The intermediate geographical position of Russia between Europe and Asia has long made it a place of intersection of two sociocultural types: European and Asian (or, in the terminology of K. Kantor, personality-centric, placing the individual, his freedom, natural rights, etc. at the center of attention, and sociocentric, oriented towards society, collective, state). The interaction of these two sociocultural types in Russian society implies not just their intertwining and mutual enrichment, but also a continuous struggle between them. The duality, inconsistency and conflict of political culture that arises on this basis is most clearly manifested now in the confrontation between “Westerners” and “soilers”, the Western model of development and the model of Russia’s original path.

radical changes in the foundations of economic, social, political and spiritual life, mass movements of various population groups from neighboring countries to Russia and the emergence as a result of this of new interethnic, demographic, territorial and other formations;

changes and complication of the social structure of society, the emergence of new social groups, growing wealth inequality, increasing vertical and horizontal mobility;

re-evaluation based on increased information of lessons from the past, present and future prospects.

All these processes dictate the need for serious modification of people’s ideological, evaluative and behavioral guidelines, i.e. all components of political culture. Political culture can fulfill its purpose as an instrument for the consolidation of society and its reconstruction only if it overcomes the confrontation of different directions in it, provided that they interact on the basis of a common unifying idea, the search for which is being actively undertaken by all political forces in our country today.

Until the 1980s, the monistic model dominated views on Russian political culture. The emergence and existence of a totalitarian political culture was associated with national cultural specifics, rooted in ancient times, which determined the characteristics of the Russian social structure: first absolutism, then the socialist system. The subject of the study was the interaction between the state and society, traditional attitudes towards power, and forms of protest behavior.

The formation of a new political culture is a long process. It depends on several factors: the dynamics of generational change; the nature of political socialization of youth groups; the direction and pace of development of new economic and political relations in the country; purposeful formation of a political culture corresponding to a democratic political system.

The ongoing political and cultural changes give reason to believe that in modern Russia a civil culture is being formed that will be mixed, more or less balanced. This is due to the presence of three sources:

the first is modern domestic political practice, implemented in regulations and informal customs;

the second is foreign experience and political culture, mainly Western. Today, the borrowing and development of European-American models is chaotic and unsystematic. Time will correct this process, but, most likely, the West will continue to remain a source of formation of civil culture for Russia;

the third is national tradition. The political culture of Russian society, which has centuries-old traditions, develops on the basis of continuity. Despite all the visible differences between Soviet political culture and pre-revolutionary culture, the former inherited the latter. Moreover, some elements of Soviet culture were a modified form traditional culture, adapted to the conditions of the 20th century.

Traditional and industrial societies gave modern world two main types of political culture: totalitarian and democratic.

The totalitarian type of the Soviet period is characterized by: unification of political consciousness and behavior, rigidity of regulations from the state, discrepancy between words and deeds among both the political elite and ordinary citizens. Democratic political culture presupposes a pluralism of political subjects, opinions, attitudes, and types of behavior. It includes tolerance, which means not just tolerance for something or someone else, but also a willingness to interact with an opponent.

The transitional state of Russian society also determines the transitional nature of the political culture in it, the presence of elements of totalitarian and democratic culture. The term “authoritarian-collectivist” is often used in relation to the political culture of post-Soviet Russia.

In Russia there are all types of political culture and its subcultures: patriarchal, subject, activist. However, the patriarchal-subjective and subject-activist ones dominate.

As a result of the influence of many factors, both historical and modern, the political culture of modern Russian society is internally contradictory. It represents many subcultures - authoritarian and democratic, elitist (political elite, bureaucrats) and mass (ordinary citizens), liberal and conservative, socialist and bourgeois, etc. Each social group has its own subculture: youth and pensioners, entrepreneurs and marginalized people, workers and intellectuals.

Particularly noteworthy is the fact that in Russia political culture is fragmented - different groups of society develop different models of cultural development. There are four main types:

1) associated with natural and geographical differences between Russian regions, which give rise to economic differences;

2) related to linguistic and ethnic characteristics;

3) socio-economic subculture associated with differences in lifestyle along with specific interests;

4) religious subculture, which arises when religion acts as an all-pervading cultural substance.

However, the peculiarity modern stage The development of the political culture of Russian society consists not so much in the diversity of subcultures, but in the fact that a significant number of them are involved in a hidden or overt struggle and are in confrontation with each other. The main lines of conflict are democracy/authoritarianism, socialism/capitalism, centralism/regionalism, globalism/isolationism, anarchism/statism, etc. The diversity of such lines indicates the absence of a basic political consensus, national agreement, and ultimately a painful discord between various social groups that question the success of reforming society, social and political stability in him.

Features of the political culture of modern Russian society are:

1) lack of a stable tradition of participation of the bulk of the population in political life;

2) political infantilism of a significant part of the population, gullibility;

3) lawlessness and arbitrariness of the authorities in the center and locally during political actions;

4) weakness of political parties and movements;

5) the split of society into two hostile camps, two types of consciousness and political culture;

6) rejection of Western traditions.

Thus, the political culture of modern Russian society is in a state of its formation, experiencing serious influence from geopolitical and historical factors and radical transformations taking place in society today. The specificity, due to the uniqueness of historical development, allows us to speak about a special genotype of Russian political culture.

Political culture and intercultural communications of modern Russia are based on the peculiarities of the development of previous periods of its history, the specific characteristics of the traditional culture of Russians. Almost all researchers note that in the political culture of Russia there is a set of basic features that directly or indirectly influence the formation of the modern political culture of its inhabitants.

Just like the political culture of other countries, the political culture of Russia is formed under the influence of the sum of external and internal factors.

One of the main features of the historical and political development of Russia is the specificity of its civilizational structure. On the topic “Russia and the West*, many books have been written both in our country and abroad, convincingly proving that Russia is not the West, and there is no need to even list these works to substantiate the assertion that Russia has serious cultural and political features that distinguish it from both the West and Asia.

First of all, it is necessary to say about the pre-state, veche political culture of Russians, the features of which can be seen throughout the history of Russia. They consist in “orientation towards socio-cultural statics, towards the ideal of “peace and quiet”, towards opposition to innovations that threaten the reproduction of established culture and human relations*.

In the domestic historical and political science literature, a tradition has developed to explain the peculiarities of the formation of Russian civilization by natural, climatic and geographical factors. In Russia, there were difficult natural and climatic conditions and a permanent threat from external enemies, so Russian society had to constantly strain its strength in the struggle for survival, subordinate private interests to state ones and limit personal freedom. And the larger the threat, the “higher demands are placed on the state, on its ability to give an adequate response to the challenge, the more harshly the subjects of state administration and adherents of state interests are forced to act*. In addition, the uniqueness of Russian agriculture (short agricultural period, poor soil fertility, climate instability, crop instability) contributed to the formation of the ideal of fast (“hurried*) work with the hope of “maybe”. As a result, legendary hero In Russian political culture, Ivanushka is considered a fool who can for a long time“to lie on the stove*, and then, by cunning and ingenuity, obtain half the kingdom, i.e. has the ability to “get away with it*, etc.

The Byzantine tradition became one of the system-forming factors in Russia. In a certain sense, we can talk about the cultural baton that Russia took over from Byzantium at its baptism. From the Byzantine political experience, Russia adopted: a specific imperial state idea; the function of a mediator between East and West with a focus on tolerance and the desire for a synthesis of the values ​​of Europe and Asia; a kind of cosmopolitanism, supranational character of power and statehood. And in modern Russia we can note the influence of these qualities.

The influence of Orthodoxy occupies a special place in political culture. According to researcher V.B. Iordansky, “overlaid on the rudiments of paganism, on the remnants of archaic consciousness, Orthodoxy favored dogmatism of thinking, intolerance, and spiritual arrogance. At the same time, it taught mercy, responsiveness, firmness in difficult times and the importance of an ascetic approach to life*.

This allowed the elite to create myths for society about the sacredness of government officials and the special significance of the figure of the sovereign in the sphere of power relations. In addition, Russia was not affected by either the Renaissance or the Reformation, so the distinction between religious and political values ​​did not occur, and ideas about freedom of conscience and individualism were not formed.

Most researchers emphasize that the uniqueness of Russia lies in the fact that it has a discontinuous history, and each subsequent stage denied the previous one, that is, the old norms and values, the achievements accumulated by that time. However, no matter how sharp the breaks with the past were, at each stage, wittingly or unwittingly, the fundamental characteristics of the previous stages were integrated, as a result of which Russia demonstrated the amazing stability of its basic characteristics.

The political life of Russia is based on strong personalism, and political ideas are based on monarchism or “leadership”, and the “monarch” himself can be hereditary or elected, lifelong or temporary, national or local. Such a model of political culture required a charismatic leader, and even if potentially he was not one, he was still made a kind of banner of the era. “Although the king had the possibility of unlimited rule, the system did not collapse even if the autocrat did not exercise power. The main feature of political culture was not called into question because of this,” adds G. Simon (Germany), one of the first Western researchers of Russian political culture.

Comparing the types of political leadership in Russia and the United States,

O. Gaman believes that “just as American political culture rejects a directive leadership style, the Russian political climate dooms a weak leader to defeat. Hence the tough, frontal, directive style of political leadership." N. G. Shcherbinina explains the phenomenon of political leadership in Russia by the fact that political culture has sacred foundations, so the leader turns into a symbol, an abstractly generalized image - “this is not a symbolic reflection of a god-man, but a reflection of an archaic-anthropomorphic deity. That is why specific bearers of state power are so little revered as individuals.” We can see the result of this approach even in the names of periods of history - the era of Brezhnev, Stalin, Alexander III, etc. At the same time, during the life of the leader himself, few people criticized him for reforms or the lack thereof, but after his death there was an “overthrow of the idol” , when all the mistakes and blunders of the recently “revered” leader were recalled.

One of the main features of Russian political culture is the obedience of the bulk of the population to even the most unpopular actions of government authorities. The fact of long-suffering of the Russian people is explained by various reasons: the religious-eschatological nature of Russian political consciousness (N. A. Berdyaev), apocalyptic fear of a change of power (V. B. Pastukhov), etc., therefore the most common type of political culture in Russia is considered authoritarian or subject-matter based on submission to authority. One of the important reasons for this phenomenon is explained by the fact that state power in Russia has basic characteristics that have remained virtually unchanged throughout history. First of all, it is traditionally irreplaceable (under autocracy this is natural; under Soviet power there was no hereditary principle, but, as a rule, there was no alternative to the country’s top leaders); second property Russian authorities is its indivisibility. Neither the emperors nor the Soviet “leaders” wanted to share it with anyone, and the current “democratic” government is not inclined to share its powers. The third property of power in Russia is that it is autonomous from society and uncontrollable by it; moreover, it is traditionally associated with the possession and distribution of property, which stimulated irresponsibility, abuse and corruption.

Due to a number of historical circumstances, the state invariably occupies a dominant position in the public life of Russia, as a result of which a huge role is assigned to the bureaucracy, paternalism develops (the desire to be under the protection of the state or any government entity), clientelism (the use of informal connections in power structures), and mass political passivity and inertia, legal and political nihilism.

A strong center (autocracy), standing above the political struggle and considered inviolable, is the main characteristic feature of the political culture of both the Moscow state and Russian Empire. If the center ceases to be strong, the state becomes dysfunctional and society becomes ungovernable.

If Western democracy is based on individualism, in which the citizen strives to rely on his own strengths, then it is rooted in the Russian national character high level expectations from the state, and very often what is expected from him is not so much good laws as specific actions that directly affect his life. One can also note such a moment of public consciousness as legal nihilism, that is, disbelief in the effectiveness and impartiality of the judiciary. This is reflected in numerous Russian proverbs: “the law is like a drawbar: wherever you turn, that’s where it comes out*”, “where there is a law, there is an insult”, “what are the laws to me when the judges are familiar”, and in the works fiction Russian classics - I. A. Krylov, F. M. Dostoevsky, M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin and many others, who express the conviction that he who has power and strength is right. According to L.N. Gumilyov, this feature Russia's political culture is determined by such a historical factor as the underdevelopment of the institutions of contractual feudalism. “The subjects of the Moscow Tsar,” he writes, “sought not to protect their rights, which they did not have, but to receive responsibilities for the performance of which the sovereign’s salary was due.” As a result, people have become accustomed to the idea that politics is above the law. The legal system is not perceived as a sphere that can exist normally provided that politicians and political interests do not interfere with it.

