PHILOSOPHY, POLITICS and SOCIAL MODERNIZATION IN RUSSIAN EMPIRE, SOVIET UNION, and POST-SOVIET REGIMES. Motivation: why study Modernity at all? Purpose: what’s the aim of my research project? Definitions: what is Modernity and modernization? Methodology: how to study Modernity? Findings so far

1. PHILOSOPHY, POLITICS
and SOCIAL MODERNIZATION
IN RUSSIAN EMPIRE, SOVIET UNION,
and POST-SOVIET REGIMES
Mykhailo Minakov, Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, Ukraine
WWICS, Kennan Institute, Washington, DC
24 January 2013

2. Plan of Today’s Report
• Motivation: why study Modernity at all?
• Purpose: what’s the aim of my research project?
• Definitions: what is Modernity and modernization?
• Methodology: how to study Modernity?
• Findings so far

3. Motivation
• How thinking changes human environment
• And… how thinking fails to change human environment
in a happy way
• There are always unpredictable impacts of rational interventions on
culture and nature

4. Motivation
Change of values : from tradition to progress
0.65
+
0.60
1961-70
1971-80
0.55
afte r 1980 1951-60
1941-50
0.50
Secular-Rational Values
1931-40
afte r 1980
0.45 be fore 1921
0.40 afte r 1980
afte r 1980
1971-80
1961-70
after 1980
0.35 be fore 1921
1951-60
1941-50
0.30
afte r 1980 1931-40
0.25
be fore 1921 1921-30
0.20
be fore 1921
be fore 1921
0.15 Africa
_ 0.10
0.15 0.20 0.25 0.30 0.35 0.40 0.45 0.50 0.55 0.60 0.65 0.70
_ Self-Expression Values +

5. Motivation
Rational Governance : Supremacy of Imperial Order

6. Motivation
Rational Governance : League of Nations Order

7. Motivation
Rational Governance : U.N. Charter Order

8. Motivation
Unified Understanding of Political Freedom

9. Motivation
Rational Economics

10. Motivation
Rational Economics and Industrial Revolution

11. Motivation
Rational Economics and Global Warming

12. Research Framework
Territory: Western Eurasia (Imperial Russia/Soviet Union/Post-
Soviet Belarus, Russia and Ukraine)
Time: XIX – XX centuries
Main question: How Modern philosophical concepts influenced social
structures and political practices in territories that
entered Modernity as part of the Russian Empire?
Focus: Mutual impacts of philosophy and politics, as well as
government practices

13. Modernization
• Dissociation with traditional way of life
• Rationalization of a life-world
• Universalization of norms of action
• Socialization that formats abstract ego-identities
• Strict separation of the public and private spheres

14. Definitions
• Modernization – cultural, socioeconomic, technical and
political change leading to the situation of Modernity
• Modernization is a part of Human Development at large,
leading to ever broadening human choice
• Modernity
– society: rationalization, secularization, and bureaucratization
– human: individual autonomy, self-expression, and free choice

15. Definitions
• Modernity
– socioeconomic transformation
– masses with new identities
– special role of Reason in all spheres of human life

16. Methodology
• Phenomenological sociology (Schuetz, Berger and Luckmann)
– social stock of knowledge
– personal inquiry, habitualization, institutionalization
• Modernization and human development theory (Inglehart and Welzel)
– human development as a change of values and practices
– social progress in terms of increase of individual choices
• Dialectics of Modernity (Weber and Habermas)
– structural transformation of public sphere
– instrumental reason vs. life-world

17. Methodology
dialectics of Modernity
• Structural transformation of public sphere
– from traditional rule to public control over authority
– constitutional separation of private and public

18. Methodology
dialectics of Modernity
• structural transformation of public sphere

19. Methodology
dialectics of Modernity
Structural transformation of public sphere
• Free competition for power, “universal access” to rights
• Idea of the law-based state: state as a system of norms
• Legitimated by public opinion distinction between
– legislative and executive power,
– reason ordering (norm) and will acting (action)

20. Methodology
dialectics of Modernity
Modernity is a result of growing instrumental reason
(system) separating from life-world
– LIFE-WORLD is the realm of life, meaning and social
relationships
– system of instrumental rationality: use of rational
argumentation to order large-scale societies
– `disenchantment' or the increasing instrumental
rationality of contemporary society

