The Soviet type of culture is a historically established type of culture of the Soviet period (1917-1991), quite complex, full of conflicting trends and phenomena. The culture of the Soviet era is multifaceted and multifaceted, it does not come down to the glorification of the "ideal present" and "bright future", to the praise of the leaders. It singles out the official, “permitted” culture and the “forbidden” culture that opposes it, the illegal culture, the culture of the Russian diaspora, and the existing “underground” culture of the “underground”.
Significant changes in the sphere of culture appeared immediately after the events of October 1917. The nature and direction of these changes were determined by the orientation towards the creation of a new, socialist culture, which was to become an important element in building a socialist society. The purpose and functions of culture were likened to the leader of the revolution Vladimir Ilyich Lenin(1870-1924) scaffolding during the construction of the "building" of socialism. This determines the practical significance and utilitarianism in the understanding of culture in the Soviet period.
For the first time in the post-revolutionary years, one of the most important tasks in the field of culture became overcoming the cultural backwardness of the population(literacy program), the development of new artistic trends. The most radical representatives of the new art called for the destruction of bourgeois culture, the rejection of all "junk". Fame received proletarian movement(proletarian culture) - a literary and artistic organization, the main goal of which was the creation of proletarian culture, in contrast to all previous artistic culture.
The variety of forms of socio-economic development in the 1920s. was accompanied by creative pluralism, the emergence of various associations - scientific, artistic, 308
cultural and educational. During these years, the "reflection" of the Silver Age falls.
In the late 1920s - early 1930s. increased control by the state authorities over the development of the spiritual culture of society. This leads to the curtailment of creative pluralism, the abolition of artistic groups, the creation of unified creative unions (the Union of Soviet Writers, the Union of Soviet Composers, etc.), with the emergence of which the relative freedom of artistic creativity was eliminated. The main creative method was socialist realism, the main principles of which were party spirit, socialist ideology, which in practice led to the subordination of literature and art to ideology and politics. The regulation of artistic creativity restrained, but did not stop the development of literature, painting, music, theater, and cinema. At the same time, the art of this period is characterized by idealization, embellishment of reality in accordance with ideological guidelines, it acted as a means of manipulating public consciousness, an instrument of class education. The use of technical means (radio, cinema) contributed to the dissemination of cultural achievements, making them accessible to the general population.
During the Great Patriotic War, culture became a means of integration, contributing to the rallying of society into a single whole based on a powerful upsurge of patriotic feelings. In the conditions of a common struggle against an external enemy, the contradictions of internal development recede into the background. Art became an expression of the will to win, the creation of outstanding works of artistic culture was facilitated by some weakening of administrative and ideological control in the field of literature and art.
But for the first time in the post-war years, there is again an increase in the intervention of the party-state apparatus in the cultural life of society. Late 1940s marked by a number of ideological campaigns directed against those representatives of the creative and scientific intelligentsia, whose work was recognized as not reflecting socialist reality. In the propaganda of bourgeois ideology, admiration for everything Western, apoliticality, formalism were accused Mikhail Zoshchenko (1895-1958), Anna Akhmatova(1889-1966), Sergei Eisenstein (1898-1948), Sergei Prokofiev(1891 -1953), Dmitry Shostakovich(1906-1975) and many others.
The trends in the liberalization of social and political life that emerged in the second half of the 1950s and early 1960s gave a powerful impetus to the development of artistic culture. The thaw of the Khrushchev era was the beginning of a spiritual renewal, a time for comprehending the events of previous years. Art includes the theme of repression, the beginning of which was laid by the story Alexandra Solzhenitsyn(1918-2008) "One day of Ivan Denisovich". Many figures of science and culture are being rehabilitated, and works by domestic and foreign authors, previously banned and forgotten for many years, are being printed and performed. International cultural ties are being activated - international competitions and festivals are held in Moscow. New theaters are being opened (Sovremennik), art exhibitions, new magazines are being published (New World).
Changes in socio-political processes in the second half of the 1980s. and in the 1990s. (post-Soviet period) opened the way for spiritual pluralism, the revival of the achievements of artistic culture, previously unknown. The culture of the Silver Age was rediscovered, the culture of the Russian abroad, which, developing in emigration, became an integral part of Russian culture and made a great contribution to the development of world culture; there is an acquaintance of the general public with works of foreign art. Works, facts, documents, testimonies that open up new perspectives of national history and culture become available.
However, in the new conditions, the contradictions of the modern cultural process also appeared: the commercialization of art, when preference is given to spectacular, entertaining arts that bring quick profits, there is a dominance of far from the best examples of Western mass culture. Only awareness and overcoming of this problem on a national scale will contribute to the preservation of the cultural identity of Russia, will become a guarantee of its existence as a civilized world power.
When analyzing the culture of Russia in the Soviet period, it is difficult to maintain an objective, impartial position. Her story is still very close. The life of the older generation of modern Russia is inextricably linked with Soviet culture. Some modern scientists, brought up in the Soviet country and keeping a good memory of its achievements, act as apologists for Soviet culture and evaluate it as the pinnacle of "world civilization". On the other hand, liberal-minded scholars are inclined to the other extreme: very gloomy value judgments about the culture of the Soviet period, described in terms of "totalitarianism" and repressiveness in relation to the individual. The truth, apparently, lies in the middle of these two extreme opinions, so we will try to recreate an objective picture of Soviet culture, in which we will find both major flaws and the highest cultural ups and downs and achievements.
The history of the Soviet state is usually divided into stages corresponding to the changes in the country's top leadership and related changes in the internal political course of the government. Since culture is a conservative phenomenon and much less changeable than the political sphere, the history of Soviet culture can be broken down into larger stages that clearly demarcate the main points of its development:
1. Early Soviet culture or the culture of Soviet Russia and the first years of the Soviet Union (from the October Revolution of 1917 to the first half of the 1920s);
2. The "imperial" period of the culture of the Soviet Union (second half of the 1920s - 1985) - full-scale construction of a new type of social and cultural model ("Soviet system"), an alternative to the bourgeois model of the capitalist West and claiming universality and universal coverage. During this period, the USSR turned into a superpower that entered into a global rivalry with the countries of the capitalist camp. The political, ideological and cultural influence of Soviet Russia spread across the globe, from Cuba in the west to Southeast Asia in the east. In political terms, this historical period consists of several epochs, each of which contributed to the formation of the unique image of Soviet culture: the period of Stalinist totalitarianism (1930s - mid-1950s), the period of Khrushchev's "thaw" (mid-1950s to mid-60s), the Brezhnev era of "stagnation", which ended with a brief stay of the closest associates L.I. Brezhneva Yu.A. Andropov and K.U. Chernenko as General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU (1960s - 1985).
3. 1985-1991 - an attempt at political modernization, reforming the cultural foundations of the social system ("Perestroika" by MS Gorbachev), culminating in the collapse of the USSR.