One of the important aspects of political culture is the style of relationship between society and the state, reflecting the relationship of the citizen to the state and the state to the citizen. In Russia, society constantly developed under the strict control of the state; rights and freedoms were not won by society in a bitter struggle, but were granted by the grace of the monarch. Even perestroika, which is called “ bourgeois revolution", was started by the ruling elite, and not by the masses. The statist nature of political culture also leads to the fact that in the minds of citizens there is a confusion of the concepts of patriotism and loyalty to the regime; love for the Motherland does not differ from loyal love for power.

Another important feature, also recognized by most researchers of the history and culture of Russia, is the opposition in the popular consciousness of the supreme leader and the bureaucracy. If administrative power can be complexly structured, then from the “supreme” the people demand simplicity, uniformity and obviousness, which imposes certain specifics on the perception of the legitimacy of power. The supreme ruler is not required to be efficient in decision-making, and all claims are made to various intermediate authorities (“the king is good, the boyars are bad*”). His power is justified not by rational arguments, not by victory in the party struggle, but by the presence of a certain charisma and the desire for an absolute ideal.

In the political culture of Russian people, there is a duality of political consciousness - the unity and struggle of the “loyal subject complex” and the “revolutionary complex”. N. A. Berdyaev was one of the first to draw attention to this paradoxical nature of Russian political culture. He pointed out the duality and irrationalism of “the Russian soul, its antinomy and terrible inconsistency*, which extended not only to representatives of the Russian nation, but also to many other ethnic groups living on the territory of Russia.

National character occupies a special place in the characteristics of political culture. Speaking about Russian political culture, it is necessary to note the basic features of the national character of Russians, which have formed the stereotypical image of a Russian for the international community. Researchers note that it combines seemingly incompatible properties: the search for harmony, mental and vital balance - and anarchic rebellion; careless negligence, bureaucratic dryness, sometimes turning into hardness of heart - and spiritual generosity, breadth and impetuosity of nature. Anthropologists, highlighting the national character of Russians, also note the following features: the dominance of the ethical principle over the logical, the combination of the right hemisphere and relativism, which gives rise to a tendency to mythologize existence, contemplation, openness, patience, peacefulness, reliability, but at the same time: laziness, irresponsibility, impracticality.

Noting the attitude of Russians towards the state, it is necessary to pay attention to the population’s rejection state system authorities.

According to Yu. Oleshchuk, such an attitude towards the top is a manifestation of hatred of power - a quality inherent in the Russian political worldview. He sees the reasons for the persistence of power-hatred in power itself (“its oppression, rudeness, cruelty, self-will and selfishness*), its omnipotence (“chronic deification*), as well as the “simple-mindedness” of the Russian person, removed from participation in solving public problems and confident, that all problems are solved easily and quickly, and if they are not solved, it is only because of the reluctance of the authorities.

One of the important features of Russian political consciousness is the desire for a unified perception of what is happening by all members of society. This phenomenon is based on the communal way of life of medieval and imperial Russia. Only unity of views could keep the community from disintegrating.

In conditions of shared responsibility of community members, it was extremely important to maintain trust in the common decision, to develop unconditional respect for the will of the people, and the requirement of fairness and impartiality was of great importance. As a result, collectivism becomes the main characteristic of social consciousness. That is why various collectivist speech cliches are so often encountered: “we”, “there is an opinion”, “many think so”, etc. The idea of ​​conciliarity, which dominated in society, teaches social harmony, the search for solidarity between people, and the neutralization of selfishness.

Russians are characterized by a weak interest in the everyday political process, which is due to the historical detachment of the ordinary member of the community from the political struggle, as well as the traditional attitude towards politics as a special field of activity, the right and obligation to participate in which does not belong to everyone.

In addition, the political process in Russia has always been surrounded by an impenetrable veil of secrecy and secrecy. The limited experience of direct communication between ordinary people and the highest officials of the country gave rise to another quality of political consciousness, the “effect of looking up to a nearby boss,” that is, the people’s idea of ​​power was based on the appearance of the closest bosses with whom they most often dealt, so citizens did not tend to take politics and its characters too seriously. Politics for them is nothing more than a kind of social game.

Today, Russian and foreign political scientists note that in the role structure of Russian political culture there is no legal opposition in the European sense. Almost the only model of opposition behavior is refusal to participate in political life. Let's try to figure out the roots of this phenomenon. First, let us remember once again that the interests of society and the interests of the state in Russia coincided. Moral condemnation of power in the Russian consciousness is associated with detachment from politics and from the manifestation of civic activity. The extreme degree of aggravation of the negative assessment of the government’s activities gives rise to two forms of manifestation of the political position characteristic of Russia: a departure from current politics towards the path of “personal salvation” or “rebellion” against the authorities. Secondly, the legitimation of power was based on a religious and communal worldview. Politics is conceived not as a space of dialogue, but as an arena of struggle between the forces of “good* and “evil*”. If the power was recognized as legitimate (i.e., divine), then to oppose it meant to go against God. If it was recognized as illegitimate (i.e., diabolical), there was no point in arguing with it, but it was necessary to demonstrate its complete denial.

If in relations with the authorities opposition is impossible, then in the sphere of political consciousness, in the struggle of political ideas, Russia always lives in an acute confrontation of opposing ideologies. The peculiarity of its political process is that ideological conflicts develop into a confrontation between radically opposing concepts. As G. Simon notes, “in Russia there is no liberal culture of disputes... conflicts tend to lead to splits, confrontation and cessation of communication*. D. V. Gudimenko calls the political consciousness of Russians “a barricade consciousness, which is characterized by the inability and unwillingness to seek common ground with political opponents, latent rejection of pluralism, the desire to defame, and, if possible, remove them from the game, crush political opponents*.

Russian political culture is characterized by conflicts not only of interests, ideas and orientations, but also of fundamental values. The concept of “schism*, which is quite difficult to translate into other languages, denotes a universal reality Russian life(a split between the government and the people, the people and the intelligentsia, the intelligentsia and the government, between different religious movements, political forces, etc.). Political culture is characterized by the antagonistic coexistence of such ideological subcultures as Westernizer and pochvennik, radical and patriarchal-conservative, anarchist and statist, democratic and “communopatriotic”, which is one of the reasons for the lack of basic consensus and national accord.

Schism is a pathological state of society; it excludes the possibility of general agreement on the scale and direction of any significant changes in society; "is splitting apart folk soil, every personality splits.” The split mechanism turns reform into counter-reform. The danger of a split is that it destroys the moral unity of society, the absence of which opens the way to conflict, disorganization, destruction and disaster.

Many researchers are confident that the special character of Russian history was predetermined by the split in Russian culture that followed the social transformations of Peter I (however, A. S. Akhiezer believes that the appearance of the split dates back to the emergence of Russian statehood, which was formed through the forced unification of tribes) .

The most important quality of Russian political culture was the split into two main subcultures, into two worlds - the traditional mass subculture and the “Europeanized” subculture of the elite. The differences between them were not just differences between the “tops” and the “bottoms,” they were of a fundamental nature, differing in their way of thinking, stereotypes, and basic orientations. All other contradictions, splits, conflicts were superimposed on them. The political culture of Russia is characterized by an almost permanent absence of basic consensus and national accord. The differences between subcultures are so striking, the gap between them is so great, that some observers may get the impression that two nations coexist in Russia, united by nothing except a common language and territory. A split in political culture often led to mutual violence, a clash of opposing ideals up to the point of civil war, and stimulated the desire to suppress the opposing point of view by force of arms. As a result, we see that the tradition of a culture of agreement or consensus has not been established in Russia. Moreover, the collapse of the centralized Soviet state entailed a new “split” - the division of the state into local units with their own attitudes, peculiarities of worldview and habits of political judgments.

Around the time of Peter I, historians and publicists have noted the emergence of futurism in the political culture of Russia (a focus on the future with insufficient attention to the past). The image of the future changes depending on the era. Futurism is based on the rejection of the vices of a real, real society, of which there have always been more than enough in Russia. The peculiarity of looking to the future in Russia is that as soon as the futuristic potential of a particular model (Moscow - the third Rome, Empire, Communist superpower) weakens or is exhausted, it is immediately replaced by the next one. But the previous model remains in the public consciousness for a long time.

Since the Peter the Great period, traditions have been established of turning the entire people into a means of achieving powerful ideas, the use of violence throughout the country and the regulation of the life of the population.

It is characteristic that national and religious differences, which dominate politics in multinational and multireligious states, in Russia manifest themselves more in the everyday sphere and intrude much less into politics. A possible explanation for this is the cultural tolerance of Russians noted by many foreign and domestic observers. “Russians sometimes demonstrate amazing helplessness, since in interethnic conflicts it was the Russians who were often the injured party,” notes D. V. Gudimenko.

When explaining the phenomenon of national tolerance in Russian society, they often refer to the specific features of the psychology of the Russian person - peace-loving, confident in his nationality, and therefore open to foreign cultures. In addition, Russia is characterized by a specific power idea, which undergoes various changes depending on the change of regimes. Accordingly, state rather than national self-identification of a citizen prevails. In such conditions, imperial consciousness is paradoxically combined with internationalism, and patriotism, as a rule, is statist rather than national in nature. Tolerance towards foreign groups in foreign policy relations is manifested in the affirmation of the idea of ​​messianism, altruism at the national level, and the persistent desire to show humanity the path to happiness. These ideas manifested themselves especially clearly during the existence of the USSR. The political history of the Russian state has confirmed the peculiarity of political culture - Russians are able to endure any trials and hardships, any onslaught of hostile forces, if they are united by a common idea and realize it as their historical calling.

A significant quality in the political culture of Russian citizens is the mythologization of the political consciousness of society. The main concept in the mythologized consciousness is justice. Social inequality and wealth are very painfully perceived in the Russian mentality, which is reflected in proverbs and in the attitude towards “traders” in Soviet times.

One of the main myths is the myth about the people as the bearer of absolute values ​​and absolute truth (“the voice of the people is the voice of God”). But at the same time, from the very beginning there was the possibility of excluding some, sometimes very significant, part from it, which led to the division into “us” and “them,” “us” and “strangers,” “friends” and “enemies.”

It is necessary to especially highlight the features of Russian political culture that were formed and established during the Soviet period.

First of all, it must be said that Soviet political culture was based on the basic elements of Russian political culture of the previous stages of historical development, but gradually transformed some of them.

During the Stalinist period, Soviet political culture updated all the basic characteristics of Russian political culture.

The official leader in Soviet political culture acted as a hero, becoming “the official prophet, clairvoyant and priest* of an ideology obligatory for all. Never has the image of a people's tsar been realized with such perfection... Speaking to the people in the language of their myths, J.V. Stalin could be calm about his power. The response of the people was the reproduction of archaic forms of behavior (unanimous voting in elections)... Everyday life began to be played out like a performance, according to the laws of the crowd or community.

But unlike the autocracy, the Soviet system failed to establish a legitimate order of succession. This was one of the reasons for her death.

The totalitarian system of state power hypertrophied paternalism, the command-distribution system of relations with its rigidly hierarchical management structure led to unquestioning subordination to the state and suppressed any initiative. Maryanovsky V.A. saw that peculiar features of the economic mentality had appeared - * the state artificially cultivated only those economic interests of people that fit into a value scale simplified to the point of primitivism (salary, bonus, apartment, etc.). At the same time, they had to be earned not so much by one’s own labor, but rather “earned from the owner state.”

During the period of “building socialism,” loyalty to the state and its institutions was a necessary condition for satisfying material needs and increasing socio-economic status. Thus, access to material benefits directly linked to political loyalty. That is why, in the modern period, trust in political institutions and political activity do not bring the desired results, hence the feeling of disappointment, especially acutely experienced by older citizens.

