№ 2 - 2003
Ilyin M.V.
Russian Choice: Made, Postponed, Cancelled?

In this article composed in the genre of polemical notes, the thesis substantiated is to the effect that antinomy as assimilated by the very existence, far from being Russia’s fatal misfortune, is, instead, a fundamental mode, characteristic of the Modern epoch, of mastering contradiction. The author argues that modern representative democracy, civil society, federalism are in each respective case nothing else but the result of compromise, and of heterovectorial alternatives united. According to his conclusion, it is exactly acceptance of the antinomies of modern existence that allows to avoid revolutions with the shocks they bring, and to substitute small preference-choices for them. Therefore, he maintains, there can be no other “total” choice but the one consisting in “choosing” to make choice continual and never final, to learn to accept the modern world in which democracy, federation, civil society and other “values” are combined with their alternatives and form antinomical unities.