glasnost' when soul-searching and recanting about their behavior of the 1970's.The political conformism of intellectuals bore an interesting product, namely, a special mythology which had to exculpate passive intellectuals as well as those who corroborated with the authorities and betrayed their colleagues.The goal of this paper is to analyze this mythology. The author makes a distinction between two kinds of mythology used by the intellectuals to justify their conformity — a "current' mythology, which is employed for the vindication of contemporary deeds and a "retrospective' mythology, the purpose of which is to acquit one of past actions. The importance of the mythology employed by the intellectuals goes beyond the Soviet experience and reminds one of the developments in the American intellectual community during the McCarthy era, as well as in German and French communities during the Second World War. As a theoretical basis for this paper, the author uses the concept of a two-level mentality which helps explain how people can easily separate their behavior from their system of values." /> The justification of political conformism - Shlapentokh Vladimir | sdvig press