The historical and cultural era that followed the collapse of the entire socialist system is usually called the post-Soviet period in Russian culture. From long years of isolation and construction of a fundamentally new social system, Russia has moved on to actively joining the liberal-capitalist path of development, again abruptly changing its course.
In order to understand the uniqueness of the Soviet type of culture, it is necessary to consider its main characteristic features and the value core on which it was based. At the same time, it is important to understand that the state ideology and the propaganda of socialist values by the theorists of the Communist Party and the media are only the official layer of culture. In the real cultural life of the Russian people, the socialist worldview and party attitudes were intertwined with traditional values, corrected by the natural needs of everyday life and the national mentality.
Soviet culture as a unique cultural type
As a fundamental characteristic of Soviet culture, one can note its ideocratic character, which means the dominant role of political ideology in almost all spheres of social and cultural life.
Since the October Revolution of 1917, the foundations of not only a new statehood (one-party communist regime), but also a fundamentally different type of culture, have been purposefully laid in Russia. The ideology of Marxism-Leninism formed the basis of a new system of values, guidelines and norms that permeate all areas of cultural life. In the field of worldview, this ideology cultivated materialism And militant atheism . Marxist-Leninist materialism proceeded from the ideological postulate of the primacy of economic relations in the structure of social life. The economy was seen as the "basis" of society, and politics, law and the cultural sphere (morality, art, philosophy, religion) as a "superstructure" over this foundation. The economy was becoming planned , i.e., agricultural and industrial development throughout the country was planned for every five years (five-years) in accordance with the strategic state program. The ultimate goal was to build communism - the highest socio-economic formation and a society of a "bright future", classless (that is, absolutely equal), in which everyone will give according to their abilities, and receive according to their needs.
Since the 1920s class approach tried to implement not only in the field of economics and politics, but also spiritual culture. Creating a workers' and peasants' state, from the very first days of its foundation, the Soviet government proclaimed a course towards building a proletarian culture oriented towards the masses. The proletarian culture, the creator of which was to be the working people themselves, was ultimately called upon to replace the noble and bourgeois cultures. In the early years of Soviet power, the remaining elements of the latter cultures were treated quite pragmatically, believing that they could be used until a culture was formed that met the needs of the working classes. To educate the masses and introduce them to creativity under the Leninist government, representatives of the old, “bourgeois” intelligentsia were actively involved, the leading role of which in the future was to be replaced by the newly trained “proletarian” intelligentsia.
The very first steps of the Soviet government in the field of cultural policy speak eloquently about the intentions to build a fundamentally different, not elitist, but generally accessible and people-oriented culture: energetic actions in the field of education reform, the nationalization of material cultural values and cultural institutions in order to "accessibility for the working people of all treasures of art created on the basis of the exploitation of their labor”, the gradual development of standards and their tightening in the field of artistic creativity.
It is worth talking about the education reform in more detail. In 1919, the Bolshevik government launched a campaign to eliminate illiteracy, during which a comprehensive system of public education was created. For more than 20 years (from 1917 to 1939), the level of the country's literate population increased from 21 to 90%. During the two pre-war five-year plans, 540,000 specialists with higher education were trained in the country. In terms of the number of students, the USSR surpassed England, Germany, Austria, Poland and Japan combined. Despite some costs at the beginning of the reform due to the pursuit of quantitative results (reduced programs, accelerated terms of study), in the course of its implementation, the Soviet state became a country of one hundred percent literacy, with an extensive system of free education. Higher educational institutions, which prepared not only high-quality, but also widely erudite specialists, acted as an important link in this system. This was the undoubted achievement of the Soviet period.
Ideocracy in arts manifested itself in the fact that the latter was perceived instrumentally as propaganda tool for socialist ideals. The ideologization of art occurred not only at the suggestion of the Bolsheviks. The task of forming a proletarian culture was taken up with enthusiasm by a part of the intelligentsia, who were optimistic about the revolution. It is no coincidence that the name of one of the first Soviet, most massive and ramified organizations of a cultural and educational nature is Proletkult. Arising on the eve of the October Revolution, it was aimed at stimulating the initiative of the working people in the field of artistic creativity. Proletkult created hundreds of creative studios all over the country (the most popular of them were theatrical studios), thousands of clubs, published works by proletarian poets and writers. In addition to Proletcult, in the 1920s, many other unions and artistic associations of the “left” creative intelligentsia with colorful abbreviations spontaneously formed: AHRR (Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia), whose members proclaimed themselves the successors of the realistic style of the “Wanderers”, OST (Society of Easel Painters), which consisted from graduates of the first Soviet art university (VKhUTEMAS - higher artistic and technical workshops), "Prokoll" ("Production team of composers"), focusing on the mass song repertoire, RAPM (Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians), which set itself the task of creating new proletarian music in a counterbalance to the classical, assessed as bourgeois. In the early period of Soviet culture, there were many other creative associations of politically engaged art, along with ideologically neutral art circles that have survived from the Silver Age, such as the World of Art. However, by the 1930s, this diversity in the artistic life of the country was replaced by solidity due to the strengthening of power and cultural unification. All autonomous art associations were liquidated, in their place came state-controlled "Unions" - writers, composers, artists, architects.
In the first years of Soviet power, due to the complexity of the internal situation in the country and the search for guidelines for cultural policy in art, there was a short period of relative freedom of creativity and extreme stylistic diversity. Special historical conditions contributed to the brief flourishing of all kinds of innovative trends that broke ties with the artistic traditions of the old academism. This is how the Russian avant-garde whose origins date back to the beginning of the First World War. As early as 1915, such associations as the Jack of Diamonds and the Supremus circle existed in Moscow, promoting a fundamentally new approach to fine art. Thanks to the democratic position of the head of the People's Commissariat of Education (Ministry of Education) A.V. Lunacharsky to the artistic intelligentsia, loyal to the Bolshevik government, the activities of avant-garde artists were not at all shy. Moreover, their leading representatives were involved in the state structures that were in charge of cultural policy. The famous author of the "Black Square" K. S. Malevich, the founder of the art of geometric abstraction, or Suprematism (from lat. supremus- highest, last) headed the museum section of the Narkompros, V. E. Tatlin, founder constructivism in architecture and the author of the ambitious project “Monument to the Third Communist International” headed the Moscow Collegium, V. Kandinsky, who later became world famous as one of the founders of the German association of abstract artists “The Blue Rider” - a literary and publishing section, O. Brik, literary critic, member literary and artistic association LEF (Left Front of the Arts), was deputy chairman of the department of fine arts.
Among the above styles, a special place belonged to constructivism, which until 1921 was officially proclaimed the main direction of revolutionary art, and actually dominated architecture and arts and crafts until the early 1930s, when there was a revival of classical traditions in the form of the so-called "Stalinist Empire style". ". The main idea of constructivism was the practically useful use of abstract art. Soviet constructivist architects built many original buildings of cultural centers, clubs, and apartment buildings. From the bowels of this trend came the production art of “artists-engineers” who abandoned the easel types of traditional art, focused on the creation of strictly functionally conditioned household items.
