ABSTRACT
The complex reality of social movements in the Soviet Union can be best studied by a theory capable of distinguishing between movements dedicated to the establishment of new social systems and movements seeking to construct identities and defend interests within alternative social systems. Modern civil society is created through forms of self-constitution and self-mobilization and is institutionalized through laws, especially subjective rights that stabilize social differentiation. Given the differences among movements, and the republican fragmentation even of the same type of movement, the elementary consensus around the desirability of a pluralist civil society remains brittle and unstable. From the point of view of independent initiatives, the turn to political society has other advantages as well, which were probably more clearly understood by the actors themselves or by movement intellectuals than was the potential of dealing with fissures in civil society.
