orientations in the following order: individual freedom, freedom to choose education,
family, the right to a personal space [2].
Western civilization in its cultural archetype is radically different from Eastern
Slavic. And these differences are not only in the ideology essence, but also in the
attitude to the world outside the cultural archetype. The western archetype has had
durable, active and stable characteristics, while the eastern type has always been
passive, has always been “for itself” and “in itself”, has manifested its development in
an archaic and abrupt manner. It has always been a subject to pressure from the West.
The East Slavic type, due to the peculiarities of historical development, was guided by
the spiritual issues, and existed by faith in a better future. The western archetype was
oriented towards the material issues, and existed in the reality of the “today”.
The main feature and advantage of the Western archetype is its development
dynamics. In our opinion, Western archetype formation dynamics’ characteristic has
the following features:
1. Consistent succession of generations, hence the stability of the social
information transmission to younger generations on the basis of original social values;
2. Supporting historical tradition in the interests of several social classes;
3. Stability of ideology represented by church, focused on material interests and
problems of social development;
4. Preaching moral and ethical values as opposed to moral and spiritual values;
5. The stability of the political organization of society to the economic interests
of the majority of the population historical correspondence, where the private property
social universality principle has played a key role;
6. The society’s beliefs in the possibility of self-realization and social reforms;
7. Historical stability and inviolability of social values regardless social
upheavals.
East Slavic culture has formed a completely different cultural type of person,
based on the values of a different nature.
“The historian and philosopher Lev Platonovich Karsavin (“East, West, and the
Russian Idea”) finds that the essential point of the Russian spirit is the religion,
including violent atheism. The Russian ideal is the interpenetration of the Church and
state, he said, however, Russian Orthodoxy, unfortunately, has a serious disadvantage,
which is its passivity, inaction. “Meanwhile, a Russian wants to act “always in the
name of something absolute or absolutized”. Striving for the endless, the Russian is
afraid of determinations. Walter Schubart, a Baltic German, who probably knew the
Russian language and Russian culture like Russians themselves, wrote a wonderful
book translated into Russian and English (“Europa und die Seele des Ostens”); he
contrasted mainly two types of a human: a promethean, heroic, and johanninic, a
messianic human, that is, the human who follows the ideal, given in the Gospel of John.
- 293 -