Ideas and Ideals

The article examines the role of religion in a traditional society and particularly in the Russian one. The author considers religion as the foundation of culture, which defines the ethical principles and values in the society. The author reveals the reason of anti-religious struggle in Soviet society as a goal of cultural revolution, which task was to form international culture and a new man with new values and atheistic world outlook. Using the evidence of eyewitnesses the author shows the main measures taken by the Soviet power to form an atheistic society. The article highlights antireligious work in the village because all layers of Soviet society (workers, the intellectuals, etc.) descend from peasantry. The study provides testimonies of antireligious struggle during collectivization. Basing on these judgments, the author comes to the conclusion that the Soviet power managed to achieve the goal of cultural revolution. One or two generations were necessary to transform the society into the atheistic one. Even traditionally religious peasant society was subjected to deep socio-cultural transformations. The reasons for it were the following: policy of repressions, atheistic upbringing of the younger generation, and the formation of negative attitudes towards the older generation as archaic and retrograde. Atheism influenced the transformation of mental reasoning and values in Soviet society.

After the dismantling of the Soviet socialist state, Russia was declared a social, legal, and democratic state in the Constitution (1993). By that time, there were already different models of social states in the world that had reached certain standards, but periodically experienced crises that questioned the regularity of the existence of such a state. The article reveals the concept of a social state in accordance with the Constitution of the Russian Federation, goals, tasks, objective and subjective diffi culties and contradictions of building a new type of state for Russia. The author considers the results of social transformations in the 1990s, the role of the state in them, the features of the Concept of the social state of the Russian Federation developed in 2004, and the main directions of social policy. The paper also analyzes the changes in the legal and socio-economic situation of citizens, the results of the “national projects” and the May Decrees of the President of the Russian Federation, the results of the activities of state bodies in the protection of human rights and freedoms as well as unresolved problems. The  author reveals the ratio of indicators achieved by Russia with the world criteria and standards of the social state. The article is written on the basis of published sources: statistical documents of state bodies, reports of the government of the Russian Federation, reports of human rights Commissioners of the Russian Federation and other types of documents. The author comes to the conclusion that for Russia the social state remains the ideological basis of the next social experiments. Social justice has not really become a priority of the state. Much has been done to restore the state after the devastating 1990s, but the effectiveness of efforts to create a social state still raises questions. Russia does not meet the international standards of the social state by any criterion. The system – forming function of the social state is social, associated with the provision of the necessary decent living standards for all citizens, and this very function is not really fulfi lled. The article analyzes the economic, socio-political, objective, subjective, internal and external causes of the discrepancy between the ideals of an equitable society, theoretical concepts of real practice, the reasons, which hinder the solution of social problems in modern Russia, the prospects for the population. The author concludes that the construction of a social state in Russia, the Declaration of many important tasks and mechanisms for their implementation made the process of building up a traditional state with huge stratifi cation of the society, social, regional, property inequality and its own concept of social justice less hurtful to people. The construction of the social state favored strengthening of the liberal policy with regard to people.

There is a fundamental difference between the human migration movements of the past and those of the beginning of the 21st century. The latter impose the need for a cultural assimilation of the migrants which they cannot master within one generation. This cultural transformation includes a human densification into a new living space, i.e. the essentially technology-based megapolises, which altogether represent the equivalent of an artificial planet. This new planet does not provide new resources or additional free spaces for an overall growth of material wealth. On the contrary, it asks for a drastic reduction of individual freedoms. The stability, even the survival of these mega centers is at stake without consistent subdivisions of the overall shrinking of spaces needed for all kinds of movements and of a consistent restriction of the exploding communicative interference within and between these mega centers. This essay is aimed at a first-hand analysis of a possible introduction of digital borders without which adequate legal spaces appear infeasible as an indispensable framework of this artificial new planet.

