one of which, sooner or later, may become fatal for it. In this case, the majority of the population can support a “quasi-authoritarian” regime, which first eliminates economic freedoms, and then, as it gains full dominance in the economy, it will limit or completely destroy the political rights and freedoms of citizens. Under such a scenario, the value consolidation of the elite and the mass strata will become quite possible, but at the cost of it will be the destruction of the most liberal and most modern part of Russian society, as was already the case after 1917.

However, there is no fatal inevitability of such a development of events (based on a kind of value “counter-reformation” - an attempt to ensure the dominance of Soviet or neo-Soviet values ​​by discrediting liberal values). If the most sane and least blinded by momentary interests of the elite or near-elite groups can mobilize a significant part of the Russian population, oriented towards the values ​​of moderate, enlightened-patriotic pragmatism, the outcome of immediate and more distant events, including elections, may well be different.

NOTES

Lipset S. M. Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy // American Political Science Rev., 1959, No. 53.

Dahl R. A. Polyarchy. participation and opposition. New Haven and London: Yale Univ. Press, 1971.

Rustow D. A. Transitions to Democracy: Toward a Dynamic Model // Comparative Politics, v.2, No.3, 1970.

Dynamics of the Values ​​of the Population of Reformed Russia (responsible ed.,). M.: Editorial URSS, 1996.

Melville A. Political values ​​and orientations and political institutions // Political Russia (under the general editorship of L. Shevtsova). M.: Mosk. Carnegie Center, 1998, pp. 136-194.

All-Russian polls of the Public Opinion Foundation, conducted on a sample representing the professional, socio-demographic and settlement structure of the adult population of Russia, were studies of two types. Surveys of the "Monitor" type, conducted in the years, included a constant component - a block of regularly repeated questions about the attitude of respondents to the most important socio-political changes taking place in Russia after 1991, as well as a variable - several dozen questions grouped into special thematic blocks , which aimed to find out the most important ideological, political and value preferences of representatives of various professional and socio-demographic groups of the Russian population. Thus, it was possible, on the one hand, to trace the dynamics of the main socio-political orientations of the inhabitants of Russia, and on the other hand, to compare them with changing value preferences. A feature of surveys of this type was that, in order to more fully represent some small, but very important professional groups in the study of a transitional society (including entrepreneurs, heads of state enterprises, employees of the state administration apparatus, etc.), in appropriate cases, the basic sample was supplemented with special directed samples, which made it possible to obtain extremely valuable, unique information about the processes taking place in Russian society.

Polls of the second type, conducted weekly in the years. according to a standard all-Russian sample, they included about 20-30 questions each and were devoted to various, recurring topics from time to time, as well as clarifying the attitude of respondents to the most relevant events in current political, economic, cultural life. As a result of comparison and analysis of respondents' answers to various questions a dynamic and “multidimensional” picture of their political and value orientations was obtained.

See: Levada Y. “Soviet man” five years later // Economic and social changes: monitoring of public opinion, 1995, No. 1; Levada Yu. Returning to the Phenomenon of the “Soviet Man”: Problems of the Analysis Methodology // Ibid., 1996, No. 5; Levada Yu. Now we think more about the family than about the state // Today, 1995, January 24; Milar J. R. (ed.). Politics, Work and Daily Life in the USSR. A Survey of Former Soviet Citizens. Cambridge, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1987.

The real Soviet state came closest to this idealistic image of the “father state” in the late 1940s and early 1950s; since the era of Khrushchev, in the light of “real socialism”, this ideal image began to fade and blur.

Inkeles A., Bauer R. The Soviet Citizen: Daily Life in a Totalitarian Society. Cambridge, Harvard Univ. Press, 1959; Milar J. R. (ed.). Op. cit.

Among the most significant values ​​that form this demarcation, we note “ human rights”, “personal dignity”, “education”, “professionalism”, “hard work”, “hospitality”, “money”.

Russian mentality. (The specificity of the consciousness of large groups of the population of Russia). Under the general editorship. . M.: Image-Contact, 1997, p.74-75.

Pantin Order // Political Research, 1997, No. 3.

Values ​​of the post-Soviet person // Man in a transitional society. Sociological and socio-psychological research. M., IMEMO RAN, 1998, pp. 2-33.

In this regard, the results of a mass international survey conducted on the initiative of the ROPER firm in the spring of 1997 among residents of the USA, Eastern Europe (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland), Kazakhstan and Russia are very indicative. According to its results, the most important individual value for both Russian citizens and US citizens is “ family safety”; the top ten most important individual values ​​for both the inhabitants of the United States and the inhabitants of Russia also includes “ freedom in actions, thoughts”(USA - 7th place, Russia - 10th place) (see Golov A. Individual values and consumer behavior in Russia and the USA // Economic and social changes: public opinion monitoring”, 1997, no. 6, pp. 32-33).

Klyamkin sociology of a transitional society // Political Research, 1993, No. 4.

Diligensky and social psychology // Power, 1998, No. 3.

Personal values. Relationship of values, needs and interests

Value orientations are the most important element of the internal structure of the personality, fixed by the life experience of the individual, the totality of his experiences and delimiting the significant, essential for a given person from the insignificant and insignificant. The totality of the prevailing value orientations forms the “axis of consciousness”, which ensures the stability of the personality, continuity certain type behavior and activities, expressed in the direction of needs and interests. Because of this, the value orientation is the main factor that regulates and determines the motivation of the individual. Value orientations are the political, philosophical, moral convictions of a person, deep and permanent attachments, moral principles of behavior. Therefore, in any society, the value orientations of the individual are the object of education.

Each individual has a singularity, his genetic, bodily, emotional, intellectual and other separateness is inherent only this person and are the basis of his individuality. Man thanks to the cumulative ability human brain accumulates information received in the process of life. Comprehending this information, he forms the actual system of various value orientations, which are manifested in the performance of his social roles.

Social role - a set of norms of conduct that are mandatory for implementation in a given field of activity, as well as

the behavior itself. Socialization is the path of an individual to personality, i.e. social reproduction of a person through the assimilation of social norms, rules, principles of behavior, thinking, mode of action in various fields vital activity. In the process of carrying out behavior, activity, communication, a person asserts himself in society, manifests his Self.

Labor is of great importance for the transformation of a biological individual into a socio-biological personality. Only by engaging in any specific business, and one that meets the inclinations and interests of the person himself and is useful for society, a person can appreciate his social significance, reveal all the facets of his personality.

On the basis of knowledge, acquired skills, a person's ability to independent logical thinking is formed - mind. Knowledge and mind in their interrelation form the basis of what is called intellect. Knowledge and intelligence are transformed into personal characteristics when a person, on their basis, develops the ability to determine his attitude to the world and to himself, to evaluate the nature of the actions of other people and his own. This feature acquires relative independence. It is referred to as "reason".

In axiology, the concepts of “value attitude” and “value” (good) are initial and basic. value attitude - this is a special kind of connection between the subject and the object, within which the identification, experience and understanding of the sociocultural significance of the object for the being of the subject take place. The value attitude has two poles - the object as a carrier of value and the subject as a carrier of evaluation.

Values are not inherent in objects and phenomena in themselves, they are revealed only in the course of active interaction a person with the outside world, i.e. within the framework of spiritual and practical activities, in the course of social relations. Animals also have values, but they come down to physiological needs. A person also has needs of a different, incomparably more complex nature - social, spiritual, etc.

Things and phenomena can have not only positive, but also negative meanings, i.e. perceived as anti-

14.2. Personal values. The relationship of values, needs ... 269

values, to be carriers of negative values ​​for a person. The expression of anti-values ​​in public life is Evil in its various manifestations. Values ​​and anti-values ​​(mind and stupidity, labor and laziness, love and hatred, etc.) seem to compete with each other in order to make a person their humble prisoner. Of course, the meaning of value can change for various reasons of an objective and subjective nature, and along with them, estimates can also change - up to the point that what is valuable for someone or at a given time, or in a given respect, may turn out to be invaluable or less valuable for another. , or at another time, or in another way.

Grade serves to determine the meaning of objects, processes or phenomena for a person, to identify their sociocultural meaning. Evaluation is the assignment of value to value, if any, of an object.

Revaluation values ​​is a rethinking of established ideas and meanings and, accordingly, a change of orientation in life. Reassessment is a natural and common phenomenon, since new generations of people who have developed somewhat different views, tastes and preferences, ideals that are being formed in new historical conditions, are constantly included in public life. A radical reassessment of values ​​occurs during social revolutions. In public life, distortions of value ideas are also possible, the substitution of good for evil (for example, a base work of art is perceived as a masterpiece, selflessness gives way to greed, etc.).

