Edited by Anna Pavlovskaya and Grigory Kanarsh
The site was developed with the support of the Russian Foundation for the Humanities (project №13-03-12003).

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National Mentalities and Social Development

The database section ‘National mentalities and social development’ is of particular importance in the context of contemporary processes of globalization and modernization. It contains the works of Russian leading experts on modernization problems — historians, political psychologists, sociologists, social philosophers.

The links between the political, the economic spheres of a society and the features of the national mentality are taken under examination (works on Russian national mentality by the sociologist A.L. Andreev (Institute of Sociology, Russian Academy of Sciences); works on European and Russian mentalities in the light of the conceptions by V.Zombart, Weber, Spengler written by the philosopher G.D. Podvoiskiy (Peoples' Friendship University of Russia); works on the value orientations of the Russians and their impact on economic development made by the social psychologist N.M. Lebedeva (Higher School of Economics, National Research University).

The nature of social and cultural transformation of modern Russian super nation in post-Soviet Russia is analysed in details. Significant changes in the mentality of the Russians are taken under discussion. They are related to the ‘uncivilized’ nature of the new Russian capitalism, the solvency of structures of civil society, the problem of the alienation of the people from the government, etc. (works by the sociologist L. G. Bizov (Institute of Sociology, Russian Academy of Sciences).

The connection of the success of Chinese modernization with their own national specificity is emphasized (the work of philosophers V.G. Burov and V. G. Fedotova (Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences). The features of the American and Russian national characters are analysed in their connection with modernization processes in these countries (Russia and the USA) in the XIX and XX centuries (work by the historian I.M. Suponitskaya (Institute of World History, Russian Academy of Sciences).

In general, the section sufficiently demonstrates the extremely high importance of national (including national-psychological) specificity in modern development processes; it shows the way certain national traits (for example, Chinese or American pragmatism, and, in contrast, weak expression of pragmatic orientations in Russia — in a special, characterological, not ordinary meaning of the concept) influence the success (or, on the contrary, the relative failure) of modernization processes. All works presented in this section of the database are published with the knowledge and consent of their authors.

Full texts in Russian