Young people were left clueless. It so happened that they do not have a meaningful and formulated worldview. Whether this is good or bad is a question, but the fact remains: the Soviet value scale is dead, those who begin their adult life have heard little about it.
Soviet films are loved by the older generation, quotes like “they will put you in jail, but you don’t steal” or “saw, Shura, saw” do not say anything to young people. They do not know about the world, labor, May, about the Code of the Builder of Communism, and thank God. Perestroika values also collapsed – there are many myths, but they are alive, and nothing can be done about it. In the bottom line, you can’t offer a teenager any scale from those years, “dashing years” are always fleeting, and in terms of worldview too. The liberal ideology has not taken root, liberals are scolded, Russian people understand freedom more as non-slavery than as the right to acquire property and the right to elect and be elected. Young people are indifferent to both the first and the second, and without a mature concept of freedom, a liberal system of views cannot be built or explained. Stateism, Christian values have gained popularity in Russia, but still they are heavy, archaic, contradict everything that the information revolution has given – openness, accessibility of any knowledge, any contact, the feeling that the world is right there – in your palm.
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- It is difficult for us to part with the Soviet past
A worldview is still a necessary thing. It is like a ruler to measure, or like a scale to weigh, it is a tool of choice that young people have to make at every step. Traditionally, writers were responsible for answering eternal questions in Russia. It was from this understanding that the idea was born to make a book of elementary truths, in which modern writers would explain to young people what good and evil, vulgarity, selfishness and sincerity are, what conscience and cowardice, honor and need are. The writers creaked their pens with joy. It turned out that the best modern writers had stagnated in the stall and were ready to rush into explanations, to make a cavalry charge on thoughtlessness and stunted judgments. They boiled, got sick, they needed this dialogue, not all the same wrinkle their foreheads in a dispute with their own kind. And so the book “ABC Truths” turned out. 33 writers about 33 main worldview concepts1. Akunin, Tolstaya, Petrushevskaya, Moskvina, Gandlevsky, Arkhangelsky, Ilichevsky, Timofeevsky, Levontina, Krongauz… We talked about concepts. We left our will. I don’t know how useful it will be, because the heirs treat the will differently. But our conscience is clear – we have fulfilled our duty to them.”
1 The book “ABC Truths” (Klever, 2015).