Summary: The destruction of the institution of the family is the destruction of the national culture. Theory of State Power: Methodology, Traditions and Current State Destruction of the Traditions of State Power

Religion is one of the traditional non-coercive bonds of statehood. Religious basic foundations are historically found in virtually every modern state. For some - like, for example, non-secular Israel - this connection has more obvious forms implemented in managerial practice. In others, as in the United States, it is not so obvious. But is it really possible to adequately understand the semantic foundations of American statehood without the legendary plots of the Protestant migration? For Russia, Orthodoxy undoubtedly acted as a confessional state-forming force.

Religion as a factor of state viability. From a worldview point of view, religion endows a person with the highest transcendent meaning of existence: axiologically, it instills in him the values ​​of common life; ethically - establishes the coordinates of good and evil; regulatory - sacralizes in the form of traditions the optimal standards for the functioning of the corresponding cultural community. Accordingly, in order to destructure the state, the foundation of religion should be knocked out from under it. There is a correlation between the religiosity of the people and state stability. Appeared at the end of the XVIII-XIX centuries. As a country of permanent revolution, France occupied at the same time the avant-garde positions in the world in spreading the ideology of secularism. It also historically acted as the first state to face the challenge of a long reproductive decline in modern times. Being a more socially stable organism in the 19th century, Great Britain retained at the same time - unlike France - a more accentuated adherence to traditional religious values.

Russia then was a country of absolute popular religiosity. But since the beginning of the 20th century it was she who became the main addressee of the spread of atheism. How was it possible for more than seventy years of existence of a state built on the paradigm of an atheistic worldview?

The point is that, in contrast to the state institutions religion is much more inertial.

The All-Union census of 1937 can serve as a clear evidence of such inertia. The question of religious affiliation was included in the questionnaires on the personal initiative of I.V. Stalin. The results obtained were so stunning that the authorities did not dare to publish summary statistical materials. Two years later, a second census campaign was carried out, which no longer contained a clause establishing a person's belonging to any religion. This important question was missing in all subsequent censuses, including the 2002 census. According to statistics obtained in 1937, the majority of those who agreed to fill out the corresponding item of the questionnaire (56.7%) self-identified as believers. Obviously, one should also include among them those who, when asked about their attitude to religion, generally refused to give any answer. Those of the total number participating in the census accounted for up to 20%. This group can be identified as the hidden believers. Refusal to fill in the corresponding item of the questionnaires, as well as non-participation in the census in general, was determined by religious motives. On the one hand, there was the fear of persecution of all those who confessed their religiosity. On the other hand, an entry in the questionnaire as an unbeliever meant religious apostasy (the archetype in this case was the New Testament story about Peter's denial).

Religious figures representing various confessions appealed to the people to avoid participation in the census campaign. The census was conducted on Christmas Eve (January 5-6), which served additional source strengthening the exaltation tension of the believing part of the population. Thus, by 1937 at least 76.7% of Soviet citizens remained among the religiously identifiable. Apparently, their proportion was even higher, because for many believers, considerations of personal security turned out to be a rather weighty circumstance when answering the corresponding item of the questionnaire. Thus, it would not be an exaggeration to assert that the victory in the Great Patriotic War was won by a people who preserved primarily their religious identity. The authorities, we must give them their due, having received the relevant static materials, were able to effectively use the resource of the religiosity of the people for national purposes. The neo-institutionalization of the patriarchy was a direct consequence of this reassessment. The strategy of erosion of the traditions of Orthodox religiosity modern Russia. Modern Russia, it would seem, is much more religiously oriented than Soviet Russia. Facilities mass media more than once they sang the hymn to the Russian religious revival. However, an analysis of the trends that have developed in the worldview sphere allows us to assert that faith itself has undergone significant erosion.

The turn towards a tolerant attitude towards religion, sanctioned in 1988 by the authorities, was used in the specific conditions of perestroika destruction as a factor of state disintegration. Through this step, another, which became one of the decisive blows, was dealt to the integration potential of the communist ideology. Religious identity - as an alternative to Soviet unity.

Religion, as one of the traditional state bonds, being taken out of the framework of the integral Soviet system formation, was paradoxically used as one of the detonators of the collapse of the USSR.

It is no coincidence that especially active support from the West in the spectrum of Soviet dissent was given to the direction of church dissidence. The human rights movement included, in particular, the activities of the Christian Committee for the Protection of the Rights of Believers in the USSR. However, it was not possible to create any kind of broad opposition from the Orthodox flock.

Obviously, the paradigm of the statist orientation of the ROC had an effect. The operation, successfully implemented in relation to the Baptists or Pentecostals, failed in relation to the Orthodox. “But,” stated this failure, a member of the human rights movement of the 1970s, an émigré historian L.M. Alekseev, “among the Orthodox intelligentsia, an ironic, squeamishly suspicious attitude towards human rights activities, as well as “Soviet heroism”, “everyday fair” and even as “satanic good” has always been widespread and intensified in the 80s. Not being, by its very nature, a force in opposition to the state.
The church was used in a big geopolitical game against its own interests. But the fate of the "Moor" who did his job is well known. The nominated religious revival of Russia turned out to be nothing more than a simulacrum. According to opinion polls conducted by the Public Opinion Foundation, at least 26% of Russians identify themselves as non-believers. These are not those who doubt, namely those for whom the denial of the existence of God is a worldview axiom. Moreover, in the capital, the share of atheists reaches 43%. Another 5% of Russian respondents found it difficult to give any answer to the question about their attitude to religion. Representatives of this category of the population cannot be classified as believers associated with a certain confessional group. Their worldview, as a rule, is individual, which is why it does not fall under any of the known religions. Thus, the level of religiosity in modern Russia is even lower than in the atheistic USSR of the 1937 model. Particularly significant in terms of its destructive potential is the spread of the phenomenon of unbelief among the Russian population.

Such a state, in which the state-forming people are largely deprived of religious faith (despite the fact that the national outskirts demonstrate a relatively high level of religiosity), is doomed to disintegration. The dichotomy of a non-religious center - religious outskirts was a model for the disintegration of many world civilizations. Given that Russians make up 79.8% of the population in Russia, and the peoples of the Orthodox cultural area as a whole - 86%, only 59% of Russians identify themselves with Orthodoxy. And how does Russia look according to the criterion of religiosity against the world background? Among countries belonging to the same Christian cultural type, it is found that the Russian Federation is one of the least religious states. In most other Christian countries of the West, the proportion of unbelievers, together with skeptics, does not even make up a quarter of the total population. Only Russia, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic exceed But who are the Russian believers? Finding out the specifics of their comprehension of religion makes the fact of their confessional affiliation highly doubtful.

Traditionally, the spread of Catholic proselytism was nominated as one of the most pressing threats to the Orthodox world. The point here was not only in the orthodox rejection of everything alien. The living memory of the people reproduced, as an edification to posterity, numerous historical precedents of Latin expansion. More than once, Orthodox statehood, in view of the direct aggression of adherents of Catholicism, was on the verge of death. The most striking episodes in this series are Constantinople in 1204 and Moscow in 1612.

The attitude towards Catholics in tsarist Russia was even worse (and to a large extent) than towards representatives of non-Christian confessions.

The papacy was consistently defined as antichrist and associated with various kinds of eschatological projections. The transition from a strategy of direct aggression to a stake on missionary activity did not mean a change in the overall target setting of the Vatican towards Russia. The former generations of adherents of the Russian Orthodox Church understood this well. However, the new Orthodox flock's sense of the threat posed by Catholic proselytism turned out to be atrophied. An indicator of this metamorphosis can be the results of public opinion polls regarding the prospects for the visit of the Pope to Russia. Only a small part Russian citizens spoke negatively about this. The number of respondents who positively accepted the idea of ​​the arrival of the head of the Catholic Church, turned out to be 8 times more. But, perhaps, the personality of the Roman pontiff crossed out the challenge of Latin proselytism at the level of mass consciousness? The question addressed to Russian society about the attitude towards Catholics in general allows us to state that we are talking it is about the atrophy of the Russians' sense of the threat of other-confessional expansion.

The indifference of the majority of respondents is quite consistent with the secular paradigm of modern society, but the positive assessment of Catholics by almost a third of all respondents is difficult to explain otherwise than as the result of appropriate propaganda processing. Most often, they understand faith as their own individual religious-surrogate worldview, not attributable to any of the known confessional practices. This is evidenced by sociological surveys to reveal the degree of churching of Russians. Persons “professing non-Christian religions” were excluded from the sample. The results obtained are discouraging. Only an extremely small number of Russians regularly visit churches (7%), perform the sacrament (1%), observe all major church fasts (2%), pray church prayers (5%), read the Gospel and other biblical texts (2%). Thus, 59% of self-identified Orthodox turn out to be nothing more than a fiction. The true number of the Orthodox flock in Russia does not exceed 7% of the population.

The position of the Church in this regard is much worse than it was under Soviet rule.

Behind the outward mass character and official respect, Orthodoxy, as the traditional religion of Russia, turned out to be almost destroyed. One cannot consider an Orthodox Christian a person who does not even have an idea about Christian prayer. Characteristically, in the United States, believers are considered to be people who regularly read the Holy Scriptures (daily - 20% of Americans, at least once a week - 30%), as well as attending church with weekly intensity and regularly participating in the sacrament of the sacrament (in those religious directions, where it exists).

The ideological state of modern Russian society evokes unwitting associations with the Roman Empire during its decline. Against the background of the breakdown of the traditional system of worldview, occult practices that are inherently destructive are spreading. By exploiting the religious feelings immanent in the human psyche, various kinds of charlatans receive a broad public platform. Extrasensory programs are regularly given a place in the hourly grid of federal TV channels. Meanwhile, the nature and nature of extrasensory influence on a person is not fully understood by science today. The Church categorically rejects such experiences as satanic practice. However, the leadership of the television channels, with strange connivance state power, considers it possible to conduct mass experiments on the consciousness and mental health of Russians. Neo-occultism directly destroys the coordinates of traditional religiosity. The neo-occult worldview is a direct competitor to the religious worldview. Suffice it to say that today in Russia the proportion of people who believe in extraterrestrial civilizations is higher than those who believe in the immortality of the soul. Moreover, even among those who identify themselves as Orthodox Christians, many do not share the basic thesis of the Christian religion about the afterlife. Only a third of Russians deny the phenomenological reality of the occult. The vast majority found themselves, to one degree or another, involved in the occult atmosphere.

In the place of Soviet atheism, therefore, came not religion, but precisely occultism.

Bearing in mind assistance in its information promotion, it is appropriate to talk about the operational nature of the introduction of a new worldview. Judging by public opinion polls, the hierarchy of popularity of neo-occult concepts is built in modern Russia as follows:

1. Guidance of "damage", "evil eye" (witchcraft).
2. Omens that come true.
3. Predictions on the lines of hands (palmistry).
4. Predictions on the location of stars and planets (astrology).
5. Diagnosis and treatment of diseases by the biofield (extrasensory perception).
6. The manifestation of otherworldly forces, ghosts, brownies.
7. Alien activity on Earth (duology).
8. The transmission of thoughts at a distance (telepathy).
9. Communication with the souls of the dead (spiritualism).
10. Moving objects with the power of thought (telekinesis).
11. Spontaneous movement of inanimate objects (poltergeist).
12. Human flight without any devices (levitation).

But the matter is not limited to a mere hypothetical statement of the probability of paranormal phenomena. Almost a quarter of Russians were directly involved in occult practices. 23% of respondents admitted to visiting magicians, sorcerers, psychics. This is more than the number of Russians who take part in church sacraments. Organizationally, Orthodoxy is losing to its ideological opponents. Today, about 300 thousand various kinds of magicians, healers, psychics are registered in the country. According to the sectologist A.L. Dvorkin, their actual number reaches 500 thousand people. Ideologically opposed to this army of occultists are 15,000 Orthodox clergy. “Such a number of actually pagan magicians,” writes a prominent researcher in the history of the church D. Pospelovsky, “in a market economy means that the demand for them exceeds the demand for the Orthodox clergy by 30 times!” V Soviet time of all religious organizations operating in Russia, 62.7% were part of the ROC. The new religious movement was represented by associations of Hare Krishnas, Baha'is and Mormons, accounting for less than 0.2%68. In 2007 the situation was fundamentally different. Associations in the structure of the ROC already accounted for 54.3%. The number of organizations representing new religious movements increased to 3.5% (increased by 17.5 times over the years of reforms). This is more than the number of Buddhist (0.9%) or Jewish associations (1.3%) associated with religions traditional for Russia.

Thus, the answer to the question of who won as a result of the transformations that took place seems obvious. In any case, this is not the Russian Orthodox Church. According to 2003 data, in Russia during the post-Soviet period of its history, up to 500 new religious movements spread, covering 800,000 adherents. The missionary department of the Moscow Patriarchate gives different statistics: 700 denominations and up to 5 million people of active adherents. Without the appropriate patronage of the authorities, such a rapid spread of neo-occultism and sectarianism in Russia would have been impossible. The extremely lenient rules for registering religious organizations that were in force in the Russian Federation led to the legal legitimization of a significant number of totalitarian sects banned in other countries of the world. Prior to the introduction of relevant legislative changes in 1997, most of these organizations had customs privileges and were exempt from paying taxes.

The activities of such public associations as the International Association for Religious Freedom and the International Civil Commission on Human Rights (the latter was established with the direct participation of the Church of Scientology) have a “sect-protective” orientation in the Russian Federation. In fact, the green light for neo-occult imports to Russia was given by the laws adopted in 1990 in the USSR "On Freedom of Conscience and Religious Organizations" and "On Freedom of Religion." Only in 1997, this expansion, in view of the recognition of the “dangerous consequences of the impact of certain religious organizations on the health of society, families, citizens of Russia”, was partially limited through the adoption of the Federal Law “On Freedom of Conscience and Religious Associations”. The leitmotif of the changes introduced was the deprivation of denominations that had a period of distribution in Russia of less than 15 years, tax preferences that existed before and the right to rent premises. This decision was implemented through the differentiation of confessional associations into religious organizations and religious groups. Interested in the religious erosion of Russia was not slow to show up.

As a response, the US Senate decides to reduce financial assistance to the Russian Federation by $200 million B.N. Yeltsin, under the pretext of contradicting the Duma bill with constitutional law, initially vetoed it. But still, in the future, a softened version, despite the external and internal liberal pressure exerted, was signed by him.

However, the fifteen-year period established earlier has already lost its relevance. For 1997, the 15-year limitation meant cutting off the spread of the status of a religious organization to the numerous neo-occult foreign groups that emerged in Russia in the early 1990s. Now all of them have already received the appropriate rights to legal legitimization. Confessional associations that emerged in the Russian Federation in the period 1991-1993 can already now be legalized as religious organizations. The theme of the new occult expansionism, which has temporarily fallen off the agenda, should be updated again in the near future. However, the current Russian authorities apparently do not have a foresight of the coming threat. What kind of protection of the interests of traditional Russian confessions can we talk about, if such politicians like Anatoly Chubais and Alexander Voloshin? The ROC also loses in the competition with its ideological opponents for the younger generation. Number of spiritual educational institutions Russian Muslims have almost one and a half times more than the Orthodox. Almost as many as the ROC have such institutions and other religious organizations in Russia. With the relative propagandistic passivity of the Moscow Patriarchate, educational institutions of the middle and higher levels are actively using organizations representing a new religious movement as a springboard for disseminating their teachings.

Scientologists, Moonies, Hare Krishnas, followers of the Anastasia sect, and others have a direct practice of cooperation with universities and schools in Russia. But someone at the level of leadership in Russian education opened the gates for them, showed interest in spreading sectarian influence on students!

The activity of the Church of Scientology is the most active in the educational field of Russia. It is education that constitutes the main revenue item for the functioning of Hubbard's organizational structures. In Russia, according to experts, the income of the Church of Scientology reaches $50 million a year. Arguing about how many Russian citizens, judging by these means, the propaganda of the teachings of Dianetics is spreading, forces us to formulate the question of Hubbardian activities as a direct challenge to national security. The structure of the Church of Scientology includes several of its own educational institutions - "Hubbard College", "Center for Applied Education", "Rodnik Boarding School Non-Governmental Non-Profit Educational Institution". A special program implemented by the Moscow Dianetics Center is to translate Hubbardian concepts through a special processing of teachers. For some time, the doors of the Moscow state university them. M.V. Lomonosov. Joint programs connected them - in particular during the period of institutionalization of the organization - with the Faculty of Journalism. Moscow State University even acted as a venue for the so-called Hubbard Days. Meanwhile, in Germany, the Church of Scientology is regarded as a "criminal commercial organization with elements of psychoterror" and placed under special supervision of the police. In France and Spain, the activities of the Hubbardians became the subject of legal investigations.

The sphere of activity of Scientologists is not limited, however, to the education system. No less successful attempts were made by them to introduce their programs in medical institutions. At the level of the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation, they received, in particular, permission to implement their method of toxin cleansing of the human body. Hubbardians were even given the opportunity to treat children affected by the consequences of the Chernobyl accident, which made up a video sequence of Scientology presentation videos. The most resonant connection between the spread of neo-occultism in Russia and the activities of state authorities was highlighted by the example of the phenomenon of "Aum Senrique".

The veil hiding the fact of active cooperation between officials and sectarians was removed only due to extraordinary circumstances - a terrorist attack in the Tokyo subway.

Having gained popularity in Russia since 1991, after several years, under the patronage of representatives of the highest echelon of power, the Russian AUM associations counted three times more adherents in their ranks than in Japan itself. The institutional cover for the followers of Shoko Asahara was established on the initiative of M.S. Gorbachev, with financial and organizational assistance from the sect, the Russian-Japanese University (originally the Russian-Japanese Foundation). Gorbachev's sympathy for the Aumovites was shared by B.N. Yeltsin, who, by a special Decree of November 13, 1991, equated university employees with “categories of employees of bodies government controlled". Oleg Lobov, head of the Expert Council under the President of the Russian Federation, acted as the direct patron of Aum Senrique in the top Russian state leadership, as shown by a judicial investigation.

It was he who organized the communication of the sect with some Russian defense enterprises, which resulted in the receipt of appropriate technological developments by the Aumovites for the production of gas used in the Tokyo metro - sarin. Later, a combat helicopter and a Russian-made gas analyzer were also found in the arsenal of the sectarians. Not only O. Lobov met with the leader of the sect, Shoko Asahara, but also other prominent representatives of the state establishment of Russia - Vice President A. Rutskoi, Speaker of Parliament R. Khasbulatov, head of Ostankino E. Yakovlev, rectors of leading Moscow universities (MSU, MGIMO , MIREA, MEPhI). For the symphony orchestra created under the auspices of Aum Senrique, the site of the Olimpiysky sports complex was provided. Asahara himself spoke from the stands of the Kremlin Palace of Congresses and the conference hall of Moscow State University. TV channel 2 2 during 1993–1994 AUM provided weekly broadcasting opportunities. Despite the injunction, the successor organizations in relation to Aum Senrika still function on the territory of the Russian Federation.

