Culture Of Guilt” In The Context Of “Empowerment” And “Oppression” Paradigms Of Post-Soviet Orthodoxy

The paper analyzes ethical-behavioral categories of the contemporary Orthodox ecclesiastic culture in Russia to determine the correlation of the cultural paradigms of "oppression" and "empowerment" therein. The main emphasis is placed on revealing oppressive stereotypes, social action imperatives, social regulators present in the cultural model of Russian Orthodoxy which condition the processes opposing the "empowerment" strategy and reducing its social capital. The hypothesis proposed by the author in this paper is that the key socio-cultural attitude conditioning the system of oppressive-restrictive stereotypes of behavior in the ecclesiastic milieu is the prevalence of the awareness of culpability in the modern ecclesiastic ethos, a certain "culture of guilt". In this connection the author pays most attention to the category of "guilt" and its discontent in Orthodoxy.