In addition, the totalitarian system replaced social inequality of people with stratification on political and ideological grounds, creating the illusion of equality. In the minds of the majority of Soviet people, as well as the inhabitants of pre-revolutionary Russia, equality was placed above freedom, and justice above the rule of law. The legal nihilism of the pre-revolutionary stage was successfully preserved in the Soviet period. Soviet citizens sought to resolve and protect socio-economic and other disputes and even violated rights in any way, but not in court. When a person went to court, often among the people, and sometimes in the press, he was called the derogatory word “settler”, which had successfully passed from the pre-revolutionary language.

The communist state presented itself as an ideological state that claimed not only to regulate all social relations, it also prescribed beliefs and values, it instilled the meaning of life.

In Soviet culture, the myth of the people was replaced by the myth of the proletariat, and subsequently by the myth of the Soviet people. There was, as it were, an identification of the Russian people with the proletariat, of Russian messianism with proletarian messianism.

The attitude towards truth changed - the state “word” became the truth, and politicians and parties fought not so much for recognition of their truth as the only true one, but for the powers of power, the possession of which allows one to forcibly impose their own vision of the truth on others.

Soviet political culture became the standard of human behavior, established at the subconscious level, in the form of habits, established stereotypes of thinking and behavior. The fact is that the totalitarian system, as I. Ilyin wrote, “imposes on people a number of sick deviations and skills that... eat into the fabric of the soul. These include: political denunciation, pretense and lies, loss of self-esteem and grounded patriotism, thinking with other people's thoughts, flattering servility, eternal fear. ... Long-term moral corruption will be overcome slowly, because people lose the habit of loyalty, integrity, courage, independence, independent convictions, truthfulness, mutual persuasion and trust.”

Under the communist regime, first of all, the system of power itself changed. A layer of nomenklatura was formed - a closed, privileged elite, which became an independent force and lived a different way of life from the people. Management was carried out not on the basis of formal rules and procedures, but through personal relationships. Nepotism and corruption have become an integral feature of political power. The growing contradictions between the nomenklatura and the bulk of the people not only undermined the totalitarian mechanisms for harmonizing interests in communist society, but also discredited the values ​​on which it was based. Seeing this, the people lost confidence both in the personalities of the leaders and in the political system and ideology. In such conditions, enthusiasm and the willingness of people to work hard and unselfishly, to sacrifice everything for the sake of abstract ideals, inexorably dried up. The long-term separation of the people from property and the decision-making process inevitably gave rise to the spread of “lumpen-proletarian” consciousness among literally all segments of the population, which, in turn, created extreme instability of public sentiment, greed for promises, and increased susceptibility to demagoguery.

Determining the features of political behavior in the USSR, it can be stated that political participation was not only subordinate to ideology, but also very massive and active. Such a norm of behavior as interest in politics is a product of the significant influence of the Soviet state on the private life of citizens through a verified process of political socialization, expressed in the system of upbringing and education from the very initial stages of personal development. This is also reflected in the continued high level of interest in politics at the present stage among representatives of older and, partly, middle age.

A fairly large number of researchers have noticed another feature of Soviet political culture - “doublethink.” This was “internal” disobedience, hidden behind the unquestioning execution of all the instructions of the party state. Soviet political activism was largely based on coercion: refusal to express loyalty to the state was frowned upon and punished. Regardless of whether each citizen shared the ideology of the system or not, political passivity was not safe.

Scientists note that totalitarian doublethink, the fundamental “duality of Soviet man as a socio-anthropological type” also persists in Russian man. Author of the fundamental sociological study “From opinions to understanding. Sociological essays” Yuri Levada notes that “the official (demonstrative) and everyday (practical) consciousness of a typical Soviet person have always been interdependent and adapted to each other. The incredibly quick and easy overthrow of the entire system of official slogans, prohibitions, social masks and other things did not at all mean the liberation of a “normal” person from the shackles that bound him. Formed by the era of forced unanimity, the “Soviet man” remains and will remain ambivalent for a long time, adapted to paternal care from the authorities and ready rather for “unanimous* approval (or denial) than for responsible action and independent thought.”

The process of decomposition of the communist idea was taking place, and any strong push was enough for it to collapse. This impetus was reforms and political changes in the structure of power, called “perestroika,” as a result of which, to this day, there is a transformation of the old and the formation of a new type, style, model, combination of political culture.

Currently, serious changes are being observed in Russian political culture. We see the emergence of new political traditions, values, beliefs, symbols, and various forms of unconventional political behavior. But at the same time, a lot remains from the past. The previously listed features of the political culture of Russian society, realized in the history of Russia, are also manifested in modern politics.

When considering the characteristic features of the modern political culture of Russians, it is advisable to apply the scheme of subject-object relations already described in Chapter 1. (See Diagram 1 on With. 24 of this manual). It is necessary to highlight the complex of relations of citizens to the political system as a whole and its main elements - the government, the president, parliament, parties, etc. etc., and also take into account the relationship of political associations to the electorate (opportunities for mobilization, methods of agitation and propaganda). And another set of ideas of Russians is self-identification and attitude towards “in” and “out” groups. In addition, the foreign policy aspect should be taken into account, i.e. the attitude towards the international community, unions and alliances of countries, and individual states.

First of all, it should be noted that there was no official symbolism in the Russian state for almost a decade. The coat of arms, flag and anthem were adopted by the State Duma only in December 2000. And in these symbols we see elements of historical continuity, a continuation not only of the Soviet period, but also of the pre-revolutionary imperial era. The double-headed eagle of the coat of arms originally symbolized the Byzantine line Orthodox Christianity, the melody of the “new old” anthem was the melody of the national anthem of the Soviet Union, the white-blue-red flag was established under Peter I as the flag of the merchant fleet (the only symbol of the new Russia, which arose “spontaneously” in August 1991). Thus, we observe how symbols of the past carrying an authoritarian imperial load are transferred as an image of the desired future. Official interpretation state symbols was presented by the authorities as “a comprehensive program for the consolidation of Russian society around the historical continuity of generations expressed through patriotic rhetoric.” In fact, there was a heraldic decoration of the existing split in society. This is reflected, for example, in the fact that the majority of respondents to questions about the origin of official symbols (August 2003) answered “I don’t know” (38%), more than half have a positive attitude towards them (up to 62%), but even more The mass consciousness unanimously accepted the revival of the red flag in the army (up to 80%). This suggests that two flags, symbolizing different periods of history, coexist peacefully in the hearts of our fellow citizens.

The collapse of the Soviet Union reverberated in Russia with a severe identity crisis, especially painful for Russians, whose self-awareness was focused less on ethnicity and more on belonging to a great power. During the post-Soviet period, the majority of the population of the Russian Federation transformed their identity from nationality to citizenship. In 1992, the majority of respondents (over 42%) admitted that they themselves would not understand who they were now. Surveys in subsequent years showed an increase in the proportion of those who identify themselves as citizens of Russia (from 38% in 1992 to 65% in 2001). Today we can consider that the concept “Russians” has received public recognition and has become widely used. Moreover, Russians of different nationalities perceive current events almost identically in many respects and assess the reasons for what is happening.”

As sociological surveys show public opinion, the basic value orientations of Russians are stable. In the modern period (1991-2004), not a single one of the basic values ​​has disappeared from the consciousness of citizens; changes have occurred with some of them in the overall scale of significance. Over the past years, their hierarchy has remained virtually unchanged: the leaders include values ​​associated with social order, the comfort of a person’s inner world, his family and friends, as well as interesting work. Outsider values ​​include: power, recognition, success.

The set of attitudes of Russians towards power structures is characterized by recognition of the extreme importance of management activities, which is expressed in the high activity of ordinary citizens when deciding on the distribution of supreme power. Both in Soviet times and today, the overwhelming majority of voters participate in the national vote. Moreover, the majority of Russians believe that by participating in the vote they will be able to change something in the country. Public opinion polls show that basic democratic values ​​and institutions have fairly broad support among the Russian population. Support for liberal values ​​(freedom, independence, initiative) has increased by 10-15% since 1990 and amounted to 48-57% in 2002. Every second person surveyed in 1995, 1997 and 2001 continued to believe that without democratic institutions and procedures, normal life in the country is impossible. But at the same time, 67% of respondents believe that democratic procedures are a mere appearance, and the country is ruled by those who have more wealth and power. This can be explained by the fact that the Russian version of democracy does not yet provide a normal standard of living for the population and the implementation of human rights in all spheres of life.

Interest in politics has remained, although it has decreased somewhat compared to the early 1990s. The Russian citizen continues to think and act according to the principles established during the Soviet period, supplemented by the concept of “rational choice.” That is, if socio-political activity does not promise anything (material or career benefits), then people’s vital energy is directed into other areas (work, family, education, leisure, creativity, etc.). At the same time, the level of awareness about politics remains consistently high.

The population's readiness to participate in politics, including elections, is combined with a stable orientation towards a strong state, order and power. Most polls show that among the Russian population, basic democratic values ​​and institutions have fairly broad support, but at the same time, people are almost sure that only a strong, tough government can restore order. Thus, dreaming of a non-authoritarian order, Russians believe that it can only be established in an authoritarian way - through the actions of a “strong” government. About half of the Russian population supports normative democracy, market economy, building a civil society and at the same time welcome the idea of ​​a “strong hand”. This paradox can be explained by the fact that in such a short period of time (just over 10 years) democratic values ​​could not replace the foundations of the traditional worldview about the essence of power and become a basic element of the emerging political culture, and also by the fact that the “powerless” Russian democracy cannot resolve pressing problems facing society. Currently, Russians are aware of the difference between democracy as it exists in Russia and the ideal that they would like to achieve.

It can be noted that the most common negative feelings of the last decade were: a feeling of shame for the current state of one’s country; a feeling of injustice of everything that is happening around, complemented by the mood that one cannot live like this; a feeling of fear of rampant crime; feeling of aggressiveness and loneliness; feeling of psychological fatigue from continuous change. And the most prosperous, middle and poor segments of the population approximately equally negatively assess the decline in the standard of living of the population, the collapse of industry, the decline in morality, the decline in Russia's authority in the world, the loss of stability, security and lack of order in the country. For the main part of the reform period, Russian society lived in conditions of constant “socio-psychological discomfort”, with a feeling of timelessness and even an approaching catastrophe. Fears are widely present in people's minds, associated, for example, with the possibility of civil war (in 1994, 45% of respondents feared war, in 2001, already 54%). One explanation can be given for this - the presence of military operations in Chechnya and the terrorist attacks that swept across the country created a serious threat to the safety of life of the population.

The focus on state paternalism continues to play a significant role in modern political culture. If in 1990 20% of respondents believed that the majority of people in the country could “live without constant care, guardianship from the state,” then in 1997 - only 17%, while the share of supporters of the opposite point of view over these years increased from 63% to 72% . This allows us to talk about paternalism as an essential and stable element of political culture. The situation that has developed in the post-Soviet period again demonstrates the people’s need for care from the state, for guarantees of social assistance and protection, which they consider as an obligatory function of power in society. Many researchers note that for a significant part of society, the main goal of activity has become not the desire for self-expression, comprehension of meaning, but simple survival. Family orientation and everyday problems come first. A person who is unable to satisfy basic needs on his own actively seeks an object to which he could transfer this task. For a significant part of the population, such an object is traditionally the state. By voluntarily transferring all their rights to the state, part of the population considers the state responsible even for those problems that arose as a result of their own actions. (Typical in this sense are the speeches of “deceived investors”).

A rather interesting concept for explaining the phenomenon of sustainability of paternalism in Russia was proposed by T. F. Ermolenko. She believes that paternalism is a phenomenon characteristic of all nations, but in Russia it has taken on the pronounced character of a social game of “daughters and mothers,” where the state acts as the mother (Tsar-Father, Queen-Mother, Father of the People, etc. .). The passing of “such relatives” causes among the people a complex of orphanhood, insecurity and the need to find a new “mother”. Political scientist A. Panarin adds that in the face of global danger, economic poverty, etc., the population simply has no other choice but to “re-love the stern Father and understand that state paternalism, despite all its costs, is better than the fatherlessness that threatens direct death."

Due to the fact that paternalism has become entrenched as an archetype of the Russian cultural tradition, we can say with confidence that at the moment the fight against it is doomed to defeat or a protracted conflict.