According to Japanese law enforcement agencies, it is in Russia that a group of internationally wanted individuals involved in the terrorist attack in Tokyo is still hiding.

No less large-scale influence on the Russian establishment at the turn of the 1980s–1990s. provided by the Unification Church, better known as the Moon sect. The head of the organization Sun Myung Moon was personally invited to the USSR in 1989 by M.S. Gorbachev as a state guest. In the Assumption Cathedral, still closed for liturgical practice at that time, he was even given the opportunity to perform the ceremony of consecration (“salting”) according to his own Munite rite. Moon-Gorbachev cooperation (in particular, through the Gorbachev Foundation) continued even after the latter's resignation. In addition to the ex-president of the USSR, among the participants of the Moonite forums there are also such persons associated with a certain political spectrum as A. Yakovlev, G. Popov, S. Shushkevich. Experts argue that in order to attract " the mighty of the world of this, the Moonies are actively using the practice of providing super-large fees. In 1992, the Unification Church conference was held mainly at the expense of the organizational resources of the Ministry of Education, which ensured the participation of delegates from departments in the conference. public education 60 Russian cities. What, it would seem, can connect the educational national system Russia and the religious organization of the Korean missionary?!

How does this kind of cooperation correlate with the declaration on the separation of religion from schools, which is so often mentioned to justify the inadmissibility of spreading Orthodox educational programs?! Meanwhile, hundreds of seven-day teacher seminars were held by the Moonies, reaching more than 60,000 representatives. teaching staff secondary and higher educational institutions of Russia. A peculiar point of triumph for the activities of the "Unification Church" was the introduction since 1993 in educational program for high school students of the course "My world - and I" specially developed by the Moonies. The teaching of this subject was short term more than 2 thousand schools in Russia are covered. In the Republic of Kalmykia, the course "My world - and I" was at one time even established as a compulsory discipline. special attention from a national security standpoint, the preparation by the Moonies of a special textbook for military personnel, "The Soldier's Inner World," also deserves. The decision to create it was made at a conference held jointly by the Unification Church and the Higher Humanitarian Academy of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.

Further munization of Russia was stopped only by a number of scandals abroad related to the exposure of adherents of munism in financial extortion. Harmonization of non-force bases: both religion and science. Various bonds of state life can be combined with each other. The hypertrophied development of one component, which is out of touch with others, leads to disharmony and can lead to the death of the entire system. It was in this way that the Russian Empire was brought to the collapse of the state system in 1917. There is no doubt that religion is one of the most important components of state viability. But when its position in society is established to the detriment of other non-coercive foundations of statehood - such as, for example, science or education - this can have the most Negative consequences. The Russian Empire acted in the world as a kind of brand of high Christian piety, Orthodox theocracy. In the West, this image was strongly supported.

Your strength, the Western “Russophiles” told Russia, is not in science and education (the lot of materialistic Europe), but in religious spirituality.

In general, stay with banners and crosses, but do not claim the path of technical improvement monopolized by the West. Positioning itself through the image of the defender of Orthodoxy, the tsarist authorities fell for this trick, which resulted in the strengthening of the obscurantization paradigm in terms of management. The disparity between religion, on the one hand, and the sphere, including science, education, and secular culture, on the other, had the character of a catastrophic fracture. The subsequent Bolshevik anti-religious campaign was objectively a reverse modernizing reaction to the previous disproportions in development. The analysis allows us to state that, behind the external cover of the reports about the religious revival of Russia, religion, as the backbone of Russian statehood, has undergone significant erosion over the past two decades. The design component of destructive processes in this area is traced. The main implemented stratagem is to blur the core of traditional Russian religiosity, to equate traditional religions with a neo-spiritualist surrogate, and to replace them with the latter. Violation of the optimum of pluralization in religious life resulted in the undermining of one of the most important non-coercive foundations of statehood.

Introduction

It has already become customary to call the 20th century a century of revolutions: social, scientific and technical, space. With full right it can be called the century of the revolution of family and marriage relations. Since the beginning of the last century, major social changes have begun that have affected all spheres of human life, including culture.

The current cultural situation causes considerable concern among culturologists. There was a sharp reorientation of Russian cultural consciousness towards the West, which was caused primarily by economic reasons. Most members of the country's leadership are in no way concerned with preserving and maintaining the level of Russia as a great world power, solving their own interests (the struggle for power, for spheres of influence, filling their own wallet, etc.). Despite the increased activity of the church and the special attention paid to it by the government, the Russian Orthodox Church no longer has that influence on the minds and souls of the people that we have seen over many centuries of Russian history. And it is unlikely that the church will be able to restore its former level.

From time immemorial, Russia has lived by idealism and placed spiritual and moral arrangement above all else. A serious negative side of the current cultural situation is the absence of a positive program for the further development of Russia. There are multidirectional tendencies in society that cut Russian culture into several incompatible planes along national, economic, and political lines, which further exacerbates the feeling of an impending catastrophe. Of course, culture, or rather cultural institutions continue to exist, and people still visit theaters, exhibitions, concert halls, and outwardly the situation does not look so tragic, but the internal situation of discord in the minds and souls of the Russian people is undeniable.

An important problem that arises in the relationship between man and culture is that modern man does not feel himself a creator of culture, does not see his role in the processes of cultural creation. Culture does not arise by itself, it is created by man. Of course, the processes carried out by a group of people are more noticeable, but a group is nothing without the activity of a particular person.

Cultural creativity restores and develops the human spirit, which is denied by modern civilization. Therefore, cultural creation takes place in a constant struggle with civilizational processes that seek to tame a person, make him a blind toy in the hands of those forces whose essence is not connected with the goals, objectives and meanings of human life.

The current 21st century is becoming an era on which great hopes are placed for all mankind. The difficult economic and social situation requires serious tension from a modern person, which often causes stress and depression, which have already become an integral part of our existence. Today is just the time when the need for a "safe haven", a place of spiritual comfort, is especially acutely felt. This place should be the family - stability against the backdrop of ubiquitous volatility. Despite such a clear need, at present the institution of the family is experiencing a rather acute crisis, because its very existence, which has been unchanged for millennia, is under threat.

In all ages, regardless of socio-economic conditions and state regimes, it was the family that was the basis of society. It is the family that is responsible for the formation of a full-fledged, morally rich and socially active personality, which in turn should become the creator of culture.

The development of the family is closely connected with the progress of culture and civilization. This determines the relevance of the study of the family in the system of human culture. The fact is that the achievements of culture and civilization are primarily reflected in the family. The family, for its part, acts as one of the main keepers and translators of traditions, values, norms, moral and ethical attitudes - everything that we call culture, in its spiritual sense.

In other words, love and family are the spiritual foundations of civilization. Since their inception, they have a socio-cultural character and therefore have a significant impact on the formation of the spiritual image of the individual. This influence is carried out within the framework of marital relations, the relationship of parents to children, and vice versa, children to parents, etc.

The object of study in this paper is culture. As you know, the concept of culture is as diverse as our life is diverse. In this case, we consider culture (within the framework of family and marriage relations) as a spiritual and moral world inherent in human society as a whole and each individual separately.

As a subject, we chose the institution of the family, which can be fully called both social and cultural.

Considering the urgency of the problem, this paper aims to substantiate the importance and necessity of preserving the family as one of the factors for preserving culture and national culture in particular.

To achieve this goal, it seems necessary to solve the following tasks: 1) first of all, to reveal the concepts of "family" and "marriage"; 2) trace the development of family relations in the cultural and historical context; 3) identify the functions of the family, show its significance and importance in the development of the individual; 4) consider various problems of the family and family relations in modern society.

At the moment, there is a huge number of works devoted to family and marriage, both in domestic teak and in foreign science. The topics are very different - this is the history of family and marriage relations, and ethnographic essays, collections of family and everyday folklore, intra-family relations, conflicts, functions, etc. This thesis presents an attempt to combine and analyze various approaches to studying the family within the framework of cultural knowledge.

The theoretical analysis of the research problem made it possible to put forward the following hypothesis: the development and state of culture and society directly depend on the functioning of the family institution and the nature of the relationship between its members.

Chapter 1. THEORETICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL SUBSTANTIATION OF THE PROBLEM.

As you know, cultural studies is a relatively young science, located at the junction of many humanitarian disciplines, such as history, philosophy, sociology, art history, psychology, political science and others. All of them are united by the object of study - a person and his activity. Thus, in culturological research, we turn to the theories and concepts developed within the framework of these sciences, because culture permeates the entire field of human life, which is both a subject of culture and an object of cultural influence.

The family is a living organism, a micro-society in which the past, present and future come into contact, in which the civilizational foundations of human reality are being formed. The family and its meaning were thought about in antiquity, the origins of these thoughts go back to the philosophical wisdom of Plato (dialogues “State”, “Laws”, “Feast”), Aristotle (“Politics”), Plutarch (“Instruction to spouses”). The philosophical understanding of the family comes down to a greater extent to reflections on the relationship of family members, that is, spouses, parents and children (Michel Montaigne "Experiments"), on the role of the family in the state, and, of course, on love as an integral part of family life (Hegel " Philosophy of Law).

Plato's dialogue "Feast" is devoted to the development of the idea of ​​love, which, in his opinion, underlies the formation and existence of any thing and the world in general. Eros in the dialogue acts as a primordial world wholeness, calling for the unity of those who love, experiencing an irresistible mutual attraction in search of blissful serenity. The State is one of the first works of utopian literature. The state appears in it as a military camp in which the family in the former sense of the word does not exist. Men and women join only for the purpose of procreation. Moreover, the state is engaged in the choice of men and women, secretly from them. Mothers and fathers do not know their children, and all female guardians are the wives of male guardians. According to Plato, the community of wives and children is an expression of the highest form of unity and unanimity of the citizens of such a state.

Aristotle in Politics sharply criticized this idea; unification of the state united family- a direct path to his death. Many children with many fathers will cause all sons to equally neglect their fathers.

Aristotle viewed man primarily as a political being. The family for a person, according to Aristotle, is the first type of communication and, accordingly, the most important element of the state system. He attaches great importance to marriage legislation that ensures the birth of healthy children, prescribing ways to educate future citizens.

Family studies are widely represented in sociology; As you know, the family is the cell of society. There is indeed a social necessity in the family, for if it were to disappear, the very existence of mankind would be in jeopardy. And that is why in no society has the family been a “private affair”, for any society has the right to expect the family to perform certain functions.

The sociology of the family as a special branch of sociological knowledge originates in large-scale empirical studies of European statisticians Reels and Le Play. In the middle of the XIX century. they independently made an attempt to study the influence of such social factors as industrialization, urbanization, education, religion, on the forms of family hostel, family structure, and economic relations in it. Since then, the problems of the family and marital relations have been constantly in the center of attention of sociology, since the family is a specific, in many ways unique formation: a small group and a social institution at the same time. Behind each of these phenomena is its own reality and a set of concepts that reflect this reality.

Among modern domestic researchers, there is a widespread point of view that Russia, as a culture and as a civilization, is experiencing an acute identification crisis: having destroyed its former “Soviet” identity, it has found itself at a crossroads between post-industrial and traditional society. This conclusion is made on the basis of the facts recorded by these researchers related to family and marriage: a drop in the birth rate, an increase in divorces, single-parent families and loneliness, high female employment.

The study of the modern sociologist Golod S. I. "Family and marriage: historical and sociological analysis" is devoted to the history of the development of marriage and family relations, the problems of the modern family. The author analyzes the concept of a traditional patriarchal family, child-centric, reveals the essence of marital and post-industrial marriages. A separate section in the book is devoted to the problem of divorce and the reasons leading to it. He also cites the opinions of various researchers regarding the future prospects of the family in modern society, at the same time, the author himself adheres to the point of view that the institution of the family is not experiencing a crisis, but a natural transformation due to the socio-historical situation.

In this work, evolutionary, functional approaches are used.

Within the framework of the evolutionary approach, such researchers as I. Ya. Bahoven, J. F. McLennon, M. M. Kovalevsky, I. Kohler, L. Sternberg, L. Morgan, F. Engels and others worked.

In this paper, we will turn to the works of the following researchers: the American lawyer and ethnologist Lewis Morgan - the monograph "Ancient Society", and the adherent of historical materialism Friedrich Engels - "The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State"

The evolutionist approach proceeds from the theory of primordial promiscuity followed by exogamous maternal lineage. Later, the theory of an exogamous clan is supplemented by the idea of ​​a dual-clan organization that arises in the course of the union of two matrilineal tribes. It was assumed that the clan consisted of two halves, phratries, in each of which men and women could not marry each other, they found husbands and wives among men and women of the other half of the clan.

According to the functional approach, family relations are derived from the lifestyle of the family and the family way of life, are determined by the sociocultural functions of the family and are built on the system of sociocultural roles associated with marriage, kinship, parenthood.

Psychology pays much attention to family and marriage.

Within the framework of psychology, the family was paid attention to by the theory of psychosexual stages of Sigmund Freud, who defines childhood experience as fundamental for the entire subsequent life of the individual, and emphasizes the influence of internal instinctive impulses on all the formation and development of the personality. The socio-cultural direction (Karen Horney, Erich Fromm), in addition to natural, biological factors, also emphasizes the social and cultural conditions in which the individual develops.

Domestic and foreign monographs on the psychological problems of family and marriage are no longer rare (E. G. Eidemiller, V. V. Yustitskis, B. N. Kochubey, V. Satir, E. Bern, and others). Most of these studies reflected the motives for marriage, the functions of the family, the causes of family conflicts and divorces, methods of family therapy. The circle of works in which the evolution of the family, its structure, the specifics of relations, both marital and child-parent, would become the subject of study is significantly limited. Of the well-known works, we can mention the studies of A. G. Kharchev and V. N. Druzhinin.

The reason, apparently, lies in the fact that in-depth studies of family relations and the process of raising children in the family began only in the 20th century. In this case, the quantitative and qualitative evolution of the family was studied, on the one hand, on the basis of ethnographic data, information about the life of peoples and tribes preserved at the primitive level of development, and on the other hand, using the analysis of ancient written sources - from the Russian "Domostroy" to the Icelandic saga Interesting attempts are being made to trace the development of types, family models based on a comparison of world religions - V.N. Druzhinin, biblical texts - Larue D.

In recent decades, a new branch of humanitarian knowledge has begun to develop - cross-cultural psychology. Researchers are paying more and more attention to cultural differences in people's behavior and their attitude to various phenomena. This is due to wide international contacts in politics, economics, science, an increase in the number of foreign students in universities in different countries, and the spread of interethnic marriages. "Psychology and Culture" by D. Matsumoto is the only and most complete manual in Russian devoted to the influence of culture on human behavior. The sections devoted to gender differences in cultures and the attitude of representatives of different cultures towards love are of interest.

Gender psychology is another new direction that studies the characteristics of the sexes. Sean Byrne in his work "Gender Psychology" also uses cross-cultural research in the field of gender relations, the roles of men and women in different cultures.

Also of interest is a collection on marriage and the family, presented in two books under the general title "Family", which contains various excerpts from the classic writings of past eras and modern scientific literature. The first part is devoted to the history of the family. It contains some ancient texts that tell about the family in a mythological and edifying way: the Bible, the Koran, a Chinese treatise of the 2nd century BC. e. "Combination of yin and yang", Indian "Kama Sutra", Russian "Domostroy", etc.

Thus, the thesis uses an integrative approach, an attempt to consider the family from different points of view in order to show its significance for society and man, culture.

Chapter 2. GENESIS OF FAMILY AND MARRIAGE RELATIONS IN CULTURAL AND HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT

2. 1 The concepts of "family" and "marriage".

"The family is the most important of the phenomena that accompanies a person throughout his life." One cannot but agree with this statement, since we are all part of a family throughout our life path, we grow up, leave it and create a new one. Generations of people change in a family, a person is born in it, a family continues through it. The family, its forms and functions directly depend on social relations in general, as well as on the level of cultural development of society.

The most popular definition of the family in Soviet sociology of the 60s-90s belongs to A. Kharchev: relations, common life and mutual moral responsibility, and the social necessity for which is due to the need of society for the physical and spiritual reproduction of the population.

Sociologist S.I. Golod considers this definition not entirely satisfactory: “Let us ask: is it possible to find a common denominator of “mutual moral responsibility”, say, “slave-patriarch” in Ancient Rome and “son-father” in the modern family? Or another question: is the commonality of life actually a family characteristic? Further, the author gives two examples, "laconic and elegant", in his opinion, definitions of the essence of the institution of the family. The first belongs to Peterim Sorokin, who understands the family as “a legal union (often lifelong) of spouses, on the one hand, the union of parents and children, on the other, the union of relatives and in-laws, on the third.” The second statement of the Polish sociologist J. Szczepanski: "A family is a group consisting of persons connected by matrimonial relations and relations between parents and children." Thus, S. I. Golod considers the family “as a set of individuals who are in at least one of three types of relationships: blood relationship, generation, property '”. . But we cannot limit ourselves to this definition only in understanding such a phenomenon as a family, since it undoubtedly represents a more complex system.

If sociologists in the definition of the family focus on kinship, then economists on the economy (and the joint budget), psychologists on the relationship between family members, on indicating the functions inherent in it.

Sociologists and demographers emphasize another important point that economists miss - the continuity of generations. Under the family, existing for a long period of time, you need to understand such integrity, which is divided and restored in each generation, without violating continuity. The ability to restore its unity in each next generation is a very important characteristic of a family. It describes what scientists call the family life cycle.

Family life cycle – this is a sequence of significant, milestone events in the existence of a family, which begins from the moment of marriage and ends with its dissolution, divorce.

Researchers identify a different number of phases of this cycle, but the main among them are the following:

marriage- family education;

start of childbearing- the birth of the first child;

end of childbearing- the birth of the last child;

"empty nest"- marriage and separation of the last child from the family;

termination of the family- the death of one of the spouses.

At each stage, the family has specific social and economic characteristics.

Researchers have identified two type families - traditional(or classical), it is also called extended (multi-generation). In such a family there is a husband, wife, their children, grandmothers, grandfathers, uncles, aunts, etc., and they all live together. That is, the family is expanding at the expense of 3-4 generations of direct relatives.

