Introduction
In 1991, the great social experiment of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics dissolved. The empire spanning almost five centuries, from the remnants of the Golden Horde to Stalin's "new Russia" (Hoskins, 1997) from Poland to the Pacific disappeared, leaving a political-sociological void that is only now moving towards resolution. Still the largest nation in the world (Shultz, 2000), Russia spans two continents, multiple time zones, and a land area that diminishes that of the United States. Although it no longer demonstrates the breadth of cultural conglomeration existing in the era of Soviet existence, the Russian Federation provides for an interesting cultural examination, and will be the basis of this paper.
Specifically, this paper will examine six different areas of culture noted by the Hofstede Centre's 6-D model; power distance, individualism, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance, pragmatism, and indulgence. A bar-graph of the various scorings of Russia by the standards of the Hofstede Centre to provide a visual representation of the information to be examined in this paper is provided below. Providing a cultural baseline also will assist the reader in examining a nation such as Russia, therefore the author has included cultural references and notations to the United States of America. As well, though it is outside the scope of this paper, a brief historical examination of different areas of Russia's culture will be offered, as to fully understand a nation's cultural existence and development, knowledge of its history is required.
Power Distance
The dimension of power distance, according to the Hofstede Centre, indicates that “[t]he extent to which the less powerful members within ...
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...Soviet era, it will be of interest to examine these cultural markers and see if the nation will remain as it has throughout much of similar changes, or if Russia will truly redefine herself as the 21st century continues.
References
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Gender roles in Russia have dramatically changed since the fall of the former Soviet Union and the fall of communism. It is hard to look directly at the constitution of Russia seeing as though the drafting and redrafting of their constitution is still underway. However, looking at the constitution of the former Soviet Union, you can see it is clearly stated that: “Women and men have equal rights.” It is very clear that in the Soviet Union they were trying to make it so that women and men were equal. It is still clear today that those same basic ideals are present in Russia. Women are clearly more equal in their country than in ours. In the workforce as well as in the home, women play a more equal role than in the present day United States. However, for the sake of this paper, let us just look at the infrastructure of Russia, formerly known as the Soviet Union or USSR.
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1) The mature Russian political and legal tradition emerged in the middle of the 19th century through reinterpretation of previous Russian national development in terms of Hegel's understanding of history as a process of the self-development of the World Spirit as the Absolute.
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In the website provided I do not found the name of my country in the in the section available to select country, even if I can’t provide any data from the website, I will try to speak about the 6 traits (power distance, Individualism, Masculinity, uncertainty avoidance, Long term orientation, indulgence) considered to analyze the countries culture.
In society, it can be agreed that there are two main types of power, proximal relations of power and distal relations of power. Proximal relations of power deals within the personal relationships in society, whereas distal relations of power are related to society in a more abstract way that affects it as a
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7) Vernadsky, George. A History of Russia: Fourth Edition, Completely Revised. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1954.
Exploring the October revolution and the establishment of communism, Richard Pipes concludes that the origin of communism can be traced back to the distant past in Russia’s history. Pipes states that Russia had entered a period of crisis after the governments of the 19th century undertook a limited attempt at capitalisation, not trying to change the underlying patrimonial structures of Russian society. (Pipes, 1964)
The first dimension, power distance index (PDI), refers to the extent to which the less powerful members of organizations and institutions accept and expect that power is distributed unequally. In a society, an individual exhibiting a high degree of power distance accept hierarchies where everyone has a place without the need for justification. Societies with low power distance however, seek the equal distribution of power. In organization
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