By the end of the 1920s, a brief period of creative freedom gave way to a transition to a totalitarian regime and the introduction of strict censorship. In the field of artistic creation, the only correct method has been established socialist realism (since 1929), the principles of which were formulated by M. Gorky. The method of socialist realism consisted in a truthful depiction of life in the light of socialist ideals, which essentially meant the implementation in art both in content and in form of party guidelines. Gradually introduced class approach led to the suppression of free creativity, increasingly narrowing the ideological boundaries of "permissible".
As a result of the harsh ideological pressure and the practice of persecuting talented individuals who made themselves known even in the conditions of tsarist Russia, but whose civic position was not convenient for the authorities, Russia lost hundreds of thousands of educated people who were expelled from the country or emigrated of their own free will. As you know, for one reason or another, many writers, artists, artists, musicians, whose names have rightfully become the property of world culture, ended up in emigration (K. Balmont, I. Bunin, Z. Gippius, D. Merezhkovsky, V. Nabokov, A Kuprin, M. Tsvetaeva, A. Tolstoy, S. Rakhmaninov, F. Chaliapin and others). The consequence of the policy of repression against the scientific and creative intelligentsia was split of Russian culture since the beginning of the Soviet period to two centers. The first center was Soviet Russia, and later the Soviet Union (since 1922). It should also be noted that a spiritual split also occurred within Soviet society, however, much later, after the 20th Congress of the CPSU and the debunking of Stalin's "personality cult", when a movement of dissidents of the "sixties" arose. However, this movement was very narrow, it embraced only a part of the intelligentsia community.
Revolution and culture. The revolution of 1917 divided the artistic intelligentsia of Russia into two parts. One of them, although not accepting everything in the Council of Deputies (as many then called the country of the Soviets), believed in the renewal of Russia and devoted her strength to serving the revolutionary cause; the other was negatively contemptuous of the Bolshevik government and supported its opponents in various forms.
In October 1917, V. V. Mayakovsky, in his original literary autobiography “I Myself,” described his position as follows: “To accept or not to accept? There was no such question for me (and for other Muscovites-futurists). My revolution. During the Civil War, the poet worked in the so-called "Windows of Satire ROSTA" (ROSTA - Russian Telegraph Agency), where satirical posters, cartoons, popular prints with short poetic texts were created. They ridiculed the enemies of the Soviet government - generals, landlords, capitalists, foreign interventionists, spoke about the tasks of economic construction. Future Soviet writers served in the Red Army: for example, D. A. Furmanov was the commissar of the division commanded by Chapaev; I. E. Babel was a fighter of the famous 1st Cavalry Army; A.P. Gaidar at the age of sixteen commanded a youth detachment in Khakassia.
Future emigrant writers participated in the white movement: R. B. Gul fought in the Volunteer Army, which made the famous “Ice Campaign” from the Don to the Kuban, G. I. Gazdanov, after graduating from the 7th grade of the gymnasium, volunteered for the Wrangel army. I. A. Bunin called his diaries of the period of the civil war “Cursed Days”. M. I. Tsvetaeva wrote a cycle of poems under the meaningful title "Swan Camp" - a lamentation filled with religious images for white Russia. The theme of the perniciousness of the civil war for human nature was permeated by the works of émigré writers M. A. Aldanov (“Suicide”), M. A. Osorgin (“Witness of History”), I. S. Shmelev (“The Sun of the Dead”).
Subsequently, Russian culture developed in two streams: in the Soviet country and in emigration. Writers and poets I. A. Bunin, awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1933, D. S. Merezhkovsky and Z. N. Gippius, the leading authors of the anti-Soviet program book “The Kingdom of the Antichrist”, worked in a foreign land. Some writers, such as V. V. Nabokov, entered literature already in exile. It was abroad that the artists V. Kandinsky, O. Zadkine, M. Chagall gained world fame.
If the works of émigré writers (M. Aldanov, I. Shmelev, and others) were permeated with the theme of the perniciousness of the revolution and civil war, the works of Soviet writers breathed revolutionary pathos. 
From artistic pluralism to socialist realism. In the first post-revolutionary decade, the development of culture in Russia was characterized by experimentation, the search for new artistic forms and means - a revolutionary artistic spirit. The culture of this decade, on the one hand, was rooted in the Silver Age, and on the other hand, it adopted from the revolution a tendency to renounce classical aesthetic canons, to thematic and plot novelty. Many writers saw it as their duty to serve the ideals of the revolution. This was manifested in the politicization of Mayakovsky’s poetic work, in the creation of the “Theatrical October” movement by Meyerhold, in the formation of the Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia (AHRR), etc.
The poets S. A. Yesenin, A. A. Akhmatova, O. E. Mandelstam, B. L. Pasternak, who began their poetic path at the beginning of the century, continued to create. A new word in literature was said by the generation that came to it already in Soviet times - M. A. Bulgakov, M. A. Sholokhov, V. P. Kataev, A. A. Fadeev, M. M. Zoshchenko.
If in the 20s literature and fine arts were exceptionally diverse, then in the 30s, under the conditions of ideological dictate, the so-called socialist realism was imposed on writers and artists. According to its canons, the reflection of reality in works of literature and art had to be subordinated to the tasks of socialist education. Gradually, instead of critical realism and various avant-garde trends in artistic culture, pseudo-realism was established, i.e. idealized image of Soviet reality and Soviet people.
Artistic culture was under the control of the Communist Party. In the early 30s. Numerous associations of art workers were liquidated. Instead, united unions of Soviet writers, artists, cinematographers, artists, and composers were created. Although formally they were independent public organizations, the creative intelligentsia had to be completely subordinate to the authorities. At the same time, the unions, having at their disposal funds and houses of creativity, created certain conditions for the work of the artistic intelligentsia. The state maintained theaters, financed the shooting of films, provided artists with studios, etc. The only thing required of artists was to faithfully serve the communist party. Writers, artists and musicians who deviated from the canons imposed by the authorities were expected to be “elaborated” and repressed (O. E. Mandelstam, V. E. Meyerhold, B. A. Pilnyak and many others died in the Stalinist dungeons).
A significant place in Soviet artistic culture was occupied by historical and revolutionary themes. The tragedy of the revolution and civil war was reflected in the books of M. A. Sholokhov (“Quiet Flows the Don”), A. N. Tolstoy (“Walking through the torments”), I. E. Babel (collection of stories “Konarmiya”), paintings by M. B. Grekova (“Tachanka”), A. A. Deineki (“Defense of Petrograd”). In the cinema, films devoted to the revolution and the civil war occupied an honorable place. The most famous among them were "Chapaev", a film trilogy about Maxim, "We are from Kronstadt." The glorified theme did not leave the capital and
from provincial theater scenes. A characteristic symbol of Soviet fine art was the sculpture by V. I. Mukhina “Worker and Collective Farm Woman”, which adorned the Soviet pavilion at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1937. Famous and little-known artists created pompous group portraits with Lenin and Stalin. At the same time, M. V. Nesterov, P. D. Korin, P. P. Konchalovsky and other talented artists achieved outstanding success in portrait and landscape painting.