The second type is nuclear(from lat. nucleus - core) a family, a modern family, usually including two parents and one child. It is so named because the demographic core of the family responsible for the reproduction of new generations is parents and their children. They constitute the biological, social and economic center of any family. All other relatives belong to the periphery of the family.

The nuclear family is only possible in societies where children have the opportunity to live separately from their parents after marriage.

Marriage is the foundation of family relationships.

"Marriage is a historically changing social form of relationship between a woman and a man, through which society regulates and sanctions their sexual life and establishes their marital and kinship rights and obligations." That is, a married couple is considered the traditional “core” of a family with the addition of children, relatives, parents of spouses to the “core”.

Between the concepts of "marriage" and "family" there is a close relationship. However, in the essence of these concepts there is also a lot of special, specific. Scientists have convincingly proved that marriage and the family originated in different historical periods. In the second paragraph, we will consider these concepts.

In the above definition, the key points for the concept of the essence of marriage are ideas about the variability of the forms of marriage, its social representation and the role of society in its ordering and sanctioning, legal regulation. So, in different societies, different ages for marriage are established, procedures for registering marriage and its dissolution are regulated.

Marriage in human society is considered the only acceptable, socially approved and legal form of not only permitted, but also mandatory sexual relations of spouses. From this we can conclude that the institution of marriage as such is more necessary for society and for society: “Look, everyone, we are now husband and wife, we are together, we are a family!”

In the Christian sense, marriage is enlightenment and at the same time a mystery. It is the transformation of man, the expansion of his personality. In marriage, a person can see the world in a special way, through another person. This fullness is further aggravated with the emergence of the third, their child, from two merged together. A perfect married couple will give birth to a perfect child, it will continue to develop according to the laws of perfection.

Through the sacrament of Marriage, grace is granted for the upbringing of children, which Christian spouses only contribute to. The child receives a guardian angel at baptism, who secretly but tangibly assists the parents in raising the child, averting all dangers from them.

In our time, when public opinion has become more liberal, and the rigid moral foundations of the Soviet period have been replaced by more democratic ones, the understanding of the family has changed. Now the concept of “civil marriage” (legalized by the Civil Code of the Russian Federation) has been introduced, when people create a family based only on a sense of responsibility, mutual assistance and, of course, love, without registering their relationship with administrative institutions. Although, for the most part, society does not consider such “marriages” to be sufficiently complete and stable.

Marriage is also a set of customs that regulate the marital relationship between a man and a woman. In modern European culture, such customs include introductions, betrothal, exchange of rings, scattering of rice or money during the wedding ceremony, honeymoon, stepping over the bride and groom through a symbolic obstacle. All this is a kind of inauguration - a solemn ceremony of concluding marriage bonds.

If marriage extends to the relationship of spouses, then the family captures marital and parental relationships. Marriage is only a relation, and the family is also a social organization.

The family grows out of two genera: in the male and female lines. It carries not only their physical qualities (hair color, eyes, nose shape, body proportions, etc.), but also feeds on their spiritual source. Striving for higher ideals or, on the contrary, grounded aspirations, altruism or selfishness, conscientiousness or spiritual callousness in young people often have ancestral roots. The more fully the family has absorbed the best qualities and properties of the clans, their value orientations, traditions, customs, the deeper it has accepted their spirit and purpose, the richer its inner life, the more stable and stable it is.

The essence and meaning of the family, therefore, is not just the reproduction of the population or childbearing, but the extension of the genus in the broadest sense of the word. The family acts as a link between the generations of the genus in all planes of being. Through it, the genus develops the mental and spiritual qualities inherent in its nature. Through the family, the clan realizes itself, its purpose, embodies, expresses and develops its physical, psychological, spiritual and moral essence, materializes in its actions, lifestyle.

With this approach, each specific family is no longer perceived as a social phenomenon that has both a beginning and an inevitable end. She receives another coordinate system that vertically reflects the depth and strength of ties with the clan (including at the genetic level) as a bearer of common social experience, wisdom, social guidelines and values, and finally, the very spirit of the clan. In the memory of the family, in its faith, the family acquires immortality. Illuminated by the light of higher spiritual principles, a person in it rises above natural and biological instincts, overcomes his egocentrism.

The family is a complex sociocultural phenomenon. Its specificity and uniqueness lies in the fact that it focuses almost all aspects of human life and goes to all levels of social practice: from the individual to the socio-historical, from the material to the spiritual. Following all of the above, in the structure of the family, we can distinguish three interconnected blocks of relationships:

- natural biological, i.e. sexual and consanguineous;

- economic, i.e. relationships based on household, everyday life, family property;

- spiritual and psychological, moral and aesthetic, associated with feelings of marital and parental love, with the upbringing of children, with care for elderly parents, with moral standards of behavior. Only the totality of these ties in their unity creates a family as a special social phenomenon, because the natural closeness of a man and a woman, not legally fixed and not bound by the common life and upbringing of children, cannot be considered a family, since this is nothing more than cohabitation. Economic cooperation and mutual assistance of close people, if they are not based on ties of marriage and kinship, are also not an element of family relations, but only a business partnership. And, finally, the spiritual community of a man and a woman is limited to friendship, if the relationship between them does not take the form of development characteristic of the family.

Marriage is a necessary element of family organization, which not only legally (or according to church standards) consolidates the created union of a man and a woman, but also creates a sense of moral security, stability and certainty in the spouses.

2. 2 Concepts of the origin of family and marriage relations.

Marriage and the creation of a family is now so commonplace that it seems that it has always been so. The European type of marriage arose more than 300 years ago, but the history of the emergence of a monogamous family (the modern type of marriage) goes back many, many millennia.

In this section, we consider the concepts of the emergence of the family and the development of forms of marriage in a historical context.

Lewis Morgan (1818–1881), American lawyer and ethnologist, became famous for his study of the life of the Indian Union of the Iroquois tribes from the inside. In his main works "Ancient Society" and "Houses and Home Life of the American Natives", using extensive field materials, he developed the idea of ​​the progressive development of mankind and its historical path. Having established himself in the idea that primitive society was basically tribal, Morgan sharply contrasted it with political society or, in modern terms, class society. Tribal associations, wherever they are geographically located, turn out to be "identical in structure and principles of action", at the same time they are transformed from lower to higher forms in accordance with the consistent development of people.

L. Morgan defines a genus as a set of relatives descended from one common ancestor, distinguished by a special totem and connected by blood ties. It is characterized by collective ownership of land and other means of production, the primitive communist organization of the economy, the absence of exploitation and the equality of all members of the tribe.

The ties of kinship were determined by maternal origin, the community in question included, simply put, the foremother, with her children, the children of her daughters and the children of her female descendants in the female line to infinity. While the children of her sons and the children of her male descendants in the male line belong to their mothers' families. Marriage within one's own gens was forbidden.

“With the development of the idea of ​​the genus,” notes an American scientist, “it naturally had to“ take the form of pairs of genera, because the children of men were excluded from the genus, and because it was necessary to equally organize both classes of descendants.

According to S. I. Golod in his work “Family and Marriage”, the doctrine of primitive history created by Morgan, in principle, refuted the patriarchal theory that dominated ethnographic science, according to which the main cell of society throughout its existence was monogamous, or at best, patriarchal family.

The ethnologist distinguished five successive forms of the family, each of which had its own marriage order. These are the forms:

consanguineous family was based on group marriage between siblings, relatives and collaterals.

Punal family. She relied on the group marriage of several sisters, native and collateral, with the husbands of each of them, and the common husbands were not necessarily related to each other, and vice versa. It was this form of group marriage, according to the scientist, that became the foundation of the clan. S. I. Golod notes that at the same time, few people recognized the reality of the existence of such a family.

Syndiasmic or steam family based on the marriage of individual couples, but without exclusive cohabitation. The duration of the union depended on good will sides.

patriarchal family It is based on the marriage of one man with several women, accompanied, as a rule, by the seclusion of wives. The characteristic of the patriarchal family is the organization, under the authority of the father, of a certain number of free and not free people for cultivating the land and guarding herds of domestic animals.

monogamous family. Here, a separate couple enters into marriage once and for life. The history of monogamy over some three millennia reveals a gradual but steady improvement. The family of this type, insists the social anthropologist, is destined to progressively evolve further until the equality of the sexes and the equality of marital relations are recognized. The presented series of marriage forms, according to Morgan, is not separated from each other by sharply defined boundaries. On the contrary, the first form passes into the second, the second - into the third, the third - into the fourth, and the fourth - into the fifth, in general, it is not noticeable.

The second concept belongs to Friedrich Engels (1820–1895), which was outlined in his work The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. It was created as a continuation of the work of Morgan, which, according to Engels, confirmed Marx's materialistic understanding of history and the idea of ​​primitive society.

Anticipating a concrete analysis of family forms, Engels clarifies the essence of the materialist understanding of history: "The defining moment in history is, in the final analysis, the production and reproduction of life itself." This provision is further concretized by him as follows: the production of means of subsistence (food, clothing, housing and the tools necessary for this) - on the one hand; on the other hand, the production and reproduction of man himself. The social order in which people of a certain historical epoch and country live is determined by both types of production - the degree of development of labor and the family. The ethnographic evidence collected by the American anthropologist just confirmed, in the author's opinion, the correspondence of the three main types of marriage to the three main stages of human development. Wildness is characterized by group marriage, barbarism - doubles, civilization - monogamy. Let us follow Engels' historical path of the family. The transformation of the family in the primitive era is seen by the theoretician of historical materialism in the continuous narrowing of the circle of persons (of both sexes) who had the right to have sexual relations. Initially there was a group marriage, the so-called promiscuity, corresponding to the lowest stage of development of society. It was characterized by promiscuous sexual relations among members of the tribe, when all women belonged to all men, that is, it was of an actual nature. But already within the framework of group marriage, the creation of permanent couples for a more or less long period took place. The development of the clan and the increase in the groups of "sisters" and "brothers" was followed by the prohibition of marriages between blood relatives.

Thanks to the successive exclusion of first direct, then more distant relatives, and later even in-laws, any kind of group marriage becomes impossible. In this way, gradually and over the centuries, a pair marriage is formed. The latter is characterized by the abduction and purchase of women, the easy dissolution of the union both at the request of the man and the woman, while both parties retain the possibility of remarriage. Children, which is significant, in both cases remain with the mother. The author attributes the initiative of the transition to pair marriage exclusively to one sex. He attributes this to the development of economic living conditions, accompanied by the decay of ancient communism and an increase in population density. Under the influence of these conditions, the former relations between the sexes lost their naive character and seemed humiliating and burdensome to women, which in turn pushed them to seek the right to chastity, to temporary or permanent marriage exclusively with one man, as a deliverance. In the future, under the influence of the same circumstances, already men resorted to strict monogamy - of course, only for women.

For the transformation of pair marriage into monogamy, from the point of view of the analyst, new premises were needed. Engels believes that the domestication of animals and the breeding of herds created previously unheard-of sources of wealth and gave rise to radically different social relations. To whom did the herds belong? he asks. And he answers: at least on the threshold of reliable history - to the heads of families, however, just like the works of art of the barbarian era, metal utensils, luxury items and, of course, human cattle - slaves. The rapidly growing wealth, which passed into the private possession of individual families, dealt a severe blow to a society based on pair marriage and maternal lineage. But we must not forget that already a pair marriage placed a reliable natural father next to the mother, which was a new element. According to the division of labor in the family that existed at that time, the husband had to get food and the tools necessary for this, and hence the ownership of the latter, therefore, in the event of a divorce, he took them with him. While the woman was left with her household utensils. In addition, the man was the owner of the main source of food - livestock, but the children could not inherit from their father, since inheritance was carried out through the maternal line. Hence, insists the theorist of historical materialism, the latter had to be abolished, which really happened. For this, a simple decision was sufficient: from now on, the offspring of members of the male clan remains within it, while the offspring of women are excluded from it and pass into the clan of their father. Thus, the definition of descent from the female side and the right of inheritance from the maternal side were abolished, and, on the contrary, the definition of descent from the male side and the right of inheritance from the paternal side were introduced.

The first result of the established order is found in the emerging intermediate type of family - patriarchal. What is the main difference between the new type of family? Monogamy differs from a paired family by a much greater strength of marriage bonds, they can no longer be terminated at the request of either party. Now only the husband can reject his wife - get a divorce.

Monogamy, according to F. Engels, the first type of family, which was based not on natural, but on economic prerequisites, is precisely the victory of private property over the original, spontaneously formed common property. The dominance of the husband in the family and the birth of reliably known children who inherit his wealth - such was the ultimate goal of lifelong monogamy. In a word, monogamy does not originate as a consensual union between a man and a woman, much less as the highest form of this union. Furthermore. It appeared as the enslavement of one sex by the other, as the proclamation of a contradiction between the sexes, hitherto unknown in all previous times.

Lifelong monogamy, as a follower of K. Marx notes, brings both progress and relative regression. Along with lifelong monogamy, prostitution and adultery, forbidden, severely punished, but ineradicable, went in step.

What are the prospects for the family, according to Engels? Understanding the limits of possible predictions, he follows the motto of Karl Marx: "Doubt everything." But one thing seems unconditional to him: "we are moving towards a social upheaval, when the economic foundations of monogamy that have existed so far will just as inevitably disappear, as well as the foundations of its complement - prostitution." According to Engels, the transformation of the greater part of private property into public property as a result of the social upheaval will reduce to a minimum the concerns about the transfer of wealth to the heir.

With a change in economic conditions, it will no longer be necessary for a certain number of women to give themselves to men for money. Prostitution will disappear, and monogamy will finally become valid for men. And the author concludes optimistically: as soon as the economic considerations due to which women put up with the infidelity of men disappear - concern for their existence and even more children - then their equality will contribute more to the actual monogamy of men than the polyandry of women.

The works analyzed above are united by the idea of ​​the existence of group marriage in the early stages of human development. In contrast to them, the Soviet scientist L. A. Fainberg, based on numerous studies, puts forward a hypothesis about the presence of regulation of marriage relations among the most ancient people long before the appearance of a reasonable person, thereby rejecting the theory of promiscuity (promiscuity), allegedly practiced by man at the dawn its history. According to the researcher, biological prerequisites facilitated the development, of course, under the influence of social factors, primarily labor and hunting activities, of such institutions and norms of behavior of ancient people as the collectivism of production and consumption, regulation of sexual relations in the form of local group (but not yet generic) exogamy, that is, the prohibition of marriages within a certain social group, the leading role of women as a stable core of the prenatal community.

Summing up, we highlight the main provisions of the evolutionist approach:

1) the account of kinship on the mother's side precedes the account of kinship on the paternal side;

2) at the primary stage of sexual relations, along with temporary monogamous intercourse, wide freedom of marital intercourse prevails;

3) the evolution of marriage consisted in the gradual restriction of this freedom of sexual life;

4) the evolution of marriage consisted in the transition from group marriage to individual.

The theories of Lewis Morgan and Friedrich Engels are classical, and most scientists today adhere to their points of view.

2. 3 Family and marriage in the process of historical development - the evolution of family and marriage relations.

In the course of cultural and historical development, not only the form of family and marriage relations changed, but also the very content of these relations, in particular, between husband and wife. With the advent of monogamy, this change was more of a qualitative nature.

Marriage in antiquity. The emergence of urban civilization, the development of writing and reading skills led to the first written laws on marriage, which appeared in Ancient Babylon. Marriage in those days was also an economic deal: the future husband had to buy the girl from her father. In all ancient cultures, marriage-agreement and marriage-deal were commonplace.

In ancient Egypt, marriage was also arranged for economic or political reasons. Brothers and sisters often married so as not to share hereditary land or government posts inherited by the family.

The first historical form of monogamy, the patriarchal family, is ruled by the father, including his descendants, their wives and children, and domestic slaves.

History also knows the era of matriarchy, when a woman occupied a dominant position in ancient society, but there were special reasons for this. When a strict taboo was imposed on incest, a clan was formed as a new form of family, which, as already noted, was based on the principle of maternal kinship. In view of the fact that husbands and wives were common, it was practically impossible to trace the paternal line, and therefore only the mother and her children, who remained with her and made up her maternal clan, could really be recognized as blood relatives.

During the period of matriarchy, inheritance always went through the female line, and in marriage agreements, the groom's property was often transferred into the possession of the bride. Many pharaohs married their sisters and even daughters in connection with this, as this helped to preserve the throne, dynasty and inheritance.

So Cleopatra (69 - 30 BC) was first the wife of her older brother, then after his death, the wife of her younger brother. Each of these marriages gave them the right to own Egypt.

The first laws of Roman law are attributed to Romulus, the legendary founder of Rome. In accordance with these laws, a woman, connected with a man by the sacred bonds of marriage, was to become part of his property, all the rights of her husband extended to her. The law ordered wives to fully adapt to the character of their spouses, and husbands to manage their wives as their necessary property. The laws of Rome said that marriage existed solely for the sake of procreation, and also in order to ensure that family property remained indivisible. Many centuries later, Roman law formed the basis of English law, which still reserved great rights for husbands.

During the period of slavery Ancient Greece 4 types of women were known: 1) priestesses - servants of various cults, "mystical" women. 2) matrons - respectable, married women, mothers of children (the husband was called "you", for treason she could pay with her life or be sold into slavery); 3) slaves who were concubines of the plebeians; 4) getters - educated and gifted women (the so-called "women for pleasure");

Morals in ancient Sparta are illustrated by the following example. The Spartan allowed any man who asked him to have sexual intercourse with his wife. At the same time, the woman remained in her husband's house, the child born to her from an outside man also remained in the family (if it was a strong, healthy boy). This is understandable from the point of view of the sole purpose of the marriage of the Spartans, which was the birth of children.

Let us quote the words of F. Engels: “The overthrow of maternal right was a worldwide historical defeat of the female sex. The husband seized the reins of government in the house, and the wife was deprived of her honorary position, enslaved, turned into a slave to his desires, into a simple instrument of procreation.

With the advent of private property, a woman becomes a powerless domestic servant with numerous household duties, she cannot even dispose of personal property without the permission of her husband, and in the event of his death, power in the house passed to her son.

According to historians, a woman could share a bed with her husband, but not a meal. In ancient Greece, a beautiful woman was worth several heads of cattle.

European marriage in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. During the 4th and 5th centuries, Europe was constantly subjected to the invasion of the northern barbarian tribes, who brought their ideas about marriage, their marriage rites. For example, in accordance with the traditions of the Germanic tribes, marriage was monogamous, and adultery, both husband and wife, was strictly punished by morality and law. The French tribes, on the contrary, approved of polygamy and allowed the sale and purchase of brides. At the same time, almost all barbarian tribes believed that marriage exists for the sake of the family, for the sake of sexual and economic convenience.

