№ 6 - 2005
Pastukhov V.B.
One Back Step, Two Steps Forward (Russian Society and State within an Intercultural Span)

The article seeks to substantiate the thesis that the crisis being experienced by post-Soviet Russia is manifestation of the general crisis of post-industrial society. On analyzing the country’s economic and political development in the Soviet epoch, the author comes to the conclusion that the Soviet system was serving the interests of post-industrial society, i.e. was implementing the same political functions that Western democracy. In his estimation, Russia is today in the same historical point as the West is, and if she has found herself the most unprotected post-industrial society and has been the first to get under the roller of the world crisis, it’s first of all because 15 years ago counter-revolution appearing under the guise of radical revolution, interrupted the natural logic of the evolution of Soviet society’s political system. Without this logic being restored, the author deems, the inertia of the fall is insuperable, and therefore it is only by a new revolution that Russia can be rescued from a catastrophe.