When Oaths Do Not Tie…

Julia Kachalova

     The results of study held in Kaluga which we have mentioned already and will refer to not once, have confirmed a well-known fact that Russian citizens in general have become more passive and concentrated on their own personal problems. This fact is taken by the many as a calming evidence of the stabilization of the society. But let’s try to make out the reason of this passiveness. First of all, one should heed that most of people are not capable of settling these "vital personal problems". The Kaluga study has shown that enterprise is not developing well in the city, business recession is taking place, people depend on their former jobs and cannot adjust to the changed conditions. And this situation acquires the character of tiresome stagnation. The population that is passive in the civil, constructive sense is subject to depression and irrational fear for its own security, and feels constant dissatisfaction which is spilled out to somebody near at hand – children, wife or husband, or one’s neighbors. By our emotional state we are close to the "war of each against all". What’s happening with us and can we resist this process that is destructive for the society in general and every person in particular?

When Cultural Tradition Is Not Transmitted Adequately

      It is necessary for every person to feel oneself a part of this or that culture, its comforts and values, because the man by his nature is a cultural creature. The one who doesn’t belong to the cultural communion feels the ground is sinking under his feet. If such a person can’t manage to join in with spiritual life of another culture he starts feeling desperately isolated, tries to disclaim cultural values and becomes hostile to the society. It is confirmed both by criminalistics and natural science. Culture means preserving and inheriting not only knowledge but also value systems and ethical norms fixed in the form of traditions. None would object to the point that in order to survive as a living system the society has to counterbalance the factors keeping the cultural tradition steady and the processes that change it. When this balance between permanence and renewal is disturbed it is injurious for the culture. The lack of "culture-consciousness" so evident among today’s young people is a symptom of disturbance in transmitting the cultural tradition.
      Let us not fall to mere assertions. Here are some results of young people interviews. In the course of the poll of the MSU (Moscow State University) students in 1992 the young people were asked to describe what they felt hearing the word "Russia". Only 22% of the respondents said they felt joy, pride or admiration, while 38% answered that they felt sadness or regret. The interviews of Moscow students of several schools in 1996 showed, along with substantial bend to "privacy", the tendency called destruction of civil identity or loss of the connection between person and society.
     One of the vivid illustrations to this conclusion is the young people’s relation to military service in the Russian Army. The recruits, as a rule, have a very vague idea of why and what for they must become soldiers. Only 10% respondents view the army service as their civil duty, and at the same time even these people are not sure what and whom the Army should defend and who is the enemy. Their ideas of possible enemies and allies of Russia are obscure and controversial. For example, the enemies usually include Chechnya, the NATO, the USA, China, Baltic states, and all Moslem countries. The allies – the same NATO and USA, and CIS countries. One third of respondents could not define potential enemies at all. For many soldiers of the term active duty the only reality is their private life, while social interests are no more that a propaganda cliche (74% of the soldiers polled have shown eagerness to "defend their family" if necessary and only 25% - "the independence and freedom of Russia"⁽¹⁾.
     A person who has not formed or has lost his sense of cultural communion is hard to help. He cannot identify oneself with anything or anybody, and thus he literally "turns into nothing" – this transformation can be clearly seen in the desperate blankness of many young faces.
      Enculturation begins with the childly imitation of some model; it is the base of behavior that is later directed by this model. This respected model is the primary source of social behavior and moral traditions. A parent, teacher, or educator can be whatever high professional he is, but he won’t be able to transmit the cultural tradition to a child if he is not a ethical model for his pupil. Regrettably the situation we are in today is characterized by the inability of the older generation to help their children with moral becoming due to its own disorientation. A person is not capable of retaining his mental well-being when he is knocked off by the radical change of the value system, and our people have suffered such changes several times in the course of one age. So one should not be surprised that we can’t tell black and white anymore.
      The opinion poll held in Kaluga has clearly shown that people do not feel they can rely on either the authorities, or civil institutions, or their close friends and relatives. But the most awful thing is that when a person can no more tell good and evil he can’t rely on oneself either. The only thing people still believe in is that "there is no truth on Earth, nor up there in Heaven". The consequences are only too familiar to us: from the state default and refusal to meet its interior engagements to consummate tax evasion of citizens and, if to speak of the "lower level", to unabashed failing of good friends and partners.

The Lingering Crisis as One of The Reasons of Weakening of The Moral Imperatives

      It is still worse that this disoriented state of hopelessness is acquiring a stagnant character. In the beginning of perestroika when the value system was changed from rather worn-out "power" to the attractive and little known "freedom" there was a feeling of some prospective. But the change was taking place within the old system and caused by this old system’s needs, and therefore the real, deep transformation did not happen. For the same reason none of the tasks set in the early 80-s were settled: the juridical state was not built, the mature civil society hasn’t formed, the mechanism of making decisions stayed the same, and the economy did not cure on the way from planning to free market but sank into a coma. The newly acquired liberal freedoms turned out to be just an abstraction for the general population of Russia. These freedoms have not given people anything instead of that feeling of security and meaningful existence they had previously had.
      In the last years the sense of prospective that was justifying the strategy of survival was lost. Reading the chronicles of the Great Patriotic War or listening to the stories of its witnesses it becomes absolutely clear that hardships and dangers suffered by that generation were much worse than the troubles we are experiencing now. At the same time it seems that interpersonal relations were more human than now. People survived while holding their own, and this was very much assisted by two subjective factors – enthusiasm and the feeling of prospective. Nowadays we are devoid of both. We are just surviving, trying to keep afloat after each new crisis which is to be followed by another one with the inevitability of a sea tide. But survival is a strategy of behavior used in an extreme situation when circumstances make a person act without thinking, not caring about ways or moral formalities. And the society which is trying to survive for a long period of time (we are doing it for 10 years already!) instead of building normal life conditions is inevitably degrading into the Jungle devoid of any Law (unlike the Jungle of Kipling where Mowgly grew up.) This fact has also been proved by the scientists who studied the behavior of human societies: "the moral gives in more readily not due to a single challenge, but in the course of long-term, exhaustive stress, whatever it is. Cares, need, hunger, fear, fatigue, hopelessness – they all have the same effect."⁽²⁾. Under such conditions moral unbalance comes suddenly and unexpectedly.

The Safety Valve Necessary For Social Aggression

      The same investigators came to a simple conclusion about the nature of inspiration possessing people in the course of so-called "just" or "liberating" wars: the inspiration is an "animal" reaction to the situation when cultural values are threatened. "Animal" in this context means instinctive for the human species, which needs a provoking situation for letting out its social aggression. Examples that confirm this conclusion are plentiful – one just has to switch on the TV and admire the enthusiasm of the international community taking part in the Balkan conflict. And the latter is near the edge of the world war due to passion of the contending parties. Mind that all sides, no doubt, are acting in the name of love and justice, in the name of human rights et cetera. One is amazed by ardor and eagerness of these devotees of human values to kill each other (along with those who just happened to be in the way)!
      If there is no such provoking situation at hand, if a man lives a passive and idle life, then aggression is accumulated inside him and then breaks out, but not at an enemy or its dummy but just at a next man. Such a state is a very kindly soil for non-purposeful, non-constructive indignation. Thus the idea of rejecting social activity, that nonsense expressed in the call: "Let’s all withdraw into our families and private life" is in fact very destructive. The only question is, do we have any effective alternative to it but the well-know war cry "to go fight to give the land back to peasants of Grenade "?

⁽¹⁾ The life of children and young people in Russia. Review. International Youth Fund, 1998.
⁽²⁾ C. Lorenz. "The reverse side of the mirror". Publishing house "Republic", 1998.