With the transition from a tribal to a national community, with the strengthening of royal power, the feudal leaders gradually lost their absolute power, including the right to decide on the marriages of their vassals and smerds.

The Middle Ages are covered with a halo of chivalry. However, in the marriage sphere, the situation looked like this: the knights had to marry the ladies of their circle. In essence, marriage was a socio-economic deal: on the one hand, the girl "sold" her virginity, chastity, on the other hand, the man took on the obligation to support and provide for her and future children. For the aristocracy, marriage was a political act, the best way to increase their influence and power. The same attitude towards marriage existed among the guild masters of medieval cities and among the merchants.

Ideas about serenades require clarification in the sense that they, as a rule, were sung under the window of other people's wives. But while a married man sang under the window of someone else's wife, another could be under the window of his own wife. The idea of ​​troubadours of the Middle Ages is well combined with the image of a cuckold.

By the Renaissance and the Reformation, marriages based on a voluntary union became possible. At the same time, a more liberal point of view on marriage began to spread, new spiritual and sexual trends appeared.

The Renaissance, essentially a revolutionary era, became "a completely exceptional age of fiery sensuality." Together with the ideal of physical beauty, and as a result of it, productivity, fertility was elevated to the ideal. In other words, “volcanic passions in both sexes were considered the highest virtues. Having many children brought glory and was common, not having them was considered a punishment for some kind of sin and was relatively rare.

The Family in Bible Times. Researchers of the Hebrew family found in it elements of phratriarchy (when the elder brother is the head), matriarchy, but in general the structure of the Hebrew family is patriarchal. The husband was the master of his wife: he slept with her, she bore him children, and he had absolute power over the offspring.

The family was not closed: it included all blood relatives, as well as servants, slaves, accusers, widows, orphans related to the family. All of them were under the protection of the family. If the damage inflicted on the family was so serious that revenge was required, this became the prerogative of the "redeemer", "deliverer". Revenge could be carried out in the form of a "vendetta" - blood feud.

"Marriage conspiracy" was committed by family members or their official representatives. The groom paid the bride's family mohar (ransom, compensation) - partly to somehow compensate for the loss of his daughter, but mainly due to the fact that all the children she would give birth to in the future would be members of the husband's family.

In most cases, the groom did not see the bride until the marriage was concluded. Gifts were exchanged at the wedding.

Both men and women married young. Mixed marriages took place but were not encouraged. The purpose of marriage was to strengthen the family, preferably consisting of males. Extramarital affairs were forbidden, and treason or fornication was punished.

There was a clear distinction between the importance of men and women. The man had more freedom and value in the eyes of society. The purpose of a woman was to bear and give birth to children for her husband and to help him in all his affairs. She must make him happy, satisfy his sexual needs and follow his orders in everything. Women had practically no social status, and all decisions were made by men. “Certainly,” writes J. Larue, “many women had more power than it seems in intra-family situations. To express her demands, a woman had many means at her disposal - anger, whims, an evil tongue, but the submissive woman always remained the ideal.

Pagan family. An example of a family characteristic of pagan culture is the Russian family of the 12th-14th centuries. The relationship between husband and wife in this family was not built on the relationship of "dominance-submission", but "on the initial conflict", as emphasized by V. N. Druzhinin in his work "Psychology of the Family"

The woman had freedom both premarital and in marriage. Not only the power of the father was limited, but also the power of the husband. The woman had the possibility of a divorce and could return to her mother and father. In families, the main role was played by the “big woman” - the eldest most able-bodied and experienced woman, usually the wife of the father or eldest son, all the younger men of a large family obeyed her. At the same time, the man was responsible for the external natural and social space, the woman dominated the internal space - the house and family.

A similar picture can be seen, according to V. N. Druzhinin, in most other pagan civilizations, for example, in ancient Greek. In ancient mythology, gender parity is observed: male and female deities are equal, and the relationship between them is complex and ambiguous, including the struggle.

In the relationship between parents and children, children occupied a subordinate position.

Christian family model. The victory of the Christian model of the family over the pagan one is characterized by a change in the types of relationships between father, mother and child.

During the period of early Christianity, many marriage laws were radically changed. For example, polygamous marriages and levirate, a custom that obliges the brother of the deceased to marry his widow, were banned.

In the days of the first Christians, the concept of the family differed little from that of the Jews. The man remained the main figure endowed with power. The wife had to obey him.

The patriarch is the head of the clan, the father of the family, and also performs the functions of a leader. Merging the roles of Father and Leader, as well as Father and Teacher, is a characteristic feature of patriarchal culture.

In a primitive, pre-literate society where there is no strong state power, the father may or may not be the head of the family. The state, whether it be a monarchy or tyranny, makes the head of the family a pillar of power, forming a miniature of social relations in the family. Family members obey the father, as subjects of a monarch or dictator, and, further, like all people, to the one God, the Heavenly Father. The triad - Father - Ruler - God is the basis of the patriarchal ideology. On the one hand, the father (the real father of the family) is assigned the functions of a monarch in miniature, on the other hand, the ruler, and then God is also assigned paternal qualities: a combination of rigor and justice, the ability to resolve all conflicts “in a family way”.

In general, as V. N. Druzhinin accurately noted, no world religion assigns such an important place to the family in the system of dogma as Christianity. Therefore, it is especially interesting to consider the model or, more precisely, the model of the Christian family. As V. N. Druzhinin notes, the Christian doctrine prescribes to the world two models of the family: the ideal “divine” and the real, earthly.

The ideal Christian family includes: Father, Son and Mother (Virgin Mary). The real, earthly family is the "Holy Family": Jesus Christ, foster father Joseph, Virgin Mary. Christianity separates the father-educator, who is responsible for the life, health, well-being of the family (first of all, the child), and the genetic, spiritual father, whose function is realized by God the Father. The earthly model of the Christian family is a classic version of the child-centric family.

It is interesting that in Catholicism the cult of the Mother of God, the Virgin Mary, is of particular importance, and vice versa, almost all Protestant creeds ignore any role of her. The Protestant family is the relationship of man to man: father to son, master to heir, potentially equal. Protestant activist Martin Luther (1485 - 1546) opposed the traditional sacrament of marriage, believed that the purpose of marriage is the birth of children and the joint life of spouses in mutual fidelity. The attitude towards a woman (wife, spouse, daughter) remained outside the sphere of relations consecrated by religion. At the same time, by the 17th century in Germany, Holland and Scotland, the view of family relations as the spiritual unity of husband and wife began to spread.

Some of the restrictive marriage traditions adopted in Europe were brought to the New World by early settlers. Interestingly, for example, Calvin's dogmatic condemnation of intimate pleasure dominated the minds of Americans, especially Puritans, for many years. Anti-sexual and moralistic attitudes dominated the colonies for a long time. At the beginning of the period of colonization, marriages were arranged solely for reasons of convenience. Women occupied a powerless, subordinate position.

As women gained more rights in the United States, attitudes towards marriage changed radically. This was facilitated first by the struggle of women for voting rights, and later by the growing feminist movement.

In Christian Scripture, more attention is paid to the relationship of spouses than to parents and children, and even more so to sexual relationships. The latter are taken as inevitable givens, although in some verses we may encounter advice to avoid sexual relations altogether:

“And what you wrote to me about, it’s good for a person not to touch a woman at all. But in order to avoid fornication, each one should have his own wife, and each one should have her own husband. ... Do not deviate from each other, except by agreement, for a while, for exercise in fasting and prayer, and then be together again, so that Satan does not tempt you with your intemperance. However, I said this as a permission, and not as a command.

And if possible, it is better to avoid marriage as well, since "... An unmarried man takes care of the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord, but a married man takes care of the things of the world, how to please his wife"

Intra-family relations according to Domostroy. In the Russian religious worldview, the roots of paganism, "dual faith" are quite strong. Perhaps that is why Orthodox Christianity stood in the struggle between two pagan principles - female and male - on the side of the male, leading the family to the "moral" dominance of the husband over his wife and children. In house building, much attention is paid to the distribution of roles in the family and how to make sure that the main place in the house belongs not to the wife, but to the husband.

Domostroy does not know the term family in its modern interpretation. He uses the word "house", denoting it as a kind of single economic and spiritual whole, whose members are in a relationship of domination-submission, but are necessary for the normal life of the home organism.

The duty of the head of the family is to take care of the well-being of the house and the upbringing, including spiritual, of its members. The wife is obliged to do needlework herself and know all the housework in order to teach and supervise the servants. In addition, she is engaged in the upbringing and education of her daughters (the education of sons is the duty of the father). All decisions related to "house construction" are made jointly by the husband and wife. They should discuss family issues daily and in private.

The role of the wife and mother in Domostroy was highly valued. The wife in Domostroy is the regulator of emotional relations in the family, she is also responsible for family charity. Domostroy recommends that the wife “to unify her husband”, that is, to act in accordance with his desires and ideas. It follows from the text that in family relations all sorts of "unlike things are condemned: fornication, foul language and shameful language, and an oath, and rage, and anger, and vindictiveness ..."

Love for children in Domostroy is regarded as a completely natural feeling, as well as concern for their bodily well-being; concern for the spiritual development of children is considered less common. However, in terms of their position in the family, they are closer to servants than to parents. The main duty of children is love for their parents, complete obedience in childhood and youth, and care for them in old age. Anyone who beats parents is subject to excommunication and the death penalty.

To date, such families have appeared, the description of which in the historical context does not correspond to traditional ideas. The American psychotherapist V. Satir calls them non-traditional: single-parent families and mixed (by definition, V. Satir, these are families that combine parts of pre-existing families).

The genesis of family and marriage relations occurs in accordance with the change of cultural and historical eras, social relations and religious ideas.

2. 4 The role of the family in society. Its meaning

in the formation and development of personality.

A family is those people whom we see from the very beginning of our life to its very end, these are the people who educate us, teach us to love or hate, to be interested in the world or to be afraid of it, to trust people or avoid them. And most of the problems, including the scale of the whole country, stem from there. In modern society, no one is surprised when they hear about a “family” where parents are drunk and children grow up on the streets - thank God, there are not many such families. But even in the most seemingly decent families, relations are sometimes so wild that there is nothing to be surprised when you see the behavior of a child who grew up in such a family.

The family can be compared to a cell. Millions of such “cells” make up the “body” of our society, our nation, our culture. In each such “cell”, smaller particles, molecules, function. These are people: spouses and their children. Consequently, the quality of the cell-family depends on the correct functioning of molecules, on the strength or weakness of their bonds, the nature of their relationships, and the state of the whole body-society, its “health” depends on the quality of the cell. Just as a sick cell creates sick organisms, so a spiritually flawed family reproduces morally unhealthy relationships in society.

Like every cell, the family performs certain functions assigned to it by society throughout history. If we rely on the three most general approaches to the family, that is, consider it as a social institution, as a small group and as a system of relationships, we can see that more and more functions, roles and values ​​in the family depend on its constituent individuals. Thus, the function of the family is the sphere of family life associated with the satisfaction of certain needs of its members.

It should be noted that there is no single list of the main functions of the family. Usually, different authors offer one or another set of functions and terms based on their theory. It is important that we are talking about the main groups of needs that the family can and should fulfill.

Different authors, listing the functions of the family, call them differently, but the set of functions they distinguish is quite similar. I. V. Grebennikov refers to the functions of the family reproductive, economic, educational, communicative, the function of organizing leisure and recreation.

E. G. Eidemiller and V. V. Yustitzkis note that the family has educational, household and emotional functions, as well as the functions of spiritual communication, primary social control and sexual and erotic functions.

Some authors (A. G. Kharchev, A. I. Antonov) divide the functions of the family into specific, arising from the essence of the family and reflecting its features as a social phenomenon, and non-specific - those functions to which the family was forced or adapted in certain historical circumstances. The specific functions of the family are preserved with all changes in society - reproductive (birth), existential (maintenance), socializing (education).

Non-specific functions include accumulation and transfer of property, status, organization of production and consumption, household, recreation and leisure, care for the health and well-being of family members, creation of a microclimate conducive to stress relief and self-preservation of the “I” of each, etc. These functions reveal the historically transient picture of family life.

Researchers agree that the functions of the family reflect the historical nature of the relationship between the family and society, the dynamics of family changes at different historical stages. The modern family has lost many functions that strengthened it in the past: production, protective, educational, etc. However, some functions remain unchanged, and in this sense they can be called traditional, only the means of their implementation change.

Economic and economic the function is related to the nutrition of the family, the acquisition and maintenance of household property, clothing, footwear, home improvement, the creation of home comfort, the organization of life and life of the family, the formation and expenditure of the household budget. This function changes its content with the change and development of ways of producing goods.

Regenerative the function is associated with the inheritance of the status of a family name, property, social status. This also includes the transfer of some family "jewels", relics. This function was most relevant during the periods of feudalism, when the continuation of the clan, the dynasty was necessary.

Recreational function - This is the provision of recreation, organization of leisure, care for the health and well-being of family members.

Researchers call one of the main functions reproductive, existing since ancient times and substantiating the existence of the institution of the family as such. In other words, the reproduction of the human species, the continuation of the race - this is the main thing for which the family was created and existed and for which it primarily exists today. The need for children is realized with the performance of this function.

For population growth, it is necessary that a family has at least three children - two reproduce their parents, the third increases the number. Traditionally, peasant families in Russia were distinguished by large families, this was necessary to perform numerous household chores: caring for livestock, working in the field, etc. The birth of children was also encouraged by the church - as God gave, so many should be born. Naturally, the termination of pregnancy was out of the question. A large number of children also guaranteed the continuation and spread of the family. Chinese emperors, for example, could marry nine girls from three different states at once “to increase offspring due to the expansion of the family”

Urbanization, difficult economic conditions do not contribute to the growth of the birth rate, therefore, at present, most parents are forced to limit themselves to the birth of one, maximum two children. Now the birth of a child is consistent with the ability of parents to provide him with a decent life.

closely related to reproductive educational function. A person acquires value for society only when he becomes a personality, and its formation requires a purposeful, systematic impact. Namely, the family, with its constant and natural nature of influence, is called upon to form the character traits, beliefs, views, worldview of the child.

Upbringing has a close connection with education, training and is realized in the process of creative mastery of all cultural achievements available to mankind, characteristic of a given socio-historical context. Education, according to the definition of K. M. Khoruzhenko, is the development in the individual of certain human qualities and the assimilation of moral, scientific, cognitive and artistic culture, which naturally orients the personality towards certain values: attitude towards goodness, truth, beauty. The goals, content and organization of education are determined by the prevailing social relations and depend on the traditions and norms of the respective culture.

Family and social education are interconnected, complement each other and can, within certain limits, even replace each other, but in general they are not equivalent. Family upbringing is more emotional in nature than any other upbringing, because its conductor is parental love for children, which evokes reciprocal feelings of children for their parents, says A.I. Zakharov.

Education is associated with such a concept as socialization.

Socialization - this is the process of familiarization with the values ​​and norms accepted in society and its subsystems, in other words, it is the entry of an individual into society and culture (the concept of “inculturation” is often applied to the latter). This concept is close to the word "education", but education implies, first of all, directed actions, through which the individual is consciously trying to instill the desired traits and properties. Whereas socialization, along with education, includes unintentional, spontaneous influences, thanks to which the individual joins the culture and becomes a full-fledged and full-fledged member of society.

In the early stages of social development, socialization was dominated by the direct practical inclusion of the child in the activities of adults; later on, systematic training, which for some time may not be associated with productive labor at all, took on an ever greater role. That is, over time, “preparation for life” is increasingly separated from practical participation in it. And today, family socialization is, on the one hand, preparation for future family roles and, on the other hand, it affects the formation of a socially competent, mature personality.

What a child acquires in the family in childhood, he retains throughout his subsequent life. The importance of the family as an institution of education is due to the fact that the child lives in it for a significant part of his life, and in terms of the duration of his impact on the personality, none of the institutions of education can be compared with the family. It lays the foundations of the child's personality, and by the time he enters school, he is already more than half formed as a person.

The family can act as both a positive and a negative factor in upbringing. The positive impact on the personality of the child is that no one, except for the people closest to him in the family - mother, father, grandmother, grandfather, brother, sister, treats the child better, does not love him and does not care so much about him. And at the same time, no other social institution can potentially do as much harm in raising children as a family can.

Parents can love a child not for something, despite the fact that he is ugly, not smart, neighbors complain about him. The child is accepted as he is. Such love is called unconditional.

It happens that parents love a child when he meets their expectations, when he studies well and behaves. but if the child does not satisfy those needs, then the child is, as it were, rejected, the attitude changes for the worse. This brings significant difficulties, the child is not sure of his parents, he does not feel the emotional security that should be from infancy. This is conditional love.

The main thing in the upbringing of a small person is the achievement of spiritual unity, the moral connection of parents with a child.

With the advent of Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis at the beginning of the 20th century, increased attention is paid to the period of childhood as the basis for personality development. His postulate about childhood experience as a determining factor in the formation of a child was continued in his works by such scientists as Karen Horney, Alfred Adler, Carl Gustav Jung, Eric Erickson and others.

The leading role in these theories is given to the need to meet the needs of the child.

Physiological Needs are food, sleep, physical activity, etc. For example, insufficient feeding of a child in early childhood can lead to such a trait as greed or excess in food.

Needs for security and protection most pronounced in infants and young children, the satisfaction of these needs in the family depends entirely on the parents. Frequent parental quarrels, cases of physical abuse, separation. Divorce makes the child's environment unstable, unpredictable and therefore unreliable.

Needs of belonging and love play a significant role in our lives. The child passionately wants to live in an atmosphere of love and care, in which all his needs are met and he receives a lot of affection. It is the love of parents for their child and each other that is the guarantor of the positive development of the individual.

In addition, sufficient satisfaction of the listed needs of the child at an early age gives him grounds for further full development already in adulthood and the realization of the highest need for self-realization, which can be achieved through creativity.

It is difficult to overestimate the importance of parental care for a child. American biologist Desmond Maurice states: "No other species on earth has such a huge parental task as a person - biologically parental feelings personify our immortality"

Worldview, the formation of character, moral foundations, attitude to spiritual and material values ​​are primarily brought up in children by their parents, writes the Polish psychologist M. Zemska.

For the development of a child's personality, the whole family and all types of family roles are important: mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers. “Each member of the family group creates a special type of communication for the child. Therefore, the absence of any of them upsets the system of interactions and relationships.

