Social Sciences

RUSSIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES S OCIAL S CIENCE S VOLUME 49 NUMBER 1, 2018 CONTENTS In This Issue 1 FOCUS ON RUSSIA Archaic Paternalism as an Organic Part of the “Power-Property” System N. Pliskevich 3 Income Stratification in Russia in Comparison with Other Countries N. Tikhonova 18 Departures from the Civil Nation in Russia and in the West: Similarities and Differences E. Pain, S. Fedyunin 35 ESSAYS Historical-Scientific Reconstructions: Pluralism and Cumulative Continuity in the Development of Scientific Knowledge V. Stepin 58 The Misfortune of Tradition, or Why Tradition Needs to Be Protected from Traditionalists S. Horujy 69 Britain and the February 1917 Revolution in Russia (based on British archival records) E. Sergeev 87 Literature in the Soviet School as an Everyday Ideology E. Ponomarev 105 BOOK REVIEW Human Sciences as a Vocation and Profession I. Dementev 125 (Reviewed book: Human Sciences: The History of Disciplines. Moscow, 2015) ACADEMIC LIFE Academic Journals 146 In This Issue 1 In This Issue: N. Pliskevich: “As a country of ‘catch-up development,’ Russia has repeatedly attempted to quickly make up for lost ground in the military-political sphere, which our rulers over the centuries have seen as the most important one for strength- ening the state. Reforms ... are usually implemented by means of mobilization drives and are not accompanied by institutional or sociocultural changes... the technical and organizational innovations required by the power elites are introduced by methods customary for an outdated system.” N. Tikhonova: “Russia still identifies its poor the way the developing countries do, although the official living wage and the perception of poverty in Rus- sian society indicate that in this respect it is more likely in the category of ad- vanced countries.” E. Pain, S. Fedyunin: “Today, while Russia and the West seem to be developing in opposite directions and heading for a confrontation... they are going through similar processes in the intellectual sphere. In the early 21st century, a critical at- titude to the idea of nation prevails in both Western and Russian enlightened cir- cles... However, the causes of mistrust and actual renunciation of the nation as a form of self-organization differ in the two cases.” V. Stepin: “Accumulation of knowledge includes paradigmatic transforma- tions that tolerate several scenarios of the system’s development, the realization of each of them depending not only on intra-scientific facts (including intra- and inter-disciplinary interactions) but also on the nature of the sociocultural mi- lieu that prefers some possible scenarios and blocks off the rest... Even if one of the programs is accepted as promising and dominant and the ideas of alternative programs are assessed as unproductive, they might acquire a new lease on life at later stages of scientific evolution. This creates a new interpretation of continuity.” S. Horujy: “Since the beginning of the Third Millennium, Russian politics, the Church sphere, public life and mass media have increasingly been dominat- ed by conservative trends and sentiments. The all-embracing conservative trend and atmosphere are asserting themselves aggressively... ‘Adherence to tradition,’ ‘reliance on tradition,’ ‘preserving and protecting tradition (or traditions)’—these and similar formulas are heard constantly and everywhere like an incantation, a cloying commonplace in Russian public discourse. On closer inspection, however, this commonplace is an empty place.” 2 SOCIAL SCIENCES E. Sergeev: “Official and personal sources... disprove the view that the UK was actively involved—through official channels, much less secret ones—in Rus- sia’s internal affairs in order to ‘prepare and accomplish’ the Revolution.” E. Ponomarev: “All Soviet methodologists... concur on one key point: a school child cannot be trusted with reading classics independently. The teacher must guide the student’s thought... The author’s biography plays a special role in the introductory talk... Struggle is the key concept in the school literature course... In studying the history of Russian literature, school students are introduced to the history of revolutionary ideas and themselves become part of the revolution which is still ongoing.” I. Dementev: “Man as the object of scientific research is by no means a new theme. However, at each new stage in the study of the evolution of human sciences, i. e., humanities and social disciplines, the scholar has to raise new questions and reinterpret the path covered by predecessors. The collective monograph Hu- man Sciences: A History of Disciplines (2015)... is a milestone in Russian history of science.” Archaic Paternalism as an Organic Part of the “Power-Property” System 3 Archaic Paternalism