ИСТИНА

Rural communities in the North of Russia live today in a condition of deep social and economic crisis, including the decline of agricultural production, depopulation, social pessimism, spread of corruption and the ethic of violence. What are the reasons of this crisis? What is the nature of the existing social system in today's Russia and if there any room for a 'northern village' in this system? Social process in 1990s in Russia and other post-Soviet states has deeply influenced all the aspects of life and economic practices. The rise of criminality, informal economy and corruption in "transforming" societies was one of the major negative effects of the dramatic attempt of Russia to join the economic globalization. Instead of the anticipated 'model' capitalist market which was to emerge, Russia in reality exemplifies a different economic system. It includes vast elements of "gangster capitalism", "criminal capitalism", "corruptional economy", or "shadow capitalism". The important factor in this development was the psychology of this new system characterized by general moral indifference, the indiscrimination between the legal and the illegal. Thus, businesspeople complied with the necessity to pay to criminal groups and corruption among state officials and law-enforcement bodies have become a "norm" and even a virtue. My assumption underlying the analysis of macroeconomic processes in contemporary Russia is that by now only those processes have been theoretically conceptualized that have to do with developed market relations. All the non-market and premarket economic structures have been outside of economists' attention which resulted in limited explaining potential of many contemporary economic constructions. The 'pressure ethics' became dominant in all spheres of the society. I consider the system gangsterism (racketeering) and the system corruption in Russia as two forms of parasitical economic relations.The resurrection of Russian rural economy and social life can take place only under the condition of overcoming corruption, ethic of violence, and semi-archaic social relations