ETHICS IN RUSSIA - CIS - EASTERN EUROPE:

ITS EFFECT UPON ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT POSSIBILITIES

an essay by Dr. Johannevich van de Waal Palms

Can transcultural conflicts be resolved by a single ethics? Are cultural artifacts binding across cultures. The release from dogma has freed the new republics of the former Soviet Union to think ethically but does a society which denied consideration of ethical questions for seventy years possess a vocabulary with which to consider ethical questions? Is there a semantic equivalent for the vocabulary of ethics in the Russian language?

Does Russia - CIS - EE possess the semantic tools for the determination of right and wrong in questions of conduct or conscience by the application of general principles of ethics? Is such casuistry a practicable art using the Russian language?

Such questions become important when we advance concepts that governments are only a tool for meeting the needs of constituents, not a power over individual minds. Ethical questions may well be at the root of opportunities for developing commercial relations and pursuing economic reconstruction of Russia.

If a theory of good has evolved in Western business, how will these principles be conveyed in communication, dialog and dialectic with the Russian culture.

What we hear is that the former Soviet Union is unique with its own culture and that Western concepts do not necessarily fit Russia without modification. Perhaps adaptation is called for in an evolutionary sense. Can we vary the basis for ethical decisions and still arrive at a compatible consensus of right and wrong?

Recent experience would suggest that the answer is far from affirmative. Changing the rules of the game in mid-stream is far from acceptable. Caveat-emptor is not the customary practice between "partners", and increasingly unacceptable even between strangers.

Westerners increasingly ask themselves, do we really want to learn to play according to the Russian manner. Does cultural adaptation and acclimation imply a willingness to abandon ethical principles?...And back again comes the question...Are ethical principles binding across cultures?

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