How do the ideas turn into ideologies: the Russian context
The process in which an ‘idea’ transforms into ‘ideology’ invariably involves such changes as primitivization, politicization, massovization, normativization, monologization; this process, which is largely spontaneous, seems to be inevitable, especially in the age of mass society. Particularly alarming is the situation in certain societies (such as in Russia) where mass society gains total dominance over the civil society and where there appear not just 'ideologies' but the ideologies that are totalitarian and repressive. The main question in this case is: how to avoid the totalirization of ideology? The author singles out the three forms of totalitarian ideocracy which all use the same ideological mechanism, i.e., they all tend to manipulate the notion of ‘historical guilt’.