Twenty years of Russian reforms and establishment of a civil society in post-reform Russia

At the end of 2011 Russia will mark 20th anniversary of taking the path of radical social-economic reforms aimed primarily at structural reorganization of the Russian economy.  Becoming one of the symbolic events in contemporary history of the country, economic reforms have affected all spheres of the state and social activity.

Debates about the political heritage of theirs main initiators are still actual for the considerable part of population.  Especially under the condition of modern – highly ambivalent – epoch partly inheriting the policy adopted by the reformers and partly being opposed to it. 

It is obvious that activity of the reformers of the decades passed often had spontaneous character and were in many respects forced, generated by the conditions of a total system crisis which has broken in the collapsing USSR, when there were no time for the search of «sparing», step-by-step ways of reforming.  At the same time mass consciousness is inclined to forget a historical context under which the reforms were carried out, to mythologize and simplify many things.  That is why it is so important to turn back to look at the events of twenty years’ prescription, to examine them from the point of view of the present generations of Russians.

At the same time it is very important to analyze in what way the changes occurred have affected life of the Russian citizens, their social and material welfare, possibilities of self-realization, evolution of their world outlook installations, national self-identification, opinions as regard the world around, role and place of the state, democratic institutions and norms in life of the society.

The article is based on the results of the national-wide sociological research «Twenty years of reforms through the Russians’ eyes» conducted by the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences in April, 2011.