Abstract

The article deals with the historical and cultural context of the Soviet phenomenon. With the unprecedented frequency of the use of the term “the Soviet”, the phenomenon designated by it remains a “white spot” for social science. The author proceeds from the assumption that the possibility of its theoretical study is due not so much to the choice of methodological tools, but to a change in the perspective in which we put this phenomenon in front of us as a subject of study. We do not talk about changes in point of view or approach, not about changes in worldview or methodological plan, but about entering the field of meta-methodology, where various factors are intricately combined – cultural, historical, institutional, political, ethical, etc. At the same time, the focus of the study is shifted from the cognizable object to the cognitive capabilities of the subject, transferred from “what?” to “how?”. This area or infrastructure of theoretical research is a set of theoretical and social apriori, implicitly directing the way of thinking, its course and the way of interpreting the results. In the course of the study of the historical and cultural context of the Soviet phenomenon, the following results are obtained: The Soviet is presented as a special type of culture that combines the dimensions of locality and worldliness and as the Soviet continue to grow it degenerates into a project of world civilization. The birth of the Soviet is considered as one of the possible outcomes of modernization, the conditions of which prevailed during the historical turning point from “tradition” to “modernity”, and the specific combination of heterogeneous cultural strata in the space of Russian City during the industrialization. The Soviet is the existence of potestarity, an attribute inherent in the community matrix. The pursuit of power as a super-value constitutes the entelechy of the Soviet. The development of the Soviet culminates in the emergence of the cultural code, which determines the reproduction of the Soviet regardless of economic, social and political conditions, and the mass dissemination of revolutionary dialectical discourse. The architect of the Soviet is Stalin. Nevertheless, in the world of the Soviet Stalin is not a historical person, not a way of ruling, but a basic myth that defined and defines the boundaries and ways of transformation of the Russian society, even in the XXI century. The novelty of the proposed concept of the Soviet is associated with the justification of the leading role of cultural factors of its constitution and development in comparison with economic, social and political ones.