CONDITIONAL PEOPLE

SOCIETY

Over the past 15 years, social scientists have tried to describe, explain, understand the characteristics, possibilities and limits of our contemporary. In the article brought to your attention, written specifically for Novaya, only ...

Over the past 15 years, social scientists have tried to describe, explain, understand the characteristics, possibilities and limits of our contemporary. In the article brought to your attention, written specifically for Novaya, only some details of this huge work are touched upon. So we begin a series of publications dedicated to today's man as such. Interviews on this subject by leading Russian philosophers, psychologists, and sociologists can be read in the next issues of our newspaper.

Power, people and business in an atmosphere of new unanimity, the confusion of the "liberals", the permissiveness of the top ... For several months now, public attention has been riveted to these processes and phenomena, as if suddenly coming to the surface. But if you take a closer look, you will have to admit: there is quite a bit of sudden and random here. Most likely, we are dealing with well-known trends in our social and political life. They turn out to be tenacious not because they are reasonable and effective, but because they are the most familiar: moreover, both for the "top", and for the "bottom", and for the disunited - although not very diverse - "elites". Or, to put it in the language of sociology, for social institutions and for their "inhabitant", the social person.

This is the person we have been “looking for” for the last 15 years, i.е. we try to describe, explain, understand its characteristic features, possibilities and limits. We are a team of researchers of the former VTsIOM, then VTsIOM-A, which has now changed its sign, but not the nature of its activity.

The main search tool is a project originally called "Soviet Man", according to which in 1989, 1994, 1999 and 2003, mass surveys were conducted under a special program.

Where is the "new" person?

At the very beginning, at the end of the 1980s, it seemed to many that a “normal”, free, active person, ready for a free life, would appear from under the rubble of the communist regime. This is how the theorists of the great Enlightenment of the 18th century imagined the liberation of man from the “chains” of the feudal order (this image was in circulation much later, already in relation to the proletarians, who “have nothing to lose but their chains”). Nothing like this happened, it is known and without any research. The man whom we began to study in 1989 turned out to be more confused and alarmed than liberated; at first, he expressed confidence in the new leaders (Gorbachev, then Yeltsin), primarily because he was used to relying on "first persons". Later came years of deep disappointment and dissatisfaction - however, mostly passive - and then a new upsurge of trust and hope, already addressed to the current leader of the country.

But there is no movement in a circle in history, and we do not have it either. Until now, half of Russians (49%) believe that the path of development along which the country is moving after 1985 is "artificially imposed" on it, only 37% consider this process "natural and inevitable" (March 2004, polled 1600 people) . But only 5% saw before the opportunity to return to the blessed times of Brezhnev's rule (for public opinion, this is the best period of the country's life in the last century). And according to the latest data (May 2004), 57% claimed that they "have already adapted" to the changed circumstances, another 20% - that they will do it in the near future.

Here, in this series of answers, it seems to me, there is a key word that is very important for explaining many problems of our modern life: adapted. Times have changed, people have adapted. I learned to live without a shortage of goods, to travel abroad, to perceive private property and business (if it is not too large) without much irritation. But he limits his participation in political life to acquaintance with television news, considers parliamentary discussions empty chatter, the conditional “West” is a dangerous enemy of Russia, cannot stand “oligarchs” and visitors, hopes for the strong hand of the president, whom he takes for a leader ...

When we asked how the respondents would prefer to work, it invariably turned out that the majority (in 2003 - 54%) chose the typically "Soviet" option: a small but solid salary, much less frequently (22%) expressed the intention to "work hard and earn good money". ". “Blame” for such preferences can be both the habits of people and the circumstances that prevent them from doing otherwise. I will add two examples. The first is "collective farm". Despite all the appeals, most of the former collective farmers are in no hurry to turn into independent farmers: there is no strength, no habit, even if they have the necessary material resources. The other is "judge". Juries, that touchstone of democracy, in our conditions often show neither wisdom nor independence, but succumb to pressure.

"All as one?"

Until now, I have been talking about a person who cannot or does not want to lose the adjective "Soviet" as about some kind of single phenomenon. We really have enough uniformity and like-mindedness, but neither one nor the other is now “complete”. Unfortunately, only a small part of public opinion data usually gets to the surface of the newspaper, mostly "average" values ​​reflecting the most common positions - so to speak, the "total" person. The positions listed above are approved, roughly speaking, by 55-60-70% of the population, the details are not so important. It is this generalized character who is a participant in such procedures as general elections. In fact, the person we study is a combination of the opinions of young and old, metropolitan and peripheral, differently educated, those who are “for” and those who are “against”, not to mention those who abstain or , say, generally approves, but with reservations. And, of course, this is a “simple” person and an “elitist”, advanced person. The differences are hardly noticeable in the situation of the same elections (although in this case it is important that the indisputable candidate, as it was in this March, receives less than half of the votes), but can be very significant in other situations, in a vague perspective.

In the socio-political life of the country in recent years, there has been noticeably less diversity (more precisely, less organized, for example, party diversity) and much more old-fashioned “I approve.” But even if “everything is like 60%” or “like 70%” is not at all like “everything is like one”. Moreover, 60-70% of "consonants" are not always unanimous. For example, 17% of those who approve of V. Putin's activity completely trust him (May 2004). Political opposition is almost invisible in our country now, but the ground for it remains, or rather, for a possible diversity of views and positions. The question is who and how will be able to use this potential.

How much does a person need?