Based on the assessments, value judgments are formed: "this is good, and this is bad." With the help of such judgments, a person realizes the world around him as having significance for him, and manifests himself in it as a cultural, social being.

axiosphere is a set of diverse values ​​- ethical and aesthetic, political, legal, religious and others, which are formed on the appropriate social and spiritual soil. The axiosphere has a hierarchy of values, i.e. their certain location in terms of significance for a person. Individual or social

Chapter 14

The social group always have their own preferences and aspirations, which distinguishes them from other individuals and groups. At the same time, there are universal human values ​​that are recognized by all and are important for all. The world of human values ​​is somewhat reminiscent of a pyramid with a base and a top. Each individual has their own value pyramid.

It is known that a person in his relations (interactions) with the outside world manifests himself universally, i.e. comprehensively. His nature is such that he strives for the fullness of his being, fully revealing his creative essence. The activity relation of a person to the world exists in various forms:

o cognitive attitude - the search for and acquisition of knowledge, starting from the simplest (ordinary knowledge) and ending with theories and scientific pictures of the world; About the practical attitude - the desire to transform the world into

according to their needs and interests; o artistic and aesthetic attitude - the perception of the world through the prism of harmony and beauty, admiration and admiration for this world, the embodiment of beauty in their practical activities;

О moral attitude - following a person to moral canons and imperatives (the dictates of society, one's own conscience) or contrary to morality and conscience;

О value attitude to the world, within which a person manifests his needs (state of need), interests (content of desires) and goals (mental image of aspirations).

Spiritual aspirations, ideals, principles, norms of morality are not so much in the sphere of interests as in the field of values. The stimuli and causes of human activity are further developed here: the needs, transformed into interests, in turn "turn" into values. The value attitude of a person to the world is a relatively independent aspect of his existence, although it is woven into the general fabric of all the spiritual and practical activities of Homo sapiens.

Human values ​​can be divided into several groups.

14.2. Personal values. The relationship of values, needs ... 271

The first group includes individual (personal), group and universal values.

The second group includes those values ​​that are revealed in the course of human activity in specific areas of public life. These are economic (money, market), social (friendship, mercy), political (dialogue, non-violence), spiritual (knowledge, images), legal (law, order) values. Spiritual values ​​are especially diverse due to the extreme complexity and versatility of this sphere of society (religion, science, art, morality and other spheres of spiritual activity). Values ​​(for example, friendship, solidarity) consolidate social relations, form a social organism as a whole. On the contrary, anti-values ​​(enmity, aggression) destroy the social organism, wash away the cultural principle from it.

The third group is material and spiritual values. It is customary to refer to material things, first of all, things that are necessary for the daily existence of a person (food, clothing, housing), help to satisfy the basic needs of people and therefore are of particular importance. Tools of labor are also included in this group; their calling is to ensure the human way of human existence in the world, i.e. meet its growing cultural and social needs, fulfill a multifaceted practical activities. Spiritual values ​​are products of a special kind of activity carried out with the help of the senses, mind and heart of a person. Their formation takes place within the framework of spiritual production (science, religion, art, oral folk art), i.e. in the realm of the Spirit.

Ideal occupies a special place in the system of human spiritual values. This is a mental model of the desired, sought-after world, which carries within itself ideas of the absolutely perfect, expressing a person's desire to change the world of his being. Like everything absolute, it is unattainable, but without it, a person’s self-determination is impossible on life path. The ideal is the ultimate goal in a person's life, which directs him to the fullness of his own being and the perfection of his individuality. Without an ideal, a person cannot take place as a person, as a creative, searching and active being.

Chapter 14

The fourth group incorporates transient values ​​(due to a specific historical time - fashion, musical genres etc.) and enduring (meaningful at all times) - Nature, Man, Labor.

The fifth group includes the so-called utilitarian (instrumental) and fundamental (higher) values, without which human life itself is impossible. The highest values ​​include freedom, health, human security, etc.

All values ​​are relative, but their relativity is not absolute, but has certain limitations that are imposed on them by the objective nature of the objects being valued, on the one hand, and by the actual specific needs of people - With another.

A particular value occupies a relative place on the scale of values. But this place is not accidental and not arbitrary, it is determined by the connection between objective and subjective factors, i.e. the nature, the specific content of this value relationship between them. Some relative values ​​are closer to the ideal, others are further away from it. Thus, a “hierarchy of values” is formed on the basis of the predominance of a positive element in them. On the scale of values, phenomena are distributed according to the law of divergence: the closer to the middle of the scale, the denser relative values ​​are located on it, the closer to the poles, the less often values ​​or non-values ​​are fixed. Among the infinite variety of meanings, there are few phenomena that retain a positive meaning at all times and for all people (universal, enduring values): life, health, knowledge, work, etc., as well as a small group of their antipodes - premature death, illness, ignorance, etc.

Since the relativity of all values ​​is determined by the circumstances of place and time, interests, value orientations of people, so far in the life of society as a whole, the set and nature of certain material and spiritual values ​​does not depend on the arbitrariness of individuals. It is determined by the mass needs characteristic of a given epoch, a given people, a class, and, ultimately, by the fundamental

14.3. needs and scientific and technical progress

mental needs of a given historical, formational type of material and spiritual production.

Ideas about valuable and non-valuable (beautiful, good, expedient; ugly, harmful, stupid, etc.) depend not only on the properties of the object, but also to a much greater extent on the nature of the evaluating subject. Value attitude is a practical determinant of the relationship of an object with human needs.

The correlation of spiritual value with the real need of individuals and society can serve as a basis for classifying the values ​​of life and culture. For example, it is possible to classify all values ​​according to the levels of social being and social consciousness: a person and humanity are defined as the highest values ​​of being, then the values material life people, social values ​​and, finally, the values ​​of the spiritual life of society. The totality of specific spiritual values ​​can be classified sociologically according to the types of spiritual activity or in the epistemological aspect according to the forms of social consciousness: value knowledge, moral values, aesthetic, etc. In these types of classification, mainly objects of value attitudes involved in one or another type of material or spiritual human activity are taken into account, and their correlation with needs recedes into the background.

The question of the role of national values ​​in the policy of the state, especially in its foreign policy, acquires in recent times increasing relevance. This is primarily due to the fact that in the development human civilization a new stage has begun. With the light hand of the American political scientist Samuel Huntington, this stage was called the "clash of civilizations." And the conflict of civilizations is nothing but a conflict between groups of peoples, each of which has common or similar national values. And this conflict did not arise by chance, but precisely because Western civilization, in addition to the expansion of its ideology, began to introduce its system of values ​​throughout the world.

In history, the competition of worldviews has existed, perhaps, as long as human civilization itself has existed. At the dawn of civilization, ideological competition was carried out in the form of a conflict of cult, pagan and pseudo-religious beliefs. Then came the stage of world religions, their conflict with paganism, and then with each other. This second stage lasted almost two thousand years. However, the first one was even longer.

Somewhere since the 17th century, secular ideological doctrines began to develop - nationalism, liberalism, communism, fascism. They also clashed with each other and with traditional religious views, pushing the latter into the background. During the most violent conflicts of the 20th century, these ideologies were defeated one after another. Fascism was defeated by the combined forces of two cosmopolitan ideologies - communism and liberalism. Then these two ideologies began the struggle for world leadership, called the Cold War. This war ended with the defeat of communism.

As far as nationalism is concerned, it has fulfilled its tasks of education nation states in Europe and subsequent decolonization and, as a result, became irrelevant on a global scale. Now nationalism continues to play certain role only at the regional level, where significant national problems have not yet been resolved. At the same time, it is possible to predict the strengthening of the role of nationalism as a current defending the identity of peoples in the context of globalization. In this sense, nationalism fits logically into the unfolding conflict of civilizations. However, at the same time, nationalism is transformed from an ideological doctrine into a value one. In its new capacity, nationalism will strive not so much to implement new political projects as to preserve traditional system values ​​of different countries and peoples.

In the early 90s of the last century, it seemed that Western liberalism had won on a global scale and could celebrate the victory. There were triumphant articles about the "end of history" and the beginning of the "golden age" in the development of mankind. Indeed, then there was a situation when the world as a whole agreed with the ideology of Western liberalism. The model of a liberal market economy has been adopted by almost all countries with rare exceptions, and the model of political democracy has been adopted in most countries of the world. Those states that have not yet introduced the model of political democracy have agreed to recognize it as an ideal to which one should strive, and have designated the transition to it as strategic goal its policy.