21. Methodology
dialectics of Modernity
Normative Public – Private Dichotomy
System of Instrumental Reason
Public Sphere government
judiciary
parliament
privacy of individual
parties
family
civil society
religious organizations
business
Private Sphere
Life-World

22. Modernization
and Philosophy
• Modernity, in social, terms is being produced by autonomous
collective agents legitimately opposed to power
– request to limit the power
– request for rational argumentation
– request for legitimacy through rational conceptualization of
authorities (rights, citizenship, political freedom etc)
• Special role of philosophy as cultural institute responsible for
– preservation of critical position
– knowledge production promoting disenchantment of the world
– impact on science and education: production of Modernities’
human resources

23. Methodology
dialectics of Modernity
• Special role of philosophy and sciences:
– philosophy:
• production of rational concepts
• critical position toward tradition and reason
– social sciences:
• articulation of theories and institutional models
• impact on economic vision and political projects
• ideas for civil society
– hard sciences:
• production of technologies
• impact on economic vision and political projects
– academic and educational institutes: production of new human

24. but if philosophy and science fail

25. Normal and Deviant
Modernizations
Historical Modernization often viewed as
• normal: when rationalization takes place in economy, society,
political sphere and science
• deviant: when rationalization takes place in only one of these
spheres, sharpening contradictions with the other spheres
– Sonderweg of Nazi Germany
– Chinese modernization (I in 1960-s, II – in 1990-2000-s)
– Soviet modernization

26. Deviant Modernities :
pathologies of Modern society
• Pathologies of Modern society: loss of guiding norms or
values in society
– Colonization of the life-world
– `Iron cage of bureaucracy’
– Rule of intimacy in quasi-Modern societies (oligarchy,
cleptocracy, systemic corruption, façade democracy)

27. Methodology
dialectics of Modernity
Deviant Public – Private Dichotomy
System of Instrumental Reason
Public Sphere government
judiciary
parliament
privacy of individual
parties
family
civil society
religious organizations
business
Private Sphere
Life-World

28. Main Theses
• Western Eurasia in Deviant Modernity Cage
– Russian Empire : dependence on Western European
modernization models
– Soviet Union – dominance of public over private
– Post-Soviet regimes : inability to maintain the public – private
dichotomy
• Problematic Modernities in contemporary Ukraine, Russia and
Belarus are connected with:
– weak institutionalization of communities and practices
responsible for rationalization of culture
– colonization and intimacy as dominant tendencies in Western
Eurasian modernization paths

29. Transfer of Modernity
Dependence on Western European modernization models
• In the non-Western contexts, transfer of development models
/ modern institutions was one of the ways of modernization
• Case of the Imperial Russia:
– traditional regime: created its own or transferred models
from the Eurasian states in XV-XVII centuries
– beginning of modernization: transfer of imperial
institutions from the West in XVIII-XIX centuries
– USSR hunting for technologies

30. Dominance of public over private
• Pro-Modern totalitarianism (Arendt)
• Marxism as applied theory for social engineering of progress
• Colonization of life-world
– destruction of traditional ways of life (peasantry, language, calendar)
– Big Brother: destruction of family and privacy
• Intimacy structures
– formal laws vs. one-party rule
– nomenclature principle

31. Post-Soviet Systemic Corruption
Inability to maintain the public – private dichotomy
• Political systems based on use of public instruments for private gain
– Corruption as response to ineffective public institutes
– Oligarchy as mechanism of preserving public institutes ineffective
• Use of private instruments for public purposes
– Populism as a core content of politics
• De-modernization as a sum of all actors’ activities
– invention of traditions (tribalism, ethno-nationalism)
– irrational legitimation of power and property

32. Public Reason without Guardian
Weak institutionalization of communities and practices
responsible for rationalization of life-world
– Academy of sciences as governmental project
– University as part of administration
– Separation of Academy and University
– Philosophy under permanent control
Local production of technical modernization; social
modernization depends on Western transferred models

33. Path-Dependency :
Conclusions
• Problematic Modernities in contemporary Ukraine,
Russia and Belarus are connected with the specific path
of their Modernization and with the dysfunction of core
institutes promoting rationality in societies at large
• The point of long-term change – growth of autonomous
groups in the public sphere that promote separation of
public and private spheres, rational politics and
responsive governance

34. Thank you!