Byzov L. G. The formation and history of the New Russia through the prism of contemporary social contradictions. Social Sciences and Contemporary World, 2018, Issue 4, pp. 58-75.

Abstract

The article reconstructs the attitude of Russian citizens to different periods of a 30 years new Russia's history, since it arose on the ruins of Soviet Union society from the point of view of today's most important social controversies. The results of monitoring research of Institute of sociology, as well as data VTSIOM, Levada center and other social centers show that the contradictions that intensified in the reform period, are still alive today, and that they affect the attitude to the events of the past decades. Conservative majority, especially influential in Russia after 2014, negatively assesses the developments of the 1980s and 1990s, and, conversely, positive that what happened under the presidency of V. Putin. Liberal community that in the 1990s was a minority, though, and closest to power, in general evaluates the events of the 1990s positively. But also positively, albeit with skepticism – the events of the last 18 years. According to the the law of the pendulum, when its deviation is too sharp as it was during perestroika and reforms of the 1990s period, the violation of the democratic principles of development returned it back to authoritarianism and the growth of anti-liberal sentiment soared again now. Today the state of society is also far from its equilibrium, which means that the political pendulum may soon turn in the opposite direction. Herein a kind of political system is proposed that it will be able to maintain the balance between the fragments of the shattered societies.