Prominent positions in the world art of the 20-30s. occupied by the Soviet cinema. It featured such directors as SM. Eisenstein (“The Battleship Potemkin”, “Alexander Nevsky”, etc.), the founder of the Soviet musical-eccentric comedy G. V. Aleksandrov (“Merry Fellows”, “Volga-Volga”, etc.), the founder of Ukrainian cinema A. P. Dovzhenko (Arsenal, Shchors, etc.). The stars of the Soviet sound cinema shone in the artistic sky: L. P. Orlova, V. V. Serova, N. K. Cherkasov, B. P. Chirkov and others.
The Great Patriotic War and the artistic intelligentsia. Not even a week had passed since the day of the Nazi attack on the USSR, when “Windows TASS” (TASS - Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union) appeared in the center of Moscow, continuing the traditions of the propaganda and political posters and cartoons “Windows ROSTA”. During the war, 130 artists and 80 poets took part in the work of Okon TASS, which published over 1 million posters and cartoons. In the first days of the war, the famous posters "The Motherland Calls!" (I. M. Toidze), “Our cause is just, victory will be ours” (V. A. Serov), “Warrior of the Red Army, save!” (V. B. Koretsky). In Leningrad, the association of artists "Fighting Pencil" launched the production of posters-leaflets in a small format.
During the Great Patriotic War, many writers turned to the genre of journalism. Newspapers published military essays, articles, and poems. The most famous publicist was I. G. Ehrenburg. Poem
A. T. Tvardovsky "Vasily Terkin", front-line poems by K. M. Simonov ("Wait for me") embodied the feelings of the people. A realistic reflection of the fate of people was reflected in the military prose of A. A. Bek (“Volokolamsk highway”), V. S. Grossman (“The people are immortal”),
V. A. Nekrasov (“In the trenches of Stalingrad”), K. M. Simonov (“Days and Nights”). Performances about front-line life appeared in the repertoire of theaters. It is significant that the plays by A. E. Korneichuk "The Front" and K. M. Simonov "Russian People" were published in newspapers along with reports from the Soviet Form Bureau on the situation on the fronts.
Front-line concerts and meetings of artists with the wounded in hospitals became the most important part of the artistic life of the war years. Russian folk songs performed by L. A. Ruslanova, pop songs performed by K. I. Shulzhenko and L. O. Utesov were very popular. The lyrical songs of K. Ya. Listov ("In the dugout"), N. V. Bogoslovsky ("Dark Night"), M. I. Blanter ("In the forest near the front"), which appeared during the war years, were widely used at the front and in the rear. , V. P. Solovyov-Sedogo ("Nightingales").
War chronicles were shown in all cinemas. Filming was carried out by operators in front-line conditions, with great danger to life. The first full-length documentary film was dedicated to the defeat of the Nazi troops near Moscow. Then the films "Leningrad on Fire", "Stalingrad", "People's Avengers" and a number of others were created. Some of these films were shown after the war at the Nuremberg trials as documentary evidence of Nazi crimes. 
Artistic culture of the second half of the XX century. After the Great Patriotic War, new names appeared in Soviet art, and from the turn of the 50s and 60s. new thematic directions began to form. In connection with the exposure of Stalin's personality cult, overcoming the frankly "varnishing" art, which was especially characteristic of the 30s and 40s, took place.
Since the mid 50s. Literature and art began to play the same educational role in Soviet society that they played in Russia in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The extreme ideological (and censorship) tightness of social and political thought contributed to the fact that the discussion of many issues of concern to society was transferred to the sphere of literature and literary criticism. The most significant new development was the critical reflection of the realities of Stalin's time. Publications in the early 60s became a sensation. works by A. I. Solzhenitsyn (“One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”, stories) and A. T. Tvardovsky (“Terkin in the Other World”). Together with Solzhenitsyn, the camp theme entered the literature, and Tvardovsky's poem (along with the poems of the young E. A. Yevtushenko) marked the beginning of an artistic attack on Stalin's personality cult. In the mid 60s. In the 18th century, M. A. Bulgakov’s novel The Master and Margarita, written before the war, was published for the first time, with its religious and mystical symbolism, which is not characteristic of Soviet literature. However, the artistic intelligentsia still experienced the ideological dictates of the party. So, B. Pasternak, who received the Nobel Prize for the novel Doctor Zhivago declared anti-Soviet, was forced to refuse it.
Poetry has always played an important role in the cultural life of Soviet society. In the 60s. poets of a new generation - B. A. Akhmadulina,
A. A. Voznesensky, E. A. Yevtushenko, R. I. Rozhdestvensky - with their citizenship and journalistic orientation, the lyrics became idols of the reading public. Poetic evenings in the Moscow Polytechnical Museum, sports palaces, and higher educational institutions were a huge success.
In the 60-70s. military prose of a “new model” appeared - books by V. P. Astafiev (“Starfall”), G. Ya. Baklanov (“The Dead Have No Shame”), Yu. V. Bondarev (“Hot Snow”), B. L. Vasilyeva (“The Dawns Here Are Quiet...”), K.D. Vorobyeva (“Killed near Moscow”), V.L. Kondratiev (“Sashka”). They reproduced the autobiographical experience of writers who went through the crucible of the Great Patriotic War, conveyed the merciless cruelty of the war they felt, and analyzed its moral lessons. At the same time, the direction of the so-called village prose was formed in Soviet literature. It was represented by the work of F. A. Abramov (the trilogy "Pryasliny"), V. I. Belov ("Carpenter's stories"), B. A. Mozhaev ("Men and women"), V. G. Rasputin ("Live and remember", "Farewell to Matera"), V. M. Shukshin (stories "Villagers"). The books of these writers reflected labor asceticism in the difficult war and post-war years, the processes of peasantization, the loss of traditional spiritual and moral values, the complex adaptation of yesterday's rural dweller to urban life.
In contrast to the literature of the 1930s and 1940s, the best works of prose of the second half of the century were distinguished by a complex psychological pattern, the desire of writers to penetrate into the innermost depths of the human soul. Such, for example, are the "Moscow" stories of Yu. V. Trifonov ("Exchange", "Another Life", "House on the Embankment").
Since the 60s. performances based on action-packed plays by Soviet playwrights (A. M. Volodin, A. I. Gelman, M. F. Shatrov) appeared on the theater stages, and the classical repertoire in the interpretation of innovative directors acquired an actual sound. Such were, for example, the productions of the new Sovremennik theaters (directed by O. N. Efremov, then G. B. Volchek), the Taganka Drama and Comedy Theater (Yu. P. Lyubimov).
