Modernization as a determinant of individualization in social processes

Drawing on new advances in the Western social science, this article develops a theory of modernization, which focuses on individualization that is on increasing autonomy of a person vis-à-vis such institutions as family, religion and traditional morality. The author assumes that initially these institutions played a key role in many societies, but in the West, especially in the Anglo-Saxon world, they had lost their former significance due to affect of several factors. Because some of these factors did not exist in Russia, and some of them were not as strong as those in the West, the process of individualization in the Russian society had got a slower and less intensive nature.