Radicalism and Terrorism Problems in a Scientific Discourse of Russian Social Sciences

Abstract

Abstract The article is devoted to the analysis of the range of questions connected with political radicalism and its extreme form - terrorism and also their reflection in a scientific projection. In Post-Soviet Russia, political terrorism is a new political problem connected with tendencies to separatism of certain regions and territories and is poorly investigated and therefore not understood as a social, psychological and cultural phenomenon. The article considers this new phenomenon in the context of modern theories of political violence. It deals with the carried out chronological comparison of official statistical data on the quantity of acts of terrorism and intensity of scientific researches of problems of radicalism and terrorism for this period. On the basis of the content analysis of research activity of scientists the article reveals the problematic distinctions in the publications of professional academic magazines. The author claims that Russian periodic scientific press hasn’t fully used the potential of timely, expeditious, preventive discussion of problems of terrorism. The share of publications considers the problems of tolerance consciousness formation, instead of counteraction to terrorism and localization of its preconditions. Discussion of the problems of radicalism has late effect. On the basis of the content analysis of dissertation researches (2000 - 2012) on radicalism and terrorism problems in the context of chronology of terrorism acts it is claimed that their maximum falls on the period of the minimum number of terrorism acts. Researchers fail to pay enough attention to the discussion of actual issues of terrorism in the regions of the Islamic right and culture (in the North Caucasus) within political science, law, sociology, philosophy. The psychology and pedagogics take the latest place in development of this perspective at dissertation level, but they take the leading place in publications of the scientific periodical press .