But very soon it turned out that the Western model, transplanted onto the soil of other civilizations, does not give the desired result. As practice has shown, this model creates in other societies an economic and political system that is very different from the Western one. And if in the countries of Eastern Europe the Western model as a whole took root, then already in the post-Soviet space there were public systems slightly different from the Western one. A similar situation arose in Latin America. Even greater differences took place in the Islamic states that formally adopted the Western model. And in Africa, traditional tribalism, dressed in democratic clothes, continued to dominate.

Thus, it became obvious that it was not possible to unify humanity according to the Western model on the basis of ideology alone. And consequently, it is also impossible to control humanity from one Western center. After all, it is not realistic to manage a system whose components react differently to the same inputs. This prompted the West to start a large-scale program for the unification of mankind, which required a change in the value system of other countries.

For this purpose, a huge worldwide network of non-governmental organizations has been created to promote "democracy" and "human rights". At the state level, active work was carried out with the national elites, on their reorientation or subjugation, in order to force them to cooperate in planting a Western worldview in their societies. This policy provoked a natural reaction of resistance in many countries. In an effort to break this resistance, the West began to move from information and propaganda work to the use of “soft power” tools in the form of “color revolutions”, and in some cases even to the use of military force.

Meanwhile, by the end of the 2000s, the inability of Western liberalism to effectively manage society, not only on a global scale, but also within the framework of Western civilization itself, manifested itself. Without the disciplinary influence of a competing ideological project, the Western economic model went haywire and provoked the biggest global economic crisis in history. So far, there are no signs that this crisis will be overcome in the foreseeable future. In a word, liberalism has led humanity into an economic dead end, from which there is no way out.

As a result, the attractiveness of the Western model of society has decreased, and resistance to the imposition of Western values ​​around the world has increased. Under US President Obama, the West had to adjust its policy somewhat. The dwindling economic resources severely limited the possibility of waging numerous wars. For this reason, a method of combined use of soft and hard power was chosen, relying on local rebel groups and foreign mercenaries. The sabotage and terrorist war against Syria became a concentrated expression of this policy. Thus, the West actually returned to the methods of the Cold War, only not against an ideological enemy, but against countries that do not want to accept the Western model of values.

Thus, if in the 90s of the last century, after the “Pyrrhic victory” in the Cold War, the West tried to act mainly by persuading and demonstrating the attractiveness of its model of society, then it moved on to imposing its values ​​with the most different ways including the military. And this is quite understandable. After all, Western civilization was in critical situation. Due to the operation of the objective law of the uneven economic and political development of states, the role Western countries in the global economy has been declining in recent decades. This trend became particularly prominent in the context of the global economic crisis. Well, after the fall of the economic importance of the West, its political influence in the world must also inevitably decrease. If this trend cannot be stopped, then the collapse of the entire Western bloc cannot be ruled out, just as happened with the “socialist camp”.

On the other hand, if the West manages to impose its values ​​on other societies, then they will recognize the moral leadership of Western civilization. Naturally, in this case, the sovereignty of these societies will be lost, and they will fall under the ideological control of Western centers of influence. Over time, this may lead to the disintegration of the respective states. But at the same time, the political influence of the West will increase, which over time will convert this influence into economic advantages and military dominance.

Thus, in modern world the struggle of values ​​has already gone beyond morality and is not limited to who will look better in world public opinion. This struggle has acquired a real military-political aspect and directly affects the national security of states.

national interests

National interests are interests arising from the state as a result of its position in the system international relations. National interests are a category of public consciousness. As such, they do not depend on the will and consciousness of individuals. However, they are formulated, as a rule, by representatives of the country's political elite and, above all, by its top leaders. The very process of forming national interests is rather complicated. Obviously they are not the total amount the interests of the individuals who make up the nation. Moreover, they are not even the resultant of these interests. In a word, the process of formation of national interests requires a special detailed study. Moreover, in different countries, this process can work differently. But one thing is clear, the basis for the formation of national interests are the interests of people living in this state.

All people have some set of interests. Interests arise from the needs of people. The difference between need and interest is that interest is a perceived need. In this, man differs from animals, which have no interests, but have needs. Indeed, both humans and animals are biological organisms and must satisfy certain needs in order to exist. However, animals satisfy this or that need when it manifests itself physiologically. For example, an animal satisfies the need for food when a feeling of hunger appears. Having satisfied the feeling of hunger, the animal forgets about this need for a while.

Man, as a rational being, acts differently. He realizes that the need for food is inherent in him constantly, throughout his life. Therefore, he seeks to create conditions that ensure guaranteed access to food under any circumstances. Thus, awareness of the need for food leads to the emergence of a person's interest in ensuring guaranteed access to food.

At the dawn of human civilization, a person had a certain limited number of interests, determined by his physiological needs - in ensuring security, in food, in clothing, in housing, in procreation, etc. Over time, people began to understand that the acquisition of new knowledge allows them to realize these interests more effectively. This gave rise to a person's need for knowledge of the world and himself. And from this need, a person has interests not only in the material, but also in the spiritual sphere. However, this is a materialistic view of the problem. From the point of view of idealism or religion, the desire for knowledge was originally embedded in the nature of man by the Higher Mind or God. But for the purposes of this analysis, this philosophical dispute is of no fundamental importance. The human need for knowledge of the surrounding world is denied neither by materialists, nor by idealists, nor by clergymen.

Since people did not live individually, but in communities, they began to have common interests. As communities developed into tribes and further into states, common interests arose for these associations of people. The interaction of states among themselves has led to the emergence of their interests related not only to internal development, but also to their position in the system of international relations, that is, national interests.

national values

National values, as well as national interests, are a category of public consciousness. With the acquisition of new knowledge, people began to develop a certain system of views on the world around them and on themselves, a worldview arose. For different people, taking into account their individual experience, it could be different and different from the worldview of other people. But since people did not live individually, but as communities, such a difference in worldview began to play a negative role, creating a threat to the viability of communities. The presence of diverse worldviews within the community inevitably led to the emergence of incompatible behavioral models of people, to the emergence of disagreements, conflicts, strife, and ultimately to the death of the entire community.

Therefore, the communities had a need to streamline the worldview of their members, to bring it to a certain common denominator. Members of the community began to agree on some fundamental worldview concepts that were to be recognized by all members of the community. Thus, a common system of values ​​began to form within the communities. In this way, values ​​are the basic worldview concepts generally accepted in a given society.

Those communities that were unable to agree on common values ​​disintegrated and disappeared. Members of such communities either died or were forced to join other communities as second-class people and unconditionally accept the values ​​that exist there. The same communities that created stable value systems began to develop and grow, then turning into tribes, nationalities and nations.

The need for a common system of values ​​was recognized primarily by people endowed with managerial functions. Being more interested than others in the community functioning as a single organism and noticing failures in the management system earlier than others, community leaders began to use their authority and power to force other community members to accept the system of values ​​shared by the majority. Over time, special mechanisms were developed in the communities to preserve the common system of values, and people appeared to carry out this activity. Thus arose religious cults and priests. They were replaced by priests and monks. Then, for a short time by historical standards, commissars and Fuhrers appeared. All of them were carriers and keepers of a particular system of values.

Now the apparatus for maintaining the system of values ​​in developed countries has become much more complicated, has acquired a polycentric, one might even say, network character. It includes both traditional religious and religious institutions, as well as numerous public organizations, government agencies, political parties and movements. Thus, the system of maintaining national values ​​has become less structured and hierarchical, and this has made it more vulnerable to various outside influences and erosion from within. Under these conditions, maintaining the national value system requires more flexible, inventive and massive work.

Relationship between national interests and national values

National interests are formulated by the country's ruling elite, taking into account numerous factors of internal and external influence. However, in addition to these objective circumstances, the formulation of national interests takes place in a certain worldview system of coordinates, that is, on the basis of the system of values ​​existing in a given society. And national interests formulated on the basis of one system of values, under generally equal conditions, will differ from national interests formulated on the basis of another system of values.

So, for example, the decision to advance Russia in the Transcaucasus at the beginning of the 19th century was justified by the need to protect the Christian peoples - Georgians and Armenians. After 200 years and taking into account the experience of recent decades, many question the feasibility of this decision. There were opponents of this policy even then. They referred to economic and geopolitical factors, insisting on the inexpediency of expanding Russian possessions beyond the limits of the Caucasus Range. However, the point of view of those who considered the Orthodox mission of Russia as the highest priority won. That is, the system of values ​​then dominant in Russia played a major role in the formulation of Russian national interests in relation to the Transcaucasus.

