Moral Culture: Public Morality and Private Responsibility

What could be worse than socialism?--Whatever comes after it. (Contemporary Russian joke). When Mikhail Gorbachev unfurled his reform banners in the late 1980's, many observers inside and outside Russia hailed perestroika as a moral renaissance. The Soviet Union was indeed a spiritually bankrupt society at the time, its citizens demanding a clean break with the past and yearning for a better future. Despite the new openness or glasnost, the changes have been slow in coming and often very controversial. A public opinion survey conducted in February 1991 showed the country morally adrift and deeply divided about the course of reforms. [1] "What do you think about public morality in our country?, " the researchers asked a cross-section of the Russian population. Thirty one percent answered that a sharp moral decline had taken place in the last few years. Thirty five percent claimed things had not changed much, except for th