The mother is with the child from the moment of his birth, or rather, from the moment of conception, during this period, the development of the child is influenced by the attitude of the mother to the fact of pregnancy, the attitude of others towards the mother herself. The mother acts for the child as a symbol of security, reliability, which are so necessary for the little man who has just been born. According to the observations of researchers, the process of childbirth and the first contact between mother and child immediately after birth are also important. In Russian villages, it was customary to give birth in a bathhouse, which, perhaps, helped the child to calmly transfer the transition from the warm, moist mother's womb to new conditions for him. For the same purpose, the so-called alternative childbirth in water is now being distributed. In this sense, the modern European type of childbirth appears in a more favorable light (the child is given to the mother immediately, the presence of a husband is possible, the opportunity to give birth at home) than the childbirth taken "in the Soviet way", when the child is immediately weaned from the mother, swaddled tightly, and the young mother sees her child mostly only during feeding.

Breastfeeding is an important intimate moment that helps to establish a deeper intimate contact, the basis for further loving relationships. “By immaculately fulfilling the role of a nurse, avoiding untimely absences and not allowing herself to be carried away by other people, affairs, personal interests, the mother thereby gives the baby the opportunity to establish and maintain in the future a constant and strong attachment to the mother” - such is the conviction of A. Freud. The constancy of this attachment, in her opinion, will serve as a strong basis for the formation and development in the future of such attachment to the father, brothers, sisters and, finally, to other people.

In modern society, there is a prejudice that a father is needed only after the child begins to speak, move independently, reason, and already becomes quite interesting in the sense of communication. Therefore, many men in the first years of life prefer to withdraw themselves, waiting for a more “favorable” time. But it has already been proven that it is in early childhood (from birth to about 6 years old) that a father is most needed for both boys and girls. Fathers are encouraged to stroke the child as often as possible, to take him in his arms, to talk to him, to follow the usual care procedures. It was found that the success of a child in society is given, first of all, by a man. It is the man who prepares the child for his subsequent entry into society. This is not an easy task, because as far as he himself is socially successful, his example enables the child to master the skills of social interaction.

The stability of the family environment is an important factor for the emotional and mental balance of the child. The breakup of a family associated with divorce or separation of parents always brings a deep shock and leaves a strong resentment in the child.

According to M. Zemskaya, separation from one of the parents can lead to a child's feelings of fear, depression, and loss of a sense of security. Many researchers note that the shock that a parent's divorce is for a child also creates certain conditions for his antisocial behavior.

The very atmosphere of family relations affects the child, his behavior, idea of ​​himself, of the world. Tension and conflict situations have a negative effect. The house ceases to be a support for the child, the sense of security is lost, this can lead the child, especially in adolescence, to seek support outside the home. In this state, children are more easily amenable to external influences. In families where parental consent reigns, children rarely go astray.

The mutual relations of parents influence the child's assimilation of behavior associated with his gender, and the child can appropriate types of behavior that do not correspond to his gender. As M. Zemska notes, in those families where mothers speak of fathers as very cordial people who treat their children with love, boys choose the fatherly role in games. In the same cases when the mother critically evaluates her husband, the boys chose the maternal role in the game.

In a complete family, children have the opportunity not only to imitate the parent, but also to differ from the parent of the opposite sex. A girl’s personal model of her father helps her to believe in herself, and in the future to understand her husband and son. For a boy, the closeness of his mother gives him the ability to better understand his wife and daughter in the future.

In a traditional Russian family, with the birth of a child, a complex mechanism of the clan was connected to his upbringing. Communication in the family, as well as with close relatives, always, ultimately, carried a spiritual and psychological burden. Any nuances in the relationship of parents with each other, with relatives are sensitively caught by children both at the conscious and unconscious levels. Openness or isolation, sincerity or pretense, sympathy or indifference, generosity or stinginess, benevolence or coldness - everything falls on the scales of children's perception, is deposited in memory with various emotional shades, influencing the formation of the child's personality accordingly.

Each person has a grateful memory of childhood impressions of communicating with grandparents. The world of a child is inconceivable without lullabies, fairy tales, instructive stories. Grandparents told their grandchildren about their young years, games, service or work, meetings and communication with interesting people, shared their life experiences, while they undoubtedly remembered their parents, grandparents. This veneration of the blessed memory of the ancestors preserved the feeling of their presence in the family. Yes, and the house itself, furniture, things bought by them or made by their own hands, supported this atmosphere, created a kind of moral nourishment. Thus, three, sometimes four generations participated in living communication, which were connected by living memory with two more generations that had left this world. All these seven generations constituted a kind of root that goes into the depths of the family.

The family is a complex socio-cultural organism that has gone through stages in its development from the “lower” group marriage, with unregulated sexual relations, to monogamy, which has created what we now call the cell of society. With the development of social relations, the intra-family way of life took on various forms. Depending on the culture, religion, there were also various intra-family relations. But at all times, the family has been responsible for the performance of certain functions related both to satisfying the personal needs of each family member and the needs of society. Probably the most important role of the family is the upbringing of a full-fledged spiritual and moral personality, capable of creativity and creation. And for centuries, this is what most families have been striving for.

Chapter 3. PROBLEMS OF FAMILY AND MARRIAGE RELATIONS

IN MODERN CONDITIONS.

3. 1 Paired relations between men and women in the modern world.

The modern family, according to researchers, is taking on a new form, where interpersonal relations of spouses come to the fore, hence the name given to this type of family - marital.

A family union is, first of all, the union of a man and a woman, it is from these two principles that a new family is born, and it is in their hands that the happiness of each other and their children is contained, therefore the role of the relationship between a man and a woman has repeatedly increased. Society is changing, and ideas traditionally associated with the role and significance of both sexes are changing.

A modern man, demanding from a woman independence, independence, initiative, strength, at the same time expects from her humility, weakness, and recognition of him (the man) as the head. That is, traditional patriarchal models come into conflict with modern conditions in which women and men become on the same level. For example, we can cite a fairly typical marriage announcement published in an Irkutsk newspaper:

“A fair-haired man of athletic build 35-180-80, high school, an entrepreneur to create a family will meet a kind, economic girl 23-30 years old, preferably a bright, spectacular brunette”

This ad shows a mixture of the ideals of the modern woman ( "bright and effective") and a patriarchal idea of ​​her role in the family ( "kind, economic").

The equality of men and women leads to the fact that the original meanings of the existence of two opposite principles are lost.

“The relationship between a man and a woman is obviously a very complex problem, otherwise many people would not have difficulties in resolving it,” writes the 20th-century American humanist psychologist Erich Fromm. What are these difficulties? Perhaps they are due to gender differences.

In modern science, gender studies occupy an increasing place. In a certain sense, attention to gender issues is generated by feminist ideas that are spreading around the world. Once having achieved recognition of their rights, women turned the whole society upside down.

As part of these studies, questions are raised about who should babysit children. and who build a career? How much should a woman earn? How should household chores be divided? etc. Sociologists and social psychologists deal with these questions and many others. They also share the concepts of "sex" and "gender".

­ Floor is a biological characteristic that determines the physiological difference between a man and a woman.

Gender - forms of behavior, actions that are considered generally accepted for men and women in the context of a given society or culture. These forms may or may not be associated with biological sex and sex roles, although, as a rule, such a relationship exists.

Sociologist L. N. Sinitsyna defines gender as a kind of dimension of social relations rooted in a given culture. “The subject not only learns and reproduces gender rules and relationships, but also creates them. This is a system of interpersonal interaction, in the course of which ideas about male and female as the basic categories of society are affirmed and reproduced.

Based on this concept, we can talk about the existence of gender stereotypes, which are behavioral characteristics attributed to men and women. To be a man and a woman and to show it in the practice of social communication, to successfully implement the stereotypes of "male" and "female" in this culture - this is the guarantor of the preservation of social order, L. N. Sinitsyna believes.

Every culture has its own gender stereotypes. At the same time, Sean Byrne in his work "Gender Psychology" cites the results of a study by Western scientists Williams and Best, during which a survey was conducted of representatives of 30 countries. Scientists have found that there is a fairly high commonality in views on male and female characteristics.

In most cultures, aggressiveness, activity, decisiveness, authority, rationality, etc. are attributed to a man. The woman was described as talkative, receptive, kind, changeable, soft, submissive, weak, sensitive, emotional. Interestingly, in different cultures, the same trait can be both positive and negative. For example, in Australia, Brazil, Peru and Italy, male stereotypes were rather negative, while in Japan and Nigeria they were rather positive. In relation to a woman, they are more favorable in Italy, Peru, Scotland, and vice versa in South Africa, Japan, Nigeria, Malaysia.

Such differences in the assessment of stereotypes, according to the results of the analysis of Williams and Best, are explained by the different religions practiced in these countries. Women were rated positively in those countries whose traditions include the worship of female deities and where women are allowed to participate in religious ceremonies. For example, in Catholic countries where there is a cult of the Virgin Mary and monasticism for women. In Pakistan, female stereotypes are more negative than in India. In the Islamic theology of Pakistan, all significant religious figures are men and religious rites are performed only by men. On the contrary, Hindu Indians follow a religious tradition that includes the worship of female deities. Both women and men serve in Hindu temples and are responsible for performing religious rites.

As far as a man and a woman are opposite, they are equivalent. Indeed, in certain situations, certain behavior is necessary. As Sean Byrne writes: “Most social roles are played primarily by either one or the other sex. Female roles tend to require different behaviors and skills than male roles. As a result, it seems that both genders are very different from each other.”

As already mentioned, a married family is a union of two equal individuals. But gender stereotypes do not allow such relations to fully develop in modern conditions. For centuries, the man was the head of the family, the patriarch of his mini-state. The woman was in a subordinate position and financially dependent on the man. Today, the woman has reached a new level. Now she often does not depend on a man, she herself earns a living for herself and for the life of her children. The man lost his authority as the breadwinner of the family, and this was his main task for centuries. Until now, in some traditional societies, we can observe this type of hierarchy in the family, for example, in the Muslim world.

Consequently, since a woman can do without a man in her social life, then the family loses its significance and may even disappear altogether as unnecessary.

But the existence of two sexes and their union in a couple, in a family, contains something more than simple material support. Based on the analysis of different studies and approaches, we ventured to conclude that pair relations have the following meanings:

metaphysical

Psychological

Social

Biological.

It is at these four levels that the relationship between a man and a woman acquires a meaning that modern humanity needs to realize.

As you know, modernity has again begun to turn to the teachings and knowledge of antiquity. And it was the ancients who clearly knew why and why a man and a woman live on earth. Which was reflected in various mythological and religious ideas of ancient people. The author of the book "Metaphysics of Sex" Julius Evola calls the awareness of the primordial opposite of the sexes the main feature of the traditional world. “The sexual division, before its physical existence, was and is a transcendent principle present in the realm of the sacred, cosmic, spiritual. Among the many mythological figures of gods and goddesses, the nature of the eternally masculine and eternally feminine is clearly traced, the product of which is the division of people into two sexes.

In other words, all divine dyads and dichotomies are not the product of man's fantasy generated by his own sexual experience. On the contrary, he is a “metaphysical existence” and, according to the teachings of the Tantric and Sahaic schools, the division into men and women has strictly ontological beginnings, expressed as Shiva and Parvati or, in mythology, as Krishna and Radha.

The main traditional principle is always that creation or manifestation is the result of the duality of the main bases that make up the highest unity.

According to Greek philosophy, masculine is form, feminine is matter. In order for something to appear, matter, as an environment and means of any development, must be excited and awakened to becoming. The form has in itself the power to determine, to implement the principles of movement, development, formation. Nature among the Greeks is identified with the feminine, with the masculine - the Logos, fertilizing, moving, changing.

Other symbols of the eternally masculine and eternally feminine are Heaven and Earth. In the Eastern tradition, the sky is identified with "active perfection", and the earth with "passive perfection". “The man corresponds to the one who creates, the female corresponds to the perceiver,” says the Great Treatise.

In the Eastern tradition, the author notes, the metaphysical dyad is most fully expressed in the form of a yin-yang pair. Yang is heavenly, active, positive, masculine, and yin is earthly, passive, negative, feminine. In a dynamic aspect, yin-yang are opposite and at the same time complementary. In the traditional Chinese worldview, yin and yang are the main forces. Everything in the universe is the result of the confrontation and interaction of these two types of energy.

As the Book of Changes says, "Yin cannot give birth to things by itself, just as yang cannot grow." So a woman cannot conceive on her own (except perhaps the Virgin Mary), not to mention men.

It was the continuous interaction of yin and yang that created a huge universe full of all kinds of things. It must be clarified that the pure forms of yin and yang are exceptions. Everything that exists consists of the union of these principles, the quality of phenomena is determined by the prevailing energy.

In the Indian tradition, we meet all the same features of the same symbolism. In Hinduism, the creation of the world occurs due to the combination of the masculine principle - Shiva and the feminine - Shakti. Through their loving embrace, the world is born.

In this case, Shakti is "power", creative energy, which is one of the incarnations of Shiva's wife Parvati. In Hindu teachings, the feminine principle is seen as an active principle, thanks to which the spouse manifests his potentialities. In the Hindu view, Shiva is present in the motionless, conscious, spiritual, homogeneous, and Shakti is present in the changeable, unconsciously vital, natural. It is Shakti that becomes the cause of any change. “Thus, it is said that Shiva without Shakti is not capable of any movement, is inactive, and, on the contrary, Shakti without Shiva is unconscious, so to speak, devoid of the light principle.”

In the Buddhist tradition (Mahayana), the image of a bodhisattva in union (that is, the male aspect with the female) is common. What expresses the unity of creative activity. Contained in the female image, and the method concluded in the male image.

Considering Christianity, a religion that has absorbed motifs from different traditions, Evola attributes the features of the feminine principle to the Holy Spirit. It is based on the words of Christ: "My mother, the Holy Spirit." And he also draws an analogy with the Mediterranean goddesses - the Cretan Potnia, Ishtar, Circe, Militta, Aphrodite herself. In those cases when they act as a kind of "wind" and have a dove as their symbol, like the Holy Spirit.

The combination of these two divine units, two principles, fundamental principles finds its earthly embodiment in the marriage of a man and a woman. In the traditional world, marriage acquires a sacred meaning.

Now we will consider the biological meaning of the pair bond. The biological approach connects the existence of two sexes with the needs of the reproduction process itself. But according to L. L. Kupriyanchik, “this cannot be the root cause of the emergence of sexes.” She builds her proof on examples of the methods of reproduction of primitive organisms, which "reproduce excellently without separation by sex, and some dioecious creatures retain the ability to reproduce asexually."

We list these methods:

Division (amoeba, infusoria)

Budding (yeast, hydra)

sporulation

Parthogenesis - reproduction by the development of unfertilized "female" eggs (some types of crustaceans, lizards)

An interesting fact, cited by the researcher, is that female germ cells are also capable of partogenetic development. “True, for such a development to end in the development of a child, an incredible combination of happy circumstances is necessary.”

Further, she suggests that it is possible that with prolonged same-sex reproduction, due to a violation of the genetic code, degeneration of organisms should occur, as in the case of marriages between close relatives. But he immediately refutes this assumption, referring to the experiment conducted by biologists, when for 22 years scientists observed the reproduction of a single ciliate - no degeneration occurred.

Thus, it was not the tasks of reproduction that caused the appearance of two sexes. LL Kupriyanchik singles out two additional purposes of nature, which this separation serves.

“One of these goals is to preserve the “breed”, to keep the species at a certain level, that is, what I usually call evolution.” Males are responsible for the quality of the offspring, only the strongest and most adapted to life can give full-fledged offspring. This means that the main reason for bisexuality is “the impossibility in another way to provide the required number of high-quality offspring.”

The second reason for bisexuality is that it allowed evolution to proceed at a faster pace. When a child is born from two parents, he inherits both the qualities of one and the qualities of the other. The various valuable qualities acquired in this way help the species to develop and expand.

In addition to the process of reproduction itself, the pair relationship is due to the fact that the human cub is initially completely unadapted to independent life over a long period of time. Even in the animal kingdom, we can observe that the duration of the existence of a pair bond depends on the time after which the cubs begin to independently take care of their food and survival. In addition, in human society this period drags on for a longer period, since social prerequisites are added to the biological ones (graduation from school, institute). It is known that as soon as the children leave the family, the spouses experience a crisis in their life together.

According to D. Maurice, the mechanism that contributes to the creation of a pair bond is love, which here has an important biological function, the formation of a stable pair bond.

The modern family differs in many ways from the families of the past, in particular, it is the opportunity for young people to freely choose their future spouse or spouse. Various sociological and psychological studies of modern youth show that love has become the main motive for marriage. “We love each other and want to be together!” - that's what you can hear now from the newlyweds, if you ask them why they got married.

Love, researchers say, is a purely human phenomenon. The driving force and the inner essence of love is the sexual desire of men and women, the instinct of procreation.

Modern American biologist Desmond Maurice conducted research in the field of human relationships. Comparing human behavior with the behavior of animals, he notes that in the animal world there is no or almost no such process as courtship, it is superfluous. The instinct of procreation is in no way connected in animals with any love feelings, it is simply a preference for a stronger and more physically complete male by the female. Although a person also makes a lot of efforts, uses various tricks, often unconsciously, to attract the attention of the opposite sex and evoke reciprocal feelings. But, importantly, such behavior does not always pursue its ultimate goal of procreation and the birth of healthy offspring. It rather becomes a subconscious criterion when choosing a partner, since men and women with more pronounced external sexual characteristics still enjoy great success (narrow waist, smooth skin, rounded outlines - in women; muscular torso, broad shoulders, narrow pelvis, thick neck , low voice - in men). In this case, the scientist claims, deep natural instincts operate.

But in human society, biological characteristics do not play a major role; social and psychological criteria are also taken into account: position in society, material opportunities, moral level, etc.

Therefore, the creation of a pair of a man and a woman makes sense not only biologically, but also psychologically. It has been proven that we feel better, less stressed, within the same pair connection. And today, 99% of people live in a pair relationship and this is the fundamental state of the human species.

It should be added that children brought up in a couple in the process of socialization learn cultural patterns of gender behavior. It is known that gender identity is formed in children at the age of 5-7 years, then, starting from the age of 17, the worldview of the personality of its idea of ​​its own purpose and meaning of life is formed. Looking at his mother and father, a young man creates for himself an "ideal model" of masculinity and femininity, which he will follow. Therefore, the parents as a man and a woman are responsible for what this model will be.

Social meaning to some extent unifies all the others. It is the family that carries all these meanings and meanings. The family is also the unity of two opposite principles, the place where offspring is provided with care, protection and love, this is the sphere of close relationships where a person can be himself and receive recognition, respect and satisfaction of many of his needs, including the highest need for self-realization.

