ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that a commendable tentativeness and caution in identifying the consciousness of postcommunist Russia. The emergence of the concept of "civic culture" in Russia and neighboring states says as much about the past as about the present. The chapter describes with great clarity the process by which the old Soviet cultural consciousness has broken apart. It outlines the picture of a single and coherent paradigm of Soviet culture put forward by the very talented contributors. This culture was all-embracing in its aspirations and was undergirded by a set of institutions created explicitly to embody a genuinely "Soviet" consciousness. Yuri Levada has characterized the old Soviet order as a "mobilized society", in which cultural values derived from the edicts of party and state functionaries. Leading trends in the analysis of Soviet culture all stressed the importance of periodization within the Soviet era, as if to underscore the capacity of Soviet civilization to evolve and change over time.
