Russian Choice:
Made, Postponed, Cancelled?
Ilyin M.V.,
Dr. Sci. (Polit. Sci.), Principal Researcher, INION RAN; Professor, HSE University, Moscow, Russia, mikhaililyin48@gmail.com
elibrary_id: 1332 | ORCID: 0000-0001-6278-374X | RESEARCHER_ID: K-1361-2015
DOI: 10.17976/jpps/2003.02.13
Ilyin M.V. Russian Choice: Made, Postponed, Cancelled? – Polis. Political Studies. 2003. No. 2. https://doi.org/10.17976/jpps/2003.02.13
In this article composed in the genre of polemical notes, the thesis substantiated is to the effect that antinomy as assimilated by the very existence, far from being Russia’s fatal misfortune, is, instead, a fundamental mode, characteristic of the Modern epoch, of mastering contradiction. The author argues that modern representative democracy, civil society, federalism are in each respective case nothing else but the result of compromise, and of heterovectorial alternatives united. According to his conclusion, it is exactly acceptance of the antinomies of modern existence that allows to avoid revolutions with the shocks they bring, and to substitute small preference-choices for them. Therefore, he maintains, there can be no other “total” choice but the one consisting in “choosing” to make choice continual and never final, to learn to accept the modern world in which democracy, federation, civil society and other “values” are combined with their alternatives and form antinomical unities.
See also:
Zamyatin D.N.,
Space and (In)security: ontological models of imagination. – Polis. Political Studies. 2013. No3
Koktysh K.E., Sergeev V.M.,
The birth of the deep state. – Polis. Political Studies. 2024. No1
Rogozhina K.A.,
Russian Choice: from What Is Probable to What Is Obvious?. – Polis. Political Studies. 2004. No1
Yanov A.L.,
Slavophiles and Foreign Politics of Russia in the 19th Century.. – Polis. Political Studies. 1998. No6
Ufimtzev V.V.,
But Has There Been Any Choice? 165. – Polis. Political Studies. 2003. No4