Upbringing and Socialization in Today's Russia: Risks and Opportunities

New people are being born, children are growing up, and young people are entering adult life; the complexity and contradictions of this process have been described very well in the literature. Leaving aside many essential aspects, people are being socialized--becoming a part of society--in a system of values that is entirely different. This paper examines socialization as an extremely broad concept that includes not only education (with its components of upbringing and instruction), but also life's influence in all the fullness of factors that are consciously taken into account and arise randomly. How coordinated (or, in any case, noncontradictory) the entire system of these influences is will determine how people turn out. Moreover, the experience of all cultures shows that socialization, the influence of the life around people, in many respects exerts a stronger formative influence than education does. To put it another way, the school of life is stronger than school per se--in the broad sense, to be sure--and if their influences go in different directions or are simply not coordinated, a whole system of risks arises for the individual, for society, and for the state. This paper discusses the possible risks and opportunities of the system of socialization in today's Russia.