According to recent studies, optimism is growing in the country: there are more satisfied, less confused and frightened. At a high level, above 70%, indicators of the president's approval remain. Meanwhile, no miracles happened in the life of the country and people. Economic indices returned to the levels that existed before the 1998 default, and the standard of living and consumption rose accordingly. But the level of 1989 has not yet been reached (this was noted by V. Putin in his recent message to parliament). On the eve of the presidential elections, in April 2004, 57% believed that our citizens were already “tired of waiting” for the president to improve life in the country.

Whence then mass optimism? First of all, because of the low level of requests and expectations - and not only consumer ones. For example, in March 2001, the average income per person (according to survey data) was 1,240 rubles, and at that time they considered an income of 4,780 rubles to be “normal” for themselves, i.e. 3.9 times more. And in March 2004, the average per capita income was 2,670 rubles, while the “normal” income was 8,850; 3.3 times more. Not so much even by our standards, not to mention international comparisons. People usually compare the situation of their own family and country not with sky-high dreams or distant models, but with a well-known situation in the recent past, in years of obvious crisis and chaos.

Something similar happens with the expectations of the socio-political plan. We have never had real participation of the population in political life. From the authorities, people expect the usual (more precisely, habitually promised) - paternal care, even hints of such care. In public opinion, "unpleasant" events (for example, the Chechen war) are more and more habitually relegated to the background, the significance of "pleasant" events (Russia's participation in world affairs) is exaggerated. It is worth mentioning the current assessments of the media, especially television. The "man of the majority" now does not commemorate with a kind word either the time of perestroika or its politicized screen; a peaceful infotainment picture is much nicer and more familiar to him.

In every wave of research we are talking about, we ask what is lacking in a person in our country? It turns out that, first of all, there is a lack of material goods, and each time this is perceived more acutely, noted by a large number of respondents: 51%, 54%, 68%, 83%. In second place today (42% of mentions in a 2003 survey) is a lack of “self-confidence.” This means that popular optimism remains both limited and unreliable.

Submissive protests

The main features of the “Soviet man” were once described by one exact expression “the crafty slave” (T. Zaslavskaya): disenfranchised, submissive, but on his own mind, able to deceive fate and superiors, circumvent any law. Not always, however, successfully. Recent research and experience show that man has not changed much in this respect.

A crafty calculation is an integral part of the mechanism of his forced adaptation to changed circumstances. A person adapts to the world of the market and business not because he has learned to work in a new way, but because he has learned to reduce his own demands and look for loopholes, gaps, workarounds in the current, rather chaotic order. Most of the respondents believe that today it is impossible to live in Russia without breaking the law, without evading taxes, without paying bribes to officials, etc. According to the general opinion, the level of corruption in the country has not been decreasing in recent years, but rather growing. And noisy campaigns like the hunt for "werewolves" are most often considered an election campaign. Virtually no one (nearly 90%) believes that the recent large salary increase for senior officials will protect them from corruption.

The usual mass response to lawlessness and corruption “from above” is circumvention of laws and regulations “from below”. In 1999, 21%, and in 2003, 30% did not see anything reprehensible in riding a "hare" in urban transport, 14% in 1999 and 19% in 2003 - in not paying taxes, 23 % in 1999 and 30% in 2003 in military service evasion.

And the level of any organized social protest invariably remains very low. In the current alignment of socio-political forces, there is simply no one to organize and lead such a protest, and there is still hope for a caring government. But another, and no less important, reason is that crafty obedience “extinguishes” public protest: why openly oppose an unjust order if it can be circumvented, if one can get used to it? Once, in the Soviet years, there was an ironic formulation of mutually crafty public agreement: "they pretend to work, and we pretend to pay them." Today it can be endlessly repeated and turned around (“... we pretend to obey” or something else). But everything has its limits, in the current conditions one cannot go far on such an agreement.

What do we deserve?

Hegel once said that every nation has the government it deserves. Of all the sayings of the half-forgotten philosopher, this is probably the most fashionable. As if it is not difficult to show - and backed up by many observations, documents, research data - that we "deserve" only what we get after the next phase of social illusions and experiments: contentment with little, disappointment in reforms, new hopes for the old order. Today, many people in our country and in the West judge this way. But one cannot agree with this way of reasoning. If in most cases in our history autocracy has won, if now the majority of the population is inclined to hope for a strong hand of power, more precisely, its main bearer, this does not mean at all that it “should be” like that and that our people “deserved” nothing else. Very rarely the “majority” determines the choice of the historical path, as a rule, this is done by a relatively small part of the elite, able to convince, captivate, induce, push others, third parties, etc. Looking back, we have to admit that it was this minority that turned out to be too weak at the last turning point.

There is a simple and standard explanation for any tendencies in the reproduction of old patterns of behavior at the level of power institutions, public opinion or a person: we, de, turned out to be “not ready” for anything else. Obviously, in terms of readiness to switch to European standards of life and politics, Russia is inferior to the western neighbors of the former Soviet Union. Behind the eternal dispute about whether the properties of the Russian soul should be thanked for this or national history should be blamed, lies the practical dilemma of choosing a path. To the turn of the 90s, neither the top, nor the bottom, nor the elites of society were equally prepared - and could not be - prepared.

Now is the time to think over and re-evaluate the experience of the past years - both at the level of government institutions and at the level of a person, elite and "mass". This is important, in particular, in order to know what problems and collisions may lie ahead. It is customary to say that generals in all countries are preparing for the "last war"; this can be attributed to politicians as well. But such a balance of political forces and means, which arose in 1985-1990. or in 1991-1993, will never happen again. The forces, the means, and the choice of the path will be different.

(The article for Novaya is based on a lecture at the Polit.Ru club, April 2004)