I would like to end with the words of L. N. Sinitsyna: “Today's time is characterized by the fact that a qualitative change in consciousness is taking place. We seem to be moving from one way of interpreting reality to another. Our perception, which was part of the polar consciousness, which very weakly combined such aspects as rational - irrational, scientific - artistic, male - female, must rise to the level of understanding and existence of a single consciousness. We must realize the reality of our body, male or female, in which a special connection is established between the mind and the heart.

Each representative of one sex contains signs of the opposite sex. We can find confirmation of this in ancient philosophy - the principle of yin-yang. Carl Gustav Jung gives us the concepts of Anima and Animus - archetypes, meaning the feminine in a man (Anima) and the masculine in a woman (Animus), which should coexist harmoniously without disturbing the overall balance. And even the very nature of man confirms this principle, because, as you know, all human embryos at the initial stage of development have one gender - female, and only later there is a division into boys and girls. Thus, every man has a female hypostasis, and every woman has a male.

This must be remembered by modern men and women and all of humanity. There is a male side of reality - rational. Overpowering, purposeful, aggressive. It is necessary for the development of civilization. But there is also a female, no less strong - spiritual, wise, harmonizing, which is rightfully taken as a basis in Eastern cultures. It is necessary for the internal development of mankind. And in the modern world of general instability, we need not to fight and resist each other, but on the basis of a conscious perception of ourselves as men and women, we need to learn to live in harmony.

3. 2 Culture of family relations.

In the popular consciousness of the ancient Russian man, the clan (family, relatives, tribe), people, Motherland are connected not just by one morphological root, but reflect the specifics of the worldview, the idea of ​​the development of society. It is no coincidence that in Slavic-Russian mythology one of the main deities was Rod - the ancestor of life, the spirit of ancestors, the patron of the family.

Russian Orthodoxy strengthens the spiritual content of the clan and family. The highest meaning in the light of the Christian concept of life is perceived as serving God, following the gospel commandments. The family acts not only as a social community of spouses, parents and children, but also as a spiritual unit, a “small church”.

The very process of creating a family combined the spiritual and social aspects. According to the Russian tradition, the rituals that preceded the creation of a family and accompanied the conclusion of marriage organically combined secular and church rituals. The church sealed the birth of a new family with a wedding. It meant that not just a civil cell was being created, but a spiritual union was emerging, bearing high obligations not only in relation to each other, but also to God. Through the wedding, the newlyweds accepted Christ himself into their family in accordance with the Gospel commandment: "...Where two or three are gathered in My name, there I am in the midst of them." [Matthew 18:20]. The religious and moral significance of the wedding was that the name of Christ affirmed the divine institution of marriage, its indissolubility, for "... what God has combined, let no man separate." [Matthew 19:6].

Of course, the wedding itself is not yet a guarantee of a lasting and happy family union. Today, in many churches, young people are forced to sign up for a wedding. It becomes the same traditional ritual as visiting the "eternal flame" and other memorable places by the wedding train. At the same time, mass divorces and mutual alienation of spouses continue to be the same commonplace. The fact is that customs and traditions that have lost their inner content cease to play a regulatory role, just as a wedding for those newlyweds who have not accepted the sacred sacrament of marriage into their souls remains nothing more than an exotic ritual. And only in the case when customs and traditions constitute the essence of national self-consciousness, include the tribal experience of the people, do they become spiritual and moral guidelines.

With the desire to live by faith, the young family brings a certain order into their internal relations, acquires the highest spiritual meaning of their union, and in the Orthodox tradition it consists in love. The purpose of the Orthodox family is the further development of love, its exaltation, the transformation of the soul with its help, for God is love. And in order to approach him, to lead a life worthy of him, it is necessary to become like him in love. The Apostle Paul wrote to the Colossians: “More than anything put on love, which is the bond of perfection” [Col. 3:14]. Only the highest gospel love can bring enduring harmony into family relationships. The husband in Scripture is called the head of the family.

But this dominance is not dominion over subordinates. It assumes, firstly, a high marital responsibility for the material, physical, spiritual and moral condition of all households and allows you to build the entire family hierarchy system according to the principle: more power - more responsibility, and vice versa, that is, we are talking about delimiting areas of responsibility between spouses in a common house. Secondly, the headship of the husband does not exclude, but presupposes a tender attitude towards his wife, love and care for her. “So husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies: he who loves his wife loves himself,” said the Apostle Paul in his epistle to the Ephesians [Eph. 5:28].

The vulgar interpretation of the phrases “Let the wife be afraid of her husband”, “The wife must obey her husband” taken out of context as relations of domination and subordination has nothing to do with the Christian tradition. “Afraid” is more precisely interpreted as being ashamed, the fear will be before her husband to act, say and do something bad, unworthy, dropping the authority of the family, the head of which is the spouse and whose last name she bears. It is in the spiritual plane, and not in the physical sense, that the word "fear" is used in Scripture. The Christian Church extends the same principles to the relationship between parents and children: mutual respect and love.

Of course, the certainty of the power center in the family can also have a negative side. Not everyone is able to adequately withstand the test of even the smallest power, especially when it falls to the lot of an egocentric, unspiritual person. And in the old days there were situations of a kind of dictatorship of the head of the patriarchal family, formal or actual. This phenomenon has found sufficient reflection in Russian classical literature. Yet such situations were the exception rather than the rule. Life practice confirms that a strong family can be based on respect and love, and not on coercion and fear. It is on such a relationship that the Orthodox Church blesses the spouses.

Particular attention should be paid to such a norm of spiritual and psychological communication in the Russian pre-revolutionary family as the institution of godfathers and mothers. In the families of the Russian North, the godmother was called "bozhatka" (mother given by God at baptism). Godparents assumed responsibility for the moral development of godchildren, helping them in difficult life conflicts. Relatives were more often chosen as godparents, thereby further strengthening tribal ties. But the closest friends, respected neighbors, also became godparents, thereby expanding the boundaries of the clan.

Thus, the whole system of kinship relations convincingly testifies that the essence of the prolongation of the race is evolutionarily aimed at creating conditions for revealing those best qualities and properties of a person that are inherent in his nature from birth, at developing the creativity of the mind and soul.

Saturation with various forms of cooperation between relatives in the family and in the clan created invisible, on a subconscious level, interconnections that united all members of the clan. It has long been noted that husbands and wives who live together for a long time become even physically similar to each other in some way. Especially in spiritual and psychological terms, constantly connected relatives were saturated with common faith and hopes, care and plans, the grief of one became common, as well as joy. All this determined some general twists of fate, not conspicuous, but quite tangible, features and details in the actions and behavior of relatives.

Having grown up on such a spiritual unity, the family, being cut off from the clan, painfully experienced this break. Just as a tree transplanted into a different soil takes root in it for a long time and with difficulty, so a family that has lost its organic connection with the clan can, in the end, adapt to new conditions, gain material well-being, a circle of new friends and acquaintances. But the rupture of non-material, spiritual ties with the family affects the psychological state, and sometimes the physical health, if not of the first generation, then of the subsequent ones. It is no coincidence that a number of diseases today (including diseases of the heart, liver, reproductive organs, lungs, brain) are explained by some researchers for reasons of a spiritual and moral order: clogging of the subtle body of a person (soul) with gross negative energy, impenitence in violating the main principle of the development of the human personality – love for man as the highest work of the Creator.

Thus, family and tribal relations in the Russian tradition followed from the principle of conciliarity - one of the main signs of the life of Orthodox Christians. The Church, as it were, projected kinship relations onto all co-religionists. All children of one God are brothers and sisters in Christ. The Orthodox family and clan, thus, gave the ideal of uniting people in their highest spiritual manifestation. This reality does not diverge from the idea, which is increasingly asserting itself in the public consciousness, that one of the main trends in social progress is the development of human society as a whole, without enmity, without conflicts.

Modernity puts us in different conditions. The Orthodox Church, which was so brutally eradicated during the Soviet period, has ceased to be an authority for many people. The Soviet ideals that replaced the Orthodox ones have also been destroyed, and new ones have not yet been created. The culture of family relations is built on Western examples taken largely from feature films. But this is an ideal, a beautiful picture, and practically no one teaches how to achieve this ideal.

3. 3 Sociocultural problems of the modern family.

At all times, a person thought of the family as his little earthly happiness. In all ages, regardless of socio-economic conditions and state regimes, it was the family that was the basis of society. And it is better to say that the family is the very original society, where the spiritual principles and the foundations of morality of each individual person are formed.

In the family, a person receives a true and essential education and begins to develop in himself a correct idea of ​​\u200b\u200bmoral life as a whole. By and large, the moral and physical well-being of the nation and the state is directly proportional to and entirely dependent on the presence and level of moral ideas and their implementation in the family.

“When we examine the state of a nation or an age, our eyes first of all turn to the state of married life. As such, we judge everything else. If the marriage life of a certain people is shaken, then we know that other areas of the moral life of the people are in a state of decline. Everyone who sought to destroy society began to do so by destroying the family, family foundations, for the family is the most precious foundation and cornerstone of all civil society.

In primitive society, the family spun off from the clan on the basis of primarily caring for children, ensuring their survival. The period of civilization gives rise to a patriarchal type of family, which can be defined as a family-household, in which the general housekeeping dominates while maintaining a variety of other ties. The emergence in Europe of the modern type of married family dates back to the Middle Ages, in which, despite the importance of an integral complex of various ties in marital relations, the role and importance of spiritual, moral and psychological principles significantly increases.

Of course, this change manifests itself only as a trend, because for today's young people, the family union can be based on different socially significant values, as well as a different understanding of the essence and purpose of the family. It can be created on different value bases: both on the basis of calculation, and on romantic motives, and as a spiritual union or union-partnership, sealed by unity of views, relations of friendship and mutual respect, etc.

And yet, the majority of young people, as sociologists show, marry for love, giving preference to moral, psychological and spiritual relationships in the family. The loss of feelings of love is considered as sufficient grounds for divorce.

However, the desire to create a family based on love does not guarantee it from conflicts and crises. Moreover, it inevitably puts a person in front of a spiritual and moral choice: pleasure and carelessness or duty and responsibility, egocentrism or the ability to give up one’s desires, interests, and ultimately the desire to ensure personal independence or readiness to correct one’s behavior, habits, the prevailing way of life in interests of family unity. Often this choice is not made in her favor. Statistics show that there are fewer divorces in families created for convenience, and not for love. Here, initially, relations between spouses develop on a specific basis acceptable to both, devoid of unpredictability and excessive demands.

This does not mean at all that love has ceased to be the most important value of family relationships. Perhaps this is the result of the fact that young people often confuse the feeling of being in love with true love. Falling in love is most often a feeling of "I-centric". Love strikes a person deeper than love, non-egoism and two-centeredness - this, apparently, is its foundation of foundations, its most human property. Treating your loved one as yourself is, perhaps, the central core of love. This is the opinion of the "expert" in love, Yuri Borisovich Ryurikov, and it is difficult to disagree with this.

But true love lays only the foundation of marriage, then the spiritual properties of the spouses come to the fore: kindness or unkindness, cordiality or heartlessness, cordiality or indifference.

For almost the entire 20th century, the country lives permanently in conditions of real and mythologized exploits. Revolutions and wars, the restoration of the economy after military devastation, exhausting competition with the West as a way to establish itself as the foremost power in the world at any cost - all this, with the appropriate ideological design, did not leave room for the idea of ​​spiritual transformation of a person not in the political and ideological, but in the Christian understanding as the idea of ​​transfiguration of the soul and upliftment of the spirit on the basis of the gospel commandments. The ideal of Orthodoxy inherent in the people was practically ousted from public consciousness. The goal of life was not the transformation of nature, but the transformation of the surrounding material world.

Such an absolutization of a person, although it mobilized him for accomplishments, had a downside as well. She completely "grounded" his purpose and the meaning of life. If a person reduces himself, the essence of his being completely to materiality, corporality, then everything in life becomes subordinate to the satisfaction of the needs of the body, its desires, whims. But, as the prominent Russian philosopher of the 20th century, I.A. Ilyin, rightly noted, “the lust of the flesh” is something unstable and self-willed. She is drawn to the pursuit of new and new earthly goods: pleasures, honor, wealth, etc.

This fully applies to family relationships. The highest tasks and functions of the family are understood more and more simply, materially, even physiologically, from the standpoint of one's own convenience.

Thus, there is a change in value orientations. Traditional values ​​are replaced by new, less burdensome ones. Instead of duty, commitment, preference is given to irresponsibility, conscience gives way to practicality, rationalism replaces cordiality and mercy, love turns into partnerships between the sexes. In practice, we are talking about the spiritual crisis of man and society. Lack of spirituality erodes the family to the same extent.

Ill-conceived and unprepared social experiments of the 80s-90s stimulated the growth of destructive tendencies in family relations. The collapse of the former social and spiritual values ​​was a natural consequence of the abolition of communist ideology at the state level. In the former Soviet republics of the USSR, the communist ideology was replaced by the ideology of nationalism, based on traditional religious values. In Russia, however, the emerging ideological and spiritual vacuum, for the most part, is experienced much more acutely. The ideology of nationalism in it objectively could not become decisive in the process of transformation.

The policy of national nihilism pursued by the totalitarian regime was primarily aimed at destroying the national self-consciousness of the Russian people under the banner of fighting great-power chauvinism. The Orthodox Church suffered especially heavy losses in this struggle. Thousands of temples were closed, believers were persecuted and ridiculed by the authorities. The years of persecution did not go unnoticed. Today it is obvious. Decades of anti-church reaction prevented Orthodoxy from becoming the center of the spiritual unity of the nation. At the same time, the activities of various religious sects, groups, schools, foundations, missionaries of Western and Eastern religions impede the consolidation of the Russian people, the revival of traditional national values, the national idea.

Attention is drawn to the fact that the aggravation of social, economic, political and other contradictions coincides in time with Russia's involvement in the system of relations characteristic of Western civilization. Russia and the West were not initially isolated from each other, there were multilateral ties between them. At the same time, they were fundamentally different, in some ways even opposite civilizations.

Western civilization, the ideological justification of which was Protestantism, at the heart of development is mainly material progress, the desire for utilitarian life. The race for the consumption of goods and services makes people hostages of things. Work, creativity, leisure, family, love - everything is saturated with market relations, everything has its price.

Since the accumulator of spirituality, the bosom of culture is the family as the primary socio-cultural institution, it has first of all been subjected to the pernicious influence of the modern crisis. The phenomena of its crisis state are becoming sharper and more multidimensional. The prestige of the family in a number of social value orientations has fallen to a critical level. As a result, 2/3 of young people at the age of 25 (optimal for childbearing) are not married, 1/3 under the age of 35 do not have their own family, 1/10 of the unmarried cross the age of 60 years.

But even the very fact of marriage does not yet indicate the intention to create a full-fledged family that continues the human race. According to opinion polls, more than 18% of married couples do not want to have children at all. Difficult economic conditions turn the joy of having a child into a struggle for survival.

Family breakdown, divorces have become more commonplace than prosperous families. The number of divorces in our country has grown from 50 thousand after the Patriotic War of 1941-1945. up to 1 million in the early 90s, with half of the divorces occurring in the first year of marriage, and 2/3 in the first 5 years. With the growth of divorces, the number of single-parent families, more often with one mother, also grows. This leads to many other problems and to increased employment of the mother, who is forced to provide for herself and the child, and to the growing alienation of the child, since the mother cannot pay enough attention to him, and, as already mentioned, inadequate personality development.

Another problem is the masculinization of women associated with the development of business in Russia and other countries. Women in key leadership positions, in the struggle for survival in the cruel world of business, are gradually losing their original feminine features and are becoming more and more like men. After all, women have to sacrifice such values ​​as personal relationships, family, children. As well as compliance, complaisance, carelessness and tenderness. Studies show that a third of women in leadership positions in the most successful companies do not have children, while most of their male counterparts are happy fathers and husbands.

The sexual illiteracy of young people seems frightening against the backdrop of the widespread dissemination of information of erotic and sexological content. Sexual relations of young people, often under the age of majority, become something ordinary. But the elementary rules of sexual hygiene, protection are generally not discussed within the family. Early pregnancy, which adversely affects physically and mentally unprepared girls, AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases, is the result of such illiteracy.

Abortion has become a real disaster in the country. The famous Italian lawyer Rafael Ballestrini wrote a hundred years ago: “The surest proof of the complete moral decline of the people will be that abortion will be considered a habitual and absolutely acceptable thing.” This terrible prediction has become a fact of our daily life. With the silent connivance of society, according to official statistics, 8 million children are killed in the country every year. Abortions have turned into mass terror against their own children.

Many mothers abandon their children. Basically, according to statistics, these are girls from 15 to 19 years old. Often, experts say, parents put pressure on young mothers, they also insist on termination of pregnancy. That is why the moral norms that are laid down in the family of the future mother are of great importance. A child can fully develop and master the world around him only together with a loving mother, and if this most important connection for a baby is interrupted from birth, then a person simply loses his support in life.

Drug addiction, drunkenness, abandonment of their children and elderly parents, and other social vices plunge the family into a truly distressed state. The preservation of these destructive processes in society and the family calls into question the prospect of preserving the Russian people.

In contrast to the West, civilization in Russia is predominantly spiritual. The idea of ​​perfecting the soul, overcoming the sinful nature of the body, comprehending the higher meaning of earthly life for a Russian person has always been closer to material well-being. Archimandrite Hilarion (Troitsky) quite deeply, in our opinion, noted: “The ideal of Orthodoxy is not progress, but transfiguration. ... The New Testament does not know progress in the European sense of the word, in the sense of moving forward in the same plane. The New Testament speaks of the transfiguration of nature and the movement as a result of this not forward, but upward, towards heaven, towards God. . Consequently, the contradiction between the two civilizations is not caused by any specific discrepancies between individual aspects of life. It stems from a different worldview, different motives for life, value systems.

Thus, the problems of the modern family and culture, generated mainly by spiritual impoverishment in society, can be solved on the basis of an appeal to the highest spiritual values.

Conclusion

Like many centuries in a row, modern man is looking for his place and purpose in society and culture. One of these destinations of a person is the creation of a family and the birth of the next generation of people. The family is not just a social or cultural institution, it is a complex system with many connections, functions and ways of interaction between its elements.

We can call a certain community of people a family on several grounds. Firstly, marriage and family relations (husband and wife, parents and children, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, etc.), a family can be very large depending on the number of relatives and generations represented, and very small, consisting from the so-called core - spouses and a child. Secondly, this is a joint economic activity aimed at maintaining the material level, providing family members with the necessary for their life. Thirdly, it is emotional attachment, mutual responsibility of family members for each other and for the whole family as a whole. Only when all these characteristics are present does a community or a group become a family.