In recent years, the United States, under the slogan of promoting democracy and human rights, has unleashed several wars in the Middle East, bombed Yugoslavia, and staged numerous “color revolutions”. As a result, trillions of dollars were spent and so many people died. Moreover, the political and economic benefits for the United States, if viewed from the point of view of foreign policy rationalism, are not at all obvious. Thus, the overthrow of the Sunni regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq led to the strengthening of the main enemy of the United States in the Middle East - Shiite Iran. The invasion of Afghanistan did not give any positive results at all and turned into a waste of material and human resources. The defeat of Libya not only did not lead to an increase in the supply of cheap oil to the West, but, on the contrary, destabilized these supplies. However, from the point of view American system values, these actions were justified, as they led to the "democratization" of these countries.

Thus, the national system of values ​​quite realistically affects the national interests of the state. But the reverse process is also taking place. National interests influence the value system existing in the state and sometimes lead to its modification. Such things have happened many times in history. Thus, the Russian Bolsheviks, who had proclaimed a course for world revolution, soon realized that the interests of preserving the country and their own survival required a change in policy. As a result, the principle of proletarian internationalism in the Soviet foreign policy doctrine was supplemented by the principle of peaceful coexistence of states with different social systems. And during the Second World War, the USSR generally found itself in the same coalition with the leading capitalist countries - the USA and England. And this was already considered normal and quite acceptable from the point of view of the Soviet system of values.

On the other hand, a change in the system of values ​​of a state leads to the transformation of its national interests. This could be clearly observed after the collapse of the Soviet system in the USSR. The rejection of communist values ​​made many former interests irrelevant. For example, Moscow's support for countries with a socialist orientation in the third world immediately sank into oblivion, just like support for the world communist and labor movement. Economic relations within the CMEA, built on the principles of a planned economy, have lost their meaning. Of course, one could try to transfer them to a market economy, but the political leadership of the CMEA countries did not consider it necessary to do this. Russia began to curtail its military presence in remote areas of the world, as it abandoned the global communist mission and focused on problems in the surrounding regions.

At the same time, the mutual influence of national interests and national values ​​is not of the same type. In this interaction, national interests act as an active side, and national values, as a conservative, restraining force. The national interest is a rather flexible system of views and it reacts quickly to changes in the environment. National values, on the contrary, are an established system of views that cannot change quickly. National values ​​can exist for centuries without undergoing significant changes. The system of national values ​​changes only when it comes into direct conflict with reality and begins to pose a threat to the development of society. And then such a change never happened painlessly without the active resistance of conservative circles.

The evolution of the national system of values ​​in Russia

In the history of Russia, the value system has changed three times. The first such change was associated with the baptism of Russia at the end of the 10th century AD, which was necessary to unite the Slavic tribes, having different beliefs from each other, into a single Russian nation. The second was the adoption by the Moscow kingdom of the religious and political doctrine "Moscow - the Third Rome" at the beginning of the 16th century, which was intended to give Russia the status of an Orthodox empire, the heir of Byzantium. The third was the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.

Each time the introduction of a new system of values ​​took quite a long period of time and met with strong resistance from the conservative circles of Russian society. The baptism of Russia was carried out for more than a century and at times was accompanied by a cruel suppression of pagan cults. The introduction of the concept of "Moscow - the Third Rome" dragged on for two hundred years, led to a church schism in the middle of the 17th century, and ended with the reforms of Peter I. And the process of changing the value system, launched by the October Revolution of 1917, has not yet ended.

The attempt to impose new communist values ​​on Russian society was only partially successful. Despite the bloody civil war and the establishment of the regime of the proletarian dictatorship, the people did not agree to accept most values ​​imposed by the Bolsheviks. Only those values ​​that more or less corresponded to the traditional worldview of the people took root. As a result, already in the first half of the 1930s, the authorities were forced to begin restoring many of the old traditions and symbols, which adapted to the new ideological environment.

In principle, there was nothing unusual about this. Any ideological reform never starts from scratch and, willy-nilly, is forced to reckon with the mentality and traditions of people. So, Christian churches were often built on the site of former temples, some pagan rites were preserved and received a new sound in Christianity, and the ministers of pagan cults, accepting Christianity, became priests. As a result, new worldview systems inevitably absorbed the components of previous eras, even when this previous era was formally denied and anathematized. The Soviet system of values ​​was no exception. It is no coincidence that in Soviet times there was a joke that the moral code of the builder of communism is a copy of the ten biblical commandments.

The uniqueness of the current period of Russian history lies in the fact that the country lacks a single system of values ​​proclaimed and defended by the ruling elite. Now you can build many versions about the reasons for the collapse of the USSR. One can, for example, consider that the Soviet system of values ​​turned out to be unrealistic and therefore could not ensure the effective functioning of the state. Another thesis can be put forward that the Soviet system of values ​​was quite adequate, but the mistakes of the leaders of the state led to its collapse, and with it the system of values ​​inherent in it collapsed. But the fact remains that the Soviet system of values ​​was discarded by the Russian state, but no new system of values ​​was offered to society.

The BN Yeltsin regime that came to power in Russia tried, it was, to transfer the country to the rails of Western liberalism and Western values. But this plan soon proved to be untenable. The point was not only that this course met with strong resistance from a significant part of Russian society, but also that Western values ​​simply did not take root on Russian soil. Perhaps they could take root in a hundred or more years, but it was not realistic to do this quickly. Yes, and the new political elite considered this question as a secondary one, focusing on their own enrichment. Meanwhile, any system of values, even Western-liberal, would obviously prevent such uncontrolled enrichment.

As a result, by now Russian system values ​​was in a rather chaotic state. It is a kind of conglomeration of values, originating from Western liberalism, Orthodoxy, nationalism and Sovietism. In these conditions effective development country is simply not possible. Moreover, Russian society has found itself in a very vulnerable position, especially to outside influence. In essence, we can talk about the emergence of a threat to national security. This seems to have been felt by the top leadership of the country. It is no coincidence that the issue of national values ​​appears more and more often in the program speeches of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

However, the authorities are still groping for only certain fundamental points that could form the basis of a new national system of values. Very promising, for example, is the thesis about the diversity of the world and human civilization and the need to struggle to preserve this diversity. At the same time, a detailed look at what should be new system no values ​​have been offered to society yet. Apparently, there is still no consensus in the elite on this score, and there is still a strongly liberal wing that is pushing Russia in a westerly direction. But it will still have to be determined, and the critical moment for making this fundamental decision is rapidly approaching.

If the Russian leadership is unable to respond to the challenge of the country's lack of a unified system of values ​​in the near future, then a crisis of Russian statehood is inevitable. In the absence of their own value system, the fight against Western expansion in this area will not be effective. As a result, Russia will not only be unable to effectively develop and increase its influence in the world, but will also face the threat of losing sovereignty and, in the longer term, its statehood. This is a real threat to national security and cannot be answered by purely academic methods. To parry this threat, you must use all suitable tools at the disposal of the government.

In Russia, there is a conflict of values ​​and interests. We live in a very unstable balance, which is becoming more and more difficult to maintain. At such moments of crisis, when everything is about to break into chaos, it simply does not make sense to talk about the entire system of values ​​and interests of Russia - we cannot realize them. Russia is “retreating”, we bear loss after loss. Many losses are beyond ideologies, there is no need to even argue about them. Take, for example, science. Things have gone so far that there are no longer, as two years ago, enthusiasts who would be publicly happy about the "dismantling of totalitarian Soviet science." Everyone can already see that we are talking about the loss of the national value that Russia has created over the course of three centuries, and not at all the Soviet regime.

It is clear that today we can only talk about a minimum program. And that conversation is not easy. The title expresses hope: there is still such a core of values ​​and interests that unites a critical mass of citizens around itself, so that it cannot be pulled apart by radical groups with incompatible values ​​and interests. It is clear that to go out on the stage of the House of Cinema today, where the Moscow elite has gathered to rest and Mr. Gaidar and his wife are sitting smiling, and shout "Proletarians of all countries, unite!" - would be unacceptable extremism. It is just as indecent to shout from the TV screen in the face of tens of millions of impoverished people: “Private property is sacred!”. Here even an atheist crosses himself: holy, holy, holy! Worshiping the Golden Calf Moses forbade even Jews - masters of financial affairs.

