Lapkin Vladimir

Universal Civilization: Genesis and Contradictions. Globalization as the Demonstration of the «Super Civilizes» Mega Trend

The article covers the attempts to understand the major changes taking place in modem society. The authors believe that understanding would be incomplete as the least if all the attention is concentrated only on the most obvious tendencies of the latest decades. The focus of V.Pantin and V.Lapkin’ study are more large-scale and long-term mega trends. According to their opinion these are, in particular, the processes of modernization, which started in Western Europe in the XVlI-th century and then extended to other regions. Western European civilization is researched form the point of view of its locality and universality. The crisis and contradictions of the «universal civilization» are reviewed.

DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-2001-22-4-44-64

Pages: 44-64

Presidential Elections of 2000 and Paradigms of Russian Development («Round Table» March 20, 2000)

Proclaiming formally in 1990s the renunciation to the soviet model of state and the socialist values, the beginning of democratization, the ruling elites did not formulate the meaning of this process. The actual regime had no responses to the most of that challenges. The country wasn't stable in the political aspect. The legitimacy of this regime is very uncertain. It is still difficult to define what legal tradition the present regime inherited and whether it proceeded from the Russian empire, or the Soviet Union or the state formed in 1991. Russia didn't react to the challenges of the modernization and of the multipolar world. The actual key tasks should be the purposes determination and the restoration of the non-totalitarian statehood. The reinforcement of the civil society could lead to the broadening of the supreme power resources.

DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-2000-15-1-5-27

Pages: 5-27

The Middle Class in Transformational Process

In spite of all the difficulties the formation process of the Russian middle class as the social community goes rather quickly. It is marked by the strong ability to survive, mobility and the ability of adaptation to the changing conditions. Actually the middle class has approached more than ever to its conversion into a mass social stratum which play the leading role in the economic and political development of the society.

DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-2000-15-1-98-109

Pages: 98-109

Universal Civilization: the Crisis of Growth and Its Symptoms

The article analyses theoretical aspects of the process of globalization in the context formed by the disintegration of the world socialist system and the collapse of the USSR. Political science reacted to the challenges of the post communist world by two different geostrategic concepts: of the "clash of the civilizations" and of the unipolar world. The conflict of these two concepts reveals a dual nature of the Western civilization, predetermined by a unique character of its evaluation when the modernization became a sort of a "mulinatation" of the civilization process, in other words – the process of transformation of a traditional civilization into some form of a universal civilization (the civilization of technology and industrial capitalism, of intensively renewing technologies and cultural unification). The progress and international expansion of the letter, according to the author, makes up the essential content of the process of the globalization.

DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-1999-13-3-94-98

Pages: 94-98