The Transformation of Values in the Times of Uncertainty

The current issue of Changing Societies & Personalities continues its main thematic thread—reflection upon value transformations in various socio-cultural contexts. The keyword that may characterize the entire issue is uncertainty. On the one hand, uncertainty inevitably follows any transformation. On the other, the COVID-19 pandemic, which is analyzed in several articles from different perspectives, is far more than a health crisis. COVID-19 is affecting societies at their core by changing the habitual way of life, and its long-term impacts are hidden in the fog of the future. The pandemic will end sooner or later, but uncertainty will remain. From big things to small, from philosophical concepts to everyday feelings, being uncertain means that people and societies are alive. Revealing the historical roots of post-colonial thought, Konstantin D. Bugrov (Yekaterinburg, Russia) begins his article Colonial Revolution and Liberatory War: from Communist to Post-Colonial Theory (Georgy Safarov, Mao Zedong and Frantz Fanon) by mentioning Vladimir Lenin’s justification of a national liberation war even if it is a war of a colonial semi-feudal state against a well-developed imperialist state. Lenin’s idea was followed by the Communist International (Comintern), which in 1920 proclaimed the possibility of a direct transition of colonies to socialism. Bugrov outlines three key tendencies of the Communist thought developed in the 20th century, which had an impact on the further development of the colonial (and post-colonial) agenda: the intellectual legacy of Antonio Gramsci; the Orthodox Leninist thought represented by different types of the USSR-inspired communist movements across the world; and some radical interpretations of the resolutions of the 2nd Comintern Congress. The article explores the concepts of three political figures: Georgy Safarov who, as Bugrov argues, arranged a set of rather unsystematic Bolshevik/Comintern ideas on colonial revolution into a theory of anti-colonial peasant war; Mao Zedong who insisted on achieving national independence by means of war rather than