With the advent of the institution of civil marriage, an exception in recent times is the clause on marital relations. But marriage also plays an important role, being throughout history a way of legalizing sexual relations between a man and a woman, supported by public morality. Therefore, until now, marriage is the most desirable goal for many people. In addition, free love, unlike marriage, does not imply any responsibility and obligations, but depends only on the moral attitudes of a particular person.

If the institution of marriage were not needed, would it exist? And this happened not today and not ten years ago, and not even a hundred, but many thousands! And according to scientists, ancient people understood much more than us in life and relationships between people. From the position of historical materialism, monogamy developed under the influence of socio-economic changes, but this is only a look from the present into the past. We did not live then and we cannot know anything for sure, but one thing is clear - people came to monogamy for a number of different reasons, including one of the main ones - the development of private property.

Mankind strives to streamline its life activity, normalize interpersonal relations in order to create order out of chaos and maintain stability. So family and marriage relations are determined and normalized, with the help of religion, morality, public opinion. The era changed the era, the culture changed, the worldview and value orientations changed. Together with them, the relationship between husband and wife, the position of a woman, the attitude of parents to children (which is more true of fathers, because a mother always loves her child), and children to parents, also changed. The family hierarchy from a strictly vertical position gradually assumed a horizontal position.

Regardless of the form or internal hierarchy, the family has always had social significance due to the performance of certain functions by it. These functions have changed in the same way as society has changed, but among their diversity, the economic, regenerative, recreational, reproductive and educational functions remain unchanged. The last two are of paramount importance for society and humanity. The birth of full-fledged, healthy children and their subsequent upbringing are the tasks that people who create a family should think about first of all. After all, the future of the entire nation depends on their awareness of responsibility for the life of a little man. Conception, pregnancy, childbirth, the period of feeding - everything is important, and everything should be associated with love for yourself, for your spouse, for the baby.

The family is a kind of factory, a factory for the production of new people capable of living like human beings. And the future of our children and their “human” life depends on what we invest in this concept. Therefore, parents, raising a boy or a girl, should first of all think about him or her, and only after that about their needs and emotions. A complete family, in which there is both mom and dad, is even better if grandparents, living on the concepts of love, honor, dignity and mutual respect, can bring up a full-fledged emotionally, culturally, morally rich personality, with a stable worldview. A child from an incomplete family is often forced to make efforts in the process of life to grow to this level. And then only if the parent has laid in him at least some foundations for further development, otherwise a morally, mentally, emotionally unstable personality that is difficult to adapt comes out of an incomplete family.

Such problems in the family lead to subsequent conflicts in personal life. The relationship between a man and a woman depends on a clear awareness of oneself as a man or a woman, on the role that is inherent in this sex, and on the moral and value attitudes of communication with people in general laid down in childhood.

The modern family is increasingly acquiring a personal-psychological nature of relationships. Love becomes the main motive for marriage. Sexual relationships are given more importance than spiritual ones. Religious ideals have lost their influence. The concept of a clan is lost, as a kind of integrity of many generations, spiritual unity with ancestors. Now everyone is on their own, individual and lonely! And the feeling of being lost and isolated must be made up for by the unity and cohesion of family members.

It cannot be said that nothing is being done to overcome the crisis and the problems of the family institution and there are no positive trends. For example, in order to avoid a difficult divorce, young people can test their feelings in a civil marriage. To prevent early marriages and unwanted pregnancies, there are today family planning centers. To overcome conflicts in the family, people can turn to various family psychological services. Recently, a wonderful, in our opinion, tradition of sports family competitions, competitions for the title of the most friendly family, etc., has begun to revive.

Based on the foregoing, the following conclusions were drawn:

1. The family is a biological necessity, a human need, the only full-fledged institution of education.

2. The transformation of the family is inevitable and historically determined. This transformation is accompanied by an acute crisis, but often a crisis state precedes a new round of development. Therefore, it is necessary to make sure that this development goes in a positive direction.

3. The modern family, like the state, needs an idea that unites it. Perhaps Orthodox Christianity should again become such, but not as a dogma, but as a spiritual and moral guide.

The attention of culturologists to family problems should not be limited to a simple analysis and statement of facts. It is necessary to develop recommendations and practical actions aimed at preserving the institution of the family. It can be some clubs for family holidays. It is desirable to restore the subject "Ethics and Psychology of Family Life" in the school curriculum, within the framework of which culturologists, psychologists, sexologists, and possibly even doctors will teach.

The revival of national culture, the preservation of the nation as a single whole is possible thanks to the preservation of the institution of the family and its active maintenance by the state, religion, society and the individual.

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MauriceD."A Man Called Animal" Popular science film. (duration 1h 30min.)

Introduction…………………………………………………………

Chapter 1……………………………………………………………...

Chapter 2……………………

2. 1 The concepts of “family” and “marriage”…………………………………………….

12-18

2. 2 Concepts of the origin of family and marriage relations………...

18-24

2. 3 Family and marriage in the process of historical development - the evolution of family and marriage relations………………………………………...

2. 4 The role of the family in society. Its meaning

in the formation and development of personality………………………………..

Chapter 3. PROBLEMS OF FAMILY AND MARRIAGE RELATIONS IN MODERN CONDITIONS…………………………………………

3. 1 Paired relationship between a man and a woman

in modern conditions……………………………………………...

3. 2 Culture of family relations…………………………………………

55-59

3. 3 Sociocultural problems of the modern family…………………..

59-66

Conclusion………………………………………………………………

67-70

List of used literature…………………………….

Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation

Irkutsk State Technical University

International Faculty

Department of Culturology and Linguistics

"The destruction of the institution of the family is the destruction of the national culture"

(thesis

specialty 020600 "culturology")

Thesis

5th year students

international faculty

Prokhorova

Sofia Sergeevna

scientific adviser

associate professor Tarasenko

Oksana Vladimirovna

"Let me defend"

Head Department of Cultural Studies

and linguistic studies,

Professor Berkovich A.V.

Talk that Russia can be destroyed as a single state has been going on for a long time. The Dulles Doctrine, Brzezinski's plans, Berezovsky's statements became widely known. The destruction of the USSR was only the first stage in the implementation of these sinister plans. Recently, information was thrown into the media about when and into what parts Russia will fall apart, apparently with the aim of sounding public opinion for readiness for such a turn of events.

However, hand on heart, we admit that so far there is little faith that Russia can cease to exist as a single state.

Firstly, the objective prerequisites for this seem clearly insufficient, one would strongly like to think that the worst is already over. Secondly, the actions of the current authorities aimed at strengthening statehood and the power vertical at first glance look quite convincing. Thirdly, it is not clear who and how can do it. After all, the West, in which these plans have been hatched for a long time, prefers to remain in the shadows, and in order to start the processes of self-destruction in Russia (which were successfully tested during the destruction of the USSR), you first need to prepare the soil appropriate for this and cock the triggers.

This is what we will try to evaluate - the political and spiritual state of society, determine the vector of its movement and evaluate its components for consent or even readiness to take part in the destruction of statehood.

And at the same time, we will try to catch the connection between politics and spirituality, because we often hear about the spiritual roots of the processes taking place in society, but it is far from always possible to see this connection, to highlight the main thing, which often leads to serious errors in assessing what is happening.

Spiritual and ideological alignment

The political heterogeneity of society directly follows from the fact that different groups of the population are carriers of different worldviews. Political parties represent and at the same time influence a certain part of society that has one or another type of worldview.

There are four main worldview systems: conservative, communist, nationalist and liberal-democratic.

Each worldview system, in turn, is based on a particular spirituality.

The spiritual basis of Russian conservatism is Orthodoxy, including the living and, as it were, hidden, due to well-known circumstances of the 20th century, in folk traditions. Nationalism - paganism and neo-paganism. Communism - atheism (belief in man). Liberal - democracies - ecumenism (the synthesis of all religions), which Orthodox theologians tend to consider the religion of the Antichrist.

There is still a very large part of society that has a very specific worldview. Its essence is to always "keep up with the times", to be afloat, to succeed financially and socially, regardless of what kind of power is in the state. The position of the "pragmatists", according to Hieromonk Seraphim Rose, to whom we will turn to for help, is " the deliberate abandonment of Truth in favor of power, whether that power is represented by the interests of the nation, race, class, love of the comforts of life, or anything else".

At first, this part of society supported the "progressive" communists led by Gorbachev, then even more "progressive" democrats led by Yeltsin, then the completely non-progressive Putin and Unity. It is absolutely clear that if the current government begins to weaken and a new strong contender or contenders appears, the sympathies of the "pragmatists" will also quickly change. Love will again be separated from hate by only one step, which will be easily taken.

What spirituality is typical for this group? In the general case, it is difficult to say, but it is quite obvious that this is not Christian spirituality, which is characterized by constancy.

Power and opposition

Each ideological part of society is represented politically.
A significant part of the conservatives along with the "pragmatists" support the current government in the person of "Unity" and President Putin. The reasons for this support may vary somewhat. For some, this is a sincere conviction that this government expresses and defends their interests, the interests of the state. For others, these are considerations such as "all power is from God", "the worst power is better than anarchy" or "choose the lesser of two evils." But all these arguments are precisely conservative.

The remaining ideological groups are represented by opposition parties and business structures. The communists are represented by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and a number of even more radical opposition mini-communist parties. The nationalists are represented by the LDPR, RNE, NDPR, etc. The liberals were recently represented by the Union of Right Forces and Yabloko, but after their fiasco in the last elections, the main forces of the liberals have grouped around Yukos and other business structures that are increasingly taking on political functions.

But what are these opposition forces trying to achieve, maybe this very state power, in order to change it in accordance with their programs and goals?
Nothing like this!

The leadership of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation has repeatedly shown that it does not want power, and in the last elections quite frankly and rudely led its party to defeat, further weakening the communists’ influence on public life, replacing the previously proclaimed thesis of “growing into power” with a “transition to power” sanctioned by the authorities. irreconcilable opposition. As a natural consequence - the beginning of the withdrawal and expulsion of statesmen from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, as well as a counter refusal of support from the left-conservative part of society. The "renewed" Communist Party now needs only oppositionists, revolutionaries and other buzzers.

Maybe the liberals are eager to get state power into their own hands? So they already had it under Yeltsin .... It turned out that it was very difficult and responsible to bear the burden of power. The liberals, having pretty much tarnished their already fake image, voluntarily renounced state power, confining themselves to shadow power, and voluntarily handed it over to Putin, to whom they immediately and with obvious pleasure went over to the opposition, hoping to cover up the traces and find the extreme.

The main liberal "nationalist" Zhirinovsky, in an incomprehensible way, from time to time manages to enlist the support of the "protest electorate", and at the same time act completely in favor of the existing government, against which this same electorate is protesting ... Another number of small parties that like to use words in their names "Russian" and "national" do not even tend to increase their influence, which is hardly noticeable, and even then only thanks to television. There are nationalist structures in the national regions of the country, but it is obvious that they do not lay claim to state power in Russia, but on the contrary, they want to get away from it, as well as regional separatist structures.

But even if we assume that some "Russian" nationalists still come to power for some time (and lately only nationalists have not been there yet), then this in itself will lead to the destruction of a multinational state. Therefore, such a possible coming of nationalists to power does not initially set state administration as its ultimate goal.

Of course, attentive and thoughtful conservatives could not long be satisfied with the quality of the current government, which can be identified as conservative only by certain signs. The idea of ​​establishing one's own political movement has been hanging in the air for a long time, and the creation of the Rodina electoral association was an attempt to put it into practice. However, the founders swung too broadly, trying to attract at the same time the communists, and conservatives, and nationalists, and even hidden liberals to boot.

The part cannot contain the whole. The left-wing conservative S. Glazyev and the liberal in the mask of a nationalist D. Rogozin, as well as the ideas and people behind them, were initially incompatible with each other. Some simply wanted to raise their political weight at the expense of others. In games with the devil, the last one always wins. It is still difficult to determine the exact and permanent place of "Motherland" in the spiritual and ideological system, but after the complete neutralization of Glazyev, this place is somewhere at the junction of the conservative and nationalist, with a further likely tilt towards the latter. The strength of this roll will be shown in the near future.

The attempt to rally the communist statesmen and the healthy forces of national orientation around the conservatives failed. Zyuganov led the communists to the left corner, and Rogozin led his people to the right. However, it is obvious that in the corner of power is not achieved. But you can not let all healthy forces unite. What else unites the personalities of these politicians is some kind of inhuman perseverance. The Orthodox know where it comes from...

political nihilism

So what, not in words, but in deeds, are all the above-mentioned oppositionists striving for? Why are they uniting, despite the complete incompatibility of the proclaimed ideas and goals: Zyuganov with Yukos, Rogozin with Zyuganov, forming a kind of political ecumenism? If not to take on the burden of state power, then only one thing remains - to destroy the Russian state as such!

But the most striking thing is that the main organizational work and coordination of the actions of the motley opposition is carried out ... by the ruling elite itself! In addition, the central government itself provokes the opposition and the country's population to anti-state sentiments, which sooner or later will turn into actions or inaction, as it was already in 1991. The opposition is preparing for the next revolution, and the authorities are constructing a revolutionary situation step by step. One gets the impression that at the appointed hour X, the last order will be given from the Kremlin: "I call fire on myself!"

What is all this manifested in? In the cadre of the government and the unwillingness to really fight ethnic crime - this is for the nationalists. In the adoption of anti-social laws - this is for the communists. In the defiant persecution of iconic business figures - this is for liberals. In the constant surrender of Russia's positions in the international arena, in the unwillingness and inability to protect its citizens and allies - this is for conservatives, etc.

The people and the state thus find themselves in a position "between a rock and a hard place." The hammer itself is either in the hands of the authorities, as it is now, or the opposition. Citizens in this situation are left with a poor choice: either to become an active participant in destructive processes, or passive observers, to which the majority, as usual, is inclined. Because it is almost impossible to understand how an impersonal state can be protected and from whom. Moreover, it is not clear how to protect the state from anti-state officials, that is, civil servants ...

The dialectic of nihilism

Let's approach the problem from the other side - from the spiritual side, for which we will take the work of Seraphim Rose "The Root of the Revolution: Nihilism" to help us.

Nihilism is defined as the denial of Truth, which cannot be comprehended by human means and which is given from above in the form of Divine Revelation. Rose defined the stages of the nihilistic process: liberalism, realism, vitalism and, finally, the nihilism of destruction. The key feature of the nihilistic process is that " each stage of nihilism opposes itself to the other, but not in order to fight against it, but in order to include all its mistakes, to lead humanity even further along the path of nihilism, the end of which is the abyss".

Russia has already walked this path once, which led it to the revolutions of 1917, the collapse of statehood and civil war. Then there was a process of gradual recovery, and after the Great Patriotic War The USSR, despite its outward commitment to communist ideas, in reality looked more like Russian Empire at least in terms of government. Well, since main reason nihilism, which was apostasy, was never overcome, everything began to repeat itself again.

Liberalism (not to be confused with an ideological system), which does not have its own value system and manifests itself in the form of a gradual erosion of existing foundations and values, first manifested itself under Khrushchev, and then this "process" actively "went" somewhere under Gorbachev. At that time, it was not about changing the existing system, but only about updating it on the basis of "universal human values", with the help of which their own, accumulated by centuries of experience, including the bitter experience of the 20th century, were destroyed.

On the denial of socialist liberalism and Gorbachev himself, realism came along with Yeltsin and Chubais. This stage did not correct anything from the negative that appeared under his predecessor, the situation only worsened. Under realism, "highest values" are replaced by naked materialism and egoism. "And if Rose took the image of Bazarov from Turgenev's novel "Fathers and Sons" as a symbol of realism, which was a type of "new man" that appeared in the sixties of the century before last, then the image of realism nineties of the last century became the "new Russian". " He does not believe in anything except that everything “higher” in a person, that is, related to the sphere of mind and spirit, can be reduced to “lower”, that is, to matter, sensual, physiological. "" Bazarov stated that in society there is not a single institution that should not be destroyed". "New Russians" put it into practice, destroying everything "Soviet" with great passion.

After realism comes the turn of vitalism. " There is no question of vitalism returning to Christian or any other truth, although the vitalists themselves sometimes try to claim this. "Pseudo-spirituality and pseudo-traditionalism are integral elements of many vitalistic systems."(S. Rose). From this, in general, it becomes clear why conservatives both recognize and do not recognize their own in Unity and Putin. From afar, they seem to be similar, many sometimes even go to church, but look closely - and you see one linden and emptiness ...

Of course, reality cannot be perceived unambiguously. A return even to pseudo, but still traditionalism was enough to improve the moral atmosphere in society, stop outright Russophobia, defamation of the army, and slightly improve the material well-being of people. Many people note that the country seems to have returned to the times of stagnation, in which it turns out that we did not live so badly. But all this is not strong somehow, the material is held on temporarily high prices for oil, capital is still being exported from the country, the privatization of state property continues. And what, in the end, led to stagnation, also should not be forgotten.

The worst thing about vitalism is that, while giving rise to the illusion of the restoration of spirituality and traditions, in fact it contributes to the onset of the final stage that nihilism has to go through - the nihilism of destruction, which will be directed precisely against vitalism and its bearers! And there are many indications that this last stage - the nihilism of destruction - will appear in the political guise of nationalism. Outwardly, it will look as if it is directed against Western liberals, but in fact it will inflict and provoke crushing blows from outside precisely on the conservative part of society and on statehood as such, which, moreover, today are sick and seriously weakened by vitalism!

To be or not to be?

Despite the presence of different spiritual, ideological and political groups, the main confrontation takes place along the axis, which was formed many centuries ago. On one side are conservative statesmen. On the other hand, Western liberals who do not need an original Russia, do not need statehood as such. Liberals and democrats, who always, who consciously, who not consciously, were, are and will be the conductors of the policy and spiritual expansion of the West, aimed at the destruction of Russia.

To the left of the main axis of confrontation are the communists, to the right are the nationalists, who are unable to pursue an independent policy. One part of both gravitate towards conservatives, the other towards liberals.

Let's not forget the words of Brzezinski: "After the collapse of communism, we are left with one serious enemy - Orthodoxy." And "Orthodoxy" in this case should be understood in a broad sense, namely as a significant part of society that lives in accordance with Orthodox and conservative traditions. It is on her that the main blows of both external and internal enemies of Russia will be directed. Moreover, these blows are and will be delivered precisely against the consciousness of the conservative part of society, including by compromising its leaders, including those set up specifically for these purposes, as well as the Russian Orthodox Church and the state. To this end, a fundamental regrouping of political forces is being carried out, which influence certain sections of the whole society.