The paper studies the transformation of the conceptual apparatus of modern social sciences, characterized by a shift from a socially-problematic to a risk-prognostic analysis. The author shows that these conceptual and theoretical changes are conditioned by the internal logic of sociology development, which has gradually transferred in the analysis of social phenomena from the study of unfavorable effects of social changes and symptoms of social deviations to the reasons that cause socially problematic situations. An approach based on the personal responsibility of “problem” individuals and social groups for their exclusion from normal social life was formed within the framework of social psychology and it is defined by a medical-criminological model that affirms the existence of “universal criteria for normality” and, accordingly, standards of behavior. In the framework of this approach, which was clearly manifested in social Darwinism, the main focus of problem-oriented studies is focused on the external symptoms of social ailments and the “deviant behavior” of individuals and social groups, or factors of their unsuccessful socialization, interpreted as a source of social problems. Theoretical and practical analysis shows consistency of the modern turn in understanding social problems, which is characterized by shifting the focus of research to an institutional-systemic level that generates conditions for the reproduction of social deviations and deprivations. According to the author, the analysis of risks in a sociological perspective takes over the baton of the development of problem-oriented research in social sciences. Modern sociology of risks was formed within the framework of critical reflection on the ideas of U. Beck (who understands risk as a rational strategy for transformation of uncertainty into certainty) and it is represented by sociocultural, constructivist, neo-institutional, administrative approaches. What unites these approaches is that risks are treated as products of social interactions that are deeply embedded in social structures, dependent on the external context and the conditions for the formation of subjective perceptions of risks, and the degree of vulnerability of different social groups, determined by their place in the social hierarchy of society. The critical direction in risk theory focused on the problem of risks interconnection and a system-institutional arrangement of society, emphasizes disproportionate vulnerability to the risks of various social groups, based on socio-structural inequalities, as well as imperfection of organizational structures created to minimize risks due to their greater fitness to the established institutional design, than to the challenges that they face due to their specific activities.

This article analyzes the possible chance of overcoming the limited capacity of the existing theories of modernity to the explanation of the newest tendencies of transformation of society. Asked about the need to update existing concepts, because all of them, according to the author, reflect already leaving the next stage of the post-industrial development. The author believes that the prospect of explaining the rapidly changing social world and his prediction tool could become a concept of informational resonance in social structures. The author draws attention to the crucial role of information increase the transformation of all parties social life. But its role remains underestimated in constructing adequate models of the contemporarily, and especially in predicting consequences for social life rapidly developing information technology. Analysis and forecasting of social and anthropological implications of the next phase of the information-computer and the sixth industrial revolutions did not follow the intensity of technological innovations and for studies of the dynamics and forms technical-technological change. The author introduces the notion of "information resonance in social structures" and analyzes the possibility of building a concept of this process. In doing so, it relies on the expertise of multidisciplinary research using the concept of resonance, wave and synergetic processes. Describes typical manifestations of resonant wave processes in social structures and their effects. The author suggests and formulates arguments proving that the "information explosion" and information overload are transforming social structures, affecting primarily the basic system of society is social interaction. The article argues that with "the cage" social system processes similar to the studied mutations in cytogenetic. According to the author, the similarity of these processes allows for the social structure and the structure of social interaction to build explanatory model by analogy, turning on an interdisciplinary level, then the transdisciplinary approach and synthesis of notional apparatus. At this level, build a new theoretical objects - "mutation the cells of the social system", and citosociology which are offered as a concept in the context of the prospects for the development of transdisciplinary methodologies.

This is а translation of the interview with Saul Alinsky published in Playboy in 1972 and reprinted by the New England Review May 27, 2018.  American professional social organizer, he unilaterally created the new field of social engineering and the new profession of radical-organizer. His two books became handbooks for several generations of organizers. Magazine Playboy sent Eric Norden to interview him. “I accompanied him from the East Coast to the West and into Canada, snatching tape sessions on planes, in cars and at airport…”

The article substantiates the necessity of an interdisciplinary approach to the study of social reality. Various branches of social knowledge have been focusing on identifying the laws of social self-development and rational action. Both the external world and the sociological system of knowledge about it are of a pluralistic nature. There are different answers to the question: "What is modern society?" Today virtual social interaction is coming on the stage. Social nets have become a sphere of intense activity for the attention of target audiences, and network structures - structures of inequality. All phenomena of reality have certain social projections. The authors pay special attention to recording social projections of such areas of reality as history, geography, space, time and the appearance of such qualitative approaches in sociological research as temporality, spatiality and contextuality. Social history is the history of human relations. Social geography is the geography of the very space of people's interaction, which determines the choice of certain occupations and the way of life. Both social history and social geography become immediate phenomena of sociological theory and social practice. The authors demonstrate the growth in the importance of the organization of people’s life, its regionalization in connection with the increased need to manage these processes. The dominating characteristics of a particular regional space are living conditions and environmental conditions. These characteristics are differentiated both in different countries and within a particular country. These differences explain the continuing migration of the population from the less prosperous regions to the more prosperous ones. For Russia, the intra-country differences, which are valid for a long time, are of the utmost importance. Social management is presented as a special type of social interaction aimed at improving the quality of life of the population in various regional environments. The article shows “the scope” of dominating characteristics of the quality of life in the international research and in the regional studies within a country. Estimation of the country's human development potential will always be incomplete without assessing some vulnerability of some regions due to their geographical and historical conditions.