Astrakhan State University Discusses Specificity of Country’s Historical Development

Round table “Political Culture of Russia: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow” has been held by Associate Professor Leonid Podvoisky for the first-year MA students of the ASU Department of Political Science & International Relations.

At the event, which was held within the final lesson in subject “Political Culture: Russia — West — East”, the participants dwelled on the history of the issue, its current state and some possible trends in its development.

For example, it was noted that the peculiarities of the country’s historical development determined a special genotype of Russian political culture. Thus, it is characterized by a statist orientation, since in Russia the State has always been perceived as the backbone of civilization. This resulted in paternalism as an important feature of Russian political culture.

The participants also noted a number of features of the modern political culture of Russia, including personalized perception of power, predisposition to conformism, lack of due trust in representative authorities, intolerance against other people’s opinion, etc.

The MA students paid considerable attention to consideration of the political subculture of the youth. Having worked on this topic, the participants of the round table came to the conclusion that addressing many social issues, connected with improvement of the financial state of young people, is of great importance; in addition, it is known that unemployment and economic crises hit young people more painfully than other population groups in the country.