Analysis of sociological data shows that a significant part of society in the post-Soviet and all previous periods has become so accustomed to constant violation of laws and various illegal patterns of behavior that many today not only do not consider it necessary to give up this, but do not even see this as a deviation from the norm. The contradiction between the desire to live in a strong state that can ensure law and order, and the reluctance to follow existing laws and condone illegal actions is one of the most important manifestations of the moral crisis in Russian society.

Russian people, in the context of a totalitarian political culture that has not yet been eliminated, often try to adapt to new power games, while remaining completely “loyal.” After all, it is safer to be “loyal” to the state. This self-preservation reflex developed by the Soviet system is still in effect. A significant part of the country's residents, as surveys show, believe that the authorities are constantly playing a dishonest game with them, failing to fulfill their own obligations and promises, imposing unfair taxes on people, and dishonestly informing them. However, this behavior of the authorities does not cause indignation and protest, but rather a desire to adapt to the situation: to evade fulfilling their own duties (today, first of all, from paying taxes), to hide income, and the like. The idea that in our country “one cannot live without breaking the law” is interpreted in public opinion as the admissibility and even necessity of constantly “deceiving deceivers,” that is, the authorities. In other words, dual consciousness is alive and well in society. The most obvious manifestation of doublethink is the general and dominant hypocrisy, which is considered by the majority as a necessity: one cannot live without breaking the law, without expressing ostentatious loyalty to the authorities, without acting contrary to conscience.

At the same time, as we have already noted, Russians are accustomed to a fundamental condemnation of state power (remember the factor of hatred of power). It is based on a complex of social impotence, the belief that the state of society is entirely determined by the actions of the authorities, and, above all, by the central government, which is responsible for everything that happens in the country, both at the macro and micro levels.

According to VTsIOM polls (1993-2000), more than 80% of respondents are confident that respect for power has decreased over the last decade, since politicians of all ranks are concerned only with their selfish interests, the desire not to lose power, etc. A stereotype is being formed “ demonization” of politics, since it is dominated mainly by corrupt and clever politicians.

The lack of positive genuine changes in the standard of living and the mechanism of power is the root cause of the widespread widespread feeling of “alienation” - alienation from power, detachment from political life and the deep conviction of the majority of the population that ordinary citizens can hardly influence the policies pursued by the authorities, even by participating in collective protests (which are becoming fewer and fewer every year).

Attitudes towards enhancing the role of the individual in the political process are practically absent in the worldview of the population. According to V. O. Rukavishnikov, this means the dominance of “passive” types of political culture among Russians (“most citizens, in relation to what is happening on the political stage, behave like spectators in a theater”). There are on average 2-2.5 times more people interested in politics in Russia than in European countries, but we are talking about passive participation - receiving information and discussing political issues with friends.

First of all, we can note that at the moment there is no political institution that is trusted by more than half of the population.

The army and the church enjoy stable trust throughout the perestroika and post-perestroika times. In general, the rapid change from Soviet atheism to a religious worldview among Russians surprises many foreign and domestic researchers. We can try to explain this phenomenon by the traditionalism of Russian consciousness: here the desire for a common idea, uniformity is manifested, without affecting the established conviction. If we try to identify those who call themselves believers who attend church, communicate with the priest, and observe religious norms and rituals, then the number will become much smaller. That is, we can talk about the superficial level of religiosity of the overwhelming majority who declare themselves to be believers. But this is at the same time an indicator of conformism, the introduction of a new “morality” into the consciousness: being considered an unbeliever, an atheist in the new Russia is becoming bad form - especially among politicians or people aimed at achieving career success. But at the same time, we can note that the church was not able to fill the ideological vacuum, much less become the spiritual vanguard of society.

Let us note that representative power, designed to reflect the interests of the population, does not enjoy special trust; The same situation of mistrust exists among political parties. It is significant that the level of participation of Russian citizens in the activities of political parties was low in the early 90s. and over the past decade there has been no significant growth in this indicator. The mass political consciousness of modern Russia reproduces the passivity and lack of understanding traditional for Russian political culture of how and why people should control power in their country. Therefore, if the need to control power is not considered a natural need and right of people, then the institution of a multi-party system itself is perceived as an incomprehensible and even unnecessary innovation.

There is also a low level of trust in the judiciary, which also does not yet fulfill the role of “protector of the interests of citizens*. both due to unsettled legislation and low legal literacy of the population.

In general, we clearly see that there is a decline in the level of trust in the main institutions of power and an increase in the popularity of the key figure in the value system of the political culture of Russians - the President. However, the growth of public trust in the president also has its own reverse side- the entire political system focuses on the image of V. Putin’s personality. And, as a result, the influence of the federal center is growing, while most state and public structures - parliament, trade unions, government, parties - are in a crisis of confidence.

This characteristic of public consciousness comes from an established feature of the traditional political culture of Russians - to oppose top management and his entourage according to the principle: “the king is good, the boyars are bad*, and in case of disappointment in the personality of the leader, instead of structural changes in the organization, the authorities prefer to look for the next leader. For example, the president is credited with increasing payments to the population, while citizens place the blame for rising prices mainly on the government.

The image of the political leader has changed somewhat. Today's leader is not a hero-savior (“B.N. Yeltsin on a tank*), but rather a “master” (“mayor in a cap*), capable of providing guarantees of existence, if not on the scale of the entire state, then at least in a specific city or region. Indeed, of all power structures, the population enjoys the greatest trust in governors and presidents of republics. Power is increasingly moving to the regions, since the population cannot understand the meaning of what is happening at the federal level, and at the same time, trust in the regional authorities, which have retained the traditional “understandable” appearance and methods of functioning, is growing. This has led to the fact that power in the regions is characterized by a high degree of stability and authoritarianism.

The preservation of traditional views on a political leader is demonstrated by the results of surveys of Russians about which periods and leaders in the country's history evoke the most sense of pride. The era and the very personality of Peter I arouse the admiration of the majority of respondents even in the early 1990s. and in the 2000s. This fact can be explained by the fact that the majority of the population assesses the current situation in the country as an emergency and is convinced that its solution requires the emergence of a new “father-transformer,” a “second Stalin.” If in the early 90s. While the majority considered it extremely dangerous to grant full power to the president, today over 60% of respondents believe that “the problems facing Russia can only be solved by concentrating power in one hand*.

In the conditions of the social and economic crisis of the post-Soviet state, the process of updating the mythological foundations of political culture is taking place in the mass consciousness of the population.

The need for group identification, a mythological merger with the group, comes to the fore. Moreover, ethnic identification is complemented by regional identification, where the region acts as a specially identified subject “we”, a mystical unity of the community with the territory.

The process of mythologization of mass consciousness and behavior today can also be seen in the creation of regional myths based on “local patriotism.” An example is the creation of the idea of ​​the “Ural Republic”, “independent Siberia”, “Far Eastern Republic*, etc. The media emphasizes the peculiarity of the region: “The Astrakhan region is an outpost of Russia on the Caspian Sea”, “Stavropol is the gateway of the Caucasus”, “ The Tver region is the soul of Russia*, etc. The strengthening of the regional element in Russian identity can be considered as one of the consequences of the identity crisis that Russia faced at the end of the 20th century.

As research shows, a very common reaction to a crisis is a passive and fatalistic position, a feeling of one’s own helplessness, despair or timid hope for some “objective” positive changes. In this environment, the craving for socialist and collectivist values ​​and nostalgia for the past are most pronounced.

Changes in society have given rise to all sorts of mythologies generated by social memory. But if in past periods of Russian history the source of mythologies was the future, then in the present decade it is the past. The nostalgia for socialism manifested in the mass public consciousness (most often for the Brezhnev “fed” times) is nostalgia for social security and a stable standard of living, and not for the monopoly power of the party nomenklatura. It is the feeling of a stable situation that for the majority of the population is the advantage of socialist orders over modern ones. At the same time, the most acceptable periods of Soviet history in public opinion are not the heroic or warlike years, but those that seem to be the most calm. The ceremonial destruction of idol monuments and the renaming of streets and cities is also an element of mythological consciousness. The destruction of the symbols of the past creates the illusion of “time management,” which is one of the signs of power in the mythological consciousness.

In the modern consciousness of Russians, there is a transformation of attitudes in the procedure of political elections. Bribery of voters, public relations campaigns and much more have led to voter passivity, distrust of the election procedure and a negative attitude towards politics in general. As a result, we see a fairly large and constant percentage of “protest” voting. Researchers of electoral behavior have noted the stereotypes of Russian voting that have become established in the last decade: the higher the economic status of an individual, the less inclined he is to participate in elections... the higher the share of the rural population, the higher the turnout for elections there... The greater the share of urban Russians in the region working age population and the higher the welfare of the residents there, the lower the turnout for elections will be. At the same time, there is no complete abandonment of elections, the public consciousness has already learned the value of the right to vote, and any attempt by the authorities or “dishonest candidates” to deprive citizens of this right may in response cause a sharp protest reaction (either the disruption of elections by non-attendance, or a high percentage of those who voted “against all "). An example is the removal from elections of candidates popular in the regions, which happened in the Rostov, Kursk regions, Primorsky Krai and other regions, where a record number of voters voted “against everyone” in local elections.

It is obvious that the level of democracy that exists in post-Soviet Russia (more precisely, liberal tolerance, which allows for the existence of certain democratic values ​​and institutions) was more a forced and by-product of the disintegration of the totalitarian party-state system than the result of any special democratic movement. Therefore, no influential and independent democratic forces or parties have been formed in the country.

As world experience shows, the creation and constitutional consolidation of new institutions and structures of a democratic state depended, first of all, on the political and, in particular, legal culture of the political elite and the general public. And if the procedures and norms of a democratic constitutional state were adopted at least by political players (president, parliamentarians, governors, mayors), consolidated democracies usually emerged at the regional level. If these norms and procedures were not adopted, “quasi-democratic” and, in fact, authoritarian regimes were established instead of democracy. The current political regime in Russia is characterized by monocentrism, when the resolution of political issues is limited to the Kremlin. According to the majority of the population, as a result of changes in the political system over more than a decade, it has not become democratic.

Ideological and political polarization and the absence of traditions of compromise contributed to the fact that the accelerated modernization that began at the end of 1991 from above not only did not reduce, but to a certain extent increased the conflict potential of society. This is partly due to the fact that reforms of the economy and political system are accompanied by significant socio-economic losses for the majority of the population, which are superimposed on the disintegration of the country, the economic crisis, the redistribution of property and power, the explosion of ethnic conflicts, an unprecedented increase in crime, corruption of officials and other negative aspects reality. As a result of these phenomena, significant social changes occurred, which were reflected in the mass consciousness of Russians in such a way that today “85% of respondents consider themselves to be part of the disadvantaged part of society, but at the same time 75% of them are convinced that, in fairness, they should belong to his prosperous part." During the period of reforms, there was, as it were, a massive descent of the entire society down the social ladder. Therefore, the attitude towards power quite naturally finds expression in a feeling of distrust, which develops into a feeling of protest among the bulk of the population, as it becomes even poorer, and trust and approval among a small part, which becomes richer or, at least, does not worsen its material position.

In the post-Soviet period, a new type of behavior appeared for Russian life - individualism (the emergence of individual initiative, courage, personal responsibility for one’s own actions, fate), the basis of which researchers consider the forced struggle for survival in the process of establishing market relations.

Over the past decades, processes of spiritual devastation have also been observed in the country. In the national consciousness of Russian citizens, spiritual and moral values ​​almost always prevailed over material values. For example, attitudes toward private property and wealth were most often associated with such negative qualities its owners, such as greed, greed, cruelty, a tendency to deceive, etc. Most citizens were characterized by a feeling of deep hostility towards those who accumulated wealth, especially illegally, through criminal means. The process of transformation of the Russian Federation (or the “third wave of Westernization”) led to the emergence of a “consumer* society. Conducted public opinion polls show that if in 1990-1995. the majority of Russians were still inclined towards traditional values ​​of national consciousness, calling the most significant such as “clear conscience”, “good friends”, “family”, “love”, then in 1995-2004. values ​​of a material, pragmatic nature (“money”, “wealth”, “apartment”, etc.) began to clearly prevail over spiritual and moral ones. Moreover, recently there has been a serious erosion of spiritual and moral values.

In relation to the problem of international relations, Russian voters tend to think in traditional categories of messianism and the ideological struggle of world political forces. Foreign policy problems are the most important component of the political programs of electoral associations.