To say that there is still a core of values ​​that we can agree on and that will "hold" Russia is only a hope, there is no guarantee. The difficulty is that, as a person, each author and each reader participates in a conflict of values ​​and interests and is always in conflict not only with opponents and opponents, but even with himself. Is it possible to maintain integrity during the "time of the death of the gods"? Will such wholeness lead to salvation, will it not become a grave for creative search?

Let's approach our topic from below, from a simpler task - "Values ​​and Interests in Russia". After all, it is easier to identify those of them that today cause the most irreconcilable conflict, and, without trying to connect the incompatible, make up the “core” by the method of elimination. Do not aim at the union of "white" and "red" at once, but see if at least their "pink" parts are compatible.

If it turns out that the remainder after cutting off the extremes is too small to “keep Russia”, then the task will become more complicated. This means that the split in society has gone too deep, and the forces in the confrontation are approximately equal. Then it will be necessary to consider options for suppressing or eliminating conflicting extreme values ​​and interests - to make a decision to unconditionally take someone's side in the opportunistic political struggle. With an increase in the risk of the transition of the struggle to the "hot phase".

We will not describe in detail the systems of values ​​and interests of the main social groups and political forces in Russia. I think that the image of these systems has already been roughly formed for everyone: we imagine what ideals Chubais, Berezovsky, Zyuganov or Anpilov believe in and what interests they have - not as individuals, but as certain political figures, as "expressors". In addition, it is almost impossible to impartially express your own and hostile values. Someone will see a caricature - and the conversation is difficult. It is more important to reveal the structure of the problem. At some point, its clarification (and perhaps even disclosure) is in the interests of all responsible people.

Let us clarify the definitions of our concepts. Values ​​are something ideal, qualitative, correlated with the ideas of Good and Evil. Good and evil are the two broadest, most common polar values. But all the same, values ​​are not from the sphere of the "inexpressible", they are more or less outlined, "estimated", although they are not amenable to quantitative calculation and rational justification. Here are the values ​​we often hear about: equality, justice, love, freedom, competition, gain, progress.

Although the words themselves mean little, deciphering the meaning is always required. Freedom for Stepan Razin or freedom for A.N. Yakovlev - the values ​​are not just different, but almost mutually exclusive. Since values ​​serve as a guide for a person in life, often in bloody battle people collide, on whose banner the same value is indicated, only they understand it differently. It seems that most of the blood was shed by people who waved the banner of freedom.

We comprehend values, but they nest "in the heart". How they take root in the human soul is a mystery. Apparently, in childhood, under the influence of emotional upheavals. In any case, it is useless to convince a person that his values ​​are bad (although many are masters of pretending). For Leo Tolstoy, the values ​​of love, brotherhood and justice are self-evident, he not only does not need any logical arguments to substantiate them, they would surprise him. But his contemporary Friedrich Nietzsche, a brilliant philosopher, poet, intelligent and subtle person - these values ​​not only seemed to him false, but even disgusting. He said: “Push the falling one!”. If Tolstoy and Nietzsche met and began to convince each other, only a big muck would come out. We often do just that.

Interests are rationally conscious goals. They are born in society, in relations with people in connection with needs. People need warmth (this is a need) - and there is a war for control of Arab oil (this is an interest). Interests can be very clearly formulated, formalized and even presented in a quantitative form (although they can often act spontaneously, unconsciously). Since a rational choice, unlike a utopian one based on adherence to ideals, is made taking into account real restrictions (that is, mentally we quickly perform a cost-effectiveness calculation), then interests can be bargained and compromised. Interest is always a search for the optimum, it is often more reasonable to be content with a tit in the hand, otherwise you have to give up the last shirt, and not at all out of a feeling of love.

Values ​​and interests - in a dialectical unity. Values ​​can give rise to interests (there is even a whole category - spiritual interests). Not all the same time to think in higher categories. When the highest goal has become a guiding star, specific tasks appear that can be calculated as interests (values ​​become objects of interest, “ideas become material forces”). The commander of the regiment is bad, who at the headquarters meeting begins to talk about the greatness of the Motherland and its independence.

Often mutual misunderstanding arises from the fact that in one culture something is value(and even something sacred), and in another - just an object interests. For a Protestant, gain is a value, even a way of serving God, but an Orthodox gain is simply a satisfaction of interest.

Values ​​impose a rigid framework on many interests (“don’t steal”). Interests are often disguised as values ​​- this is the hard bread of demagogues and other friends of the people. There are also cases of coincidence of values ​​and interests, then there is a particularly strong, even sometimes inexplicable motivation. Here a person begins to fight with a robber because of his wallet or fur coat and gets stabbed in the ribs with a knife. From the point of view of interests, his behavior is unreasonable, but here insulted values ​​\u200b\u200bare mixed into the calculation.

A classic example of large social movements- peasant wars over land ownership. For a "civilized" person who sees in the earth only an economic category, an object interests, such conflicts are not entirely clear (in fact, they are not clear). But for peasants, land is not only a means of production, but also spiritual, even religious. value.

Sometimes there is a complication of the picture - when in large groups people's values ​​and interests categorically contradict each other. This leads to a strange numbness, to paralysis, to the loss of all will to act and even to think. The current crisis in Russia gives many examples of this. Thus, the scientific intelligentsia, having believed in the values ​​of freedom and democracy, enthusiastically supported the liberal reform, in general, realizing that they were acting against their social interests. And no movement in defense of domestic science could arise among this intelligentsia (although there was no fatal need for the murder of science).

In the poles of "values ​​- interests" of society are different. Extreme case: theocracy. Here, society is soldered by the dictates of religious values, almost all interests are summed up and disguised under them, so that even the norms everyday life justified by religion (for example, Sharia). The other extreme is the rationalism of the Protestant West. Here, in the course of the Reformation and the Scientific Revolution, a "rationalization of values" was carried out. A completely new way of knowing and seeing the world has emerged - an objective science focused on truth, and not on values. “Knowledge is power,” it was said at the dawn of science. And no more! Knowledge is alien to the very problem of good and evil. Rationalism has become a powerful means of liberating a person from a multitude of norms and prohibitions, fixed in traditions, legends, taboos. “Never accept as true anything that I would not know as such with obviousness ..., include in my judgments only what appears to my mind so clearly and so distinctly that it does not give me any reason to doubt it,” wrote Descartes.

To substantiate the freedom that was laid at the foundation bourgeois society, desacralization (deprivation of holiness) of both the world and human relations was carried out. The condition for this was the replacement, where possible (and where not) of quality by quantity, by its conditional measure. Mene, Tekel, fares- "calculated, weighed, divided." It even becomes scary.

For value, a quantitative surrogate was found - the price. This was the most important means of eliminating holiness: “that which can have a price does not have holiness,” said the philosopher. The ability to calculate everything gives great freedom, but it is, of course, dreary - the world is devoid of charm, and the bride signs a marriage contract. There is a sad aphorism (already by a modern philosopher): "The West is a civilization that knows the price of everything and does not know the value of anything."

In a civil society that arose on a rational basis, freedom was declared the main value, and the protection of private property was an interest that held society together (for the sake of which a “social contract” was concluded - the transfer of part of personal freedom to the state). From whom was such a desired protection needed? From the poor, from the poor, who, however, were condemned not rationally, but precisely through values ​​- as “ bad"(and in religion as" outcasts"). This is a liberal society (from the Latin word liberalis- free). The most important condition freedom was just the absence of common values ​​for the whole society, a common ethics for all.

Now, in the second half of the 20th century, neoliberalism has emerged - as a "return to the roots", a kind of secular fundamentalism. Here this attitude is even more pronounced. Any common, "totalitarian" values ​​- this is the "road to slavery", socialism. This idea is developed by one of the main philosophers of neoliberalism, Friedrich von Hayek. A.N. Yakovlev echoes him, angry with the Russian intelligentsia: “Give us an ideology, come up with ideals, as if there are some other ideals besides human freedom - spiritual and economic.” This is the extreme expression of Western rationalism: there are no ideals other than freedom.

What is the position between these two extremes - theocracy and nihilism, declaring the absence of ideals, does Russia occupy?

Russia has always - both as an empire and in the form of the USSR - been a moderately ideocratic society. This is not the East, and not the West. We recognized the existence of common ideal values, from which the rules, norms of life, our foundations were derived. Ideals acquired an imperious character (in this sense, ideocracy is the power of ideas). But this power is absolutely not total, Russia is not a monastery, the sky does not dominate the earth. Always, with the exception of troubles and revolutions, a balance of values ​​and interests was sought in society. In stable times, a large core of common values ​​united society. In crises, this core, like an "onion", lost its outer shells, undressed. Today it is useful for us to remember what was left as a minimal core in past crises. How did our thinkers see it?

