Association probe into the notion of shame in modern Russian culture: from post-perestroika freedom to modern authoritarianism

ABSTRACT This article provides an analysis of the notion of shame in the language consciousness of Russians during two periods of Russia’s development – the early 1990s and the early twenty-first century. The data of association experiments are juxtaposed to demonstrate the change that occurred in Russians’ worldview in the course of transition from the twentieth to the twenty-first century. The most striking difference between two Russian samplings consisted in the willingness of some twenty-first-century Russian respondents to comment on shame negatively, while 1990s Russian respondents did not comprehend shame as a negative phenomenon. All findings make it possible to assert that while the cultural core of Russians’ worldview remained unchanged, political perturbations triggered alterations in Russians’ perception of shame.