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Weak Social Base of Capitalism |
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In order to be
successful, any radical reform must take into account not just the
material conditions prevailing in a given country but also the
cultural, religious, and psychological makeup of its population.
Over centuries Russia has evolved as a Eurasian power with
distinctive historical, economic, and political characteristics, and
a way of life different from Western norms. Being open to influences
from both the East and the West, Russia has always followed its own
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However, the
radical westernizers of the early 1990s ignored some of the age-old
values and ideals that form the core of the mentality of the Russian
people. The attempt to create overnight a bourgeois society of a
Western type and establish full-scale capitalist relations in a
society that for over seventy years had officially repudiated them
was a utopian idea, and doomed to fail. There is little doubt that
the social and political system that will ultimately emerge from the
post-Communist transition will in many ways be different from
Western patterns.
To the average
Russian, the idea of social justice has been more important than
those of freedom and democracy. The interests of the collective and
the state traditionally have taken precedence over those of the
individual. The moral code of the Russia Orthodox Church condemns
profit hunting and wealth accumulation, preaching instead
self-sacrifice for the common good. The Communist doctrine, which
replaced Orthodoxy as Russia’s state ideology for much of the
twentieth century, equally discouraged capitalist habits of mind. It
is clear that Russia needs to find its own model of capitalism with
Russian characteristics.
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