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Release Date 27.02.2026

 INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIES

 

 

 

Medushevskiy Andrei

doctor of Science (Philosophy), Tenured Professor

Higher School of Economics (Moscow), This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4314-662X

 

VIRTUE AND VICE: ETHICAL CODES OF MARGINAL COMMUNITIES IN MODERN RUSSIA

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It is generally accepted that the basis of social and legal stability in any society is a consensus on virtue — the fundamental values of proper behavior, ways of maintaining and reproducing them. And, conversely, the destruction of this consensus is a sign of the loss of stability and divergence of positions of social institutions, groups and professional communities in understanding and applying norms and sanctions for their violation. This schematic representation poorly explains the parameters of the moral crisis of the era of globalization: the reasons for the loss of the meaning of the concept of virtue as the basis of the moral universe of humanity; the rejection of universal moral standards previously supported by religion or ideology, the growing conflict of their interpretations in different cultures, confessional and ethnic communities, the confrontation of value hierarchies within national cultures and individual groups, and most importantly - the lack of common moral guidelines of what to strive for. In these conditions, the dominant global trend has become the appeal to the codification of norms of so-called “pragmatic ethics” – the development of various codes of proper behavior for individual social and professional groups, which in this way seek to express their identity, functions and place in the dynamics of changes in the social hierarchy. This general fashion for the creation of ethical codes has captured post-Soviet Russia and is considered almost a panacea for moral distortions and the basis for effective social regulation. Meanwhile, the codification of ethical standards of all social subcultures without exception means a tacit recognition of both their insurmountable contradictions and that part of them that does not share conventional standards of virtue or clearly rebels against them. On this basis, the phenomenon of moral anomie (that is, the destruction of the entire normative system) and the justification of non-conformist and immoral behavior arises. What should be the parameters and limits of its acceptance in a democratic society, and most importantly - who sets them? This range of problems becomes the subject of analysis for the first time in this article, based on the entire corpus of the latest ethical codes of marginal communities in modern Russia.

 

Keywords: virtue, vice, faith and reason, ethical codes, conformist, deviant and criminal behavior, nihilism, amoralism, moral mysophobia, moral insanity, marginal communities of Russia

 

JEL: K14, K15, L84, Z00

UDC: 172, 177, 34.096, 392, 393.05

DOI: 10.52342/2587-7666VTE_2026_1_145_163

 

©  A. Medushevskiy, 2026

© Institute of Economics of the Russian Academy of Sciences «Issues of Theoretical Economics», 2026

 

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Manuscript submission date: 24.11.2025

Manuscript acceptance date: 15.01.2026

 

For citation:

Medushevskiy А. Virtue and Vice: Ethical Codes of Marginal Communities in Modern Russia. Part 1 // Voprosy teoreticheskoy ekonomiki. 2026. No. 1. Pp. 145–163. DOI: 10.52342/2587-666VTE_2026_1_145_163