Conflict Facets of the Cultural Field of Russian Politics

The article reveals the relevant features of the Russian society's mass political culture dynamics. In this context, it is shown that, being an ordinary phenomenon, political culture transforms its value-oriented structures only under the influence of basic political transformations which determine the society's immediate environment. The restricted area of public administration, related to key policy decisions and dominated by interests affiliated with the government of the beneficiaries and corrupt practices, is considered to be the main factor shaping the social order and the organizational and political environment of the Russian population. Having become the most important means of resource allocation, network communications (supported by informational and symbolic means) have a systematic impact on the inhabitants of the country, trying to accustom people to informal methods of mastering public resources and to a cynical attitude to public requests. The proposed sociopolitical orders reinforce the basic value-orientation fractures of political culture. On the one hand, this contributes to the expansion of traditionalist, power-centric identification models that strengthen feelings of “patient inequality” and constantly slip to anthropic (activating fear, aggression, etc.) orientation mechanisms. These mechanisms evoke direct ethological subordination and biologically determined dependence on the centers of dominance. In the state bureaucracy, these mental changes give rise to many forms of irresponsible governmenance. On the other hand, the “disciplining” pressure of elite networks provokes an increase in the activity of young people and civil activists who are guided by the values of democracy and the priorities of human rights. As a result, the norms of network governance that corrupt people's consciousness and claim to be universal form new sources of cultural antithesis not only to the principles of democracy and humanism, but also to official institutionalism. As a result, social solidarity is declining in Russian society and the space of imposed consensus is expanding, which may lead to the growing tensions and patterns of an alienated civicism culture.

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