Transformations of Entrepreneurial Ethics in the Imperial, Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia: Paradoxes and Problems. Part 1

The article examines the specifics and history of the formation of entrepreneurial ethics in pre-revolutionary Russia, as well as its transformations in the course of Russian revolutions, in the Soviet era during the New Economic Policy period. Research embraces the transformations in cooperative / artel types of business at a later stage, in the «shadow» system of private entrepreneurship, and finally, in the times of the late Soviet and post-Soviet reforms. It is shown that several stages of breaking the mass ethical norm «at the turns of the epochs» – could not but lead to serious destruction of the moral oriented basis of life in all social groups and in all strata of society. It is shown, that the «turns of the epochs» caused lasting and painful fractures between the outward normality of the state (the norms of written law) and the internal normality of citizens, communities and society (mass morality and the «customary law»). It is shown, that during the Soviet period, in the process of organizing economic life, authorities largely relied on the successive moral community specificity of mass self-awareness, including community forms of collective encouragement and punishment, as well as on religious ethical precepts transformed in the terminology of communism. It is established, that the late Soviet and post-Soviet so called «market» transformations of economic legislation, the purposeful discrediting of mass normative and ethical views of the Soviet era, as well as illegal and fraudulent privatization of substantial part of Soviet public property, led to deep chaos in the entire Russian institutional and regulatory system that ensures economic activity and social sustainability. It is shown, that this creates serious obstacles to the successful development of Russian statehood.

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