ABSTRACT
All societies are possessed of integration mechanisms - so long as they exist. A community that fails to develop such mechanisms and/or build them into political culture is ephemeral. Political culture can be generally defined as basic knowledge about, or a vision of social life shared by a relatively large section of society that determines for those who belong to it their understanding of particular political situations and their behaviour in them. Knowledge of this kind can be divided into three main categories, viz. social ontology, political values and operational experience. The priority of the whole is so pronounced that all internal distinctions appear irrelevant, which creates a specific "egalitarian" attitude that, after it has been incorporated in the value system, affects both political decision-making and political behaviour. The holistic vision of society outlined in the preceding section is by no means a unique Russian phenomenon.
