Where does the ‘arrow of time’ go?

This article offers a critical reflection on the collective monograph “The Arrow of Time in the Mass Consciousness of Russians: Assessments of the Past, Judgments about the Present, and Representations of the Future” (2024, FCTAS RAS, Institute of Sociology, edited by M.K. Gorshkov, Moscow: Ves Mir Publishers), which synthesizes the findings of a sociological survey aimed at elucidating the historical orientation of Russian mass consciousness. The article primarily focuses on the methodological framework of the study (addressed in the first part, comprising the initial three sections), as well as the principal trend of the “arrow of time” in contemporary Russian mass consciousness and society as a whole (analyzed in the final two sections of the second part). Emphasizing the originality of the approach – which requires examining the historical orientation of mass consciousness through the lens of an instantaneous sociological snapshot – the author reconstructs the overarching logic of philosophical doctrines of time (Aristotle – Augustine – Kant – Bergson). The discussion explicates A. Zinoviev’s conceptual distinction between social time and physical time, demonstrating that society itself, as the systematic organization of large groups of people, constitutes a mode of their existence within social time. In the second part, the analysis addresses the documented trend toward an “explosive” intensification of traditionalist attitudes within mass consciousness. The author argues that this shift represents a reaction to the futurist bias of public consciousness and serves as a response to the transition from globalism to a multipolar world order. This turn does not signify a retrograde movement; rather, the appeal to tradition is interpreted within the framework of a nuanced understanding of the present as the unity of past and future. The article concludes by asserting that the return to tradition and roots not only leaves open the channels for engagement with, enrichment by, and integration of the achievements of other cultures and peoples, but in fact constitutes a prerequisite for a more comprehensive and fruitful assimilation of them.