One of the initiators of the project, Professor of the Rutgers University in the USA, Sergey Erofeev, spoke about the relevance and prospects of this study:
“The values of people around the world are directly related to what they believe in. First of all, this concerns issues of family, work and social activities. Our goal is to identify not only the substance of values and the mood of people in the post-Soviet space, but also what they are striving for.
Social scientists often talk about some similarities between our region and the Arab world, China and Europe. In general, the line of modernization in the Soviet Union had a great impact on how we perceive the world today. And today the system of education, science and production in Kazakhstan is closely linked with the development of European civilization. We're here to find out what we have in common with the rest of the world. Is there a general "moral revolution" taking place in the former USSR? How is political culture changing? How have the values of people and their attitude towards society changed over the past 25 years?
When we got the idea to do the research, I immediately thought of colleagues from leading universities. Some of them are with us today as experts. There are also young scientists who have experience in conducting analytical work in this area. Now the time has come to combine common forces into something large-scale, ”summed up Sergey Erofeev.
The event will continue tomorrow as well, with participants discussing the differences and dynamics of values among research subjects in four countries. As a reminder, Narxoz University acts as an educational platform for Tectonic Value Shifts in Post-Soviet Societies: A Biographical Approach. Within the framework of the project, scientists plan to implement training courses and prepare recommendations by the end of this year.