THE MODERN CONCEPT OF MODERNIZATION: CORRECTING PREVIOUS MISTAKES

Abstract

The present article is the continuation of the authors previous work. It examines
the evolution of the views expressed by the theorists of modernization of the late 1960s -
early 1990s. It is noted that within the period mentioned the researchers abandoned the
treatment of modernization as a single-line and universal process. The scientists of the late
1960s -early 1970s dispelled the myth that there was a single way to modernity for the
whole West. The central research topic of the 1980s was the question of the ratio of western
values (modernity) to the national ones in the culture of the country being modernized. This
ratio was considered as a factor determining the model of the future of a certain country. The
collapse of the Soviet Union and the collapse of the Socialist bloc of countries led to a new
round of scientifi c debates of the way to modernity which revived the concepts of the late
1950s - early 1960s.