The attitude towards the outside world and Russia's role in the world order is one of the main points of the election campaign. Currently, for a significant part of the population, the main values ​​are the ideas of a strong state and the return of Russia to the ranks of world powers.

A significant portion of surveys show that the idea of ​​great power, the revival of Russia as a great country, is gaining the highest ratings. At the same time, the idea of ​​greatness, national uniqueness, and the special historical mission of the Russian people* (the idea of ​​nationalism) is gaining a small percentage of votes.

At the same time, the concept great country"Over the past ten years, its content has changed somewhat. Greatness today is associated in the mind not so much with military power and territorial expansion, but with economic efficiency, advanced science, and developed democracy. Almost 85% of respondents believe that “only by boosting the economy and establishing democracy will we force the world to respect us.”

In relation to other nations, Russians demonstrate traditional installation to significant goodwill and thereby preserve and transmit from generation to generation a large resource of national tolerance.

The protracted period of modernization affected the mass consciousness of Russians with a crisis of traditional political culture and the emergence of new qualities.

The fact that the features of a new political culture have not yet been established and the features of a traditional one have not disappeared is evidenced by the paradoxes of public opinion. On the one hand, we see a longing for the Soviet past (about half of the population is ready to approve a return to the Soviet system), on the other hand, more than half of the population claim that they have “already adapted” or will soon adapt* to the changes that have taken place. People speak in favor of continuing reforms more often than in favor of stopping them.

On the one hand, there is universal recognition of freedom of speech, approval of the independence of the media and the right to criticize the authorities; on the other hand, there is a willingness to recognize state control over the media and the introduction of “moral censorship.” In the mass consciousness, a high level of hope for the current president, the opportunity with his help to restore order in the country, raise well-being, etc., is combined with rather restrained and even negative assessments of the president’s activities in various areas; desire to enter the community as equals developed countries intertwined with the great power complex.

It is no coincidence that the most common feelings among Russians in last years steel: fatigue and indifference, embitterment and aggressiveness, confusion and fear, etc. The “Weimar syndrome” is very common in Russian society - a complex of ideas, feelings and moods reflecting disappointment in democracy, national humiliation due to the collapse of a great power. Hence the nostalgia for a firm hand, strong power, and order. There is no empire, but imperial thinking remains.

One of the important positive results of the past decade has been the tendency towards rationalization of political behavior, expressed in liberation from characteristic mythological elements and inflated expectations from power. In political culture, attitudes towards the need for effective and capable government have appeared. (Over the past 10 years, the number of supporters of Russia as a rule of law state has increased.)

One of the noticeable features of the current consciousness of citizens is an all-encompassing focus on stability. But this does not mean satisfaction with the existing situation. Social discontent persists, fears have arisen of the loss of the current stability, a new round of inflation, political crises, etc.

Particular mention should be made of the existing youth political subculture, within which elements of the country’s new political culture are being formed. It is the youth who have benefited in recent years from an economic point of view; they have quickly adapted to the new rules of the political game and know what is more profitable socially and professionally. As sociological surveys show, the majority of young people are satisfied with their lives and consider themselves to be in the middle stratum, confident in their own abilities, and have a pronounced focus on realizing personal interests and goals. They are distinguished by a stronger and more significant focus on achievement and success than older generations. The younger generation is more characterized by a clear manifestation of the values ​​of individualism, personal initiative, and independence. It is confident that it can change its life for the better.

In general, young people are characterized by an attitude towards fairly active participation in elections, although socio-political activity is extremely low (the vast majority do not take part in the activities of any public or political organizations and movements).

At the same time, Russian youth, as well as society as a whole, have not yet overcome the basic characteristics of imperial and Soviet political culture. For example, the population of Russia in general, and young people in particular, are characterized by significant stability of state-paternalistic stereotypes (for providing work, education, etc.), trust and distrust are caused by the same political institutions (high level of trust in the president, distrust in political parties, government, etc.).

According to the figurative expression of A.I. Solovyov, the traditional political culture of Russia “swung* towards the “world political culture” and is gradually transforming into a transitional one.

Most scientists highlight a synthesis of traditional features that characterize the political culture of Russia and new social relations that have formed over the past more than ten years. Taking this into account, we can call it transforming or transitional.

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Features of Russian political culture

The modern political culture of our society can be viewed from three perspectives: 1) identifying the origins of its emergence, analyzing past political experience, traditions, and mentality; 2) study of its modern structure, determination of value guidelines, identification of problems of formation and impact on society; 3) identification of trends and priorities in the development of political culture, determination of its place and role in world civilization.

1. Historically, the political culture of our country is very unique and original. It is characterized by the presence of many subcultures, determined by geographical, ethnic and religious factors. As the fundamental values ​​of past political development, the ideas of autocratic statehood have reached us, allowing various regions, peoples and national communities to exist and develop. For many centuries, there was a centralized Russian state, which, in fact, predetermined the political development of society and the individual.

Characteristic of our history was the merger of the church with the state, which was an element of statehood. The Orthodox Church played a significant role in the formation of the multinational Russian Empire and the spirit of conciliarity, Russian messianism, which became an integral feature of the political thinking of that time.

A special imprint on political life and culture was left by the collective form of community life of the Russian peasantry - the community, which prevented the formation of an individual principle in economic and spiritual life.

In the 60s XIX century favorable conditions arise in the country for the development of political culture. Serfdom was abolished, the formation of new social forces began: the bourgeoisie and the various intelligentsia, and large-scale legal reform was carried out. However, the revolution of 1917 stopped this process.

The Bolsheviks set a course for building a totalitarian state. The nationalization of all spheres of society was taken to the limit. Political culture acquired a purely authoritarian, statist character. The role and functions that Orthodoxy performed in the justification of Russian statehood were transferred to Marxism-Leninism, which became the only and undividedly dominant state ideology. The interests of the individual were completely subordinated to the interests of the state. The Soviet legal system as a whole was based on the idea of ​​an individual's obligation to the state. The role of the law was reduced to almost nothing, since fundamental provisions were established by party directives, and specific issues of legal regulation were resolved in departmental regulations of governing bodies.

Since the mid-50s. Liberalization processes began in the country, which ultimately led to the collapse of the USSR and a change in the fundamental values ​​and standards of behavior that previously underlay Russian statehood.

2. The formation of a new political culture in its systemic form actually began with the adoption of the Constitution of the Russian Federation on December 12, 1993. This process is complex and painful, associated with breaking stereotypes, acquiring new qualities, and all this against the backdrop of a socio-economic, spiritual and moral crisis. The low level of political culture is explained not only by ideological factors, but also by the lack of experience of democratic participation in governance and political decision-making, since many institutions of civil society are in the process of formation.

Today, like many years ago, the political culture of Russia suffers from antinomy, since each of its basic elements has its own antithesis (statism and anarchism, fear of authority and violation of laws, loyalty and extreme radicalism). It is internally contradictory, because along with the remaining values ​​of communal collectivism and group justice, norms are established that focus on the development of individual creative, entrepreneurial initiative and activity. Characteristic features of Russian political culture are the orientation of a significant part of the population towards the personalities of political figures, a campaign approach to solving political problems, and a penchant for unsanctioned forms of political protest.

3. Events of recent years, in particular the formation of the legal system, the development of federalism, improvement of the law-making process, the search for a compromise between the legislative and executive powers, the functioning of a multi-party system and other positive elements, allow us to make an optimistic forecast for the development of political culture in Russia. It is important to note here that among the most important areas in this regard should be the consistent strengthening of individual and public spiritual freedom, the creation of real mechanisms for the manifestation of civil political activity of people, their involvement in the management of the state and control over its activities.

Speaking about the specific and original features of Russian political culture, we must not forget about the achievements of world civilization. It is necessary to make wider and more intensive use of the political experience accumulated both within the country and outside it. The prospects for the development of Russian society depend on achieving an organic combination of a market economy, political democracy, historical traditions of statehood, and humanistic natural law principles.

Every country and every people has its own specific political culture. This is explained by the fact that the political culture of any country does not include all currently existing political consciousness and behavior in society, but only historically established, relatively stable, habitual, embodying the experience of previous generations of people attitudes, beliefs, ideas, behavior patterns, which actually distinguish this society from others. Thus, most Western countries are characterized by a historically established formalized consciousness and respect for law, law, contract based on it, a high degree of respect and self-respect for the individual, his rights and freedoms, non-interference of the state in the private life of citizens, a high degree of self-restraint of the individual, without which it is impossible true democracy and the rule of law.

Russian political culture, on the contrary, is characterized (and historically conditioned) by the priority of the state in the life of society (statism) and the authoritarian nature of power associated with this feature at almost all stages of Russian history, paternalism (the desire of the state to “patronize” society) and the paternalistic nature of power relations , clientelism in the relationship of the population to the authorities (the habit of being under the patronage, patronage of the state), weak structure of society (underdevelopment of autonomous institutions of civil society independent of the state), sacralization of power and personification of political relations (the primacy of the individual, not the law).

The specificity, due to the peculiarities of historical development, allows us to speak about a special genotype of Russian political culture.

Even in Ancient Rus', culture, being traditionally archaic, acquired a veche form. Its specificity was the rejection of innovations that threaten the established order and rules, and the focus on the reproduction of local worlds, which conflicted with the desire to form a state. This veche culture and corresponding way of life had a huge impact on subsequent history and the formation of statehood.

Russia's geographical location between Europe and Asia has had a serious impact on Russian society. The country finds itself at the intersection of two sociocultural types: European or personality-centric, which puts the individual, its freedom, and natural rights at the center of attention, and Asian, or sociocentric, which focuses on society, the collective, and the state. At the same time, the interaction of these two sociocultural types in Russian society is very unique: it involves not just intertwining and mutual enrichment with the content of both types, but also a continuous struggle between them. The dualism, duality, inconsistency and conflict of political culture that arise on this basis are most clearly reflected to this day in the confrontation between “Westerners” and “soilers”, the Western model of development and the model of Russia’s original path. T.I. Zaslavskaya proposes to recognize Russia in cultural terms as “a marginal member of the European family, occupying approximately the same place in it as Pluto in solar system» ]

The specifics of Russia’s role and place were also determined by the vast geopolitical space in which peoples with various types crops Under these conditions, a pronounced statist orientation of political culture was formed. In Russia, the state is perceived, as E. Batalov puts it, as “the backbone of civilization, the guarantor of the integrity and existence of society, the organizer of all life.” In the absence of civil society, such a perception reflected the real role of the state, not only in tsarist times, but also in the Soviet period, when it was necessary to maintain the victory of socialism in a capitalist environment. It was impossible to achieve international recognition without a strong state, so the Bolshevik government did everything possible to promote the statist orientation of Soviet political culture. In post-Soviet times, the statist tradition was weakened, but it soon resumed along with the strengthening of the role of the federal center, which was the reason for the strengthening of the vertical power.

State-centricity turns into sacralization of the supreme power, i.e. its persistent perception as sanctioned by extrahuman forces. The invariable attribute of the image of a leader in the mass consciousness is not the ability to coordinate positions and reach a compromise, but the ability to impose one’s will. The leader appears as the main object of paternalistic expectations, which is facilitated by the persistent historical memory of the “benefactor fathers”, drawn from the Russian political tradition. As a result, the belief developed that the well-being of the country depended only on the sovereign, his intelligence and enlightenment. This is how the belief in the highest royal justice was formed, which became characteristic of the political culture of Russia. According to N. Eidelman, “as soon as the injustice of real power came into conflict with this idea, the issue was resolved, in general, unambiguously: the tsar was still “right”; if the king was wrong, it means that his true word has been distorted by ministers, nobles, or this monarch is incorrect, self-proclaimed, and he urgently needs to be replaced with a real one.”

The central role of the individual is represented at all levels of the state-social ladder down to its lower floors, where it leads to the formation of clientelistic relations. Real power relations are regulated more informally - personally, rather than on the basis of formalized bureaucratic procedures. The rules of the game here are a continuation of tradition; legal control over their compliance is not provided. Such traditions form an authoritarian personality type, described by E. Fromm in his work “Flight from Freedom.”