The main trends in the development of post-Soviet culture. One of the features of the development of Russian culture at the turn of the XX-XXI centuries. is its de-ideologization and pluralism of creative search. In the elite fiction and fine arts of post-Soviet Russia, works of the avant-garde trend came to the fore. These include, for example, books by V. Pelevin, T. Tolstoy, L. Ulitskaya and other authors. Avant-gardism is the predominant trend in painting as well. In the modern domestic theater, the productions of director R. G. Viktyuk are imbued with the symbolism of the irrational principle in a person.
Since the period of "perestroika" began to overcome the isolation of Russian culture from the cultural life of foreign countries. Residents of the USSR, and later the Russian Federation, were able to read books, see films that were previously inaccessible to them for ideological reasons. Many writers who had been deprived of citizenship by the Soviet authorities returned to their homeland. A single space of Russian culture emerged, uniting writers, artists, musicians, directors and actors, regardless of their place of residence. So, for example, sculptors E. I. Neizvestny (a tomb monument to N. S. Khrushchev, a monument to the victims of Stalinist repressions in Vorkuta) and M. M. Shemyakin (a monument to Peter I in St. Petersburg) live in the USA. And the sculptures of V. A. Sidur, who lived in Moscow (“To those who died from violence”, etc.), were installed in the cities of Germany. Directors N. S. Mikhalkov and A. S. Konchalovsky make films both at home and abroad.
The radical breakdown of the political and economic system led not only to the liberation of culture from ideological fetters, but also made it necessary to adapt to the reduction, and sometimes even to the complete elimination of state funding. The commercialization of literature and art has led to the proliferation of works that do not have high artistic merit. On the other hand, even in the new conditions, the best representatives of culture turn to the analysis of the most acute social problems, looking for ways of spiritual improvement of man. Such works include, in particular, the works of film directors V. Yu. Abdrashitov (“Dancer’s Time”), N. S. Mikhalkov (“Burnt by the Sun”, “The Barber of Siberia”), V. P. Todorovsky (“Country of the Deaf”) , S. A. Solovieva ("Tender Age"). 
Musical art. Representatives of Russia made a major contribution to the world musical culture of the 20th century. The greatest composers, whose works have been repeatedly performed in concert halls and opera houses in many countries of the world, were S. S. Prokofiev (symphonic works, the opera War and Peace, the ballets Cinderella, Romeo and Juliet), D. D. Shostakovich (6th symphony, opera "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District"), A. G. Schnittke (3rd symphony, Requiem). The opera and ballet performances of the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow were world famous. On its stage, there were both works of the classical repertoire and the works of composers of the Soviet period - T. N. Khrennikov, R. K. Shchedrin, A. Ya. Eshpay.
A whole constellation of talented performing musicians and opera singers who gained worldwide fame worked in the country (pianists E. G. Gilels, S. T. Richter, violinist D. F. Oistrakh, singers S. Ya. Lemeshev, E. V. Obraztsova) . Some of them could not come to terms with the harsh ideological pressure and were forced to leave their homeland (singer G. P. Vishnevskaya, cellist M. L. Rostropovich).
The musicians who played jazz music also experienced constant pressure - they were criticized as followers of the "bourgeois" culture. Nevertheless, jazz orchestras led by the singer L. O. Utyosov, the conductor O. L. Lundstrem, and the brilliant improviser-trumpeter E. I. Rozner won immense popularity in the Soviet Union.
The most widespread musical genre was the pop song. The works of the most talented authors, who managed to overcome momentary opportunism in their work, eventually became an integral part of the culture of the people. These include, in particular, “Katyusha” by M. I. Blanter, “The Volga Flows” by M. G. Fradkin, “Hope” by A. N. Pakhmutova and many other songs.
In the 60s. In the cultural life of Soviet society, the author's song entered, in which professional and amateur beginnings closed. The work of bards, who performed, as a rule, in an informal setting, was not controlled by cultural institutions. In the songs performed with the guitar by B. Sh. Okudzhava, A. A. Galich, Yu. The creative work of V. S. Vysotsky, who combined the talents of a poet, actor and singer, was filled with powerful civic pathos and a wide variety of genres.
It received even deeper social content in the 70-80s. Soviet rock music. Its representatives - A. V. Makarevich (group "Time Machine"), K. N. Nikolsky, A. D. Romanov ("Resurrection"), B. B. Grebenshchikov ("Aquarium") - managed to move from imitating Western musicians to independent works, which, along with the songs of bards, were the folklore of the urban era. 
Architecture. In the 20-30s. the minds of architects were occupied with the idea of the socialist transformation of cities. So, the first plan of this kind - "New Moscow" - was developed in the early 1920s. A. V. Shchusev and V. V. Zholtovsky. Projects were created for new types of housing - communal houses with socialized consumer services, public buildings - workers' clubs and palaces of culture. The dominant architectural style was constructivism, which provided for the functional expediency of planning, a combination of various, clearly geometrically defined shapes and details, external simplicity, and the absence of decorations. The creative searches of the Soviet architect K. S. Melnikov (club named after I. V. Rusakov, his own house in Moscow) gained worldwide fame.
In the mid 30s. The General Plan for the Reconstruction of Moscow was adopted (redevelopment of the central part of the city, laying of highways, construction of the subway), similar plans were developed for other large cities. At the same time, the freedom of creativity of architects was limited by the instructions of the “leader of the peoples”. The construction of pompous structures began, reflecting, in his opinion, the idea of the power of the USSR. The appearance of the buildings has changed - constructivism was gradually replaced by "Stalinist" neoclassicism. Elements of classicism architecture are clearly seen, for example, in the appearance of the Central Theater of the Red Army, Moscow metro stations.
Grandiose construction unfolded in the postwar years. New residential areas arose in old cities. The image of Moscow has been updated due to the "skyscrapers" built in the area of the Garden Ring, as well as the new building of the University on the Lenin (Sparrow) Hills. Since the mid 50s. The main direction of residential construction has become mass panel housing construction. Urban new buildings, having got rid of "architectural excesses", acquired a dull monotonous look. In the 60-70s. new administrative buildings appeared in the republican and regional centers, among which the regional committees of the CPSU stood out with their grandiosity. On the territory of the Moscow Kremlin, the Palace of Congresses was built, the architectural motifs of which sound dissonant against the backdrop of historical development.
Great opportunities for the creative work of architects opened up in the last decade of the 20th century. Private capital, along with the state, began to act as a customer during construction. Developing projects for buildings of hotels, banks, shopping malls, sports facilities, Russian architects creatively interpret the legacy of classicism, modernity, and constructivism. The construction of mansions and cottages has again come into practice, many of which are built according to individual projects.
