О культуре в контексте российской истории

Abstract

From time to time, there is a continuing polemics about the nature and destiny of Russian culture. Is it possible to speak of Russian culture as a homogeneous, unified whole or, as Yuri Lotman stated, history of Russian culture sees itself as a chain of explosions? Really, Russian culture has often been referred to as a culture of explosions, that is to say, of discontinuity and abrupt rifts. The question arises, can Russian culture be characterised as culture of discontinuity, or has there always been a solid kernel which continues to drive it forward, giving a common ground to the social being of the people? In the opinion of the author, it is possible to explain this phenomenon only in the context of Russian history. Every turn of Russian history was accompanied by a great cultural upheaval, and caused fierce cultural and historical debates, often with appeals and real actions to deny or re-write the past of country. As examples we can recall the drastic modernization turn to the West by Peter the Great or the post-revolution desire to do away with classical Russian literature at the dawn of Bolshevist power or the post-Soviet attempts to cross out the Soviet period in history and culture after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The very uniqueness of Russian history was, according to Yuri Lotman, «the everacting factor, which then spontaneously and unconsciously to the culture, openly and even emphatically determines the way of its development». The same phenomena can be observed in Russia today, when our culture is facing the complexities of the modern world, which are due to the ambiguous effects of globalization, technological changes in everyday life (so called digitalization), which leads to a significant reformatting the social consciousness and the degradation of many religious and ethic values. It seems that Russian society (and culture as its integral component) was again at a crossroads, faced at the turn of XX – XXI centuries with the threat of change of the civilizational vector of development, so the search for optimal forms of social life remains a pressing issue on the agenda. The author offers some reflections on the fate of culture in the context of the dramatic upheavals of the Russian history.