Russia and Siberia in the Eurasian socio-cultural space: on the results of the discussion and its possible prospects

Abstract

The author summarizes the results of the discussion that was held on the pages of the Siberian Socium journal in 2021 on the topic “Russia and Siberia in the Eurasian socio-cultural space”. This discussion was opened by our article on the spiritual and ecological civilizational perspective of development. The essence of the article was the theoretical justification of this model of the future, which is supplemented by the results of a special sociological study of Siberian students. The study has shown a high level of correspondence of the value potential of young people to the spiritual and ecological civilizational perspective. At the same time, it has revealed certain problems and contradictions in the socio-cultural potential of young people. The discussion has proved that its participants support the main ideas expressed in our article and suggest their further development in several directions. The author highlights the following among them: the need for a systematic understanding of global trends in world development as an important condition for understanding the inevitability of a spiritual and ecological civilizational perspective; fixing the complex nature of a civilizational phenomenon that is often “elusive”, but at the same time has an internal potential for self-preservation; awareness of the important role of the “green economy” in the global civilizational transformation, taking into account its socio-cultural and spiritual and moral foundations; the demand for creative activity of specific social actors within the framework of the civilizational turn under consideration; identification of the role of civilizational and global identities in future civilizational transformations and determination of the impact of the institution of the nation state on the formation of civilizational identity in different countries; highlighting two perspectives of a possible increase in attention to Siberia, which is promising for a civilizational breakthrough — when it becomes an object of active study and when subjects are formed here that can generate meanings of interest outside the region. The author critically evaluates some of the statements made during the discussion: he draws attention to the illegality of the identification of civilization, civilizational specifics and civilizational identity, reflects on the illegality of the “hard” conclusion that there is no alternative to the “green economy”. In conclusion, the author outlines possible prospects for the continuation of the discussion under consideration. He focuses on the activation of institutional mechanisms in the formation of the integration potential of the Eurasian socio-cultural space, on the need to increase the level of trust in the authorities on the part of the population, and on the allocation of the basic values characteristic of the peoples of this region that underlie its civilizational specification. The author concludes that at present Russia has a historical chance to implement the designated civilizational turn.