Two opposite tendencies were observed in Soviet culture: politicized art, varnishing reality, and art, formally socialist, but, in essence, critically reflecting reality (due to the conscious position of the artist or talent, overcoming censorship obstacles). It was the latter direction (along with the best works created in exile) that gave samples that were included in the golden fund of world culture.
O.V. Volobuev "Russia and the world".
A significant part of the population of Russia, having lost faith in the tsar and trust in the church, made Bolshevism their religion and made a revolution. However, there is a serious difference between Christian eschatology and Bolshevik utopia, well shown by the German philosopher G. Rohrmaser: “The fundamental difference between utopia, including socialist, and Christian eschatology is that the latter is historically, politically realized as the present, and not as the future. ! Christian eschatology contains no other meaning than the idea of how to make a person capable of perceiving the present, while utopian thinking depicts the future as the result of the denial of the present. Utopia is realized in the process of rescuing a person from the present, when a person loses his present. Christian eschatology, on the contrary, leads a person out of the insane faith in the future that has taken possession of him, preoccupied with the fact that a person always only has to or wants to live, but never lives. This eschatology orients him to the present.” Thus, a future-oriented utopia gives the sanction for the destruction of the present. This is what revolutions are terrible for.
The price of the revolution for Russia and Russian culture is high. Many creators of culture were forced to leave Russia. Russian emigration of the XX century. gave a lot to world culture and science. One can cite many names of people who worked in physics, chemistry, philosophy, literature, biology, painting, sculpture, who created entire trends, schools and showed the world great examples of national national genius.
The contribution of Russian thinkers abroad to the world philosophical process, translations and publications of their works in the main languages of the world contributed to the recognition of Russian philosophy as highly developed and original. They have priority in posing a number of problems of cultural studies, the history of philosophy, the philosophy of history. These include an understanding of the role of Orthodoxy in the development of the Russian people, an analysis of the national specifics of Russian culture, reflections on the main features of the Russian nation in the 20th century, on the “Russian idea”, etc.
Cultural life in Soviet Russia acquired a new dimension. Although until the early 1930s there was a relative ideological pluralism, there were various literary and artistic unions and groupings, leading was the installation of a total break with the past, the suppression of the individual and the exaltation of the masses, the collective. In artistic creativity, there were even calls to "burn Raphael in the name of our tomorrow", to destroy museums, "to trample on the flowers of art."
Social utopianism flourished, there was a powerful impulse towards new forms of life in all its spheres, various technical, literary, artistic, architectural projects were put forward, up to extravagant ones. For example, there was talk about the communist transformation of the whole way of life. It was planned to build such residential buildings in which there would be only small secluded bedrooms, and dining rooms, kitchens, and children's rooms would become common to everyone.
The denial of the immortality of the soul led to the idea of the immortality of the body. The placement of Lenin's body in the mausoleum was also associated with the hope of someday resurrecting him. In the subconscious of the Russian people, there has always been a glimmer of hope for the possibility of the immortality of the body. N. F. Fedorov considered the main problem of "the resurrection of the fathers." Communism, which swung at the creation of the kingdom of God on Earth, received approval from the people also because it supported the belief in bodily immortality. The death of a child in A. Platonov's Chevengur is the main proof that communism does not yet exist. The generation of people who grew up in the conditions of Soviet mythology was shocked by the physical death of Stalin, is this not the reason for such a grandiose “great farewell”, and did not faith in communism collapse on a subconscious level after this death?
Bolshevism brought to its logical conclusion formed in the European thought of the XVIII-XIX centuries. the idea of active transformation, alteration of nature. Already in the first years of Soviet power, L. D. Trotsky declared that, having done away with class enemies, the Bolsheviks would begin to remake nature. In Maxim Gorky's 3-volume collected works, published in the 1950s, one can find an article entitled "On the fight against nature." In other articles, Gorky argued that "in the Union of Soviets there is a struggle between the reasonably organized will of the working masses against the elemental forces of nature and against that "spontaneity" in man, which in essence is nothing more than the instinctive anarchism of the individual." Culture, according to Gorky, turns out to be the violence of the mind over the zoological instincts of people. Theoretical calculations were put into practice in the post-war "great Stalinist plan for the transformation of nature." After Stalin's death, the construction of a large number of large facilities was stopped, including the Main Turkmen Canal, the Volga-Ural Canal, the Volga-Caspian Waterway, and the Chum-Salekhard-Igarka polar railway. The last echo of those times was the infamous project of transferring part of the flow of northern rivers to the south.
In the 30s. a new stage has begun in the development of culture. Relative pluralism was over. All figures of literature and art were united in single unified unions. One artistic method was established - the method of socialist realism. Utopian impulses were put to an end. Some elements of the national cultural tradition were restored in their rights. There was a national model of totalitarianism. It turned out that some archaic state of society was restored. A person turned out to be totally involved in social structures, and the fact that a person is not singled out from the mass is one of the main features of the archaic social system.
At the same time, with external similarities, for example, with the position of a person in the Muscovite kingdom, there were serious differences. The industrialization of society gave it dynamics, the stability of an archaic society was impossible. The instability of a person's position in society, his inorganic involvement in structures made a person value his social status even more. The need for unity with other people is a natural human need of any culture. Even in the individualistic culture of the West, the phenomenon of so-called escapism is known - an escape from freedom, noted by E. Fromm. This need, which has become the only and dominant one, is a powerful psychological root of social utopianism, a social support for designing an ideal society. Any such project leads to totalitarianism, which in the broadest sense of the word is the domination of the universal over the individual, the impersonal over the personal, all over one.
The “post-Stalin” period of national history is characterized by a slow, gradual, with zigzags and digressions, the restoration of contacts and ties with world culture, the understanding of the role of the individual, universal values is being rethought. The Soviet period had a serious impact on the way of thinking of the people, their mentality, typical personality traits of a Russian person. This was noted by prominent writers, "experts in human souls" M. A. Sholokhov, A. I. Solzhenitsyn. According to the testimony of the son of M. A. Sholokhov, his father told him that pre-revolutionary people had a different attitude to life: “as to something infinitely strong, stable, incommensurable with human goals and capabilities ... From childhood, a person learned resilience, blame yourself for your failures, not life. A. I. Solzhenitsyn notes the loss by the people of such qualities as openness, straightforwardness, accommodatingness, long-suffering, endurance, “non-pursuit” of external success, readiness for self-condemnation and repentance.
In our time, the conviction is being strengthened that any people, any nation can exist and develop only if they retain their cultural identity, do not lose the originality of their culture. At the same time, they do not fence themselves off with a wall from other peoples and nations, but interact with them, exchanging cultural values. In difficult historical and natural conditions, Russia withstood, created its original original culture, fertilized by the influence of both the West and the East, and in turn enriched world culture with its influence. Modern domestic culture faces a difficult task - to develop its own strategic course for the future in a rapidly changing world. There is an important prerequisite for this - the achievement of universal literacy, a significant increase in the education of the people. The solution of this global task is difficult, it requires an awareness of the deep contradictions inherent in our culture throughout its historical development.
