Philosophy / 5. Philosophy of Culture

Ph.D., Associate Professor Kotlyarova V.V.

Institute of the service sector and enterprise (branch) Don State Technical University in Schachty Department of"Philosophy and History"

TRADITIONAL VALUES OF RUSSIA

The value problem during all historical eras was presented as one of the most actual in a process of man's comprehending of its inner and spiritual world. Throughout the millennial history traditional values were the basis of self-identification of Russian people and Russia. How the traditional values are saved in modern Russian culture and to what degree Russia of the XXI century can consider herself as an assignee of cultural traditions of the historical past? This article is devoted to the answer to this question.

Modern sociocultural processes indicate that the transformation of values that occurred in the Russian society does not mean the complete destruction of traditional values. Traditions and customs defined life of people the most part of the humankind history. The tradition is the characteristic of stability and sustainability in a culture. Thanks to existence of traditional values, people internalize cultural experience of generations. The system of traditional values promotes understanding and cooperating people of different cultures. It reflects the integrity and strength of the society as a society, instead of a simple cluster of separated groups of people.

But the culture can not exist, without of any updating, creativity and change is another important side of the development of our culture. It is difficult to be limited only by traditions, when you live in the modernity. Much in the values have to be rethought and even radically changed, or recreated, or borrowed. So formed traditional values are not as a dead burden, on the contrary, they are constantly renewing heritage of culture. Parallel existence of traditional and modern types of values is natural, because innovation and traditions – two interconnected aspects of cultural development which characterize existence in it both sustained and controversial moments.

Characterizing traditional values of the Russian culture, it is necessary to allocate existence of religious values. Today religiousness is perceived by many Russians as necessary part of spirituality, as the sociohistorical phenomenon which has an important world outlooking value, as an element of national spiritual culture, as a factor which plays an important role in formation of national consciousness and national identity.

The Orthodoxy has played a very big role in the history of Russia. Toleration of Orthodoxy is based on the idea of conciliarity. The conciliarity implies the moral commonality of community group subordinated to interests of the Church, religion and, directly into the valuable consciousness of many Russians is connected with a nationality. The nationality is a love to the people, spiritual and political unity. In the Russian culture the nationality is harmoniously combined with patriotism. For the Russian citizens patriotism has always been one of the indicators of their valuable and world outlook spirituality. The touching relation to the Homeland was long since typical to Russians, in the Russian history were committed many feats and heroic acts for love to the Fatherland, in order to preserve the independence and integrity of the state.

Unlike pragmatic patriotism of the west the Russian patriotism is traditionally more irrational and contemplative. Russian man used to love the Homeland not for material remuneration but because it is given him from God, and because he was born, grew up and he found people dear to the heart. There is a trend of consolidating property in modern culture– distinctly expressed request to the "new patriotism". Patriotism is treated by significant part of the population as feeling of national pride, as one of ways of national self-identification, as the value which is defining main living positions.

There is still a traditional triumvirate of values on the top– the value of family, friendship and love. In recent years the situation in hierarchy of values was not at all weaken, and was even firmly established. Such high position in the Russian culture of traditional values is explained that family, private life was and still is the main center of the sincere and physical forces for the majority of Russians. It often is that only saving island where it is possible to find protection against the ever-increasing social and psychological pressure.

On one of the central places in the Russian culture there is steadily the value of freedom. Considering the problem of freedom, it should be noted that in system of values in the Russian cultural archetype the concept of freedom is not able to take shape in the proper sense of the word. Freedom as key concept of the European mentality means not only possibility of a choice for itself, but also respect of the same right of others, freedom is freedom for everybody, protection of foreign freedom as your own. Attribute of freedom – need and ability of an individual, internal and responsible choice. In an archetype of culture of the Russian man the place of freedom is taken by the concept "will" as freedom only for itself and indifference to foreign freedom in the broadest sense of the word – from indifference to suppression.

Specifics of civilization development of Russia consists that as a dominant form of integration in it is the state which in connection with it gets special value in the Russian cultural archetype that largely predetermines the relation of the Russian person to the political power. On an extent of all thousand-year history in Russia there was a certain form of rigidly centralized authoritative power. The Russian culture lived an ideal of "the national tsar", who is capable to suffer for interests of the nation, to organize repulse to the external enemy and to protect the people from an arbitrariness of officials. For culture of the Russian person is typical the fetishization of the power, which is generating quasietatism, and not in western, in east - imperial sense. The quasietatism is based on that the government was thought of as the main core of all public life. Therefore it is natural that invariantly high political value, still is durability and stability of the Russian statehood, stability in society and the strong state as the guarantor of confidence in the future.

The situation of valuable crisis doesn't mean general crash of traditional values, values therefore are traditional because express fundamental norms which are peculiar to the Russian culture, and also rules of behavior, the relationships and an assessments – and it is, undoubtedly, the positive moment. The values which are formed by the traditional culture, give this or that coloring of all personal activity and that is extremely important that having passed through a prism of life experience, they would be transferred to the future generations. Inextricable link of times and generations is possible only thanks to a constant of cultural traditions which as the history of Russia showed, despite ideological pressure, are saved and cry to revival the original spirituality which was always existed in the Russian culture.

Thus, values in the development of culture, certainly, change; so what was the value yesterday, can cease to exist today, and in the future we can turn to the values of the past, along with emergence of new values. The absolute discontinuity of tradition is impossible because elements of tradition are always saved and they may indicate that we are talking about one the same cultural and historical types of culture – Russian.

Keywords: values, traditions, Russian culture, religious values, patriotism, a set of traditional values.