The Individualization of Post-Soviet Youth in the Sphere of Morality

The concept of individualization as "a macrosocial process of modern times" was developed within the framework of general theories in the course of examining and explaining the sociality of the second half of the twentieth century. In the case of U. Beck's theory of risk society, individualization is interpreted as "liberation from traditional life interconnections," in which "family obligations and class differences . . . are relegated to the background with respect to the newly emerging "center" of the plan of the life story". In accordance with the methodological postulate that in a situation in which there is an increase in the number of alternatives, when resolving moral issues the likelihood of choosing the same option will go down, the author focuses on the dimension of differentiation, and considers individualization in morality as the maximal variability of normative orientations in society. The author looks at the degree of individualization in the morality of post-Soviet youth in Eastern Europe (Belarus, Lithuania, Russia, and Ukraine). In the study, use was made of the data of a European and world study of values in aggregated form for the countries of Eastern Europe and processed data for the Western countries. Survey data on individualism among young people in Russia, Belarus, and Lithuania show that while it was approximately equal in 1990, the population of Lithuania became more individualized with respect to morality than did the population of Russia by 2000, while by then Belarus showed the highest level among the three countries. (Contains 3 tables.)