Authors

Anna Smolentseva¹;  ¹ University of Cambridge, UK

Discussion

How can we understand the changes in the Russian society since the Soviet period as changes in morality? The complexity of the moral domain makes it a difficult object of research in various disciplines, including sociology. Morality is studied through the concepts of moral beliefs, moral emotions, norms, values, practices, ‘orders of worth’, ‘thick concepts’ of dignity, recognition, and others. However, wider conceptualisations embracing various dimensions of morality are scarce (e.g., the levels of morality by Kon 2012, Abend 2014). This paper makes an original contribution in two ways.

First, the study revives and further develops the late Durkheim’s theorisation of morality which was left unfinished and under-recognized. The paper proposes the concept of moral order which connects key elements of what creates a morality of society in a Durkheimian perspective: the power of the social (moral ideals, moral authority, social attachment to the group) and the power of the individual, which all shape the moral obligation, the central element of morality. The paper further elaborates Durkheim’s ideas by the conceptualisation and operationalisation of moral obligation which has not received much sociological attention.

Second, employing the above conceptualisation, the paper contributes to our understanding of the moral transformations of Russian society. The study analyses discourses constructed in the public space by powerful authorities shaping the moral order, the state and popular media, over the period 1976-2021. Using thematic analysis, the research focuses on the gradual transformation of each element of the moral order, their continuities and discontinuities.

Late Soviet moral order which established moral obligations for each individual and the collective, in relation to society and the common, was internally undermined by perestroika and dismantled in the late 1980s. The moral order shaped in early 1990s has been reinforced throughout the entire post-Soviet period. It was completely different from the perestroika’s humanistic, universal human values perspective. Moral ideals of the market and the new Russian statehood were constructed as the rejection of Soviet collectivity, the common, and the social. The Soviet norm of ‘everyone’ working for society became a neoliberal subject working for oneself, navigating the consumer market and paying taxes. Soviet rights and obligations were replaced with human rights and freedoms. The idea of justice already weakened in the Soviet time became the justification of inequality. In a Durkheimian perspective, such a moral order lacking sociality necessarily leads to the ‘self-aggrandizement’ of the state and prioritisation of patriotic duties to the state.