So is our society ready or not for the destruction of a single statehood?
If some events happen that periodically occur in our country, who will protect the current government? "Pragmatists"? - Not. Liberals? - Why would you? They themselves will take part in these events on the side of the opponents of the authorities. Conservative Communists? But all the communists, it seems, will be busy with internal disassemblies for a long time to come, and now they have no time for state problems. Nationalists? They're more likely to hurt than help. Conservatives? So there are doubts in their ranks. And whether the authorities themselves want to be protected - that's another question ... In 1991, after all, they didn’t want to.
The question remains open...

The complexity, understatement and uncertainty of both state power and power as a whole is undeniable at the moment. At first glance, a clear and intuitive social phenomenon reveals its abyss when it is studied in depth. Despite the fact that power is considered in any science connected in one way or another with society, it still remains an unraveled "tangle" that has mixed masses of social meanings and concepts. Obviously, to forget, to bypass this phenomenon in research practice impossible, because power is the backbone of all social relations.

Let's start from the position of Zh.P. Sartre, who argued that on the basis of the social contract, it is possible to give the object in question the property of a sign and, consequently, that the researcher's gaze will "... glide along without affecting the essence", paying attention only to the created, symbolic meaning of this object. As you can see, the main focus when considering power lies precisely in the fact that in research practice, especially in domestic practice, there is a dialogue between various concepts of power, where its eidos is analyzed, revealed and unfolded through the prism of the latter. This gives rise to a certain duality, on the one hand, the research eye either passes through various definitions and follows further to the analysis of the essence of this social phenomenon. On the other hand, it captures the researcher and keeps him in the reality of the created sign, and thus, perceiving it as an object, starting from the latter in the analysis of power relations. For example, P. Bourdieu describes such a phenomenon by means of the term "habitus", which is a system of dispositions that generates and structures the practice of a social agent and its representation. In this context, the view of the scientist, like a "microscope", is always attuned to the principles and in the area of ​​the intellectual's privileged social position. Moreover, the restriction on the cognitive space is also imposed by the situation and the context of the social demand for a particular type of intellectual activity, as well as the fact that the problem of power has always plunged into an extremely ideological and politicized field. Because of this, it is not indisputable that it can be argued that any knowledge cannot be completely neutral or completely objective, since it is a communicative product of a certain historical era. Consequently, knowledge and, accordingly, the paradigm of truth is manifested and supported by a specific political and social time.

In light of this, it seems quite natural to study power in its modern dimension, through the identification and analysis of the historical genesis of various discourses of power. You should also pay attention to the conditions and social context that contributed to the formation of a certain modality of power relations and configuration. social institutions in some social field. In turn, the social fields, taken together, form a certain cultural text of the era, within which the power practice itself is "read", develops and changes, which is determined mainly through language structures, various discursive dispositions, creating a certain socio-political theater, where only within its framework each action can be understood and interpreted. Turning to the modern principles of the study of power discourse, it is very interesting to dwell on the point of view of Foucault and Bourdieu, who, in contrast to the traditional principle of thinking, are more interested not in the subject itself as an element of a certain structure, but in the conditions and practices that determine the action and thinking of the subject. As a rule, with the traditional approach, the researcher takes an objective position, interpreting and commenting on the subject as a particle of the structure, abstracting him from social action and depriving him, at the level of generalized analysis, of cognitive activity and the role of random deviations in his activity. Paying attention to this cognitive limitation of the structural approach, Foucault's subject or Bourdieu's social agent appears as consciously acting within a certain discourse or social field, obeying specific rules and social strategies. . Such a social disposition of the subject in a particular field of the mental structure allows one to classify and produce certain types of practices, helps to navigate in a particular discourse, adequately respond to events, fit into their course in a limited way and design one’s own practices, and also, depending on the position taken, influence existing strategy. This inclusion in the discourse, on the one hand, contributes to the process of socialization, and, on the other hand, creates an opportunity for effective action and decision-making.

Thus, the emphasis in these studies shifts from the analysis of structures, the objective patterns of its change and the position of the subject in it, towards the conditions and practices that are generated and fill this structure with concrete content. This raises the question of how the totality of positions in the social field is constructed by practitioners and what makes this position in this field independent of a particular subject. Let us add that, from this point of view, the following statement by Michel Foucault, which he expresses in the article “Subject and Power”, is important: “To understand power means attacking not so much certain institutions of power, groups, elite or class, but rather technology , forms of power ... one should abandon the use of methods of scientific or administrative inquisition, which reveal who, who is who, but do not answer the question why this "who" became the one who can be identified as a subject.

Thus, it seems quite clear that each power discourse plays not a primary role in specific power relations in which state power is meaningfully manifested, but a secondary one. Since the discourse, although it manages and creates a certain intention in understanding the essence of power, is itself a product of the era, and therefore its truth is always in national and historical quotation marks. Foucault quite rightly writes that "... any science appears in exactly certain conditions, with its historical possibilities, the area of ​​its own experience and the structure of its rationality. It forms a concrete a priori which can now be made evident."

Based on these general ideas, we can propose some principles according to which power should be analyzed, and which we will try to adhere to in the course of our consideration of problems relating to the theory of state power.

Firstly, it is necessary to identify the meaning, value and understanding of power in various historical eras. This involves considering not so much the concepts created at one time or another, but that practical experience and that historical context who formed certain ideas about this social phenomenon how social relations unfolded, and what role power played in them.

Secondly, it is necessary to understand the meaning and structure of state-power experience, as well as pay attention to the history of institutions in which its organizational efforts were manifested.

Thirdly, it is important to see something common, unchanging, let's say a certain core that permeated every historical period of time, forming invariant patterns of construction and functioning of various social fields.

Fourthly, consider the main traditions that have had a significant impact on the modern theory of power, as well as the system of knowledge circulating in society, being the foundation for understanding and legitimizing power.

And finally, fifthly, you need to point out modern features state power, to make an analysis of strategies and those global social practices aimed at preserving or transforming the existing socio-political structure.

The first interest in power, its essence and social significance and, accordingly, in its scientific consideration and explanation appears in ancient Greece, India and China. Probably due to their high social development, as well as changing the conditions of life, there is a need to understand and explain both the power itself and the established power practices. It is also important to emphasize that both in Ancient Greece and in Ancient China and India, with all the commonality and existing differences in views on power, it was mainly about state power, and the very phenomenon of power was given either little or no attention at all. This is explained, first of all, by the situation and the context of the social demand for a particular type of intellectual activity. For example, the established power theory and social practices organically related to it focused attention and outlined the directions for the development of ancient thought on the creation of such mechanisms that would be able to provide a political and legal guarantee of ancient democracy and stability. political organization society.

As a rule, power was understood in the ancient period as a certain means of achieving harmony, an ideal state, political stability and stability, or to overcome social chaos. Because of this, the authorities had to meet the needs in the regulation of social relations, and this led to the development of the theory of public administration, which describes the rational interaction between the holders of power and the objects of control. Power has always been attributed to a clearly defined subject. At the heart of the concepts and treatises of various thinkers lay the "concern" about who should be a sovereign with a single power, how to educate him and how he should dispose of it. The origin of power in most cases was explained either by divine nature or already by contractual theory. Of undoubted interest is the fact that some thinkers of antiquity understand power as a "synergetic" mechanism structuring the chaos of social life. It also deserves special attention that, basically, the ancient Greek philosophers, "... calling their works "Politician" or "Politics", the focus was not on politics so current, but on power. By the way, they understood politics as power ".

The problem of connecting the supreme power with society and maintaining its legitimacy was solved in this era in completely different ways than, for example, in Ancient Greece, where this function was carried out by the People's Assembly in small city-states. It seems that in order to ensure the "spirit of power" in every corner of the large medieval states, the problem of the legitimacy of power was solved in a completely different and perhaps more voluminous and difficult way: in order to maintain one's right to power, it was necessary to constantly publicly display power and power of government. It manifested itself primarily in grandiose rituals, symbols, public executions, high-profile military victories, etc. Another mechanism of communication and legitimation of the actions of the authorities was the church, which, through its extensive network, could support state power or, on the contrary, neutralize its significance and discredit its leaders. From these positions, it seems natural to endow power with some kind of super-rational, divine essence, because the manifestation of power was most often associated with God's will, and therefore did not need any justification and justification.

Today we can safely say that interest in the essence of power, in the principles of power relations, as a characteristic of political relations, always arises during a period of crisis and reorganization of the social system. Such interest is caused by the fact that power relations act as a complex mechanism of self-organization of the system and ordering of social relations, the modality of which depends primarily, as already noted, on the system of knowledge articulated in certain language norms, texts, i.e. in various discourses. So at the end of the 20th century, as well as at its beginning, it has continued to this day, there is a search for theoretical and methodological foundations for building the main strategies of power. Therefore, in light of this, it will be important to further consider the most influential traditions in the understanding and interpretation of power that have a direct impact on modernity.

The entire array of ideas concerning power arising in a particular discourse can be safely divided into two types according to the nature of the social relations identified in them. First of all, this is the most traditional, developed and widespread idea of ​​defining power as a subject-object relationship. In general, our attention has already been held within the framework of this idea, and one could notice that it goes back to ancient times and therefore has many power theories that deploy their definitions of power based on this scheme relations. Without pretending to be comprehensive, we single out the following traditions: volitional, structural-functional, formal-managerial, and behaviorism. Thus, the volitional understanding of power is traditional for German thought. Power in Hegel, Marx, Fichte, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Weber is considered as a potential ability or possibility of imposing one's will on the subject of power - on the object. Note, for example, that Nietzsche - power is the will and the ability to assert itself. For Marx, this is the will of the ruling class, for Weber, it is the ability, the ability to carry out the will of the subject within social relations, in spite of resistance, through various mechanisms and techniques.

“In order to change the government, it is necessary first of all to change or change the people who created it. Change it by gradually diluting it with foreign peoples, or change it by “cleansing the brains” of several generations from childhood” (V. Raevsky, 2014)

Message 1. Creators of the people and state of the United States (introduction to the topic).

The USA was created by immigrants from England (ethnic Anglo-Saxons), deeply religious Protestants - a branch of Christianity that broke away from the Roman Catholic Church in the 17th century. Main principle of this faith is the recognition of the exclusive authority of a single Holy Scripture - the Hebrew Bible (the Basic, Original Testament, slyly called the "Old" Testament by the Roman Church) and the Additional Testament, called the "New" by Rome. As a consequence of this principle, strict observance by Protestants of biblical moral standards in Everyday life, which became the basis for the formation of the American people (Anglo-Americans):

“Of all the inclinations and habits that lead to prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable pillars ... National morality cannot be preserved with the exclusion of religious principles.

So said George Washington (1732-99), the first President of the United States (1775-83). Today's 44th President ("Stranger in the White House") destroys this religion and this national morality.

The significance and priority of the Jewish part of the unified Judeo-Christian Holy Scripture (Original and New Testaments) for the formation of human civilization was also emphasized by the 2nd President of the United States (1797-1801), John Adams (1735-1826):

Jews have done more human civilization than any other nation ... It was the Jews who were chosen to store and transmit to the whole world the idea of higher mind, mighty and wise, ruling the universe, which is the basis of all morality and as a consequence - the whole civilization».

As a consequence of their faith, the founding fathers of the United States of America understood the importance of restoring a Jewish state in its homeland for the advancement of civilization:

"Returning the Jews to their homeland is a noble dream shared by many Americans." Abraham Lincoln (1809-65), 16th President of the United States, 1861-65).

The first of the presidents to receive Nobel Prize Peace (of those times, 1906, and not today's parodies of it) Theodore Roosevelt, (26th President of the United States (1901-1909), emphasized the connection of the national development of the United States with the Jewish religion and morality and the spiritual unity of the Protestant (English- American) and the Jewish population of the USA:

“The United States is a country that, from the very beginning of its national development was aware of its duty to the Jewish people ... For Washington and its associates, the founders of this republic, there was no military or civil battle in which citizens of the Jewish faith would not play an important role in the benefit and honor of our country.

And this tradition of spiritual kinship and unnamed union is being roughly destroyed by the current 44th president - the first non-Christian president of the socialist ideology, who does not mention God at all in his speeches.

Finally, completing the galaxy of founders of the United States, Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924), the 28th President of the United States (1913-21), 50 years after Abraham Lincoln's statement about "the dream of many Americans -" return the Jews to their homeland ", could proclaim: “I have the honor to hand over the Holy Land to those to whom it should rightfully belong. The re-establishment of the State of Israel… is obedience to God and a unique precedent for the establishment of democracy.”(1921).

So, dear readers, the "Holy Land", and not Palestine and not the West Bank, but Holy Land of Jews and Christians, with its root region: Jerusalem-Judea-Samaria , today not an American and not a Christian, the 44th President of the United States is trying to take it away from Jews and Christians and transfer it to another people - Arabs and another religion - Islam, enemies and America ("Great Satan"), and Jews ("Small Satan"), the enemies of the Jews, Christians and their civilization as a whole. Transfer, that is, completely destroy the "unique precedent of democracy", placing it under the rule of a dictatorship that destroys all types of democracy.

Based on the above norms and morals of the unified Judeo-Christian Scripture, the founding people of the United States and its leaders developed forms of socio-religious and state-political government of the country: each person is free (individual freedom - Biblical "free will"), but he before God and people is responsible for their behavior and sins. It is in this principle that the fundamental difference between the Protestant faith and the main principle of Catholicism is that you believe in Christ, and this is enough so that all your sins can be forgiven (removed from you) by a priest. Catholicism, under the auspices of Obama, today filling the United States from Latin American countries - a people of a foreign faith, a foreign language and a foreign ethnic group (as well as President Obama himself).

The first settlers, Anglo-Saxon Protestants, like Abraham in biblical times, led by faith and not willing to obey anyone but the Lord, left " your home and your country and traveled to uncharted lands. Only strong people are capable of such an act, confident in their self-sufficiency in order to God's help build your society and your well-being. They are distinguished by an unshakable faith in the One Creator, a deep knowledge of the Holy Scriptures, the holiness of the institution of the family, diligence, personal freedom, limited only by Biblical morality, complete economic independence and a ban on state interference in personal life. In other words, a firm decision to be citizens, not subjects of the state. They treated the family, traditions, the upbringing of the younger generation with special trepidation and with deep respect for the Jews - the only people who for thousands of years were completely literate and read the Holy Scriptures, the people of the Book.

These were the first settlers - the creators of the American people, its state and a special, American Judeo-Christian civilization. We repeat: they and their descendants, brought up by them, created in distant lands a new people called Americans, a new type of state - the United States of America and a new civilization - the Judeo-Christian civilization of Biblical morality. A civilization based on the priority of morality and the norms of a single Holy Scripture, where the morality and faith of Abraham-Ivry (Jew) served as the foundation, and where there never was and could not be enmity towards the Jews, who gave the idea of ​​the One God, enmity, known today as anti-Semitism. Finally, they created a new (not modern) "republican democratic form of government" - without universal suffrage (only taxpayers vote), a new state that became the leader of the Free World and the military, political and economic leader of all Western civilization as a whole. It was: " Firmly trusting in the help of divine Providence”(Declaration of Independence, 1776), it was they who, according to the Huntington formula - religion forms culture, and culture creates civilization (religion-culture-civilization), created precisely not the Roman Catholic, but the Judeo-Christian civilization, which it is correct to call not the world of Western democracies, but the Free World, the world of creative free citizens, and not the state of subjects who expect commands and handouts from the state. It was.

Unfortunately, the 20th century became the century of the destruction of the foundations of the Free World, “the century of the West’s gradual capitulation to the socialist (state) ideology” (Yu. political correctness and personal independence - total surveillance, destroys the national culture ("multiculturalism"), and then generally eliminates the entire complex of civil and economic human rights. Ultimately, this leads to the dictatorship of the state bureaucracy and the primitive unanimity of the obedient majority - a new breed former people, the transformation of "homo sapiens" (a thinking person) into thoughtless zombies like "homo sovieticus", "unbaptized property" of the government or simply, "cattle")

Today, the Democratic Party is claiming autocracy with the creation of a state dictatorship in the United States. This party is controlled by a group of billionaires (“Democratic Alliance”, “New World Order”) and since the 1960s they have been transformed into a socialist one (V. Raevsky “New Meridian”, No. 976, January .. Since the authorities are elected by the population, then, as mentioned above (see the epigraph), in order to capture it, it is necessary to transform the freedom-loving population into an obedient one - to destroy the ideology, tradition and morality of the "founding people". This is carried out by a combination of "brainwashing" with the gradual replacement of the indigenous population with an alien and hostile to traditions " founding people". Each of these paths is carried out gradually (the effectiveness of phasing was very figuratively shown by B. Gulko - "Frogs in the broth", EM. No. 1139, March, 2014).

Consider these paths

1. Replacing the traditional population with an alien to American traditions. It is carried out by encouraging legal and illegal immigration of peoples who are ethnically, religiously and culturally alien and mentally hostile to the spirituality and traditions of the “founding people”. This is the introduction of Muslims, Hispanic peoples Latin America, immigrants of African and Asian origin. Today, out of 316 million US citizens, these groups are: Hispanics - 43.5 million, African Americans - 39 million, Asian Americans (including Muslims, Arabs) - 12.5 million. The rest, about 183 million, are of European origin. Of these, Americans of German origin - more than 48 million, Irish - 46 million and, only in third place, Anglo-Americans (including Scots and people from Northern Ireland and Wales) - 38 million, and the English themselves, i.e. Anglo-Saxons - only 25 million people (less than 8% of the population). However, until recently, they still held power in politics (75% of US presidents, almost 70% of state governors, about 60% in the Senate) and in business (close to 60% of the number of billionaires). At the same time, they do not have any formal advantages and never have - just the self-organization of generations of indigenous settlers. Today, this self-organization of the protection of traditions has practically already been destroyed (the transition of the quantity of strangers into quality, which is strongly promoted by the Democratic Alliance).

2. Transfer of the population from the American culture of freedom to the ideology of socialism, slyly called liberalism and democracy. It is carried out by “cleansing the brains” according to the “homo sovieticus” system (with the leader-messiah) similar to the Goebbels system. Both systems were intended to lead the people to a one-party ideology of socialism with subordination to the leaders and their party bureaucracy. Both are based on massive lies. Today, such a system is used by the Democratic (Socialist) Party (D/dP), along with the exaltation of its professionally insignificant leader - Obama (falsely promoting "successes" and covering up failures). Today, this system has already ensured the almost complete capture of the D / s by the Party of primary, secondary and higher education and most of the media.

3. Weakening the economy and encouraging the “take and divide” movement. It is carried out by a directed increase in public debt, a decrease in the status of the dollar, an increase in taxes on business, the approval of a minimum wage, which hits industrial business and sharply increases unemployment, and other anti-market measures of the ruling administration.