D.I. Mendeleev, who dreamed of creating new science- "Russian studies", - on the eve of the revolution, he reduced the entire core of Russia's values ​​and interests to such a minimum: "Survive and continue your independent growth."

One can accept this as a minimum set of values ​​and interests of any human system: to survive and continue its type of development, to avoid mutation, not to become “completely different”. Disputes arise about what values ​​are included in the concept of one's own. The rejection of what ideals will make us narrower non-Russia? At the most critical moments, the wrong choice in this matter can be fatal for a nation or an entire civilization.

The example of Japan is eloquent. Having no opportunity to continue the war in 1945, the Japanese, however, did not agree to unconditional surrender. They set one condition - the preservation of the emperor. If this condition had not been accepted, they were ready to fight and die. Why? What is this emperor to them, who absolutely does not interfere in state affairs and whom the Japanese see once a year? We do not know this, but for some reason the Japanese believed that without the emperor they would become non-Japan. And they kept that value.

How can we define “our minimum” for Russia? Mendeleev himself introduces the value of the "second level": "integrity must be protected by all folk means." The integrity of Russia!

We remember that over the course of a century this value occupied a very high position among the ideals of the majority of the inhabitants of Russia (with the exception of the inhabitants of Poland, Finland, the Baltic states). When the liberal-bourgeois revolution crushed the Empire in February 1917, two powerful and in many ways irreconcilable restoration movements arose in response, striving to restore integrity from different positions: the Reds and the Whites. The Reds are like a brotherhood of working people, a family of peoples. White - as a single and indivisible Empire.

It was precisely the fact that, in the guise of the USSR, Russia managed to “survive and continue its independent growth”, reconciled with Soviet power even such anti-communists as academician I.P. Pavlov or, later, General Denikin. For them, ideological values ​​and even social interests were less important.

For the sake of preserving the purity of ideology, Stalin was even forced to dissociate himself from these acts of recognition. He wrote then: “It is no coincidence that the Smenovekhites are praising the Communist Bolsheviks, as if saying: you talk about Bolshevism as much as you like, talk about your internationalist tendencies as much as you like, but we know that what Denikin failed to arrange, you arranged it, that you, the Bolsheviks, restored the idea of ​​a great Russia, or you, in any case, will restore it. All this is no coincidence.” But Stalin was not simple, and does not the “declaration of intent” shine through behind the irony?

How was the situation on the eve of the liquidation of the USSR, and how is it now? According to studies in 1989-90, imperial or sovereign consciousness was characteristic of 85-87% of the inhabitants of the USSR. The opportunistic political attitudes of some citizens were different (this is a conflict of values) - in the 1991 referendum, 76% voted for the preservation of the USSR (in a number of places, under pressure from nationalists who gained strength, a referendum was not held).

Does this mean that even today it can be considered that the territorial integrity of Russia occupies the highest rank in the scale of society's values, is included in the "generally recognized core"? No, and even the opposite. This is the object of a sharp ideological conflict (and interests stand behind it). A very influential and active part of society considers Russia's geographic configuration to be one of the most important brakes on liberal reform and the source of many troubles. For them it is antivalue, evil.

Underneath this is a whole philosophy, coming from Chaadaev (for which he was once declared insane). Today, this philosophy is developed in a variety of speeches - from elite academic journals to tabloids. It has its own logic, according to which land spaces put pressure on a Russian person and do not allow him to turn into a free individual. This means that no market and democratic reforms will take place until Russia is divided into 36 “normal” states (for the USSR, the number 45 was called). These views were defended by academician Sakharov, now there are no spiritual leaders of this magnitude, but there are many smaller ones.

Here, in 1993, in “Problems of Philosophy”, a certain doctor V. Kantor writes: “In Russia, the spaces were too limitless, and therefore served as an obstacle to the material and spiritual development of the country ... This boundless space left an imprint on the social attitude of the people, gave rise to a sense of hopelessness ... To master, civilize, culturally transform the incredible Russian territories is a task of great complexity, ... practically unsolvable.

Kantor almost retells the philosopher-ecumenist N. Berdyaev, who wrote: “The vast expanses of Russia have weighed heavily on the soul of the Russian people. Both the boundlessness of the Russian state and the boundlessness of Russian fields entered into his psychology. The Russian soul is bruised by the vastness, it sees no boundaries, and this infinity does not liberate it, but enslaves it... These immense Russian spaces are also inside the Russian soul and have tremendous power over it. The Russian man, the man of the earth, feels helpless to master these spaces and organize them.

Although this "anti-imperial" position is shared by a minority, this minority is very influential. Firstly, this is a significant part of the intelligentsia (in 1991, in Moscow and Leningrad, the majority voted against the preservation of the USSR). Here is one of the intellectuals of perestroika, A. Nuikin, admits with satisfaction: “As a politician and publicist, until recently I supported every action that undermined imperial power. We supported everything that shook her. And without connecting very powerful national levers ... it was impossible to topple this colossus.” Moreover, the concept born in the depths of the Academy of Sciences national policy Russia (the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR did not have time to adopt it in 1993) even approves the choice not of an evolutionary reform of the state, but of its destruction through the activation of separatism: “ National movements played a positive role in the destruction of totalitarian structures and in democratic transformations.”

But after all, this setting was completely transferred to Russia. Immediately after August 1991, the then active ideologue L. Batkin declared: “Who is the formula about a united and indivisible Russia now designed for? To the illiterate mass? And the slogan about "Russia Divisible" was thrown out.

This attitude is philosophically substantiated by the most vulgar Eurocentrism, which even the Soviet Historical Mathematics got rid of in the 1960s. V.I. Mildon in “Problems of Philosophy” simply threatens: “For Russia, as a part of Europe, following the former, its historical path, determined spontaneously, under geographical latitude, suicidal. Life demands to refuse it - it must be refused, even if in its and other peoples' past there were no examples of such a refusal ”(although Mildon will not give us a different“ geographical latitude ”). Thus, the radical democratic intelligentsia, having accepted the main myths of Eurocentrism, fundamentally refuses both the integrity of Russia as a value, and even the basic value formulated by Mendeleev - "to continue its independent growth."

Secondly, separatism has always and everywhere been the ideological condition for the formation of a national bourgeoisie. In the transition to a market economy, Europe, previously an empire, broke up into nation-states, down to tiny ones. But the attitude of the emerging bourgeoisie, both in the center and on the outskirts, to the problem of the integrity of Russia - separate issue. And in it analogies with Europe are not entirely legitimate.

Thirdly, the dismemberment of Russia was and remains the most important goal Cold War, which was not fully achieved with the collapse of the USSR. The most prominent ideologist of the final stage of the Cold War, Z. Brzezinski, directly writes about this in his latest works, and not only he, but also Western political scientists of the next generation. This means that the radical reformers-Westerners are forced to pay for the support of the West by overt or covert indulgence of separatism.

Over the past seven years, the way of thinking, words and deeds, the number, composition and resources of opponents of the integrity of Russia have come to light quite clearly. This is a very serious force. Any institution of the state, any politician and even any citizen who accepts the values ​​of Russia's territorial integrity as his goal, must have a developed doctrine of dialogue, compromise, neutralization or suppression of this force.

The criticality of the situation is that it is impossible to give up this position, to transfer integrity into the category of insignificant values ​​- this immediately radicalizes huge forces. So, you can not seek a compromise at the expense of this value. According to many, often subconsciously, the “root” of Russia, the very continuation of its existence, is connected with it. This feeling, which has been formed over many centuries (and, in turn, has shaped the Russian people and their way of living together with other peoples), over the past 150 years has also been explained in a number of theories based on vast material and on strict logic. And since there is a theory, it means that not only feelings speak here, it is possible to calculate interests.

Briefly, you can say: abrupt change The geographic configuration of today's Russia will mean a change in the entire type of Russian civilization. She will not be able to survive or continue her path of development. (We do not touch here on a completely different question: what are the best, acceptable and losing methods of protecting integrity).

In essence, the conflict of values ​​and interests in Russia has always been associated with waves of modernization - attempts to remake it into a semblance of modern Western society. The traditional society of Russia passively resisted, and its representatives were rather easily forced out of the arena as reactionaries and retrogrades (Slavophiles, Black Hundreds, red-browns). Conflicts flared up between the modernizers, mainly in connection with interests, with disputes over who should pay the social price of reforms. Stolypin laid this price entirely on the peasants, planning modernization through the destruction of the community and the transformation of the majority of the peasants into proletarians. The Cadets proposed to infringe on the landowners, too, by transferring part of their land to the peasants. The Social Democrats intended to "pay for" modernization by expropriating the bourgeoisie.

