«Коррупция» — модное слово, важное понятие, означающее корень едва ли не всех бед нашей страны. Без заклинаний о необходимости непримиримой борьбы с коррупцией не обходится ни одно программное выступление официальных лиц высшего уровня. Оппозиция сделала обличение продажных чиновников, заклейменных хлестким прозвищем «партия жуликов и воров», главным лозунгом протеста.

Civil rallies in Russia that have started in late autumn 2011, but for the irritation of a certain social group with the government's policies (and with the very government) are based on the factor that some experts call “delayed modernization”. It is rather about socio-political and socio-cultural modernization than the technical one, perhaps even a kind of modernization of public consciousness in the first place. The so-called “creative class” challenges its place in Russian politics, and (surprisingly for many) gets involved in the public debate; gender problems, issues of minority rights (in particular, sexual minorities) become crucial – which was impossible to imagine few years ago. The very current Russian authority, being perfectly alienated from society, gives reason to compare itself to the Soviet communist establishment; the confusion, it demonstrates in an environment of a growing public discontent, is most logically explained with its circularity and lack of modernization. Finally, the new leaders of public protests, who appeared last year, aspire taking a new look at both the classical problem of “the role of a personality in history” and the discussion about the “personal history” in general. The mentioning of “history” is by no means accidental. The Minister of Culture seat in the new Russian government was given to an amateur historian Vladimir Medinsky, who quite openly admitted being ready to misrepresent the facts of the past in order to better “align” them with a patriotically-right doctrine. Apparently, the Russian humanitarian community is due to face the extreme point of scientific integrity and common sense capitulating to the political situation since the beginning of post-Soviet time.