Creative potential of the older age group in the rural society

The issues of the older age group of the rural population are discussed in the paper on the basis of objective and subjective prerequisites affecting the activeness of its involvement in socio-cultural activities. Taking into account the wide horizon of socio-cultural practices of the older age group, the authors used the concept of creative potential, which includes elements of human, labor and social potentials. This concept allows overcome the context of the meaning of oldness as the exhaustion of human power spiritual and physical. Unlike the similar urban group, where elderly men and women have guaranteed resources for social services and, if they wish, can find a sufficiently wide range of employment, rural people face limitations in terms of preferential living arrangements. Owing to the optimization of the medical service infrastructure, hospitals and paramedic centers have become less available for them. Since for the same reason schools in villages where there are few children have been closed, elderly people are more concerned about the safety of their grandchildren, who now have to cover long distances every day to get to schools located in other settlements. Due to the fact that older children of the older age group are not always employed where they live and have to seek job far beyond even their own region, the burden on those staying on, including pensioners, to maintain the family farmstead has increased. The vector of the manifestation of the creative potential of the older age group can most fully be implemented in the profession. To the greatest extent, this is demonstrated by the elderly people with higher and secondary special education. Their share in the structure of the rural society is quite high, whereas agricultural enterprises and independent farms are in no opportunity to provide them with jobs for legal reasons. Keeping their jobs are such representatives of the older age group as agronomists, engineers, economists, experiences machine operators and cattle breeders. Given their reliability, farm managers are reluctant to replace them. The underutilization of the creative potential of this group of the elderly is obvious. Rural communities also have high shares of elderly people with primary and incomplete secondary education, who before the beginning of the agrarian reform were engaged in different kinds of manual work, the amount of which in the new time has significantly decreased. Therefore, this part of the older age group has focused on working in their households helping their adult children. If they are alone, their activeness in this field gets reduced and sometimes they even completely abandon their personal subsidiary farming. But many of this group becomes beekeepers, and this kind of employment allows them feel they are needed by their city relatives and fellow villagers, who are interested in business communication with them. The paper also assesses the people‟s viability, which is most prominently represented by the older age group of rural residents.