The history of the Russian state is closely connected with Orthodoxy. Orthodox Church acted as the spiritual support of the Russians, opposed the Muslim East and the Catholic West. The Orthodox faith played an important role in the formation of ideas about the greatness of Russia, its magnitude, patriotism and devotion to the fatherland, the special path of Russia, which became the most important components of the political consciousness of Russians. The Church elevated to the rank of saints prominent figures, who in the strict sense were not her servants (Princess Olga, princes Vladimir, Alexander Nevsky, Dmitry Donskoy and others).

Being a follower of the Byzantine civilization, Russia adopted from it not only religion, but also culture, primarily the imperial idea, the implementation of which led to the transformation of the country into a multi-ethnic, multilingual empire. It was possible to maintain the integrity of such a huge empire only with the help of despotic power, a strong centralized state. Understanding this circumstance led to an awareness of the need to submit to power and the state. At the same time, the authorities were tolerated without taking them to heart, which was reflected in the negative attitude of the population towards its representatives, especially towards officials. Nevertheless, always, and especially after the collapse of the USSR, a powerful centralized state in the minds of many people was and is perceived as the main historical achievement of the Russian people and their allies.

From the East Roman Empire, the mass consciousness also adopted a kind of cosmopolitanism - the supra-ethnic, supranational character of both political power itself and statehood, which manifested itself in the international policy of the Soviet state and in the absence of the need for the formation of a Russian national state.

The messianic orientation of Russian political culture appeared at the turn of the 15th-16th centuries. in the proclamation of Moscow as the Third Rome, as well as with the Bolsheviks coming to power in 1917 with the messianic goal of spreading the ideas of communism throughout the world.

A split in political culture often led to mutual violence, to a clash of opposing ideals up to the point of civil war, and stimulated the desire to suppress opposing cultural potential by force of arms. Such clashes continued throughout the country's history (violence associated with the adoption of Christianity, mass terror in the 20th century). Supreme power tried repeatedly to move away from direct violence, but kept returning to it, which indicates the inability of the authorities to solve increasingly complex problems.

Under Peter I, the idea of ​​the “common good” was formed as a national value, which was embodied in the form of utilitarianism, which recognizes benefit or gain as a criterion of morality. A person begins to move away from the values ​​of traditionalism and look for fundamental solutions beyond its framework, to recognize himself as a subject capable of influencing the implementation of goals. As a result, a reform impulse appeared aimed at overcoming the country's backwardness, implemented through increasing the level of education and culture, and using elements of Western potential. However, it turned out that society must learn to use a new effective means of self-development, otherwise it becomes a means of destruction, as evidenced by both the post-Petrine reign and the reign of some sovereigns in the 19th century.

According to Yu. Pivovarov, the Russian political culture of the 20th century was decisively influenced by Lenin, whom he calls “the demiurge of the new order.” For its formation, Lenin developed communist theory, created a new type of party, brought it to power, laid the foundations of the Soviet system - “one-party democracy” and a completely state-controlled economy

The Russian man, being, in essence, a statesman, at the same time was afraid of the state, avoided dealing with the authorities, and did not trust state institutions. Hence the conflict in the state consciousness of the Russian people, on the one hand, and the rejection of power, on the other. This feature acquired its extreme forms during the Soviet period. The more terrible the power manifested itself, the stronger the person’s desire to join it, to enter it, to become a part of it. Such an attitude towards the state and authorities contributed to the formation of a double standard in their assessment. The man seemed to split into two, which testified to the antinomy of political culture.

N.A. Berdyaev wrote: “Russia is a country of endless freedom and spiritual distances, wanderers and seekers, a rebellious and eerie country in its spontaneity.” And at the same time - “Russia is a country of unheard-of servility and terrible humility, a country devoid of consciousness of individual rights and not protecting the dignity of the individual, a country of inert conservatism, enslavement of religious life by the state...”

The entire political history of Russia can be presented as a picture of a constant confrontation between liberal and patriarchal-traditional values: on the one hand, private initiative, the individual’s thirst for self-affirmation in competition with peers, freedom of property and hard work, maximum limitation of the role of the state in society; on the other - conciliarity, communalism, collectivism, with a simultaneous tendency towards authoritarianism, a strong leader of a charismatic type, a strong state. The development of trade, commodity-money relations, private initiative, private property, not being complemented by the mass dissemination of corresponding values, generated and accumulated a hidden feeling of dissatisfaction in society, and strengthened the mass negative attitude towards such changes. Starting from the reforms of Peter I and to this day, the political history of Russia resembles a “zebra crossing” - the liberal trend, not having time to gain a foothold as a result of the efforts of successive reformers, is replaced by a return to traditional mass values.

In the structure of value relations of political culture, general cultural orientations, attitudes towards power, and political phenomena are distinguished.

The nature and direction of general cultural orientations reveals the place of political phenomena in the structure of values ​​of an individual, group, and society. The significance of ideological orientations lies in the extent to which a person’s choice of political positions depends on his preferences for individual or collective values. Thus, the history of Russia shows, in contrast to Western countries that have experienced the impact of capitalism, that the inhabitants of our country for centuries have been guided mainly by the norms of communal collectivism. It embodied the priority of the interests of the family, community, estate, collective, class, state, society over the goals and values ​​of the individual, the needs of the individual.

A general indicator is that the ideal of equality, rather than freedom, is highlighted. This tradition in Soviet society received additional impetus from the total control of the state over the individual and the collectivist principles established by the Soviet government in public life.

At the level of the individual, the most adequate expression of the essence of political culture is the code of conduct, the style of activity as a participant in the political process. This code is ultimately determined by its value ideas about political phenomena and is embodied in practice. It simultaneously contains both a generally recognized and individually unique element.

Based on the existing political culture of an individual, we can talk about his political maturity (or immaturity - infantilism). A politically mature person is distinguished by ideological conviction and citizenship, manifested in a conscious, constantly present interest in political processes and events, in the need for constant updating of political knowledge, independence of political analysis and individual decision-making, in a sense of responsibility for the fate of one’s country.

The most important feature of Russian political culture is paternalism. In the modern interpretation, paternalism is understood as a doctrine and activity from the standpoint of “fatherly care” in relation to layers and groups that are less protected in social and economic terms.

The roots of the paternalistic tradition in Russian culture, including political culture, are located in the historical past. The basis of traditional culture and the most important social unit of agrarian society was the patriarchal family. The total number of such a family could number several dozen people. The authority of the head of the family was indisputable.

Having a large family has long been an economic necessity driven by climate middle zone Russia, where the short summer often forced different field work to be carried out almost simultaneously. The labor rhythm contributed to the development of mobilization forms of community life, for which the most adequate feature of power relations in the family was authoritarianism.

Property relations, which left the head of the family with full right to dispose of all the funds of the peasant household, imposed great responsibility on him and required him to perform a number of functions in the social, economic, everyday, and moral-psychological spheres.

IN public sphere he represented family interests in relations with the outside world: the community, neighbors, elder, master. In the household sphere, he managed property, gave tasks and controlled their execution. He was assigned the functions of reward and punishment, monitoring compliance with moral standards. In fact, we are talking about power relations of an authoritarian type in the primary cell of society.

The concentration of command functions behind the authority, in this case, the head of the patriarchal family, leaves only execution functions to all household members. In such a situation, a person does not feel the need to feel like an individual; he shifts responsibility for his fate to the family, state, government, he moves away from individual responsibility, and therefore from freedom.

The head of the family had the right to manage the lives of the household at his own discretion, and they had to accept any decision as inevitable, since such behavior guaranteed the survival of the family as an entity.

Paternalistic traits determined by natural and climatic conditions became entrenched in Russian peasant culture. Orthodoxy has sanctified these relations with the authority of the church. Thus, paternalism has become an axiom, a cultural archetype, enshrined in the Russian mentality and political culture.

This typological feature of Russian society attracted the attention of historical thought back in the 19th century, starting with N. Karamzin’s well-known statement that in Russia autocratic rule is paternal rule.

Traditions preserved in folk, peasant culture were also characteristic of the culture of the educated elite of Russian society. Liberalism of the European type, which spread after the bourgeois-democratic revolutions, began to transform under the pressure of internal and external circumstances.

Russia's victory in the war with Napoleon strengthened national pride, consolidated society and acted as an incentive to search for its own path of development. While creating an industrial society, that is, moving in line with the global development trend, Russia simultaneously strengthened its focus on traditional cultural values.

Paternalism, as a behavioral stereotype, permeated the political culture of an educated society. Naturally, its manifestations were designated by concepts adequate to the time. The most common words reflecting different aspects of paternalism were care and patronage, as well as their derivatives. Paternalism, as a basic basis, in the Russian Empire was implemented in the following categories: care, supervision, encouragement, protection, charity, assistance, donation, relief, mercy, donation.

The history of the Soviet period confirms the stability of the established paternalistic traditions. All children of primary school age were Octobrists - Ilyich’s grandchildren. For a quarter of a century the country was ruled by the “father of nations” - J.V. Stalin. Party bodies carried out guardianship functions, supervising, encouraging and punishing citizens, guided by the norms of the moral code of the builder of communism.

The relevance of the problems of paternalism is confirmed by the events of our days, when the situation that has developed in the post-Soviet period has demonstrated the people’s need for care from the state, for guarantees of social assistance and protection, which they consider as something a priori, as an obligatory function of power. Paternalistic traditions can be attributed to the “collective unconscious,” that is, a cultural archetype acquired by a person in the process of socialization, and which controls his behavior at the subconscious level.

In Russia there are all types of political culture and its subcultures: patriarchal, subservient, activist. However, according to researchers, the patriarchal-subjective and subject-activist ones dominate.

Characterizing the submissive nature of political culture, R. Mukhaev identifies a number of specific features due to the influence of civilizational, geographical and historical features of the development of Russia. Firstly, the dualism of political culture, which is a complex interaction of two socio-cultural flows (from the East and from the West), focusing on various systems values: on the one hand, the values ​​of collectivism, justice, equality, adherence to patriarchal traditions; on the other hand, the values ​​of freedom, individualism, human rights, pluralism. Secondly, the confrontational nature of relations between carriers of political culture, expressed in riots, civil wars, and revolutions. Thirdly, the concentration of political dominance in the hands of the ruling class, which led to the fact that at the slightest weakening, the uncontrollability of the system increased. Fourthly, the absence of a free individual and a mature civil society, leading to the concentration of political life within the ruling class, which contributes to the political disenfranchisement of the population

As a result of the influence of many factors, both historical and modern, the political culture of modern Russian society is internally contradictory. It represents many subcultures - authoritarian and democratic, elitist (political elite, bureaucrats) and mass (ordinary citizens), liberal and socialist. There are subcultures in every social group: among young people and pensioners, entrepreneurs and marginalized people, workers and the intelligentsia.

However, the peculiarity of the modern stage of political culture of Russian society is not so much in the diversity of subcultures, but in the fact that a significant number of them are involved in hidden or overt struggle and clash. The main lines of confrontation are democracy-authoritarianism, socialism-capitalism, centralism-regionalism, globalization-isolationism, anarchism-statism, etc. The diversity of such lines indicates the absence of a basic political consensus, national harmony, and ultimately a painful discord between various social groups questioning the success of reforming society, social and political stability in it.

Thus, the political culture of modern Russian society is in a state of its formation, experiencing serious influence from geopolitical and historical factors and radical transformations taking place in it today.

Zaslavskaya T.I. Modern Russian society: Social mechanism of transformation: textbook. allowance. M., 2004. P.63.

Batalov E. Political culture of Russia through the prism of civic culture // Pro et Contra. 2002. No. 3.

Eidelman N.N. Edge of centuries. Political struggle in Russia: the end of the 8th - beginning of the 19th century. M., 1982. P.36.

Fromm E. Flight from freedom / Trans. from English M., 1989. P.141-148.

Akhiezer A. Specifics of Russian political culture and the subject of political science (Historical and cultural research) // Pro et Contra. 2002. No. 3.

Pivovarov Yu. Russian political culture and political culture (Society, power, Lenin) // Pro et Contra. 2002. No. 3.

Berdyaev N.A. The fate of Russia. Experiments on the psychology of war and nationality // The Fate of Russia: Works. M., 2000. P.283.