as an Organic Part of the “Power-Property” System Nataliya PLISKEVICH Abstract. This article attempts to explain the existence of archaic forms of paternalism in Russia along with its modern (though often distorted) forms characteristic of developed countries. It is shown that the archaic nature of paternalism in Russia results in large part from the archaism of the institutional structure that emerged in the country by the beginning of the 2000s and has only strengthened since then: a system of relations known as the “power-property” system. The author examines the role of individuals’ responsibility for their own welfare, as well as the responsibility of the pater, es- pecially in cases where individuals are deprived of the opportunity to solve their problems on their own. Such monopolization of these problems by the pater in the existing hierarchical system of access to their solution promotes the growth of aggressive adaptive individualism among the masses, which becomes extremely dangerous when the system is weakened. Keywords: paternalism, individualism, liberalism, freedom, responsibility, “power-property.” Paternalism vs. Liberalism Modern economic theories exploring the role of the state in the system of socioeconomic relations inherent in particular societies can hardly avoid deal- ing with the problem of paternalism (state paternalism in the first place, but also paternalism on a smaller scale confined to a certain territory, diaspora or other type of social group). In this context, most researchers agree that paternalism is essentially opposed to liberal interpretations of economic development paths because, on the one hand, it shifts the responsibility for the solution of people’s N. Pliskevich, senior researcher, Institute of Economics, Russian Academy of Sciences; dep- uty editor-in-chief of the journal Obshchestvenniye nauki i sovremennost (Social Sciences and Contemporary World). E-mail: [email protected]. This article was first published in Russian in the journal Obshchestvenniye nauki i sovremennost (ONS), No. 1, 2018. 4 SOCIAL SCIENCES everyday problems to the pater, and, on the other hand, it allows the people themselves to demand assistance from the pater in solving even those problems that they could actually solve on their own. In such a situation, the pater begins to dictate the terms of its assistance in different areas, and this makes it difficult to demand that people take a proactive and creative approach, which is essential for rapid economic growth. In general, the paternalistic approach is usually contrasted with liberal economic theories, because the latter place emphasis on the individual efforts of people, for whom the interference of a pater (unless they have a special relationship with the latter) is an obstacle to developing individual entrepreneurial ability. It appears, however, that such absolutization of the contrast between paternalism and liberalism is nevertheless erroneous. After all, any individual, including an active, inventive, and creative one, lives in a society with all its constraints and institutions, primarily the state. That is why individuals take advantage, in var- ying degrees, of the benefits associated with this modus vivendi and often think it rational to use these benefits precisely for the purpose of stimulating individual activity. Hence, the absolute negation of paternalistic tendencies may be equiva- lent to the negation of any pater, whether group or state, which is simply impos- sible when people live in a society. Actually, even the classics of liberalism were not inclined to such absolutization. For example, Milton Friedman emphasized in his famous book, Capitalism and Freedom, that liberals are not anarchists and do not reject government. True, the list of areas where, in his view, government intervention is justified is quite short, although it can include elements that might be adopted by the paternal- ists: “A government... which supplemented private charity and the private fami- ly in protecting the irresponsible, whether madman or child—such a government would clearly have important functions to perform. The consistent liberal is not an anarchist” [6, p. 36]. As for periods of economic reform, according to the the- ory of reform developed by Viktor Polterovich, in such periods “the role of the state increases. In particular, effective modernization requires a stronger state” [20, p. 425]. That is why Tatyana Chubarova is quite right in saying that the problem of paternalism in general and paternalistic tendencies in modern Russia in particular is not whether paternalism itself is justified, but whether the paternalistic practices used are sufficiently rational and appropriate [5]. Ruslan Grinberg and Alexander Rubinstein

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