All this ended in a revolution, civil war, and then - a crushing victory for the values ​​of traditional society, but in the harsh and sometimes cruel guise of Stalinism. Perhaps the deepest conflict of values ​​within Russia in half a century was when two currents clashed in social democracy, and then in Bolshevism, when it was said about "building socialism in one country."

The opponents of both Lenin and then Stalin understood this quickly. One of the leaders of the Bund, M. Lieber (Goldman), wrote in 1919: “For us, “non-relearned” socialists, there is no doubt that socialism can be implemented primarily in those countries that are at the highest level of economic development - Germany , England and America ... Meanwhile, for some time now, we have developed a theory of a directly opposite character ... This theory is very old; its roots are in Slavophilism.

In the West, the assessments were even tougher. P. Szyman, referring to the leader of the Social Democracy Kautsky, wrote: “Internal ossification, which has been characteristic of the peoples of Asia for thousands of years, now stands like a ghost in front of the gates of Europe, wrapped in a mantle of shreds of European ideas. These shreds deceive the blind cultural world. Bolshevism brings with it the Asianization of Europe. If we ignore the abuse, then this is an acknowledgment of the collapse of the Western wing in Bolshevism. Under the "mantle" of Marxism, the Bolsheviks hid nationalism, the project of reviving a special, non-Western civilization - Russia. The short-sightedness of our “anti-communist patriots” is amazing, who did not see the essence behind the mantle. They began to shoot at the mantle, and then they were surprised that they got into Russia.

Then Russia, having received severe injuries, survived. The archaic, soil component of Bolshevism devoured a thin layer of "European-educated communists" (which, of course, was a great loss for the nation). Today, of course, the situation is much more complicated - the International Monetary Fund and the meetings of the G-7 leaders are not Bukharin with sad eyes, and not even Trotsky. At the end of the twentieth century. the imminent clash of civilizations could be fatal.

In the 1930s, when the battles for the most part ended in connection with the choice of the path of modernization, development went very quickly and precisely along “its own” path, advocated by Mendeleev (by the way, the principal opponent of the revolution). He was looking for just such conditions, “so that she could not take root with us ... (as it happened in Western Europe) an ulcer of enmity between the interests of knowledge, capital and work. It was possible to do this for a whole historical stage, turning "capital" into a common (or, according to critics of the Soviet system, state) property.

The interests of the development and even survival of Russia demanded, according to Mendeleev, the realization of precisely the values ​​inherent in our civilization, which in general can be denoted by the concept community. Along with this rather extensive set of ideals are alternative systems values: individualism and sociality(public). Liberalism (a free market economy without state intervention) is built on the values ​​of individualism, and different variants of social democracy are built on the values ​​of sociality. In reality, it is always a combination of the three types. Thus, Japan retains the core of community values, but has adopted and adapted to them many institutions of a liberal society and social democracy. The "Swedish model" is dominated by the values ​​of socially oriented capitalism (social democracy), with the almost complete absence of community. In the USA - the values ​​of individualism with a large admixture of social democracy.

Mendeleev believed that Russia's path would be exactly this: modernization based on communality with the perception of sociality, but without passing through individualism. He saw the germs of development in "the social and artel principles characteristic of our people", and not in the destruction of these principles. He wrote: "After a certain period of preliminary growth, it is easier to make all major improvements on the basis of a historically strong communal principle than going from a developed individualism to a social principle."

Today in Russia there is a confrontation between the values ​​of individualism and community. How fundamental it is, and how artificial it is, based on urgent political interests it's hard to say today. Outwardly, the situation is as if the "community" is retreating. On the other hand, society is still based on it: the remnants of industrial activity, life support systems, a minimum of security. If people work for half a year without receiving a salary, then this is a complete denial of the values ​​of individualism and the affirmation of communalism. This is the preservation and even victory of the values ​​of Russian civilization.

After all, the ability of people to work without receiving immediate pay means that one of the main mutations caused in Europe by Protestantism did not occur: the desacralization of labor and its transformation into an object of sale. Labor remains a service, wages remain a means of subsistence. If the salary is not paid on time, this is a misfortune for the family, but it does not follow at all that it is necessary to stop working, to stop serving the people and the country. These are completely different relations than in the “labor market”, and it is very difficult, almost impossible, to explain them to a Westerner and even to a “Sovietologist”.

And our people still do not believe that in the West the destruction of the fruits of labor (values) in order to maintain prices is a common thing. Here I open a Spanish newspaper - a huge photo, similar to the painting "Harvest Festival" of Stalin's times. Sunny landscape, rows of tractor carts with golden peaches, huge scales, mountains of fruits on the site. It turns out that this is one of the points for the destruction of peaches equipped in Aragon. The government buys them from cooperatives at the market price, the peasants take them, trying not to crush - quality control in Europe is at its best (as the newspaper says, the European Union has set the price of fruits purchased for destruction from 17 to 27 pesetas "depending on quality, size and commercial kind"). And here they are crushed on the ground by a special machine or buried in huge trenches. The “production” plan for destruction points in Aragon for that year was 12 thousand tons of peaches.

It is difficult to predict how modernization will develop in Russia, how the conflict of values ​​between individualism and community will be resolved. Everything depends on whether the political will arises for its constructive resolution instead of suppression, instead of another revolutionary transformation of Russia. One can only express the fear that spontaneous development is fraught with upheavals. One of the traditional values ​​of Russia can play a cruel joke, saving up to a certain limit - patience. It deprives the authorities of the methods of "measuring social temperature" that are familiar and reliable for Western society. After a critical limit, patience can be replaced by disproportionate resistance in rage.

Security installations encourage today to include, as a priority value, which immediately creates multiple and clear interests, a guarantee of an indefinite civil truce. Today it is no longer possible to talk about peace and harmony: an annual million excess deaths and a million “unborn” are the losses of a great war. In reality, a civil war is going on in Russia, but a “cold” one. The maximum that can be achieved before a compromise is reached, some kind of social agreement on reforms, is to keep the war within the framework of the Cold War. So far, the vast majority of Russian citizens place the value of a "bad world" extremely high. It must not be allowed to come into conflict with the interests of a significant portion of the population.

So far, it is far from easy to agree on a truce. After all, a truce is a "ceasefire", which, within the framework of our topic, means a refusal to destroy the opponent's values. What is happening in Russia? Recall that at the end of June 1996, when there was a risk of losing the presidential election, 13 of Russia's top bankers proposed a "compromise" to the opposition. For their part, they promised: "Spitting on the historical path of Russia and its shrines must be stopped." Thus, the bankers stated that the infrastructure of culture (at least mass) under their almost total control "spit on the shrines of Russia" - destroyed its national values, the ideals of its collective unconscious. This confession is not a joke. But now, the fright of the elections has passed - has this spitting stopped? Unfortunately no. This can be shown rigorously by analyzing TV shows.

So far, Russia as a civilization is in retreat. It hasn't even begun to "focus" since its defeat in the Cold War. To claim too much during a retreat is to lose everything. It is important to retreat in order, moving to prepared lines, surrendering part of the "territory" - both in the field of values ​​and interests. Many values ​​and interests necessary for the healthy development and prosperity of Russia today have to be sacrificed. The period of development and the period of catastrophic crisis are completely different historical situations. We need a "obscene peace of Brest".

As I have already said, such a colossal value as the unique Russian science has been handed over, although its grains have not yet been lost. If Russia survives, they can be revived. The culture is paralyzed, but it breathes. With the new owners of property, apparently, it is impossible for the time being to agree on maintaining a minimum of egalitarian values. This means that loss of health and massive early deaths from malnutrition and lack of medicines are inevitable. All these are sacrifices during the retreat.

It is terrible if these sacrifices turn out to be in vain - the root of the Russian people will be cut off and Russian civilization. If it is not possible to walk along the knife's edge and the value necessary for the reproduction of the people and the country will be surrendered. Or, without calculating our strength, we will start a hopeless battle for those values ​​without which we could survive for some time, and suffer a final defeat in the chain of cold-hot wars.