Mukhaev R. Theory of Politics: a textbook for university students. M., 2005. P.252-254.

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Lecture 18.Political culture of Russia: traditions and modernity

18.1. Political culture and political process

Political culture - an integral part of general culture, a cumulative indicator of political experience, the level of political knowledge and feelings, patterns of behavior and functioning of political subjects, an integral characteristic of the political way of life of a country, class, nation, social group of individuals.

The peculiarity of political culture is that it does not constitute politics or the political process itself, but their awareness and explanation: in political sphere Often, not only the actual actions and measures of the state acquire significance, but also how they are assessed and perceived, and in what context they are presented. Political culture can be seen as an intermediary between the political world and the environment, providing interaction between areas of social relations, cultural norms and stereotypes, and political processes.

Political culture is part of the spiritual culture of the people and includes those elements of the latter that are associated with socio-political institutions and political processes. It influences the forms, functioning and development of state and political institutions, sets the direction of the political process, and determines the political behavior of the broad masses. Political culture is understood as “a system of orientations and attitudes regarding the political system and its components, as well as regarding patterns of political behavior.”

Researchers have long been asking the question: why do Western political models not take root in countries of non-European culture, or, although they take root in form, are they filled with a fundamentally different content? The conclusions reached by scientists are that the form of implementation of these models, their acceptance or rejection by the majority of the population is largely determined by the main characteristics of its political culture. Therefore, modern researchers most often consider political culture as a political dimension of the cultural environment in a particular society, as a characteristic of the behavior of a particular people, the characteristics of its civilizational development. In this sense, political culture expresses the movement of traditions inherent in the people in the sphere of state power, their embodiment and development in the modern context, and their influence on the conditions for the formation of future policies. Expressing this “genetic code” of the people, their spirit in the symbols and attributes of statehood (flag, coat of arms, anthem), political culture integrates society in its own way, ensuring stability of relations between elite and non-elite strata of society in forms familiar to people.

Political culture includes the following components elements, which were formed over many hundreds of years, decades and generations: informative- political knowledge, political education, political consciousness, ways of political thinking; moral-evaluative- political feelings, traditions, values, ideals, beliefs, general cultural orientations, attitudes towards power, political phenomena; behavioral- political attitudes, types, forms, styles, patterns of socio-political activity, political behavior.

These elements are determined by socio-economic, national-cultural, socio-historical and other long-term factors. They are characterized by relative stability, vitality and constancy.

Political culture is formed over decades and centuries. It is the result of knowledge of objective political processes and the corresponding conclusions from them. Therefore, without studying its genesis, formation, dynamics of internal differences and integrity, analysis of the specifics of political culture is impossible.

18.2. Genotype of Russian political culture

The specificity, due to the peculiarities of historical development, allows us to talk about a special genotype of Russian political culture.

Even in Ancient Rus', culture, being traditionally archaic, acquired a veche form. Its specificity was the rejection of innovations that threaten the established order and rules, and the focus on the reproduction of local worlds, which conflicted with the desire to form a state. This veche culture and corresponding way of life had a huge impact on subsequent history and the formation of statehood.

Russia's geographical location between Europe and Asia has had a serious impact on Russian society. The country found itself at the intersection of two sociocultural types: European or personality-centric, which places the focus on the individual, his freedom, natural rights, and Asian, or sociocentric oriented towards society, team, state. At the same time, the interaction of these two sociocultural types in Russian society is very unique: it presupposes not just interweaving and mutual enrichment of the content of both types, but also a continuous struggle between them. The dualism, duality, inconsistency and conflict of political culture that arise on this basis are most clearly reflected to this day in the confrontation between “Westerners” and “soilers”, the Western model of development and the model of Russia’s original path. T.I. Zaslavskaya proposes to culturally recognize Russia as “a marginal member of the European family, occupying approximately the same place in it as Pluto in the solar system.”

The specifics of Russia's role and place were also determined by the vast geopolitical space in which peoples with different types of cultures coexisted. Under these conditions, a pronounced statist orientation of political culture. In Russia, the state is perceived, as E. Batalov puts it, as “the backbone of civilization, the guarantor of the integrity and existence of society, the organizer of all life.” In the absence of civil society, such a perception reflected the real role of the state, not only in tsarist times, but also in the Soviet period, when it was necessary to maintain the victory of socialism in a capitalist environment. It was impossible to achieve international recognition without a strong state, so the Bolshevik government did everything possible to promote the statist orientation of Soviet political culture. In post-Soviet times, the statist tradition was weakened, but it soon resumed along with the strengthening of the role of the federal center, which was the reason for the strengthening of the vertical power.

State-centricity turns into sacralization of the supreme power, i.e. its persistent perception as sanctioned by extrahuman forces. The invariable attribute of the image of a leader in the mass consciousness is not the ability to coordinate positions and reach a compromise, but the ability to impose one’s will. The leader appears as the main object of paternalistic expectations, which is facilitated by the persistent historical memory of the “benefactor fathers”, drawn from the Russian political tradition. As a result, the belief developed that the well-being of the country depended only on the sovereign, his intelligence and enlightenment. This is how the belief in the highest royal justice was formed, which became characteristic of the political culture of Russia. According to N. Eidelman, “as soon as the injustice of real power came into conflict with this idea, the issue was resolved, in general, unambiguously: the tsar was still “right”; if something wrong came from the king, it means that his true word was distorted by ministers, nobles, or this monarch is incorrect, self-proclaimed and he urgently needs to be replaced with a real one.”

The central role of the individual is represented at all levels of the state-social ladder down to its lower floors, where it leads to the formation of clientelistic relations. Real power relations are regulated more informally - personally, rather than on the basis of formalized bureaucratic procedures. The rules of the game here are a continuation of tradition; legal control over their compliance is not provided. Such traditions form an authoritarian personality type, described by E. Fromm in his work “Flight from Freedom.”

The history of the Russian state is closely connected with Orthodoxy. The Orthodox Church acted as the spiritual support of the Russians and opposed the Muslim East and the Catholic West. The Orthodox faith played an important role in the formation of ideas about the greatness of Russia, its magnitude, patriotism and devotion to the fatherland, the special path of Russia, which became the most important components of the political consciousness of Russians. The Church elevated to the rank of saints outstanding figures who, in the strict sense, were not its servants (Princess Olga, Princes Vladimir, Alexander Nevsky, Dmitry Donskoy and others).

Being a follower of the Byzantine civilization, Russia adopted from it not only religion, but also culture, first of all, the imperial idea, the implementation of which led to the transformation of the country into a multi-ethnic, multilingual empire. It was possible to maintain the integrity of such a huge empire only with the help of despotic power, a strong centralized state. Understanding this circumstance led to an awareness of the need to submit to power and the state. At the same time, the authorities were tolerated without taking them to heart, which was reflected in the negative attitude of the population towards its representatives, especially towards officials. Nevertheless, always, and especially after the collapse of the USSR, a powerful centralized state in the minds of many people was and is perceived as the main historical achievement of the Russian people and its allies.

From the East Roman Empire, the mass consciousness also perceived a kind of cosmopolitanism - the supra-ethnic, supranational character of both political power itself and statehood, which manifested itself in the international policy of the Soviet state and in the absence of the need for the formation of a Russian national state.

The messianic orientation of Russian political culture appeared at the turn of the century XV - XVI centuries in the proclamation of Moscow as the Third Rome, as well as with the Bolsheviks coming to power in 1917 with the messianic goal of spreading the ideas of communism throughout the world.

A split in political culture often led to mutual violence, to a clash of opposing ideals up to the point of civil war, and stimulated the desire to suppress opposing cultural potential by force of arms. Such clashes continued throughout the country's history (violence associated with the adoption of Christianity, mass terror in the 20th century). The highest authorities tried repeatedly to move away from direct violence, but kept returning to it, which indicates the inability of the authorities to solve increasingly complex problems.

Under Peter I the idea of ​​the “common good” was formed as a national value, which was embodied in the form utilitarianism, recognizing benefit or benefit as a criterion of morality. A person begins to move away from the values ​​of traditionalism and look for fundamental solutions beyond its framework, to recognize himself as a subject capable of influencing the implementation of goals. As a result, a reform impulse appeared aimed at overcoming the country's backwardness, implemented through increasing the level of education and culture, and using elements of Western potential. However, it turned out that society needs to learn to use a new effective means of self-development, otherwise it becomes a means of destruction, as evidenced by both the post-Petrine reign and the reign of some sovereigns in XIX century.

According to Yu. Pivovarov, the Russian political culture of the 20th century was decisively influenced by Lenin, whom he calls “the demiurge of the new order.” For its formation, Lenin developed communist theory, created a new type of party, brought it to power, and laid the foundations of the Soviet system - “one-party democracy” and a completely state-controlled economy.

The Russian man, being, in essence, a statesman, at the same time was afraid of the state, avoided dealing with the authorities, and did not trust state institutions. Hence the conflict in the state consciousness of the Russian people, on the one hand, and the rejection of power, on the other. This feature acquired its extreme forms during the Soviet period. The more terrible the power manifested itself, the stronger the person’s desire to join it, to enter it, to become a part of it. Such an attitude towards the state and authorities contributed to the formation of a double standard in their assessment. The man seemed to split into two, which indicated antinomy political culture.

N.A. Berdyaev wrote: “Russia is a country of endless freedom and spiritual distances, wanderers and seekers, a rebellious and eerie country in its spontaneity.” And at the same time - “Russia is a country of unheard-of servility and terrible humility, a country devoid of consciousness of individual rights and not protecting the dignity of the individual, a country of inert conservatism, enslavement of religious life by the state...”.

The entire political history of Russia can be presented as a picture of a constant confrontation between liberal and patriarchal-traditional values: on the one hand, private initiative, the individual’s thirst for self-affirmation in competition with peers, freedom of property and hard work, maximum limitation of the role of the state in society; on the other - conciliarity, communalism, collectivism, with a simultaneous tendency towards authoritarianism, a strong leader of a charismatic type, a strong state. The development of trade, commodity-money relations, private initiative, private property, not being complemented by the mass dissemination of corresponding values, generated and accumulated a hidden feeling of dissatisfaction in society, and strengthened the mass negative attitude towards such changes. Since Peter's reforms I and to this day, the political history of Russia resembles a “zebra” - the liberal trend, not having time to gain a foothold as a result of the efforts of successive reformers, is replaced by a return to traditional mass values.

In the structure of value relations of political culture, general cultural orientations, attitudes towards power, and political phenomena are distinguished.

The nature and direction of general cultural orientations reveal the place of political phenomena in the structure of values ​​of an individual, group, and society. The significance of ideological orientations lies in the extent to which a person’s choice of political positions depends on his preferences for individual or collective values. Thus, the history of Russia shows, in contrast to Western states that have experienced the impact of capitalism, that the inhabitants of our country for centuries have been guided mainly by the norms of communal collectivism. It embodied the priority of the interests of the family, community, class, collective, class, state, society over the goals and values ​​of the individual, and the needs of the individual.

A general indicator is that the ideal of equality, rather than freedom, comes to the fore. This tradition in Soviet society received an additional impetus from the total control of the state over the individual and the collectivist principles established by the Soviet government in public life.

At the level of the individual, the most adequate expression of the essence of political culture is the code of conduct, the style of activity as a participant in the political process. This code is ultimately determined by its value ideas about political phenomena and is embodied in practice. It simultaneously contains both a generally recognized and individually unique element.

Based on the existing political culture of an individual, we can talk about his political maturity (or immaturity - infantilism). A politically mature person is distinguished by ideological conviction, citizenship, manifested in a conscious, constantly present interest in political processes, events, in the need for constant updating of political knowledge, independence of political analysis and individual decision-making, in a sense of responsibility for the fate of their country. And if a society with a stable political system can afford to free some of its citizens from direct and immediate participation in the political process, then for modern Russian society, which has not yet emerged from the crisis, the political passivity of citizens can lead to its complete collapse . It follows that the political culture of the population is the foundation on which real practical politics should be built. If a policy does not take into account the existing culture in a society, then it is either rejected by the population or distorted beyond recognition. In Russia, every another attempt modernization was embodied in political radicalism, which ignored the fundamental principle of continuity of the accumulated experience of previous generations.

