Head of the project: James White, Senior Researcher, Laboratory of Archeographic Studies, The Project is supported by the Russian Science Fund for the period 2018–2020.
The project aims to explore the concepts of Conflict and Consent as understood by the Russian and Soviet public and political thinkers of the New and Modern Time (18th - 20th centuries). Recognizing the complexity of these notions, to bring them in focus of the scientific investigation demands a bigger picture, thus expanding the study field to the global context of western European thought.
With the same view, the time scale of the project is covers a large period from the beginning of the westernization of Russian public thought at the turn of the 17th – 18th centuries until the collapse of the socialist system in 1991. The study of individual views and takes on the cases of conflict and consent on behalf of the Russian authors is a way to locate and summarize the major paradigms of thought in which sustainable systems for understanding conflict and agreement were produced and replicated.
From the times of “westernization” in the end of the 17th – beginning of the 18th centuries, the Russian thought was highly preoccupied with comprehending the peculiarities of the national culture in the New Time. The development of the concepts of conflict and consent during this period was also greatly influenced by Western ideas. Political crises of the turn of the 18th – 19th centuries (the French Revolution and the subsequent chain of European wars) led the Russian elites to develop a particular look on social conflicts, leaving no place for a revolutionary explosion. At the same time, due to the influence of Western intellectual tradition, the question of the balance between the Russian and European “constituents” of the national culture became a topical issue for Russian philosophy.
The liberal, the Slavophile, the conservative-religious, the populist groups of public thought have proposed their own visions on the problems of conflict and accord, which were, by and large, alternative interpretations of the Western ideas and concepts mentioned above.
The new approach to the concepts of conflict and consent developed in Russia in the 20th century with a shift of paradigm requires special attention: this implies analyzing the changing attitudes of the Bolshevist establishment towards conflict and accord in the course of the “construction of socialism” which brought along a new understanding of reform, revolution, class struggle, and non-conflict in society.
The project team sets the task of developing a critical, historically sensitive political and philosophical concept of conflict and consent which, on practical terms, would provide for conflict prevention, eradication of xenophobia and the development of a social stability policy in contemporary conditions. Discussing the problems of conflict and accord against a broad historical background of the Russian public thought of the New and Modern Times, has a great potential for reconsideration, allowing to realize this task.
Created / Updated: 7 June 2019 / 7 June 2019