These contradictions constantly manifested themselves in various spheres of life, reflected in art, in literature, in the search for a high value-semantic content of life. There are many contradictions in our culture: between individualism and collectivism, high and ordinary, elite and popular. Along with them, in Russian culture there were always features of a very deep gap between the natural-pagan principle and Orthodox religiosity, the cult of materialism and adherence to lofty spiritual ideals, total statehood and unbridled anarchy, etc.
The mysterious antinomy of Russian culture was described by N. A. Berdyaev in his work “The Russian Idea”. Russia, on the one hand, is the most stateless, the most anarchic country in the world, and on the other, the most state-owned, the most bureaucratic country in the world. Russia is a country of boundless freedom of spirit, the most non-bourgeois country in the world, and at the same time a country devoid of consciousness of individual rights, a country of merchants, money-grubbers, unprecedented bribery of officials. Infinite love for people, Christ's love, is combined among Russians with cruelty and slavish obedience.
The time of troubles that our national culture is now going through is not a new phenomenon, but our culture has always found certain answers to the challenges of the time, continuing to develop. It was in the most difficult periods of national history that the greatest ideas and works were born, new traditions and value orientations arose.
The features of the current "Time of Troubles" in Russia are that it coincides with the global world crisis, and the Russian crisis is part of the world crisis, which is most acutely felt in Russia. The whole world found itself at a crossroads at the turn of the 21st century; we are talking about a change in the very type of culture that has been formed within the framework of Western civilization over the past few centuries. Therefore, the thesis about the alleged “falling out of Russia” after the events of 1917 from the world civilization and the need to now return to this civilization seems disputable. World civilization is a collection of civilizations of different countries and peoples, which did not keep pace at all. Among these civilizations is the Russian one, which even in the Soviet period of history contributed to the treasury of world civilization, it is enough to mention the role of our people in the crushing of Nazism and fascism, successes in the exploration of outer space, in social transformations.
In the last decade, new layers of spiritual culture have opened up, hiding previously in unpublished artistic and philosophical works, unperformed musical works, forbidden paintings and films. It became possible to look at many things with different eyes.
In modern domestic culture, incompatible values and orientations are combined: collectivism, catholicity and individualism, egoism, deliberate politicization and demonstrative apathy, statehood and anarchy, etc. Today, such mutually exclusive phenomena as the newly acquired cultural values of the Russian diaspora , a newly rethought classical heritage, the values of the official Soviet culture. A general picture of cultural life is emerging, characteristic of postmodernism, which was widespread in the world by the end of the 20th century. This is a special type of worldview, aimed at rejecting all traditions, establishing any truths, focused on unbridled pluralism, recognizing any cultural manifestations as equivalent. Postmodernism is not able to reconcile the irreconcilable, since it does not put forward fruitful ideas for this, it only combines contrasts as the source material for further cultural and historical creativity.
The prerequisites for the current socio-cultural situation emerged several decades ago. The widespread introduction of the achievements of science and technology into the sphere of production and everyday life has significantly changed the forms of functioning of culture. The widespread use of household radio equipment has led to fundamental changes in the forms of production, distribution and consumption of spiritual values. "Cassette culture" has become uncensored, because the selection, reproduction and consumption is carried out through the free will of people. Now a special type of so-called "home" culture is being created, the constituent elements of which are, in addition to books, radio, television, video cassettes, and a personal computer. It is as if a “bank of world culture” is being formed in the “memory of an apartment”. Along with the positive features, there is also a tendency for the individual to become increasingly spiritually isolated. The system of socialization of society as a whole is changing radically, the sphere of interpersonal relations is significantly reduced.
By the end of the XX century. Russia again faced a choice of path. Culture has entered an intertime, fraught with different perspectives. The material base of culture is in a state of deep crisis. Collapsing libraries, lack of theater and concert halls, lack of appropriations aimed at supporting and disseminating the values of folk, classical culture contrast with the explosion of interest in cultural values that is typical for many countries. A difficult problem is the interaction of culture and the market. There is a commercialization of culture, the so-called "non-commercial" works of art go unnoticed, the possibility of mastering the classical heritage suffers. With the huge cultural potential accumulated by previous generations, the spiritual impoverishment of the people is taking place. This is one of the main causes of many troubles in the economy, environmental disasters. On the basis of lack of spirituality, crime and violence are growing, there is a decline in morality. The danger for the present and future of the country is the plight of science and education.
Russia's entry into the market led to many unexpected consequences for spiritual culture. Many of the representatives of the old culture were out of work, unable to adapt to new conditions. The assertion of freedom of speech deprived literature and other arts of that important dignity that they had before - to tell the truth, improving Aesopian language in order to circumvent censorship. Literature, which for a long time occupied a leading place in the system of national culture, suffered especially, and in which interest has now significantly decreased, besides, the speed of social changes was such that it was not easy to immediately realize them.
If the creation of cultural works is approached as a profitable business, as an ordinary ordinary commodity, then the striving for excellence, high spiritual ideals, but for the maximum benefit at the minimum cost, prevails. Culture is now compelled to focus not on spiritual man, but on economic man, indulging his basest passions and tastes and reducing him to the level of an animal. A kind of “market personality” is being formed, characterizing which one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century. E. Fromm wrote that "a person is no longer interested in either his own life or his own happiness, he is only concerned about not losing the ability to sell." The definition of ways for further cultural development became the subject of heated discussions in society, because the state ceased to dictate its requirements to culture, the centralized management system and a unified cultural policy disappeared. One of the points of view is that the state should not interfere in the affairs of culture, since this is fraught with the establishment of its new dictate over culture, and culture itself will find means for its survival. There is another opinion: providing freedom to culture, the right to cultural identity, the state takes on the development of strategic tasks of cultural construction and the responsibility for the protection of the cultural and historical national heritage, the necessary financial support for cultural values. The state must be aware that culture cannot be left to business; its support, including education and science, is of great importance for maintaining the moral and mental health of the nation.
The "spiritual crisis" causes severe mental discomfort for many people, as the mechanism of identification with superpersonal values is seriously damaged. Not a single culture exists without this mechanism, and in modern Russia all superpersonal values have become dubious. Despite the contradictory characteristics of the national culture, society cannot allow separation from its cultural heritage, as this inevitably means its suicide. A decaying culture is not well adapted to transformations, because the impulse for creative change comes from values that are cultural categories. Only an integrated and strong national culture can relatively easily adapt new goals to its values and master new patterns of behavior.
The process of cultural borrowing is not as simple as it might seem at first glance. Some borrowed forms easily fit into the context of the borrowing culture, others with great difficulty, and others are completely rejected. Borrowing should be done in ways that are compatible with the values of the borrowing culture. In culture, one cannot follow world standards. Each society forms a unique system of values. K. Levi-Strauss wrote about this: “... The originality of each of the cultures lies primarily in its own way of solving problems, the perspective placement of values that are common to all people. Only their significance is never the same in different cultures, and therefore modern etiology is increasingly striving to understand the origins of this mysterious choice.