18.3. Paternalism in Russian political culture

The most important feature of Russian political culture is paternalism. In the modern interpretation, paternalism is understood as a doctrine and activity from the standpoint of “fatherly care” in relation to layers and groups that are less protected in social and economic relations.

The roots of the paternalistic tradition in Russian culture, including political culture, are located in the historical past. The basis of traditional culture and the most important social unit of agrarian society was the patriarchal family. The total number of such a family could number several dozen people. The authority of the head of the family was indisputable.

The existence of a large family has long been an economic necessity due to the climate of central Russia, where the short summer often forced different field work to be carried out almost simultaneously. The labor rhythm contributed to the development of mobilization forms of community life, for which the most adequate feature of power relations in the family was authoritarianism.

Property relations, which left the head of the family with full right to dispose of all the funds of the peasant household, placed great responsibility on him and required him to perform a number of functions in the social, economic, everyday, and moral-psychological spheres.

In the public sphere, he represented family interests in relations with the outside world: the community, neighbors, elder, master. In the household sphere, he managed property, gave tasks and controlled their execution. The functions of reward and punishment and control over compliance with moral standards were assigned to him. In fact, we are talking about power relations of an authoritarian type in the primary cell of society.

The concentration of command functions behind authority, in this case the head of the patriarchal family, leaves all household members with only executive functions. In such a situation, a person does not feel the need to feel like an individual, he shifts responsibility for his fate to the family, state, government, he moves away from individual responsibility, and therefore from freedom.

The head of the family had the right to manage the lives of the household at his own discretion, and they had to accept any decision as inevitable, since such behavior guaranteed the survival of the family as an entity.

Paternalistic traits determined by natural and climatic conditions became entrenched in Russian peasant culture. Orthodoxy has sanctified these relations with the authority of the church. Thus, paternalism has become an axiom, a cultural archetype, enshrined in the Russian mentality and political culture.

The attention of historical thought was drawn to this typological feature of Russian society back in XIX century, starting with N. Karamzin’s well-known statement that in Russia autocratic rule is paternal rule.

Traditions preserved in folk, peasant culture were also characteristic of the culture of the educated elite of Russian society. Liberalism of the European type, which spread after the bourgeois-democratic revolutions, began to transform under the pressure of internal and external circumstances.

Russia's victory in the war with Napoleon strengthened national pride, consolidated society and acted as an incentive to find its own path of development. While creating an industrial society, that is, moving in line with the global development trend, Russia simultaneously strengthened its orientation towards traditional cultural values.

Paternalism, as a behavioral stereotype, permeated the political culture of an educated society. Naturally, its manifestations were designated by concepts adequate to the time. The most common words reflecting different aspects of paternalism were care and patronage, as well as their derivatives. Paternalism, as a basic basis, in the Russian Empire was implemented in the following categories: care, supervision, encouragement, protection, charity, assistance, donation, relief, mercy, donation.

The history of the Soviet period confirms the stability of the established paternalistic traditions. All children of primary school age were Octobrists - Ilyich’s grandchildren. For a quarter of a century the country was ruled by the “father of nations” - J.V. Stalin. Party bodies carried out guardianship functions, supervising, encouraging and punishing citizens, guided by the norms of the moral code of the builder of communism.

The relevance of the problems of paternalism is confirmed by the events of our days, when the situation that has developed in the post-Soviet period has demonstrated the people’s need for care from the state, for guarantees of social assistance and protection, which they consider as something a priori, as an obligatory function of power. Paternalistic traditions can be attributed to the “collective unconscious,” that is, a cultural archetype acquired by a person in the process of socialization, and which controls his behavior at the subconscious level.

18.4. Types of political culture in modern Russia

Work on the study of Russian political culture is carried out within the framework of the theories of modernization, transitology, and democratization, taking into account Russia’s potential ability to transition to a truly democratic regime. Research is carried out in several directions: the search for a democratic sub-culture within the framework of national culture, truly democratic institutions in modern Russian society, democratic traditions in the national consciousness.

Traditional and industrial societies, coexisting at the same time, gave the modern world two main type of political culture: totalitarian and democratic. Until the 1980s in views on Russian political culture, the monistic, or “monostylistic” model dominated. The emergence and existence of a totalitarian political culture was associated with national cultural specifics (genotype), rooted in the distant past, which determined the features of the Russian social structure from absolutism to the socialist system. The subject of the study was the interaction between the state and society, traditional attitudes towards power, and forms of protest behavior.

For the totalitarian type The Soviet period is characterized by the unification of political consciousness and behavior, the rigidity of regulations from the state, the discrepancy between the words and deeds of the political elite, and therefore ordinary citizens.

The replacement of Soviet political culture with a new one is a long process and depends, according to E. Batalov, on at least four factors: the dynamics of generational change; the nature of political socialization of youth groups; the direction and pace of development of new economic and political relations in the country; purposeful formation of a political culture corresponding to a democratic political system.

Democratic political culture presupposes a pluralism of political subjects, opinions, attitudes, and types of behavior. And as a result, it includes tolerance, which means not just tolerance for something or someone else, but also a willingness to interact with an opponent, to absorb the most rational.

The transitional state of Russian society also determines the transitional nature of political culture, the presence in it of elements of both a totalitarian culture and a democratic one. In relation to the political culture of post-Soviet Russia, the term “authoritarian-collectivist” is sometimes used.

The extreme conditions of Russia, which put it on the brink of survival for a long time, gave rise to a mobilization type of political culture of society, oriented towards achieving emergency goals. Therefore, ideas of extremism and a penchant for forceful methods of resolving issues are widespread in society, and at the same time, ideas of compromise, consensus, negotiations, etc. are not popular. In combination with the weakness of democratic traditions, personal ambitions often become dominant over political expediency.

In Russia there are all types of political culture and its subcultures: patriarchal, subject, activist. However, according to researchers, they dominate patriarchal-subjective And subject-activist.

Characterizing the submissive nature of political culture, R. Mukhaev identifies a number of specific features due to the influence of civilizational, geographical and historical features of the development of Russia. Firstly, the dualism of political culture, which is a complex interaction of two socio-cultural flows (from the East and from the West), focusing on different value systems: on the one hand, the values ​​of collectivism, justice, equality, adherence to patriarchal traditions; on the other hand, the values ​​of freedom, individualism, human rights, pluralism. Secondly, the confrontational nature of relations between carriers of political culture, expressed in riots, civil wars, and revolutions. Thirdly, the concentration of political dominance in the hands of the ruling class, which led to the fact that at the slightest weakening, the uncontrollability of the system increased. Fourth, the absence of a free individual and a mature civil society, leading to the concentration of political life within the ruling class, which contributes to the political disenfranchisement of the population.

As a result of the influence of many factors, both historical and modern, the political culture of modern Russian society is internally contradictory. It represents many subcultures - authoritarian and democratic, elitist (political elite, bureaucrats) and mass (ordinary citizens), liberal and socialist. Subcultures exist in every social group: among young people and pensioners, entrepreneurs and marginalized people, workers and the intelligentsia.

However, the peculiarity of the modern stage of the political culture of Russian society is not so much in the diversity of subcultures, but in the fact that a significant number of them are involved in a hidden or overt struggle, a clash. The main lines of confrontation are democracy-authoritarianism, socialism-capitalism, centralism-regionalism, globalization-isolationism, anarchism-statism, etc. The diversity of such lines indicates the absence of a basic political consensus, national agreement, and ultimately a painful discord between various social groups questioning the success of reforming society, social and political stability in it.

Thus, the political culture of modern Russian society is in a state of its formation, experiencing serious influence from geopolitical and historical factors and radical transformations taking place in it today.

18.5. Political culture of modern Russia

Among the traditions that are directly related to politics in modern Russia, there are such as the sacralization of power, municipal liberties, and socio-political activity of the population associated with solving local or national problems. Among those that are beginning to develop, the following can be distinguished: civilized methods of polemics and discussion; the ability to listen to an opponent, persuade and convince using rational arguments; the art of compromise, maneuver and alliances, active forms of pressure on the legislative, executive powers and political parties, the use of the press and means of mass communication; manifestations, demonstrations, rallies, mass performances and movements in defense of certain demands and interests; “conquering the street”, strikes - local and national, economic and political; the use of the most effective and decisive forms of struggle; mobilization, solidarity, mutual assistance; social unions.

Radical changes in the foundations of economic, social, political and spiritual life, mass movements of various population groups from neighboring countries to Russia and the emergence as a result of this of new interethnic, demographic, territorial and other formations;

Changes and complication of the social structure of society, the emergence of new social groups in it, growth of property inequality, increased vertical and horizontal mobility;

Reassessment of lessons from the past, present, and future prospects based on increased information.

All these processes dictate the need for a serious modification of people’s ideological, evaluative and behavioral guidelines, that is, all components of political culture.

Researchers identify the following as characteristic features of the political culture of modern Russia:

The values ​​of communitarianism are the priority of group justice over the principles of individual freedom;

Indifferent attitude towards political participation;

Personalized perception of power;

Predisposition to conformism;

Lack of faith in representative bodies of government, attraction to executive functions with limited individual responsibility;

Submissive attitude to power;

Legal nihilism;

Intolerance to other opinions, principles;

Uncritical perception of foreign experience, copying of its dubious samples;

Predisposition to forceful methods of conflict resolution, rejection of consensus technologies.

Political culture can fulfill its purpose as an instrument for the consolidation of society and its reconstruction only if it overcomes the confrontation of its various directions and interacts on the basis of a common unifying idea, the search for which is being actively undertaken by all political forces today.

Due to objective circumstances, Russia will always feel the need for a strong, effective state, which cannot but affect the political culture. In a democracy, power is limited by citizens defending private or group interests and acting within the framework of civil society. Therefore, anti-statism in political culture should not be aimed at destroying the state, but at limiting its expansionist tendencies, overcoming paternalistic expectations and developing the ability to self-organize.

From the point of view of A. Akhiezer, “society cannot ensure its existence in an increasingly complex world without involving everyone in the process of dialogization.” more of people. The central task of political science in post-Soviet society is to look for ways to reproduce liberal culture, the sociocultural foundation of which is still weak, improving society and the state on this basis, helping to achieve a basic consensus and overcome the split between all elements of moral schematism. And for this, certain moral foundations are necessary - first of all, the development of humanism (which at one time was not accepted by the spiritual elite of Byzantine culture), the Christian idea of ​​love, the displacement of aggressiveness, hatred, the belief that “the world lies in evil”, renunciation of the world to the periphery of culture (the latter was actively adopted from the Byzantine heritage).”

The ongoing political and cultural changes give reason to believe that a civil culture can be formed in post-Soviet Russia, which will be of a mixed nature, because You cannot move forward by denying everything that was created by previous generations. The main sources of such a culture can be modern political practice, which through legal acts will acquire a legitimate character; Western political culture, which is the source of necessary values; a national tradition that corrects the emerging political culture.

Basic concepts: antinomy of political culture; genotype of Russian political culture; paternalism; political culture; Orthodoxy; sociocultural types: personality-centric, sociocentric; types of political culture: totalitarian, democratic, patriarchal, subject-based, activist, patriarchal-subjective, subject-activist; utilitarianism; elements of political culture: cognitive, moral-evaluative, behavioral; statist orientation of political culture.

Questions for self-control:

1. What is the relationship between political culture and the political process?

2. What constituent elements does political culture include?

3. Characterize the genotype of Russian political culture.

4. What is the essence of statist political culture?

5. How does the personality-centric type differ from the sociocentric sociocultural type?

6. What influence did Orthodoxy have on the formation of political culture?

7. Who, from the point of view of Yu.S. Pivovarov, had a decisive influence on the formation of political culture in the twentieth century?

8. Characterize utilitarianism as a form of political culture.

9. How does the antinomy of Russian political culture manifest itself?

10. What are the reasons for the emergence of Russian paternalism?

11. How does paternalism manifest itself in modern political culture?

12. Describe the totalitarian and democratic types of political culture.

13. What types of political culture dominate in modern Russia?

14. What processes influence the development of the political culture of modern Russian society?

15. Name character traits political culture of modern Russia.

16. What does anti-statism mean for Russian political culture in modern times?

17. Is it possible to form a civil political culture in modern Russia?

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