That is the question as a whole. And on each specific issue - to hand over or not to hand over this or that high-rise on the way of retreat - decisions must be made based on the real balance of forces in this "area". Decide using the entire arsenal of available weapons, courage, creativity and cunning. And most importantly, do not miss that moment, that milestone, when you have to give yourself an order: “Not a step back!”.

When “perestroika” gradually acquired the character of a socio-political crisis in the USSR towards the end of the 1980s, it became clear that political regime has a completely vague, if not outright misrepresentation of the social basis of its existence. It could be said that he reaped the fruits of contempt for the exact social knowledge, inattention to the development of sociology, especially in its empirical and critical-analytical form, because of which, at a moment of crisis, he was deprived of accurate information and a clear understanding of the social structure of society, the processes that took place in it, contrary to the understood political decisions. Of course, there was no professional sociological service in the country. There were also social spheres and social problems, for the study of which there were restrictions or direct prohibitions. In terms of the volume of sociological information obtained, our social science was significantly inferior to Western studies.

But these circumstances alone cannot explain the whole essence of the current scientific situation. It should not be forgotten that in the field of social and ideological problems there was a situation that in a fundamental sense deactivated the very significance of empirical studies of society. And even the most prominent representatives of social thought in the USSR considered the model of American sociology unacceptable and ineffective. In this model, the decisive link was occupied by the level of factology, the incredibly developed technique and practice of private and detailed sociological analyzes and measurements that did not work for the development of a broad social theory. It was believed that empiricism paralyzes theory, the collection of facts becomes an end in itself and does not justify the effort expended.

In the 1960s, the discussion about the status of sociological theory became widely known. Three tiers were identified. Theories of the lower level, directly growing as a generalization of empirically homogeneous social facts; theories of the middle level - the scope of generalizations of which assumed a wider and more heterogeneous social sphere, and finally, theories top level, to which the name of social theory in sensu stricto actually belongs. It was believed that Western sociology is arranged in such a way that social theories of the first and middle levels are of decisive importance in it. But it is either very cautious or powerless in the production of theories of the highest rank. She was charged with methodological impotence, conceptual bloodlessness, lack of proper scientific and ideological prerequisites for building a universal theory of society. Therefore, it is doomed to delve into the minutiae of empiricism, extracting useful and valuable facts, but not being able to give them a proper scientific interpretation. Everything that American sociology, as the highest expression of this empirical trend, was able to give to Soviet social thought was perceived with distrust, if not more. Speaking of this, we do not want to go into an unproductive diatribe about the doctrinairism of our public thought until the 1990s, and we have no intention of explaining everything by ideological diktat. Those who have subjected Western sociology to critical scrutiny and ascertained its empirical one-sidedness, the fear of the bold theoretical generalizations, distrust of categorical constructions, did it not for the sake of an ideological attitude, but quite meaningfully and reasonably. Ideologism affected other aspects of criticism and attitudes towards Western sociology. The hypertrophy of empiricism was clear to them. But it turned out to be easier to overcome than ideological paralysis.

So, we have presented one model of sociology. It was in it that the theory of the "middle class" was obtained - the core of a normally organized, stable, self-sustaining social system.

The second model was an organization of social science based on a not directly opposite principle. Its basis was thought to be a universal social philosophy, which accumulated in itself in a “removed” form the previous socio-historical experience and scientific methodology. It was she who opened the horizon of social practice and made possible the very applied sociology. The latter acted not at random, but strictly oriented, proceeding from advance this submission about important and unimportant spheres of social experience, about significant and insignificant social facts. In this perspective, sociological research was not seen as an end in itself, but as an approach to social material, verifying theoretical ideas, which, although they were considered to have grown out of social practice, but in some other way than the one that concerns empirical research. In this situation, it was almost a rule that the studies of the social structure of society that were carried out strikingly coincided in their results with already existing ideas. Again, we will save ourselves the temptation to indulge in belated mockery of this situation. A careful look of the philosopher of science will notice behind the cloudiness of biased and opportunistic circumstances a problem of much greater theoretical significance than is seen by conventional criticism. Be that as it may, in this model, the prevalence of the theoretical-ideological level over the empirical-specific one led to the fact that sociological research constantly ran into the tight boundaries of theories that already “knew the main thing”.

In social science in the late 1970s and 1980s, the idea that our society was moving towards social homogeneity dominated. The boundaries between social groups-classes tend to be blurred, erased, as a result of which, with favorable ideological factors, the cohesion of society, the solidarity of its members on the basis of harmonization and coincidence of interests and social goals, is enhanced. This process is facilitated by the growth of well-being, an increase in education and the general cultural level, a change in the nature of labor processes (the content of labor), the blurring of boundaries between individual types of labor, between the image of urban and rural life etc. There is no need to especially emphasize that these characteristics of social dynamics had political and ideological motivations. But was it only on them that such a theoretical model? Society, of course, was represented by scientific means as it was pictured in the imagination of the then ruling forces. But the imagination of these forces was only part of a wider and more powerful sociological imagination that dominated the public consciousness. The problem was how powerful the impact of this imagination was to determine constructive behavior in the sphere of socio-political decisions, to harmonize its postulates and values ​​with the prosaic effects of everyday life. Of course, the social policy of the previous period had many productive aspects. But its effectiveness has been paralyzed to an ever-increasing degree by the effects that accompany every type of centralized, rigid and forceful way of solving problems, to which directly opposite technologies of organization are adequate. social behavior. The chasm between the communist political and ideological elite and society deepened, social initiative, which was manifested by ghostly artificial forms and symbols, faded, and bureaucratization grew. The immediacy of social ties has been replaced by its alienated forms. The concept of "working people", conservative in itself and inadequate to refer to the majority of socially active members of society, was fixed as a definition of a society of a higher rank: " Soviet society working people”, which it just wasn’t. The paradox was that a radical change in the situation was necessary, but it turned out to be the most dangerous social decision. This is always the case: drastic measures are either too early or too late. And no one knows when and to what extent they are appropriate.

The practice passed into a radical transformation of the socialist order. Seventy years later, the belated counter-revolution overtook its own revolution.

One of the reasons for the collapse of the former regime can be seen precisely in the fact that it had a fictitious foundation, was built on a public basis, which for some time began to take on a life of its own, and, in the end, refused to support it.

The emerging new political order inevitably had to address the question of its social base. The guidelines adopted by him for development, ensuring stability and irreversibility of the changes that have taken place, and finally, the social experience of developed democracies suggest that such a guarantor can serve as social environment, the parameters of which are established not by a priori socio-philosophical doctrine, but natural process socio-philosophical evolution of society in the twentieth century. In the language of Western sociology, it is called the middle class. So, the content of the social program of the new regime now becomes the technology of creating a middle class and expanding its numerical boundaries. According to the social indicators of his life, the social diagnosis of society as a whole is determined, no matter how shocking deviations from it are indicated by his critics. What kind of social stratum is this, who is included in it, does it exist in modern Russia at least in the embryo, in the background, and if not, is it possible?

These questions have already generated research interest, which has brought some results. But they are much more modest than the skepticism that still prevails on this score.

Skeptics argue that scientific reasoning on this subject is still unfounded and even meaningless. While discussing the desirability of the middle class in Russia, they use not autochthonous arguments, but borrowings: they talk about Russian reality in terms of a theory that has developed on a completely different social experience. How legitimate is this approach? Obviously, for a mode of serious and long-term research, and not for the “seed” phase, it is of little constructive value. Required case studies own dynamics. And it still reveals two trends: the impoverishment of the main social contingent and the growing social polarization. Oddly enough, this state of affairs can be more aptly described in the language of classical Marxism than in modern sociology. But perhaps this is a superficial impression, and the hidden tendency is different? Therefore, it must be convincingly demonstrated to skeptics. If Russia has a real future, then these trends must be stopped.

It should be noted that middle class formed in those societies that are ethnically homogeneous or so compact that ethnic and religious differences in their destructive effect were reliably controlled and for a long time remained marginal, background social relations. Such societies are marked by the predominance in their mentality of constructive reasonable pragmatism, which does not accept radical manifestations of any social claims.

In our country, deprived in its current form of organic social connection and determined to a large extent by the determinants of political origin, are there any prerequisites for a single middle class? So far, we see a more pronounced trend of segregation, especially along ethnic lines. Consequently, a certain special measure of social time is required within which, perhaps, the sharpness of separating tendencies will be removed and a unifying social effect. They should be replaced by a social policy of creating such social structures, in which the bulk should be made up of people who are secure in meeting their basic claims and needs, who have reliable guarantees of the stability of their existence and the claimed improvement in well-being. Their outlook could be defined as conservative optimism.