Unfortunately, modern Russia is again going through radical changes, accompanied by tendencies towards the destruction or abandonment of many positive achievements of the past. All this is done for the sake of the speedy introduction of a market economy, which supposedly will put everything in its place. Meanwhile, with a serious study of the history of other countries, including the most "market" ones, it turns out that it was not the market that created new values and patterns of behavior in them, but the national culture of these countries mastered the market, created both moral justifications for "market behavior" and and restrictions on this behavior by cultural taboos.
An analysis of the state of modern domestic culture reveals the absence or weakness of stable cultural forms that reproduce the social system, reliable connectivity of cultural elements in time and space. In our opinion, a fairly accurate description of the current state of Russia is contained in the words of the philosopher V. E. Kemerov: “Russia exists as an indefinite set of social groups, regional formations, subcultures, united by a common space, but weakly connected by the time of social reproduction, productive activity, ideas about perspectives, etc. The modernity of all these formations remains a problem.” The collapse of the totalitarian regime quickly exposed the underdetermination, the lack of manifestation of many forms of our life, which was characteristic of Russian culture before and that some Russian thinkers defined as "the lack of an average area of culture."
N. O. Lossky pointed out that “the lack of attention to the middle area of culture, no matter what justifying circumstances we find, is still the negative side of Russian life.” Hence the extremely wide range of good and evil, on the one hand, colossal achievements, and on the other hand, stunning destruction and cataclysms.
Our culture can respond to the challenges of the modern world. But for this it is necessary to move on to such a form of its self-consciousness that would cease to reproduce the same mechanisms of irreconcilable struggle, tough confrontation, and the absence of a “middle”. It is necessary to get away from thinking oriented towards maximalism, a radical upheaval and reorganization of everything and everyone in the shortest possible time.
Avoiding radicalism can be achieved by creating a stable system of public self-government and the formation of a median culture that guarantees the participation of various social, ethnic and confessional communities. For the normal existence of society, a diverse self-organizing cultural environment is necessary. This environment includes socio-cultural objects associated with the creation and dissemination of cultural values, such as scientific, educational, artistic institutions, organizations, etc. However, the most important thing is the relationship of people, the conditions of their daily life, the spiritual and moral atmosphere. The process of forming a cultural environment is the basis of cultural renewal, without such an environment it is impossible to overcome the action of social and psychological mechanisms that divide society. Academician D.S. Likhachev believed that the preservation of the cultural environment is no less important task than the preservation of the surrounding nature. The cultural environment is just as necessary for spiritual, moral life, as nature is necessary for a person for his biological life.
Culture is a holistic and organic phenomenon, it is not artificially constructed or transformed, and such experiments only lead to its damage and destruction. With great difficulty in the minds of many people, including scientists, the idea of the specificity and diversity of the development of different cultures is affirmed, each of which is integrated into the global civilizational process in its own way, relying on its deep spiritual and moral archetypes, which cannot be distributed according to ranks into progressive and reactionary. The philosopher Yu. M. Borodai believes that “... where the earthly life of people developed more or less tolerably, it was built not on speculative conjectures and calculations, but on shrines, that is, on moral imperatives, “prejudices”, if you like, peculiar to each of the peoples, which makes them unique conciliar personalities, public individuals. The human world is multicolored and interesting precisely because the basis of the culture of each of the peoples is their cult shrines, which are not subject to any logical justification and are not adequately translated into the language of a different culture.
There are different cultures in the world, but they cannot be "better", "worse", "right", "wrong". The mistake is the desire to "correct", "improve", "civilize" them according to some model, to idealize some model. Genuine universal human values can arise only in the dialogue of all earthly societies and civilizations.
General remarks
Post-Soviet culture should be characterized by covering the period of 1985-1991, which went down in history as the period of "perestroika and glasnost". Speaking of post-Soviet culture, one cannot but take into account such historical events as the collapse of the Soviet Union and the socialist camp, the liberalization of the economy, the signs of freedom of speech that have appeared, and most importantly, the Communist Party has ceased to be a political monopoly.
In addition, the usual planned economy collapsed, and the people began to rapidly become impoverished. B. Yeltsin's coming to power had a significant impact on the cultural situation in the country: such celebrities as M.L. Rostropovich, G. Vishnevskaya (musicians), A. Solzhenitsyn and T. Voinovich (writers), E. Unknown (artist). At the same time, thousands of professionals left Russia, mostly in the technical field, which was associated with a huge reduction in funding for science.
Remark 1
The fact that our scientists were hosted by the most famous foreign scientific centers indicates that Soviet science in previous years was at the forefront.
The high adaptability of Russian culture was manifested in the fact that, for example, despite the reduction in funding for culture, in the dashing 90s, about 10 thousand private publishing houses appeared, which literally in the shortest possible time published almost all the books that were banned in the USSR and which could be " get" only in "samizdat". There were many so-called thick journals that published interesting analytical work.
Religious culture also returned. This was manifested not only in the number of believers, by the way, this can be attributed to fashion, but also, most importantly, in the restoration and restoration of churches, cathedrals and monasteries. Orthodox universities also began to appear. But the painting, architecture and literature of the 90s were not marked by bright talents.
Somehow, positively or negatively, it is impossible to characterize the culture of Russia in the 90s - too little time has passed. Now it is only possible to designate the cultural realities of that time.
So, after the collapse of the USSR, a single culture broke up into 15 national cultures, which "disowned" both the common Soviet culture and the cultural traditions of each other. All this led to socio-cultural tension, often expressed in military conflicts.
Remark 2
And yet, the threads binding culture cannot be torn so easily, but only they were refracted in a peculiar way.
First of all, culture was affected by the disappearance of a unified cultural policy, i.e. culture lost a guaranteed customer and got out of the dictates of the state. It was necessary to choose a new path of development, and this choice caused heated discussions.
On the one hand, there were opportunities for the development of spiritual culture after the fall of ideological barriers, and on the other hand, the economic crisis led to the commercialization of culture, which led to the loss of its national characteristics and the Americanization of many branches of culture.
We can say that the current stage of development of Russian culture is a transitional one. Russia in just one century is experiencing twice a cultural revolution, i.e. some cultural values that did not have time to form are rejected and new ones begin to emerge.
At the present stage, mutually exclusive tendencies are manifested in Russian culture:
- subordination of Russian culture to Western standards;
- progressive, based on the ideas of patriotism, collectivism, social justice, which have always been professed by the peoples of Russia.
The struggle between them determines the development of Russian culture in the third millennium.
Remark 3
Today's Russian culture is a very complex and ambiguous phenomenon. On the one hand, it determines the direction of the world socio-cultural process, on the other hand, it is influenced by the culture of the West in the broadest sense of the word.
